Why people sell so cheap?

[serban95]

I don’t understand but a lot of people (even TOPRATED sellers) sell very cheap services. I understand those newbies (Im one of them) who tries to get their first orders but I don’t understand why those people are selling so cheap.
Fiverr marketplace is destroyed where 5$ means everything. Sell yourself for just 5$ just because that’s the law?
A lot of / scam people (I was scammed but I got my refund back)

Fiverr should do something… good services obviously deserves even more payments

I can’t give a good service for just 5$. I did it until I started to get some orders but now I rised up my prices and people are just running away from my profile because they can’t see anymore 5$

Should I quit from Fiverr or I should continue this way? I don’t think I will have orders anymore

What do you think about selling yourself at a cheap price or keep your prices fair?
Thanks!
Best regards,
Serban

[fonthaunt]

I think that a “fair price” is up to buyer demand and seller’s choice. I might have a shiny red apple for sale for .25, the next merchant has a shiny red apple for .50, and the 3rd has a green apple with a bruise for .75. One buyer who wants a green apple might pay more and take the expensive bruised apple, or might decide paying less for a nicer red apple is better. The guy with the medium priced apple might not make a sale that day, but tomorrow could be different.

There is nothing wrong with any of these sellers or buyers. “Fair price” changes. If you can’t sell your offering, you’ll have to stand strong and wait for another day, or make yours better/cheaper/different. It’s an open market.

You said: “Fiverr should do something… good services obviously deserves even more payments”. Which apple is the “good” one? What do you want Fiverr to do? Your gigs are your business, not Fiverr’s.

[silberma1976]

Well said. It is all about supply and demand. Sellers change prices for a number of factors: How busy they are, what other sellers are doing, and if they want a volume business or go for high price sales are just a few. There is no “Right” way to price. There are suggested methods, but how sellers price is a personal decision.

[ubaid007]

I think its fair price .not everyone thinks 5 dollar is cheap

[emmaki]

All the more reason, then to charge more than $5 for those people who think it is cheap. Fiverr actually offers a lot more value for people in developing countries with good $>local currency rates.

I find it somewhat bizarre when established sellers from those countries continue to undercharge, as they’re leaving easy profits on the table.

But let everyone charge what they want to OP, getting angry with the “status quo” and threatening to quit is a bit of an overreaction. After all, quitters always lose…

[serban95]

Some services really deserves 5 dollars but what I want to say is that I can’t give you a full course for 5$ What Im trying to say is that buyers thinks every services sold here are just 5$ and this is because Fiverr installed this way of thinking into buyers memory (5 bucks gig rule)
I’ve spent nights and days to study a topic and I don’t want to give it almost free. If the risk is that I will never sell a higher price service then probably I will assume it
Not to mention that I didn’t even get 5$ I get 4$ or something with all deductions…
By the way thanks for your replies ubaid007 and emmaki 🙂

[ayeshafarooq42]

Well these days i also challenged by those $5 $10 $50 sellers… For example a good and stable website costs $200 to $250 and takes nearly 15 to 20 days to complete if done professionally. Its not fiverr who is forcing us to provide services on $5 its trend of themes sellers low cost providers which provide junky themes at low cost promise that it will cover everything. I mean in the buyer request section a i was reading a request and it said the buyer needs complete website for $10 because in his words he knows how easy this is… Its mind set that we are dealing with. Sellers have no voice we cant say anything else buyer will give a bad review… and your sales will be effected.

[serban95]

Thanks, I feel you 🙂
That’s the trend but I think this trend started from Fiverr… Is just my opinion
Fiverr could change that and remove pesky sellers if they promise the moon and delivers nothing they just want to scam people…
I got scammed by someone and I still see her/his services here, this should change! Buyer of course will purchase that 5$ gig and not mine or someone else for 10-15$ just because they think 5$ is everything here… that’s sad and I will need to keep it in mind if I am trying to stay here anymore

[virtualservice1]

When I first started I was overwhelmed with people saying I was “too” expensive. Can you believe someone wanted 2000+ calls to be made but wanted to pay under $50???

