Fiverr Community Forum

"High" Fiverr Fees - Explained đŸ’¶

Fiverr Site
#1

Recently, there have been many buyers and sellers (including me) complaining about the fees. Most topics were from buyers about the $2.00 fee on the $5 purchase. Why after having $2 fee it doesn’t say $7 instead of $5? You feel scammed. :face_with_raised_eyebrow: Before 2 years the fees were $0.50
 Not only buyers have fees, sellers also have fees. They receive “only” 4/5 of the price of the order.

Twice, I also got nervous when I got only $80 from a $100 order, $20 is not a small amount of money, you can buy speakers, headphones, a microphone


Another time a buyer purchased a $60 purchase. I expect $60, but I know it will be less. ($48.00) He tipped me for the good work with $12, I think, but the purchase again was under $60. I was so disappointed, Fiverr is getting money from tips too! But why?

Here is the main reason: Fiverr exists, updates, maintains, supports and more...

WARNING: Explanations continue in comments.

And here is a short explanation: Have you imagined what sums should Fiverr pay to exist? Fiverr has a lot of workers constantly improving and helping fiverr doers.

For example, Fiverr support cannot exist with only 10 persons. As there are +100,000 Sellers and +100,000 buyers. There should be at least 100 customer support persons. Although support is not the best possible, (I mean you almost always get a bot answer), sometimes, you can’t do (what you need) without them. Last time when I contacted support, I think they improved themselves, they helped me much with non-bot answers.

But it’s not all because of support. Fiverr needs and will update. Updating the Fiverr interface shouldn’t last long, because sellers’ orders will end and their statistics will go down


Something more! Imagine how much TB (Terabytes) of storage should fiverr have to exist? Every new delivery
loans more and more space.

Also, Fiverr servers are constantly up, Fiverr site is running on servers which never should stop. At least, I have not noticed Fiverr to be down, except for short “coffee” Updating breaks.

I really hope that helps all service-fee-disappointed people from all around Fiverr.

  • I agree on fees
  • I hate fees.
  • I still hate fees a little but
  • I agree on fees at a moderate level

0 voters

1 Like
My Tips Matter!
Level two seller, great stats suddenly banished to last pages of any search
#2

I think most of use get that Fiverr needs to charge for their services, but I think there are better ways to do this and I don’t always agree how they spend that money. :slight_smile:

For example, does Fiverr have to spend time handling mutual cancellation complaints? I think no.
Change it so that mutual cancellations are not counted towards cancellation rate and you can instantly save probably a few hundreds tickets which means you can focus on things that really matter.

And by mutual cancellation I mean orders where both the buyer & seller agree that the order needs to be cancelled. If buyer asks for cancellation because it wasn’t delivered on time then it’s not a mutual cancellation. The reason should matter.

8 Likes
#3

I have worked at major companies at pricing roles before, so these exorbitant fees are still does not add up to me.
I know Fiverr has loads of staff, and software licenses, offices, taxes(yikes), servers to pay, BUT. Since they have hundreds of thousands of transaction each day, those are well covered. No one really knows how much transactions they do, but it’s the proportions that matter.
From a 7 dollar payment (5+2), they get 3 dollars. That’s 42.8%. Which goes down to around 22% on large orders.

Anyways. If I look around to how other service companies work:
Ebay. They take 10% (less in some categories) from the seller, and that is it. I think they still have tiered pricing for large orders, their fee goes lower as the transaction value is higher and a cap on their fee. They also have massive, highly skilled staff, payment processing service at each transaction, marketing, customer services, so they are really similar in this regard. Yes, they do 10% on small 99cent orders too. Nothing more.

So instead of Fiverr raising their fees, maybe they could hire a cost and efficiency expert, who could cut their costs(and greed) in half! I bet I could do a significant cost reduction, so

Hey Fiverr, I’m happy to send my CV, as I worked in costing and pricing in several multinational IT companies!

11 Likes
#4

I’m a buyer. I don’t have to pay a non-returnable ‘admin fee’ on every purchase anywhere else, including eBay.

I still don’t understand why it exists, why it’s so high, and why it’s non-refundable if something goes wrong with the order that wasn’t my fault. Well I do of course - it’s pure profit for Fiverr who now make money on every transaction whether it’s a 20% cut from the seller and/or the ‘admin fee’ from the buyer. Winner either way.

Added - BTW disagreeing with the fees does not mean I hate Fiverr, which is why I won’t vote in a public poll which is worded in such a way. Sorry. :sun_with_face:

5 Likes
#5

And tis is why they take 20% of our earnings.

