Is English a necessary evil as a freelancer (On Fiverr)?

[tenthtiermedia]

I personally think so. But I’m curious on everyone else’s thoughts.

[jamesbulls]

English is necessary to be a freelancer on Fiverr, or at least to be a freelancer working with English-speaking buyers. It really depends on where in the world you’re doing business. If you’re primarily doing business with the Chinese, then English isn’t going to be as important as Mandarin or Cantonese. Pick the language to fit your audience. This feels like a conversation that would be benefitted by the participation of non-English speaking sellers, but since they don’t speak English, I don’t know that they’d find out about it or have the means to participate? What a quandry.

[tenthtiermedia]

I suppose so. I probably should’ve titled this differently 🙂

[diegow]

By speaking English you are expanding your customer base to an extreme extent.

English is a lingua franca, which means a LOT of people around the world have it as a first or second language. That means a LOT of people around the world will be potential customers to you.

I.e., if you speak, say, Portuguese, you would benefit from a niche market composed of people from Brazil and Portugal, but not many others.
Instead, by speaking English, you could target a lot of people from Brazil and Portugal (since a lot of people from these countries speak English as a second language), plus a lot of other people from around the globe.

[misscrystal]

Yes but as evils go it’s one of the lesser ones.

[fitrigwrites4u]

No, it´s not evil. But the way I see it, a language skill is like a bridge.