Anyway, it is the culture of Fiverr sadly. Many people want top notch service for a low price. It sucks even more when the $5 gig only earns $4 and minus any fees they take out for direct deposit.

[serban95]

Absolutely agree with you!
And I believe you with 2000+ calls
I had an awful experience with a man who tried to threat me with bad reviews if I am not doing his time consuming tasks for 5$ I WORKED ALL DAY just to make him happy I even skipped college to be able to finish his task.
FOR JUST 5$!! I thought he will destroy my business with a bad review but Fiverr helped me and removed those unfair reviews. That’s the thing I appreciate Fiverr

[floreaalexandru]

I’ve been reading all the comments, and I think we all should see the oportunity that fiverr give us. For me, is way too low $5, but it’s also a compromise that I gladly take in order to grow my profile here.
Because of how Fiverr works, the price is the key for upcoming sellers who delivers good quality work and want to stay here to climb the ladder, and from there to increase the prices, because of the good reviews they collected.
I have $5 gigs and I will consistently ad new ones until I will reach LVL 2 Seller when I will grow my prices.
I hope I didnt offend anyone, but for me, this is the only way you can grow. A lot of work in advance, but I’m sure will pay of eventualy.
Thanks,
Alex

[khairul01]

Nice article!

[madein5rr]

This is Fiverr. If you want more income - go to Up***k

[eoinfinnegan]

There are just as many over demanding, idiotic and selfish buyers on U’work, and all the other sites. There are also plenty of incompetent sellers on them too. If you deliver high quality and/or quantity on any site you should be paid appropriately.

[seotalent]

Nice to see you again bro. Thanks for your command 😃

[fonthaunt]

This has been proven untrue, though. When Fiverr began to allow sellers to create packages, sellers could offer all packages at higher prices or they could have a $5 package and 2 others that are more expensive. A lot of sellers panicked when this happened. There were forum posts here plus external blogs and Facebook posts saying that this would be the death of Fiverr or just would not work. They claimed the same thing you are saying, that buyers simply will not buy a gig that is more than $5 if they see someone advertising the same thing for more.

In reality, it hasn’t turned out that way. There are successful sellers at level 1 and 2 (and maybe a rare few unleveled sellers) who have their prices starting at $10 or more. Buyers DO buy their gigs, sometimes without even trying a $5 gig first. Why do buyers do this?

-One reason is that buyers are becoming more cautious and many read the gig description carefully and look at sample work. Many of those scammy sellers and low quality sellers do not write great descriptions and do not display good samples. If a buyer does get scammed (like you might have) they leave a poor review and they complain to Customer Support. Fiverr doesn’t always remove them on a first report, but if it happens repeatedly, they sure do delete the bad seller account.

-The other reason some buyers jump to higher priced gigs is perception, and this can be valid or invalid. My own sister is this kind of buyer in retail stores. If she sees two purses that look almost identical, she will buy the more expensive one assuming it is better. Online buyers are sometimes the same.

Regardless of any other reasons why, in the brief time Fiverr has allowed higher priced gigs, buyers are buying them. Yes, you will probably have to be at least level 1 with a good 25 reviews to start getting those orders. Until then, you have to scale your service down or just do some near-free work. Most sellers started out doing that. Some have to work a few hours for $4 to build their reviews and others sell small services. My $5 gigs take me anywhere from 5-15 minutes so I can earn $20 an hour minimum and it goes up from there.

Once you get 25-60 reviews and are a high level 1 or a level 2, you can usually scale up more. Where you go from there is up to you. I know of a seller who posts on the forum often that probably makes $10 for 5 minutes work multiple times a day. Some long-time level 2 and TRS sellers don’t have any gigs that are less than $75-100 per gig. You build your reputation, you build your portfolio, and the buyers will pay when the time comes. if you are here to start a luxury shop from your first few months, though, this may not be the right business for you.

