What is Fiverr? Fiverr is a web application at fiverr.com that allows freelancers to make a profile along with gigs (services they will perform), and then buyers can search for the service they’re interested in and make a purchase. Fiverr is a huge website in terms of traffic. According to Alexa, an Amazon company, Fiverr is one of the top 500 websites in the world; that’s a lot of traffic. Fiverr is a financial strong website as well. Last November it received an additional $60 million for a total of $110 million in funding. Fiverr has over 200 employees in five different cities worldwide. Fiverr does over 8 million transactions a year and that number is growing. On the surface Fiverr seems like a great website for a freelancer to do business with.
Freelancers of all different walks of life use Fiverr. Some of the various freelancing categories are: Graphics and Design; Digital Marketing; Writing and Translation; Video and Animation; Music and Audio; Programming and Tech and much more. Freelancers flock to Fiverr because it has a lot of traffic; which means a lot of buyers are on the website looking for services to buy. Freelancers don’t have to chase down buyers; the buyers in essence come to them. If you can judge success by shear volume; than Fiverr for freelancers must be a viable option.
Who Do I Trust?…Me
Based on all of the information presented above you might be asking yourself why I wrote in the title that, “Fiverr Is Not For Me”. There are a few reasons why I came to this conclusion. The number one reason is price, or the inability to make a living wage. Fiverr allows the freelancer to charge $5 for a gig, hence the name Fiverr. Five dollars is not a lot of money, but if you can do the gig in a short amount of time than it might be worth it. Unfortunately the freelancer doesn’t even get the whole five dollars. Fiverr takes a cut of 20% for themselves, so now the seller only gets $4. The buyer also gets charged up to a 10% processing fee (this is true even if the buyer uses Bitcoin). So Fiverr gets up to 30% for doing little to nothing, on a five dollar transaction. It gets worst. If you sell a physical product and need to ship it; Fiverr keeps 20% of your shipping charges for itself too (this is straight legalized robbery). Fiverr’s not done raping yet, if you want your money sent to you; that’s another fee up to $1. Lastly if you are using PayPal, that is another 2.9% plus .30 cent fee. Okay so there is little to no money in this, but if the volume is high enough maybe I can make some money? I’m a web developer and most of the gigs on Fiverr in that category make outlandish claims like I’ll make you a website, I’ll convert your website to a responsive website, or I’ll fix any problems you may have with your website. Then in the fine print the seller says contact me first so we can discuss the exact price. Most of these sellers are from Pakistan or India. I’m sure they work for cheap by American standards, but I can see how this would cause a lot of misunderstandings between buyer and seller. For example the buyer would really think he is getting a website like Facebook built for $5, when he is not. This is not a quick task anyway which could justify the low pay and the high possibility of a negative feedback, because the buyer would not think his expectations were being met. Furthermore if you think about the type of buyers that are attracted to a website like Fiverr, you have to ask yourself if that is really the type of buyer you want to be associated with? Fiverr may be cost effective for some automated SEO tasks, but I don’t see how it would be worth a web developer’s time or sanity to use a site like Fiverr. It definitely is not for me!
“What’s meant to be will always find a way.”-Trisha Yearwood
I realize that the ultimate goal is to have the client come to me. In the mean time I will try one of the many other freelancing sites where more than $5 per gig can be made.