Fiverr could change the world but the world will have to change first

[jmenn1]

The idea of fiverr is a great one it has the potential to change peoples lives. It allows people a chance to make money from their skills in their free time. That could lead to something really big. A life of freedom where you are your own boss and make your own rules. It will not happen over night as nothing does but with the whole world as your market place it truly could happen much faster than anything else. That is the upside.

The downside is this a large percentage of people on fiverr want to sell their services at prices well beyond what they are worth. As a business owner I often come to fiverr looking for new talent. I am looking to help those people trying to live their dream a chance to show their talents.

Yes, I know that there are people out there who want something for nothing but you honestly can not blame them I mean after all the name of the site is fiverr where people are willing to do things for $5. You have to expect that people are going to want what is advertised. Does it mean that you have to do everything for only $5? No, but you need to offer something for $5. The site is full of false advertising where people say they will make and app, website, video etc for $5 but no one does. Then when people buy those gigs people get mad and send nasty messages like "What are you stupid no one can make a X for $5. They put it out there as bait but it does not catch what they want and it is dishonest and just makes it harder for those who might buy your service to find you. Because the actually gigs are buried in with the mountain of fake gigs. The truth is that $5 is over double the Daily wage of over 70% of the people living on earth. So when someone say “I will make you a an app for $5” at the very least you have buyers saying well I wonder if they really will. Dishonesty just wastes everyone time.

Then there are people who put up a “I will consult for $5” this means for $5 I will give you a bid on your project. Again just more spammy gigs because no one is gonna pay some person they do not know any money to give them advice. If you can not do anything of real value to offer someone for $5 then maybe you should go to another freelance site and not try and trick others into wasting their time playing your games.

But if their is something you can do for $5 then do it. If you are a graphics artist that wants to do big graphics projects then offer some Banner gigs for $5. Use it as an opportunity to get amazing free advertising. You want people looking at you. Sales is a numbers game the more people looking at you the more you make. Make a good banner for someone and others will see it. Add Gigs for other more expensive things as well but use your $5 gigs as a way to give people a real sample of your product. When someone has a banner made people often ask where did you have that made. The person asking needs work done or they would not ask and the person is telling that person for you for free.

Don’t think that your sample images will be enough they are not. Not for any real client who has the money to pay you well for your service. Why? Because it is easy to post other peoples work from the Internet and claim it as yours. Real buyers know this. What you want are ratings of happy people that is what is going to sell your services.

Fake reviews, real buyers with real money also know fake reviews when they see them. Anyone can buy Fiverr reviews just hop over to Google and search for “buy Fiverr Reviews” you will find a laundry list of places to get them. Will they work on the masses? Maybe. Will they work on the people with real money? Not on your life. People with money did not get not get it by being stupid. Real reviews look totally different from Fake reviews. While you could probably pay someone $5 to do a good one. The truth is that $5 would be a fair price for something that simple but you are buying from dishonest people and they never do good work. If you are good at what you do a real review will stand out and be very different from the fake reviews.

Don’t compare yourself to other sellers with high rankings as I said those can be bought and coping them will just waste your time an money, because no matter how well of a job you do faking up your account the real buyers are always going to test you first. Don’t look up to those who seem successful on here is a lot of smoke an mirrors.

You want to stand out from the crowd and the only way to do that is to give a real sample of what you do. If you can not do it for $5 then do it for what you can do it for. You can not expect people to just trust you when you are on a site that allows people to offer their lying services for sale, it just is not going to happen. For a small price you can get people to say pretty much anything about your product including how much they love it. Online reviews for anything on the Internet or Mobile really mean nothing to anyone with real money to hire you for real work.

Anyone can say they can do anything but the real buyer wants proof and is willing to pay money for the proof. I may have to buy 50 $5 gigs to find the right person for a job but it matters little is the end if I find them. If I need a person to do a job I give them a test project. Normally the same one for everyone in that field so I am comparing people fairly. You would be surprised how many people will bid $2000-$5000 on a game or and app. This is why they do not get any work. It is not because you can not earn that much through Fiverr but not from someone who does not know you and has never worked with you. Also note that this is a competitive place full of low quality people so when people do find good people with good skills they tent to hold on to them. I found my graphics artist on fiverr after going through a lot of bad gigs and I do not even consider using anyone else when it comes to graphics now. The only way I would is if it was an emergency and he was not available which never happens.

