Mods Im not sure this is in the right place so feel free to place it else where if not.... I see alot of designers working in threads these days and so many of them come to nothing. So many of the contests are been run by frauds and wasting our time. When are we going to get some sort security for our work??? As useful as DP is it is starting to really take the piss where we spend hours and even days on a project and some poster gets to walk away with our ideas and designs. What ideas can we come up with to help this current situation?
You can be smart and not work for free. Unless dealing with a very trusted member I never do a thing until money is in my paypal.
Just heavily watermark your entry(s) so they are unusable unless they pay you and you send them the PSD? Only other alternative is to do as suggested above. DP staff won't be able to enforce anything more than they already are doing.
you should ask for 50% of money first and then create a banner. checking the feedback score of the person will also help you know whether he is a scammer or not
The suggestions above are pretty solid advice. Certainly, when entering Contests I would never do so without laying a huge watermark across it to prevent it simply being ripped.
I feel your pain a bit. I'm an excellent graphics designer. I even won Worth1000 contests several times but if you ask me how often I go in the "Contest" forum I'll say never again!. Its totally stupid. Someone posts a contest where everyone makes a banner and he/she chooses the best and pays them, but then 20 people show their banners without copyright txt over it so the jerk wad who made the topic just takes one of those. Just avoid the contest section completely and create a topic for your service instead. Its much more professional anyway.