Is Fiverr the best thing that happened to Online Freelancing

[akoscreative]

Hello
I recently checked whether Fiverr is the best platform for freelancers who wan to start small.
I came across other platforms similar to Fiverr. I was particularly interested in learning more because I suddenly felt Fiverr’s 20% fee hurts after all especially if you have worked on projects that took hours and days to complete. not that we charge much on Fiverr but the fee makes your already weary eyes teary when you decide to take a pause and check you earnings.

none the less, I really like Fiverr’s platform and interface. there are new Buyer requests all the time and it now feel like a community to me.
So, what is the best attitude for a Seller if she/he wants to grow and make the best of what Fiverr offer.

Or will Sellers be better off adding on top of their fees to Buyers, that 20% fee charged to them.

What are other Sellers doing that seems to help.
Cheers

[therealsiri]

That will still depend on the kind of service you are offering. But for custom gigs you can also negotiate with your buyer for a custom invoice. Hope that helps.

[mariamughal]

Fiverr is just like a community,all the sellers can communicate with each other like a family and I like it very much 🙂

[anointedballa]

I can personally say that I’ve done internet marketing and spent a lot of money without making any profits back. I then stumbled upon fiverr and life changed for me after that.

I think it has made it easier for the person trying to start out. Other platforms don’t provide that. THe 20% fee isn’t bad if you keep in mind that Fiverr does all of the marketing and handles all of the transactions that are processed. It is well worth it.

[wincode]

Simply best. Willing to work in fiver long terms.

[rockinflash]

Just started with this. I’ve always hated marketing. Hated it. So I’m thrilled by the idea that this might be a platform in which I don’t have to do (too much) of it. At this point, I don’t have enough reviews, etc to really pull in the work, so there’s probably quite a bit of marketing to do for how.

But I’m hoping at some point I’ll have the 'gravity ’ to be able to do the work without worrying about how to get the word out. That would be really nice.

[fastcopywriter]

You’re whining about losing 20% instead of focusing on the 80% you’re making. Fiverr lets you join for free, there are no tests, you don’t have to scan your ID, you don’t have to buy credits to bid on orders, and Fiverr gets the traffic that gets you work.

“Or will Sellers be better off adding on top of their fees to Buyers, that 20% fee charged to them.”

Nobody cares about the 20%, it’s an insignificant amount. Our gig extras reflect the time it takes to do the work, where we live, how much money we need, in how many days can we do the job, etc.

If you’re lazy, you can even jack up your prices to decrease the number of orders you get. When I see someone charging $100 for one-day delivery, I know this is a person who doesn’t have the time or doesn’t want to deliver too much stuff in one day. Or he might have 50 people in his queue, so his time is really worth more than mine.

Another way sellers make money is the “commercial license,” a joke in my opinion since we’re not lawyers and we don’t have the capacity to give licenses. We’re paid to do work, once we deliver that work, it is no longer our property, it belongs to our clients. Ironically, Fiverr disagrees with me and allows sellers to sell that nonsense.

[misscrystal]

I agree about complaining about the 20%. We are using this site and it is entitled to earn money if it gets us jobs. It’s reasonable.

[fastcopywriter]

It shocks me how many people fail to see the picture. Would you pay an accountant $500 if he can get you a $3,000 return? I would. That’s better than the guy who spends $40 on TurboTax and brags about his $200 return.

[misscrystal]

I don’t understand people not wanting to pay this site 20%. I can’t get any sort of reason for that and I’ve tried to see that point of view. It makes no sense. Maybe if you only expect to earn $20 a month? Nope, even that gets you $16 you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

[eoinfinnegan]

There is a part of me that wishes Fiverr charged a monthly fee - think how many low quality, in-it-for-a-quick-buck-sellers this would eliminate!
The only issue I have with the 20% is that I feel it should decrease when a seller has a certain amount of sales volume eg. 20% for the first $500, 10% for the next $500, 3% for the rest. It would reward those who are serious about their business here and would give an incentive for others to aim for.
I also think there is room for a cancellation penalty. Not sure exactly how or how much but I think it should be looked at, especially for forced cancellations but also for too many mutual cancellations. Buyers who have bad experiences with sellers will not come back and that hurts all of us. Perhaps a suspension would be better than a monetary penalty but something that stops people from screwing people around with no consequence.

[fastcopywriter]

Buyers who have bad experiences will hire other sellers. Besides, It would be unfair if people had to pay a monthly fee, not everyone can afford it and Fiverr is global.

I also hate websites where you have to pay before you make money. There’s a lot of scammers out there, a lot of shady deals. Multi-level marketing is a great example, real sales jobs give you products to sell. The MLM scammers make you buy their crap and try to sell it to your friends and family. If you fail, then you’re stuck with crap you don’t need or want.

[eoinfinnegan]

Buyers who have a couple of bad experiences will go elsewhere. If this site is to grow out of the $5 price bracket like it wants to then the really bad sellers have to be eliminated/reduced. Once packages are rolled out across all categories it will not be a case of “Screw it, I only wasted $5”, it will be “I paid a proper price for a proper service and I got some shit that I can’t use, never buying here again”.
You telling me you would not prefer to pay $10-20/month and only pay 10% in fees? I would love that.
Not sure what you are referencing MLM scams for, that’s completely different to what I am suggesting.

[thevideostore]

“Or will Sellers be better off adding on top of their fees to Buyers, that 20% fee charged to them.”