Fiverr already does have the ability to change peoples lives but it changes very few, in time however we will probably see stories of people who got their start here and how they made a fortune and what they did and that will likely get more people to wake up to what they have here.

Best of Luck

[misscrystal]

Hello!
Regarding this:

“Fiverr already does have the ability to change peoples lives but it changes very few, in time however we will probably see stories of people who got their start here and how they made a fortune”

It changes thousands of lives already. Millions are earning good money on fiverr, paying all their bills, buying cars and houses and supporting families with money they earn. Some people earn $100,000 and much more here. People who are talented but have not had the opportunity to use their talents are finding fiverr to be the only place they can earn the kind of money they are really capable of earning.

[writer99025]

Don’t know what to say.

[misscrystal]

I didn’t either at first but the text has some inaccuracies which I was able to pick out.

[eoinfinnegan]

The article says that Sellers should offer their services for $5, yet also says that Buyers are willing to do a test order for $5 and that Buyers are willing to offer several tests to different Sellers. Using the examples as above, how do you test an app maker/website designer with a $5 test?
The poster seems to forget that Buyers do not have to accept bad work. When you get a delivery that is substandard (I mean not good enough, not that you have changed your mind or you want a few tweaks done to) then cancel. If there is an issue, go to customer service.
I can never understand how Buyers can have problems as detailed above. I have posted regularly on how to find a good Seller but even when you get a bad one, you still have all the power.

From this post it sounds like the poster wants the best of both worlds - he wants the hourly rate of third world countries and the customer service of first world countries. These simply do not go together.

If you want lots of pandering to your every request before paying $5 for a lot of work, you are simply misguided and unrealistic. Go to an agency and sit down, discuss, get a free cup of coffee, talk about everything from politics to your family and then pay the $300 for something a Fiverr seller will give you for $25. Alternatively, forget all the padding etc and pay the $25 to the Fiverr seller. And then give them a tip because of how much you have saved.
I am a buyer here too, this is how I operate. I don’t need people to tell me how much they love my project and that we will get on great throughout the project. I just need the project done!.

[philtabest]

Thankyou very much for that response. Was trying to say the same thing, but couldn’t think how to word it without coming across as a greedy idiot.

My gig for example doesn’t mention in the title how many words it is for $5, this is because the title is very limited. That’s exactly what the description is for, which buyers don’t always read and expect a 5 page manual for $5.

Understanding the sellers perspective
$5 to a buyer = $4 to a seller (after fees)
When you live in the UK, $4 = £2(Roughly)
Minimum Wage = £7
Living wage = more than above

You then have to bare in mind any taxes that the seller has to pay.

My gig is not misleading just because it doesn’t have how many words I offer for $5 in the title. This is because unfortunately the title is very limited in how many words you can use. I do however detail in the description that it’s 40words for $5.

I do not feel like I am conning people by doing this, in fact I am still selling my skills well below the market price.

@jmenn1

[misscrystal]

Some $5 buyers expect the world but have terrible attitudes–not all of course.

[philtabest]

Me neither, I’m glad that @eoinfinnegan commented on this. I was so annoyed reading this that I couldn’t type real words.

[topaz_muse]

In regards to samples, Buyers will have to settle for preview images since there’s not a good way to showcase all that you can do because, at the moment, we can’t link to an external portfolio.

Testing sellers to see how well they can do a gig isn’t going to pan out well because one of two things will occur: 1) Buyer may over work Seller to get a whole lot for next to nothing or 2) Sellers won’t jump on board because their live port (portfolio) should do all the talking.

“Anyone can say they can do anything but the real buyer wants proof and is willing to pay money for the proof.”

Just as any Seller can say they can do anything, some Buyers may say they are willing to pay for proof but aren’t really going to.

[emgarry]

There are some valid points there and really honesty and clarity of services are the best policies on Fiverr for generating customers and having return custom. It can be slow going but I would rather do a few good jobs and satisfy my customers that a lot of rubbish jobs and get bad ratings

[fastcopywriter]

“The downside is this a large percentage of people on fiverr want to sell their services at prices well beyond what they are worth.”

That is their choice, and if they don’t get orders, they’ll either have to change or do something else.

“As a business owner I often come to fiverr looking for new talent.”

So? Hire their basic gig. There’s a graphic designer on Fiverr I really like, usually I hire him for $5 because what I need is worth $5 and he can do it for $5. If I needed something more complicated, I would pay more.

