Last updated on May 9, 2020
Fiverr Review
If you are wanting to work from home and you have specific skills to offer, Fiverr may be a place to sell it. On Fiverr you are either a business hiring or you are a seller. As a seller you already know that location location location matters in the physical brick and mortar world.
Such is the same for the online marketplace. Sellers which include seasonal workers, freelancers, and others providing temporary services rely on the venue’s solid reputation to attract the immense numbers of buyers needing their temporary services.
Sellers are also troubled by anything that would negatively impact buyer confidence. Nearly a thousand Fiverr users scored below average in all key areas of the customer-buyer relationship including, services, value, shipping, return and quality (Fiverr, 2020).
Still Fiverr boasts of an active buyer-seller market claiming that a gig is bought every 4 seconds, 50M+ transactions have taken place and gig prices range from $5 – $10,000. Unfortunately these numbers don’t convey the actual experiences of buyers and sellers.
Who is this Fiverr For?
Micha Kaufman, founder and CEO created Fiver for listing temporary work positions. It’s freelancers work from home, office or anywhere. Young adults dominate the Fiverr marketplace. Sellers age 55 to 64 represents just 2% which may increase and remain even after a coronavirus cure is found.People with traditional forms of work now see working online as a viable alternative for making a living from home.
Fiverr is suitable for individuals or businesses with specific skills that they can package and market. They cannot just list their skills as they need to win the competition to catch the buyer’s attention. It is the equivalent of going into a busy marketplace with everyone having an eye-catching basket of goods. It dazzles – the colors, the images and descriptions all vying for attention. And in Fiverr all the higher ranking sellers showcase on the top search results pages making the 5-star (or closer) moot.
Control Over the Value of Your Product?
Very active sellers have a 5-point rating and those fill the first pages of the categories. Services include anything that is legal and offered under the 200 plus categories. The top selling services are video creation and other digital products.
The cornucopia of over 200+ categories means you need to offer a specific service. Even if you consider yourself a jack of all trades. You would likely need to individually list those services to show up in specific search results.
Due to Fiverr’s $5 base price and the diverse marketplace of sellers from across the world, someone switching from their traditional job may find their income drops. Yes, their income may drop though doing the same task they did in the brick and mortar. This due to the immensely vast and competitive marketplace.
Can You Thrive at Fiverr?
It will take more than your five star rating and your well described expertise to thrive in this marketplace. It will also depend on your peers around the world.
BBB complaints show buyer dissatisfaction with the services received. And, Amazon, back in November 2015 started a lawsuit to crack down on Fiverr sellers who were using fake reviews to sell their products (Wikipedia, 2020).
The last thing any marketplace wants to foster is any unethical behavior. Bad reviews may not entirely scare away buyers as it is not unusual for businesses to have complaints which they generally work to resolve. But, the buyer’s fear of being deceived may contribute to uncertainty as to whether they are getting the best service and ultimately end up in disputes, chargebacks or refund requests. This following complaint to the BBB is typical of many more.
Complaint Type: Problems with Product/Service
Status: Resolved
01/28/2020
They are authorizing a great number of “sellers” from Pakistan which try to fleece you out of money, request your personal information, and even ask to allow remote access to your system. On top of this, when the services/goods aren’t delivered they give you a bunch of *** excuses why they wont refund you while protecting the scam artists. Instead of refunding me for services/product not received they keep giving excuses and protecting some scam artist. On top of it, the person who was suppose to assist in facilitating my refund and protecting my interests was 100% incompetent.
Customer Response
01/28/2020
Better Business Bureau:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me and the matter has been resolved.
I have been refunded my money and had to change all of my security data involving the incident.
Sincerely,
Live Feel to the Video Introduction
The brief video introduction and other video guides to each section adds a personal feel to the website. The viewer is informed that their talent and expertise can allow them to live the life of a successful freelancer. The emphasis is on having a high level seller presence after learning to convert customers, crafting their service description to experience a growing income.
200+ categories of services is supposed to give you an idea what service to offer but also gives you an idea of the competition and why the course focuses on selling skills.