1 Like
#6

Couldn’t they mostly use open source software? Wasn’t Fiverr originally written partly (the server side) using Ruby on Rails (which is open source)? Surely most of the software they use could be open source if it isn’t already (or using stuff they’ve written/own).

1 Like
#7

Open source and free software is nice, but there is a reason 99% of businesses use paid software.
Or, you hire more coders to fix and customize the “free” software, but those coders earn well above 100k a year. Some of them above 200k

1 Like
#8

I think I somewhat agree with you. Fiverr really can have with -50% fees, which will lead to having more power and acticity and the same amount of money income. Also, I think Fiverr platform gets the most from us, compared to other platforms.

But, I am still voting on “Now I agree with fees”. Someone else? I need someone to tell me serious reasons which will change my mind about fees, maybe?

1 Like
#9

I’d say that 90% of people who use Fiverr to buy services are business owners or buy and sell online to make a living.

These people weren’t born yesterday and know full well that payment processing fees stand at 1.51% plus $0.10 for most Visa/MasterCard transactions, and 2.9% for PayPal. When a company says they need to charge a $2 transaction fee but only accept payments visa PayPal, it is doesn’t take a genuius to work out that the ‘fee’ isn’t a fee at all, and is instead a stealth tax/surcharge which a company does not want to risk announcing for fear of bad PR.

This strikes people as disingenuous and no amount of “Fiverr needs to expand and our poor CS agents can only afford to eat cabbage leaves,” will ever convince buyers otherwise. After all, if they can build their businesses around a transparent pricing stricture, why can’t Fiverr?

Edit: Your survey questions are also quite condescending. Hating service fees means you hate Fiverr? Talk about trying to sway an argument.

5 Likes
#10

Also need an option for “I accept fees, on a moderate level”

2 Likes
#11

Done :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
#13

Not able to afford fiverr anymore. Some one above said 100000 buyers x $3 commission from buyers and sellers = More than a million dollars they earning every week. The maximum staff and server will cost them 50 thousand a week. The greed is increasing.

1 Like
#14

How can supposed greed be increasing if their commission hasn’t changed? All gigs should be designed and priced around the 80% earning. If they aren’t, then yes, you will fail.

It is a myth that you need to make peanuts to get business here. I don’t.

You are using a service. Fiverr is charging you for it. They don’t owe it to you for free and they have their own costs to cover. This is the nature of a marketplace.

5 Likes
#15

This got flagged as spam by Fiverr - you’d think they would have loved my standing up for them

Are you mad? How much do you think their marketing budget costs?

Its probably the best part of millions of dollars a month.

Without that speculative investment in marketing then the buyers wouldn’t come to the platform and you wouldn’t have a risk free source of clients with zero cost if you get none, unlike running a PPC ad campaign, keeping on top of your website and trying to rank in the SERP.

This week I’ve earned good money and I know that while having to cut 20% of that, that’s a darn sight cheaper than paying someone to manage ads, handling enquiries, closing deals, protecting payment to avoid debtors and actually paying for the ads themselves.

In return for that reduction in risk, I hope Fiverr turns a good profit or this simpler system is gone.

I know what I’d prefer

1 Like
#16

How much marketing do you do for your freelancing lifestyle?
How much marketing do you do off platform to promote your Fiverr gigs?
How much time do you invest in your personal development or training? Improving your soft skills? Improving your hard skills?
How much do you spend to keep ticking over your small business or side hustle?
How much tax do you pay?

Using platforms like Fiverr do most of this heavy lifting and marketing for you. So indirectly, you can see your 20% as platform running, business and marketing costs that YOU don’t directly pay for.

Also given this context, you do realise that if you sell an app or in app purchases with the Apple Store or Google Play, their cut is 30%?

2 Likes
#17

For me, 20% is still a lot considering that they also take a fee from the buyer and that we sellers have also to pay the taxes. Here in Italy, the tax is 20% as well, so what will remain? Around 60% of the total amount, which is a bit more than the half


1 Like
#18

Don’t you think they pay taxes as well?

Lol

So many sellers complain about how unrealistic buyers are. I think there’s clearly a lot of sellers who are unrealistic as well.

2 Likes
#19

You are replying 1 year later to someone who has left Fiverr. Maybe you didn’t notice.

The moderators don’t like to see old topics resurrected.

#20

How would I know they have left?

Dated content probably wants to be removed if they are going to offer this type of user experience to people who freely offer their time to engage on the forum.

#21

20% is very light on.

Consider you are running your own website, at your cost, from your own money as a freelancer.
Add in your ‘salary’, costs for promoting and marketing and then the time to do the ‘work’.

Once you calculate this, I think you will find your costs MUCH more than the fee Fiverr takes from your sold gigs.