Step 1:Determine Need: I want a cool, unique, custom WordPress theme without doing or paying anything in return for it.
Step 2:Realize Some Incentive is Needed: Okay, no one will do it for free. Let's hold a contest for what seems like a lot of money!
Step 3:Announce Contest and Make It Sound Cool: See here.
Payment Plan
Or how it works out to one dollar an hour.
So Flashmint is offering $500 to the person who can create for them the most creative and original custom WordPress theme. Five-hundred dollars, I could use that! But before you're tempted by the cash prize, let's think about how much you're really getting.
For my estimate I'm going to say that it takes 50 hours to design and code a custom theme. (Really it's usually more than this, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.)
So, at 50 hours for $500, you're making ten dollars per hour. Not bad I guess, as long as it's just for fun.
But Wait!
Oh yeah, you're not guaranteed to win anything! Let's say ten people enter the contest, all things being equal you have a 10% chance of winning, so now your potential hourly earning is more near to one dollar per hour.
A Better Solution
Make good use of your theme AND your time.
Instead of spending your time and hard work building a theme for pennies to be used only by someone else, release it for free. Seriously, it's a great way to get your name out there. You'll get traffic to your site/blog, great experience with publishing and the joys and pains that come with it, and the satisfaction of seeing others use your theme.
Weblog Tools Collection announces new WordPress themes weekly, and it's not hard to get on the announcement list. Ian even set up a template for it. So what are you waiting for?
Are design contests ever worth it?
Not really.
In short, no. They cheapen the web design/development industry as a whole and usually benefit no one but the contest holder.
However, for fun's sake, let's a do a reverse calculation to see how much money a contest holder would have to offer to possibly make it worth your while.
Using the same parameters above, let's say you want to earn seventy-five dollars per hour. So $75 multiplied by 50 hours is equal to $3,750; and to make up for the 10% chance of winning, multiplied by ten to get a grand total of $37,500.
So if you want to participate in a contest that pays, wait for one that is offering tens of thousands of dollars!