“Anyone can buy Fiverr reviews just hop over to Google and search for “buy Fiverr Reviews” you will find a laundry list of places to get them. Will they work on the masses?”

So what? If you’re crappy, positive reviews won’t save you. It’s the same rule with books, if a writer pays for reviews and his book isn’t any good, it will stop selling.

“You would be surprised how many people will bid $2000-$5000 on a game or and app.”

That’s cheap. I did a google search and found this: “Creating the app may just be the tip of the iceberg, or better yet, the first step of a long journey. Multiply development cost by 3. A Forrester Survey once found that the average amount spent on a typical mobile app ($50,000 to $150,000) turns out to be just 35% of the true two-year cost.”

In real estate, they say a house is worth whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. You may think your property is worth $315,000 but maybe the market says it’s worth $200,000 or $250,000. So what do you do? Do you lower the price to get the sale? Do you rent it until your home grows in value? Do you hire a stager to make your property look expensive?

Fiverr is the same way, we’re all following the market.

[cyaxrex]

Hi there,

Firstly if possible, could you please be a little more specific about where I might be able to find fake reviews? You see, you say this very casually as if it is common knowledge & practice. However, the way Fiverr works, only buyers can leave reviews. In this case, even 10 reviews would cost me $50. Even worse, Fiverr doesn’t actually let me just delete real reviews which I don’t like. Moreover, if I ever did find a way to buy some fake reviews, I’m certain that Fiverr would remove them and quite possibly ban me.

Secondly then, yes, I agree, personally I believe that everyone on Fiverr should offer something for $5. However, my own advice for people looking to change their life using Fiverr, is to build up their (legitimate) ratings and slim down their offering.

You see, a lot of people with absolutely no talent and no business acumen routinely make flashy one page websites, set themselves up as web designers and artists and the like, and resell work they can buy cheaply on Fiverr to their own clients. The problem? I could deliver an X-ray vision unicorn that lays gold eggs to such people if they asked me too, but usually they are never satisfied with anything and need tons of revisions anyway.

The reason for this? Although they call themselves professional business people, these people are usually absolutely clueless about how to communicate what they need. They don’t know what their client actually wants, nor do they have even the most basic concept of what actually constitutes quality work.

It’s not just re-sellers though. For every buyer who will pay me $25 for something and starts telling all their friends about how great I am, there are people who I will deliver just as good work to for $5, who think that because it is just $5, it must be really easy for me to do. In this case, they ask for numerous revisions just like the re-sellers, not because the work is of poor quality, but because they have changed their mind about something.

In the end then, as soon as someone on Fiverr has demonstrated that they can provide quality work, they need to raise their price in order to start engaging with more quality buyers and less of the self important time vampires.

In this case, please don’t start a thread accusing people who have worked hard and dealt with all of the above as pricing their work beyond what it is worth. If you really think this is the case, buyers should simply invest what they would spend on a higher priced seller, in teaching themselves how to use their loaf and do what they need for themselves.

Lastly then, yes, Fiverr does have the potential to change lives. Please understand though, that the No.1 reason that buyers get poor service on here, is because a lot of genuinely talented people actually get tired very quickly of people trying to take them for granted.

In this case, if anyone reading this is a new seller trying to make a go of things, just keep your bloody chin up and if possible, try and avoid working for the apparently caring, “your so good, but could you just do this a little cheaper?” people like the above seems to be.

And no, 99.9% of reviews on Fiverr aren’t fake. In this case yes, you’ve got some competition. All you have to do though, is earn your own reviews now like eveyone else.

[misscrystal]

Hi Cyaxrex, I’m not sure it would be wise to post where people can find where to buy fake reviews. But they are out there.

[cyaxrex]

Really? But that’s mad! I can understand how fake reviews work on sites like Amazon where anybody can leave a review, but on Fiverr where something has to be purchased? From a a web site administration perspective, I’d assume that Fiverr would very quickly be able to spot people either swapping reviews or the like.?

I only thought this was a myth as I read a post somewhere a while ago saying that you can tell that certain reviews on Fiverr are fake, because you see multiple reviews by the same people. This though, is wrong as in my case, I simply have a knack of attracting buyers who always want more work, so they do review over and over again.

Anyway…You learn soomething knew everyday I suppose. Thanks for clarifying this then.

[edume]

Just like anything you buy these days, you get what you pay for. If you want quality, professionalism and experience, you need to pay a little more!