Personally, participating in any competition is not my cup of tea, especially those creativity-related. Not to mention the high subjectivity of judgment which always leads to an absurd and disappointing results, the core reason why I am so reluctant to take part is that the return is not so conducive given the significant amount of required dedication and potential risks. There could be some residual benefits that might interest you, such as chances of revealing to the public, or winning a considerable amount of bounty, and so. Still, as a former accounting practitioner who has some financial background, I would consider that the advantages per se outweigh the disadvantages. It is not worthwhile to join any of these Ponzi schemes, unless certain conditions are met. Here, I attempt to elaborate my aforementioned argument, by firstly (1) depicting the drawbacks of joining creativity-related contest, then (2) revealing its niche real benefit (not nominal, of course) in returns, and eventually (3) suggesting a probable strategy to mitigate your cost and risks if you still insist. 

As of above, judges of creativity-related competitions are often under-qualified, which frequently results in unpredictable or even unjust judgement on your submission while having no effective way to improve their objectivity from your end. In addition to the game rule, most contests do not provide any marking scheme nor judging standard, whilst claiming for judges' own preference as a single imperative norm. All of these uncertainties essentially escalate your cost of winning the game, presuming that this is your prime vision. In this regard, investing times and efforts on investigating judges' preference is essential, while doing this in an efficacious manner is time-consuming and costly. What is more, your grained knowledge for certain particular contests is not interchangeable, as their preference would be ridiculously dynamic and nonsense in most cases.