Etsy is fundamentally a creative community. On eBay, or Amazon for that matter, practically anyone can sell practically anything. On Etsy, you can only sell handmade goods, vintage goods over 20 years old, and craft supplies for making.
I opened up Shutterstock to the whole world. I created a contributor community that anyone could give stock photography a shot.
The landscape of professional creation continues to get more complex. Organizations and platforms of all sorts are vying for a slice of the value created by the relationship between creators and their audiences.
The main thing that 99designs is about is choice. It's a fantastic model that eliminates risk for small business owners and puts designers on equal footing.
All of the designs on Minted are crowd-sourced from a global community of independent designers. We hold monthly design and art challenges that anyone in the world is welcome to enter.
There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand - good heavens! - that's what I really call troublesome.
There are artists who make their living now going to conventions... because now you can.
Minted.com is both a global design community and stationery retailer. Independent graphic designers from all over the world submit designs to our ongoing design competitions, and Minted's community votes to tell us what to sell.
