Why I'm Walking Away From 99designs and Taking Back My Marketing
99designs is a platform that connects designers and clients in a way that protects both parties. If you need a logo, packaging design, or a website you put together a brief, scroll through a bunch of portfolios and invite the designers whose work catches your eye to send over a personalised quote. Initially focused on graphic design and branding, later 99designs added the option to work with a Squarespace ‘expert’- an independent designer, developer or specialist from the Squarespace Circle (“super user”) community. It was in 2019 that I applied to become a Squarespace expert, shortly after which I was plugged into the 99designs ecosystem and the first 99d enquiries started trickling in.
Up until that point, the way I’d found clients was kind of old school: when people asked me what I did, I told them and inevitably they knew someone who needed a website and would put us in touch, over the phone. I built a website for a farmer (a friend’s dad), and for a small private school (my mom was on the school board), and for a church, and then another church (I knew people who attended). Each next project came via word of mouth, was local, and personal.
Alongside designing and building what at that time were fairly basic sites, I also leapt into blogging with both feet in an attempt to process what I was learning along the way. Squarespace was new to me and to the South African context and writing long form blog posts was a means of consolidating my own discoveries. My blog got some traction. People found me on Google. I got more clients. And so it went.
Over time and with a growing portfolio, I was bumped up from ‘mid-level’ (not the most appealing descriptor!) to ‘top-level’ designer on 99designs, and the work really took off. I would typically have up to five enquiries per day on weekdays and about 25 to 30 over a weekend. It turns out a lot of people have their best business ideas on a Sunday! Of course not all of these enquiries led to work, but many of them did. In 2022, I completed 40 separately invoiced projects just through 99d, ranging from one-page websites, to quick technical fixes, to fairly complex ecommerce stores taking a couple of months to complete. Although people continued to reach out to me directly through my personal website, I began to lean pretty heavily on the 99designs work coming in.
At one point I took several months leave for an extended trip overseas, and “switched off” my availability (a handy feature on the platform) and wasn’t sure how the algorithm would react to my absence, and whether I’d get any enquiries once I switched my profile back on. When I did, it took only five minutes for the first quote request to come through.
99designs had become a lot of things for me:
An reliable lead generator: with up to 40 personal enquiries per week on a regular basis
A secure payment portal: clients pay 99designs directly, and on completion funds are released to Payoneer and then into my South African bank account.
A legal contract: my quote plus client payment constituted a legal agreement as stipulated by 99designs, and any risk was mitigated by their direct involvement.
A client communication portal: basic messaging, file uploads, graphics annotation and organisation was provided within the system once you started a one-to-one project.
An intermediary: “Ghosting-forward” clients (there are always a few!) were contacted by the 99d team directly, and on the rare occasion (there was one!) someone was unhappy with my work, 99d stepped in to manage the situation, swiftly and fairly.
A review/testimonial space: project complete, clients were automatically prompted to leave a review, which was then publicly visible on your profile.
A dynamic portfolio: Each finished project is added to your portfolio, which new clients can browse easily.
The 99designs system felt robust, dependable, and was working in my favour. Where once I blogged my way to online visibility with clients finding me organically, my regular writing routine fell away, my newsletter never happened, my personal portfolio stagnated and I neglected the simplest of site and social media updates.
Things started to go awry around October of 2025. An inordinate number of scammers were let loose on the loose on and through the 99d platform:
First they posed as 99designs staff members taking drastic action on my account: ‘your account has been banned’, ‘your account has been flagged’, ‘your account has been restricted’, ‘your account has been blocked/locked/deactivated’ all of course with a suspicious link provided to ‘reactivate/verify/claim a bonus’
Then they targeted my former 99designs clients impersonating me: they took my name, portfolio, reviews and profile pic and reached out to my past clients demanding ‘urgent compliance action’ and threatening dire results if no payment was made. This is a long story for another time that sadly ended in many folks getting caught out and making panic payments of hundreds of dollars.
Then the scammers posed as clients: with a specific brief and urgent deadline, they attempted to book calls with me. These messages were flagged by 99d and I never did find out what would have happened if I’d met them.
While the scammers were on the loose, the use of generative AI was ramping up. AI generated design was now both permitted as a legitimate offering on 99designs (in certain instances), and many clients were coming to me with an AI generated brief, images, and visuals as well. Then the rate of enquiries began to drop, alarmingly so. I wasn’t sure if the online impersonation had somehow ruined my enquiry algorithm, whether the struggling economy meant people had less access to funds for planned projects, whether people were now just turning to AI first for design solutions. Or did it have to do with changes to the 99d ecosystem after they were acquired by another company VistaPrint?
Confused about what was going on, I reached out to their support team to find out more about the extreme drop-off rate in enquiries, and asked whether it had to do with the number of scam messages flowing through their site. They responded, in essence, that the algorithm uses hundreds of data points to match the right designers to the right clients and that I should work on my profile, reviews, online presence, and portfolio. I had already checked all the boxes, but my inbox was quiet.
I put it out of my mind and continued plugging away, telling myself magical things like “Once I get on top of my existing work, things will go back to normal.” Or “It’s just one of those ebbs and flows of freelancing, the tide will soon change, like it usually does.” Or “Maybe I’m imagining things, and if I just work harder, it will all be fine.” But when I downloaded my platform data, ran it through Claude and asked for an overview analysis of the emerging pattern over time, the fog of wishful thinking cleared, and fast!
In 2022, 99designs brought me 40 paid projects. As of September 2026, I haven’t yet completed three. Enquiry rates that once sat at over one hundred per month, are down to around one, every second month. For me, the era of 99designs as a reliable, lead-generating, client-connecting platform that it has been for me these past seven years is officially over.
After looping through denial (this can’t really be happening), anger (this doesn’t seem right!) bargaining (if I just work harder, it’ll all be fine!) and depression (if this is really it, I’m not sure how I’ll manage), I’m only now truly waking up to acceptance: I put my trust in a system I never had any control over, while neglecting what was truly mine to control.
The waters are blurry, but I’m trusting clarity will come.
I’ve been re-reading a wonderful short book by Parker J. Palmer titled “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.” In chapter three, he explores the Quaker concept of ‘way opening’ – finding direction as we wait for the right path to become clear. He shares a story in which he brings his frustrations about a lack of guidance to a trusted older friend. She explains that in her experience: “There is as much guidance in way that closes behind us, as there is in way that opens ahead of us.”
As Palmer says:
“...each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls 0..what now lies before us is the rest of reality.We must take the no of the way that closes and find the guidance it has to offer.”
(Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak p 53-55)
My inbox is quiet. The enquiries are stagnant. The invoices are non-existent. The message boards are full of scam reports. AI proliferates. The numbers don’t lie. If this is ‘way closing’ behind me, what would it mean for me to turn around and welcome a new reality? To accept that it’s time to explore a new path?
I don’t have the whole plan yet, but I know that it starts with the writing. Join me as I muddle through it.
