Not really sure what you are ranting about. The website itself exists to provide services for $5. Surely these designers are able to place what they think is a fair value on the use of their time and resources. Why do you think its a bad thing to take advantage of that? FWIW I also hire programmers for less than $10 an hour and I get stellar work from them. Price is a signal, but there isn't always a direct correlation between price and quality (or effectiveness) . To leave you with an anecdote, I have between $5 and $1000 for App icons (iphone), my best selling app is the one with the $5 icon and no custom UI elements.

My reaction was surprise (at jsnk's comparison), not intended to be a rant. But I'll explain further: I completely understand why this site and many others like it exist. They have a purpose, which is to provide a quick and painless service at practically no cost. I don't think that the service itself is necessarily bad. Rather, I think the way it's used is wrong. You don't use them to 'hire a designer' (or a dozen). You use them to get a couple people with either too much time, too much software, too little skill, or too little opportunity to show something off in hopes of getting a few dollars. In this case, there is a startup which needs a brand so that they can forget about it as they build their business. My feeling is that regardless of the cost, there is a better approach to getting this sort of work done especially if you claim to value this step of the process. I understand the desire to cut costs, and I am perfectly aware that quality doesn't scale with cost. On top of that, I've done my share of cheap-ass logos to pay for a little gas. But this is hacker news, I think it's worth putting in this perspective. In the most basic sense, I see it as a simple professional courtesy to pay a proper wage, even when you're getting closer to squashing costs and risk.

That's a very western centric view of the world. Let's say it takes 2 hours of work to create those logos (look at my results, I think it's not an unreasonable estimate). $2.50/hr is a lot of money in some countries.

Every single one of them got paid too, it wasn't even spec work. They did work, they got paid.

Two hours looks about right for an average. While it's great that everyone gets paid (heh, wouldn't it be nice if that could scale to say... architectural comps or ad pitches), saying that $2.50 is a lot in some countries is just a bogus argument. So what if it is a lot of money to some people? Did you specifically seek out designers in developing countries? With graphics software, broadband, and 2 hours of free time to do little design jobs? That part seems sort of silly since the point of your post is that it cost virtually nothing to you.

Now, I wasn't being sarcastic when I said that I'm glad you've satisfactorily solved your problem. Further, I'm glad that everyone you contacted got paid. But that doesn't address the problems which I see, which are that 1) it wasn't a very business or worker friendly (yes, in my opinion) move and 2) I think you could've done better.

I looked for designers willing to take $5 in exchange for logo design. These were people willingly and publicly advertising their service. I didn't pay attention to region at all. I looked at the portfolios and if they weren't horrible, I hired them. Just because it costs nothing to me should have no bearing on this discussion. Do you get upset at Bill Gates for paying retail for his coffee at starbucks?

business/worker friendly: I think it's hard to judge. I had an outsourcing company in Indonesia once. The salaries there, if they could get constant work for $2.50/hour they would have better off than what we were paying.

done better: probably. I invested $30. I hope there are better options. How much money and time they would/will cost is a different matter though.

I actually had a free one designed by a really talented guy here on HN, but it was for a different brand name that we didn't end up being able to use. (If you're curious: http://kevinohashi.com/sites/default/files/mention.png)