On Qwertee, art contests, and artist exploitation

So today, I was alerted by some kind fans that a t-shirt design site called Qwertee decided to start selling a design traced off one of my ancient Pokemon fanart drawings. You can read more about it here but what I'd really like to discuss in this journal are the fundamentally problematic aspects of sites like Qwertee. Yes, there's the art theft and the copyright infringement, but those aren't the real issues.

Basically, Qwertee is a website that makes its profit from a neverending art contest. Users create and submit designs to the website, and the staff pick out the designs that seem most popular and sell them as official t-shirts. The winning artists get a small cut of the profits.

Sounds pretty awesome, right? A chance for nobodies to make it big, right?

The problem is that lots of sites are beginning to operate off this business model. More and more, 'entice people to send in stuff for free and only pay a fraction of them' is beginning to replace 'actually hire and pay people to create products'. Artists are expected to do complete works for free, just for the chance to get paid and noticed, and companies get to cherry-pick the very best designs out of an enormous, free pile that would normally cost them mountains if they were actually paying employees to create ideas. Plus, they can often get away with giving criminally pitiful 'compensation' to the winning artists, who often don't know better and feel grateful that they're being exploited for pennies.

(A caveat regarding Qwertee themselves: Qwertee is actually one of the sites that compensates their designers fairly well. They pay designers $1 per shirt sold. This might SEEM like a small amount when the shirts are being sold for $12-$20 each, but even on completely artist-controlled sites like Redbubble, artists often only make a $2-$3 profit on shirts due to the costs of manufacturing. Factoring in all the marketing, web platforms, and other services that Qwertee provides, a $1 profit for a designer isn't bad at all. If only they weren't doing it in the context of an inherently problematic business model.)

I know it seems really benevolent of sites like this, devoting their time and marketing clout to give small designers a chance to bask in the limelight. I used to dream about getting on sites like these.

But our society already treats artistic talent like dirt. Every time someone hands free designs to these websites, it underscores the idea that companies aren't obligated to hire artists or pay them a living wage. That's saying nothing about insurance, benefits, and other things that ought to be automatically included in skilled labor jobs. There is no other industry I know of that would expect people with 10, 15, 20 years of specialized, skilled experience to work for minimum wage (if that) and no benefits.

Art contests themselves are great! I'm not speaking out against them. But sites like these cross the line from 'harmless contest' to 'moneymaking scheme' and it's really not okay.

Please, to all artists: don't fall for this business model. You're worth more.