I've been a logo designer myself, waaaay back, and have always known that just having someone designing a pictogram and styling a word is kinda winging it. There's more to it than being good at drawing/sketching/Adobe-doey.
Our logo was a three month process with a branding agency, of which the actual logo design took less than a month to iterate.
The main part is getting straight what the brand represents, who's it for and what the persona of the brand is. You want the designer to really understand what the product/company is about. We couldn't have done this went starting out, since we didn't know all that.
So, if there's a take-away from all this, besides that good logos cost good money, is that you should get your product really straight, before spending money on a logo. Bad or fuzzy product view gets you a bad logo.
He did everything in a couple days. I just had to give him a rough idea of things I like. I would 100% recommend.
The real value in hiring logo designers is that they save time. It takes me a really long time to be satisfied with color contrast or font weight. Everyone has an eye for these things even when they don't know why it's off. Logos create an image of professionalism.
$60 is about half a day of work for most of us, at most. If you can save half a day by hiring a professional, you're already ahead. And it's not just the logo you get but your brand colors.
I could have made much better use of that time if I'd outsourced it, but I didn't like look of the logotypes I saw on 99designs and Fiverr, and didn't have a recommendation from a friend, so wasn't sure how to pick a designer.
I tried modifying existing fonts but in the end drew it 'by hand' in Inkscape.