You can quit, though, and prove to yourself that it can’t be done. That would be one less seller to compete with here. I guarantee you, though, it CAN be done if any seller has the skills and persistence to build a business.

[ayeshafarooq42]

About buyer being cautious I purchased two gigs from a top rated seller with nearly 60k reviews. The seller was offering 50 backlink including some other things for $5. So I thought instead spending 4 5 hour in building my own links i should hire someone to help me it will save my time while i can do something more productive. So I placed two orders for two websites. First they promised we will provide you a file containing proof of the backlinks that we created. But after two days when they delivered the order. They gave me a login to user panel which had nothing except for stats old stats of only one domain no sign of newly created links or any proof. So i rejected the order after waiting for 2 days and requested a revision stating that the panel you have provided only shows stats of my one domain where is the other one and there is no information on newly created links. In four Hours i got a reply that we will fix the problem and get back to you as soon as possible now 3 days has passed and still there is no word from the seller. I think the seller is scamming.

So the question is how we will know the seller is a scammer or not? I think relying on levels is not the best thing.

[ayeshafarooq42]

I can understand your pain as this has happened twice with me. And those two buyers also took my code without paying for it.

[ayeshafarooq42]

true $50 dosen’t justify the price for 2000+ calls.

[ayeshafarooq42]

Yes these kind of buyers exists everywhere.

[fonthaunt]

Levels and reviews are useful as one part of your assessment as a buyer.

I always recommend that buyers start out with a low cost gig from any seller they haven’t dealt with or weren’t referred to. It’s rare to see a TRS scamming, but not impossible. You can always report them to Customer Support.

One of the things that makes $5-10 gigs so important is that buyers have a chance to try something cheap before committing to more money. When you order a $5 gig and you don’t like the results, you can either ask the seller for a refund, ask Customer Support to mediate (if the seller says no) or you can lose the $5 and gain the right to leave an honest review for the seller. At least it’s a small price to pay for both a test and a way to warn others.

[fonthaunt]

They key here is to tell the person what you will do for a small price and let them build trust. If they want you to make calls but you are a level 0 or 1, you may have to offer them a bit of a good deal, but not an insane deal.

Offer to do X number of calls for $5 to show the buyer you can do the task well. If they like it, they can buy more. It’s safer for you, safer for the buyer, and still allows you to make much more money since the buyer will return if you get the wanting to come back.

Also, to minimize fees, wait until you have at least $50 in your Fiverr account before withdrawing it. At least with PayPal, the fee is capped at $1 after that. You’ll still make $49 which is not a bad fee. It only costs more when you withdraw small amounts. If you withdraw $4 at a time, you end up only getting $3.92 each time. You have to find ways to get the most money in creative ways.

[ayeshafarooq42]

Lol thats why i bought two gigs it was just to test a top rated seller who looked promising so i thought i should give test ride and if everything went fine then I will be working closely with him. But to surprise me they didn’t delivered anything and being a developer without doing much work i created nearly 10 good and proper back link in an hour while playing games. 😛

[ayeshafarooq42]

Now i am thinking whether to leave a bad review or wait for few more days bygiving one more chance to seller

[fonthaunt]

You have some wise ideas. if you keep this in mind, are careful about your withdrawals, and encourage buyers to buy small orders for a while you will be right on track. You will keep your orders low risk. A $100 order that is cancelled costs you too much time and you lose the money. if the buyer really isn’t happy and you keep the money, they lose $100 which will make them want to leave you a terrible review.

Start small, build your portfolio and later you can charge as much as you want (according to your skills) and you’ll get the buyers. The people who quit early will be gone and you benefit. Once you have a good number of reviews, too, if someone does spend more and leaves you one bad review, it won’t hurt you much because all your good reviews will show people that most of your customers are thrilled.