Fiverr launched with a bang in 2010. There wasn’t anything like it before: A marketplace where people can buy and sell anything for only five dollars. It was unlike eBay and freelancing websites such as Elance, however I am sure it was heavily influenced by services such as TaskRabbit.
The service has one of the easiest fee structures online. For each service sold for five dollars, Fiverr take a dollar. It’s that simple. Buyers do not need to worry about that. You simply pay your five dollars by PayPal and await the service you ordered to be delivered to you.
Although sellers must sell their main service for $5, they can sell enhanced services for more. For example, it is common for sellers who produce videos to charge more for downloading the video file in full HD, or for recording a longer video. New members cannot sell these additional services. They are reserved for experienced members who have many sales. Fiverr rates sellers in three ways: Level 1, Level 2, and Top Rated Seller. Buying from a top rated seller is usually a good indication that you are not going to get ripped off.
Unfortunately, getting ripped off is something you need to be worry about. This is to be expected by a service where sellers make four dollars per transaction, but the Fiverr rating system makes it easy to spot bad members.I usually avoid buying from sellers who have no ratings.
Signing up is very quick. You just need to enter your email address and desired username. You can sign up using your Facebook account too.
Each Fiverr member gets a small profile. There is a field entitled “Something about you”. Rather than write a long bio about myself, I simply linked to my about page (i.e. www.kevinmuldoon.com/about). It soon became clear that Fiverr worry about sellers taking business outside of the marketplace. Even though I signed up as a buyer and had no intention of selling anything, and no intention of promoting myself there, I immediately received an email entitled “Fiverr: Account Warning!”. It said:
Hi kevin_muldoon,
We just noticed that your user description contained a URL or contact/personal information. Please re-write your user description without such info. If you wish to display samples of your work, you may use a link to flickr (for photos, illustrations and graphics) or youtube (for video, audio and animation). All communications, ordering, delivery, and payments must be completed exclusively within fiverr.com
Thanks,
The Fiverr Team
As per their instructions, I replaced my website address with a link to my YouTube account (i.e. www.youtube.com/KevinMuldoonDotCom). Despite following their suggestion, I received another email which warned that “All communications, ordering, delivery, and payments must be completed exclusively within fiverr.com”.
I can understand the need for them to keep all transactions through their service, however I was surprised at how strict are about the situation.
What Can You Buy on Fiverr?
The range of services on offer varies greatly. Apparently, there are more than one million services on offer, though I imagine the true number of legitimate services is much lower.
There are 11 main categories. Within each main category, there are around a dozen sub-categories. The main categories are:
- Graphics & Design
- Video & Animation
- Online Marketing
- Writing & Translation
- Advertising
- Business
- Programming & Tech
- Music & Audio
- Fun & Bizarre
- Lifestyle
- Other
You can filter gigs in the directory by rating, by new gigs, or by those that have intro videos (bizarrely, they use the term “Haz Video”). Despite this, I have found the results to be quite random at times, but that’s half the fun of Fiverr and how you can find unique services.
Throughout the site you will see gig collections listed. This is a great addition to the service as it makes finding what you want much easier. Fiverr group collections of top rated sellers together for you though you can create collections yourself. It is worthwhile creating a collection for any job you need done. This allows you to add good listings to your collection when you come across then. You can then review all listings later.
Making the Most of Fiverr
I know that many bloggers who use Fiverr regularly to do random tasks they need completed. Whilst there are many sellers selling useless services such as guaranteed likes or follows (from bots), there are people there selling great services such as translation and design services. Video Intros are very popular too. You can’t argue with a price of five dollars for a video intro, particularly when you remember most automated services charge 4 times more.
Overall, I really like the Fiverr service. If you sign up there thinking it’s a good alternative to Elance or PeoplePerHour, you’re going to be disappointed. You get what you pay for, and five dollars isn’t a lot of money for any service. So I do not take the service too seriously. I know that it is not a place for me to get professional work done, so I just have fun with it.
Two weeks ago I decided to order a few jobs to get to know how Fiverr works. I hired a few people to proclaim that they loved my martial arts community Black Belt Forums. Simple, effective, and fun. I was really pleased with the outcome.
I hired Mr. Marcus to juggle and promote my forum:
I also hired the kickboxer Lisa Marie:
Last but not least, I had professional TV journalist Ivon, from Serbia, take a photo of herself showing her love for Black Belt Forums.
As always, Black Belt Forums member SifuPhil topped all of these with this video:
Fiverr got a lot of things right. Paying through PayPal is always quick but if you want your transactions to go through quicker, you can authorise Fiverr to pay via PayPal whenever you order an item. This makes ordering an item even quicker.
The message area works well too. As soon as you order an item, a conversation begins with the seller. This gives you an opportunity to send additional information to the seller before they begin.
I cannot recommend Fiverr as a place to make money. I have read that some Fiverr members are making over one thousand dollars a month through selling core services and additional services. For the work you need to do, you would be better finding work through a freelancing marketplace.
As a place to buy services, Fiverr is cheap and fun. I recommend trying it out even once, if only to order a few wacky advertising messages.
What do you think of Fiverr?
Kevin
Link: Fiverr