I had a _great_ experience with 99designs, though I won't say it came cheap.

The most useful tip I was given about 99designs is to browse other contests and ask the authors of the best designs you see to join your contest.

Give daily feedback, and make the contest "blind" so that designers can't see each others submissions: you'll get less copycats.

I second this. I used 99 Designs as well for a project. It ended up being in the $400-450 range, but the quality was amazing.

Just note, they're in Australia... so you may have to pay a small international transaction fee depending on your bank.

I'm in now way trying to bash on 99 designs, I'm just giving an honest account of my experience with them.

I put up a contest on 99 designs for their lowest package, the $295 one (I've heard that you get what you pay for, so if you're looking for more than ~15-20 designs for your contest, you should buy the more expensive packages). I also bought an admin template from themeforest for $20 that I needed the logo to match.

I'm not sure if I didn't communicate my idea clearly enough in the contest or even if I just didn't know what kind of logo I was looking for, but none of the logo's stood out to me when my contest was over. I ended up finding a unique font on some font site and it ended up fitting perfectly with what I had in mind so I created the logo myself.

I requested I get my money back guarantee from 99 designs, but never heard from them. I left them multiple messages and called their office multiple times during their business hours but they never answered or responded (You'd think that if a website is offering a money back guarantee and if they put their phone number up on their site that you would at least be able to get a hold of someone but I never heard from them at all).

Eventually I ended up getting my money back but I had to file a dispute with Paypal to get it.

EDIT: To answer your question, I created my logo myself.

To get a refund you have to call during business hours. They say they won't do it over email and have no way to do it from the web site.

That's really lame, but what makes it damn near criminal is that they never answer the phone during business hours or return voice mail.

They finally did issue me a refund after I sent them a strongly worded email.

I've had some good luck searching for freelancers on elance.com. Look at portfolio's, and if one of them has a style you like and some talent - you can use them as a resource for ideas. I usually have a couple ideas of what I am going for (like the feelings I want to project like "friendly"). I've been able to get some solid designs for $50 bucks. Worst case scenario you don't like it and try something else. I've heard 99 designs is great, but they would cost quite a bit more.

I second the 99designs recommendation.

As soon as you get a single design that you think you might be able to live with, guarantee the auction. You will get better submissions.

You can see my archived auction here: http://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/bizen-logo-54825

I would suggest finding a good font on Google WebFonts (http://www.google.com/webfonts) , pick a color & use gimp/photoshop. Most logo's only have text in them. I had to design my logo this way as I am on a shoe string budget for my startup.

The cheapest and fastest thing to do is to pick an interesting font and skip the art. Take a look around, and you'll be surprised by how many mega-corps are just the name in a memorable font.

Perhaps this is what I'll do at the start. Some of the other suggestions seem really good but cost a little too much as I'm just starting out.

I do it myself; getting comfortable with graphics isn't a bad thing. You need to try to retain a critical eye, though. It's easy to fall in love with a bad design if its your own.

99 designs is a great "easy" resource. They do both "commissioned" logo designs and recently introduced off-the-shelf logos too, which look better than they sound.

I used dribbble.com several times and I love it. You have to contact the designer directly and close the price beforehand but the results have been awesome.

Have you looked at 99 Designs [1]? I havn't used it, but it looks useful!

[1] http://99designs.com/

When there is need for a logo, I get in touch with one of the great designers on http://dribbble.com

Sometimes I check on http://brandstack.com/ for stock logos. They recently merged upstack, so you can go for a custom design on the same site.