• Yes we do that. Because we feel its absolutely too greedy to take 20% from anyone’s sale. Unfortunately the buyer has to fork it out … but they are coming here for cheap services anyway … so it just levels that out a bit.

If you want to eat … charge the fee… if you want to turn in a huge order and feel pretty cheated making $160 out of $200… then don’t charge the fee.

They should drop it to 10% … 20% is just greedy.

[akoscreative]

Thanks Folks for all the responses and opinions. Really diverse and interesting. Adding to the point I raised, hurting more is bidding on a $5.00 gig and not even getting that. A great logo design service for $5.00 and dare you add $10 to make it $15 for a logo design. And buyers are not prepared to pay for that. I for one puts in as much as I would in my day studio. I only wish I had more returns in terms of earnings from my efforts- thats all.
Thank you all. Have a Great Day Akoscreative is still on Fiverr though so there might be some Hope- BIG BIG Hopes. Lol

[thevideostore]

Good luck - The best buyers are the ones who do their research on the seller , look at work samples , ask questions and finally settle with a seller. Talking over price should be part of the whole process. In most cases real sellers have a $5 gig up as sort of a store front. If you are only doing $5 logos with every order , you’ll just burn yourself out. Doing that to gain some good reviews is one thing… but no business will really survive on $5 gigs alone. Furthermore , the ones who are serious about enhancing their business will understand its going to take more than $5 , $10 , $15 to make a positive impact on it. They should also understand that ordering something such as a logo is worth more than a $5-$15 value at best. When the world realizes that everyone plays a part in it … we will begin to do better business with each other.

And you said “hurting more is bidding on a $5.00 gig and not even getting that”

Thats why many sellers here need to take their gigs down. Its hurting many qualified sellers to offer $5 gigs claiming to be a logo design…when it’s just some logo generator they found online and they doctor it up with photoshop or something.

[fastcopywriter]

I’m here to make money, not to spend money. I refuse to pay anyone for the privilege of making money. I like Fiverr because it’s like a partnership, they make money when I make money, that’s fair. It isn’t fair to ask new sellers to pay money when they haven’t made any money. Do you not know that many level 1’s will fail and end up dropping out? Some have bad offers, some are in crowded categories, some give up easily. By letting everyone compete, we let the cream rise to the top.

Besides, there’s nothing wrong with the $5 price bracket. Ten $5 orders equals $40. At that rate, some sellers might make $1,200 a month. Why would I want to charge $25 or $50 and then be angry when I’m only getting order a week? I would rather charge $5, by the time my buyers order gig extras, I’m making $10-$50. On a really good day, I might make $92. My daily average this month is $52.44. I’m happy with that, I don’t need Fiverr constantly changing, I want buyers not to struggle when they visit Fiverr, constant change means a lot of buyers will go elsewhere.

Fiverr is perfect just the way it is, I wouldn’t change anything. OK, I would make one little change, everytime a buyer demands a cancellation, I get to keep 10% of their order. The real world has kill fees, if I RSVP a cruise and then change my mind, I might get 50% to 90% of the fare, but not 100%. This is why people buy travel insurance.

However, if my little change means people will be afraid to order, then I would rather have no change at all.

[fastcopywriter]

Do logos for $5 today and you’ll do them for $15+ tomorrow. It’s a question of proving yourself, once you’ve done it then you can charge more. Besides, if designing a logo takes you more than 15 minutes, then maybe you should be doing something else. Remember, nothing you do for $5 should take longer than 15 minutes unless 1. You’re having fun. 2. You don’t mind.

[fonthaunt]

I wonder how it would go if new sellers couldn’t raise their base prices? Maybe that couldn’t happen until a certain level, a certain earning threshold, or some other criteria.

I get what you are saying. I worry about new accounts created by users hoping to get one big sale and run.

[psychicbunny]

You are right, I believe it depends on what service you are offering exactly.

[tarnia]

Yes its the start of it and many sites have followed. But it is important for Fiverr to stay relevant by bringing in new features and to make things flow very easily especially as buyers and sellers become busier. I think they are doing that on a regular basis.

[misscrystal]

The only times I cancel are when the buyer is wanting more than he paid for and making unreasonable demands or otherwise being awful in some way.

[eoinfinnegan]

We have very different ideas based on what we offer to clients.
Paying money to make money is a fairly standard idea. Whether it’s buying a new suit to impress at an interview or paying someone to create a website for you to sell your product on. If I was paying a monthly fee to use Fiverr with a lower fee % then I would happily do it.

Charging less does not guarantee you will sell more gigs, I get around 10 orders per week of mixed amounts. I seldom get $5 orders but would happily take more of them. The fact is that there are a lot of part/spare time sellers here who can do small jobs in my niche in an evening, but to get a big job done in their available time would take weeks. I can guarantee translations of up to 100k words and proofreading of 250k words in 7 days or less, that gives me a lot of appeal to buyers with large quantities and leads to my order price being higher. If I focused on small orders I would be competing with a lot more people who can offer the same service.

I think Fiverr is far from perfect, but that is just my view and I acknowledge that my views and ideas are biased by what I want Fiverr to be for me. Others may agree with me but for all I know Fiverr is best for the majority as it is.

[eoinfinnegan]

Exactly, this is sure to be a problem when you consider the worry that buyers have spending and “losing” $5!

[eoinfinnegan]

That all makes sense and I am glad to hear it! I presume these are few and far between?