Navigation Could Be Enhanced
Green ‘continue’ tabs at the bottom of the page provide direction to keep you moving to the next screen. Lots of white space with one-dimensional icons representing a clickable section and give a crisp appearance.
Since you can be either or both a buyer or seller, there’s a link in the top right allowing you to ‘switch to Buying’ or ‘switch to selling’ depending on the mode you are currently in.
Should you click through to the list of about 16 brief training headings and attempt to later return, there appears to be no short-cut or pathway back. Even if you once again click the ‘Become A Seller’ from the top navigating menu at the top of the page; then click the Get Started Link at the bottom of the next page. However, you never find that list again though you know you could if you persist and enjoy this little maze of getting back to the course list.
What you instead run into repeatedly are the links at the top right, or the ‘Learn from Fiverr’ dropdown link at top left of the screen. These links however, lead you to other sellers course offerings.
You see the first free course which was an introduction from Fiverr’s education manager. But all the other courses are from the marketplace and still no link to return to the original list courses which were part of the Fiverr onboarding experience.
The Good & the Bad
The Good:
PRO #1 Short introduction videos to some sections pointing to what’s next, such as ‘creating your seller profile’ section
PRO #2 Picturesque presentation of the Seller descriptions
PRO #3 Affiliate program
The Bad:
CON #1 50M+ transactions is mentioned. It would be useful also to also mention the number of chargebacks or refunds as such is also important to a seller.
CON #2 No noticeable information about the market size or the traffic conversion
CON #3 New Sellers appear to have no visibility
Price
There are no subscription fees. You leave 20% of each transaction with Fiverr. The rest of your earnings, 80% would have been prepaid by your buyer. The money is then transferred to your account and released when the customer is satisfied.
Tools & Training
Fiverr website provides about 16 training links to get you up to speed on how Fiverr expects to develop you into a strong seller.
Help and Support
The navigation section at the end of the screen has a support tab that gets you to a webform. This will become your trackable support ticket for following up on the particular issue you are reporting. Additionally, a ‘support’ tab in the lower right corner of the screen opens a pop in which you can type a message. “Thanks for reaching out. Someone will get back to you soon.” Apparently no real time communication is available.
Pay or typical earnings
The pay you get is what you charge for your gig less 20% which Fiverr keeps. The money initially stays in your Fiverr seller account 14 days after the order is marked completed. If there are no issues with the customer then you transfer the amount to your Paypal, Fiverr revenue card, bank transfer or direct deposit which is available to USA residents only. You can convert to any of these currencies: USD ($), Euro (€), British Pound (£), Australian Dollar (A$), Canadian Dollar (C$), and Israeli Shekel (₪).
Did you Win the Battle of Being Able to Stand Out?
Setting up your seller account and populating it with all the content needed for showcasing your services is very routine. Guidance is provided.. Because you are presented with just one screen at a time of course (and not a bird’s eye view as in the brick and mortar marketplace), you don’t get a sense of the vast marketplace until you spend a quick minute going through the categories and drilling down to the sublevels.
The orderly layout of visual seller description with much white or silent space takes from the reality of the back and forth communication which may be happening through internal messaging between the participants. You may not immediately see what you are getting into.
Unless you have other promotion activities to drive customers to your services on Fiverr it appears you just set up shop and wait for a buyer to find you. We know that doesn’t work so much in the real world anymore unless you are a supermarket selling hundreds of different items. But you likely are only selling one and the challenge is to be found by your prospective buyer who doesn’t get sidetracked with all the other offers around you.
Can Fiverr Allow You Unlimited Earnings?
As a temporary services business model, Fiverr helps you to be ‘pretty’ and to sell. The company can also look at fixing the above mentioned issues that are causing buyer grief. But, only you can exchange your services for dollars. And how about your future. Nowhere in this business model is there consideration for passive income. Passive income is what’s generated when you put a system in place to give you a break from the constant activities of exchanging most of your living hours for dollars. Your role switches to nurturing your money as it predictably accumulates.
Even if you are simply looking for temporary income, the path from signing up for your virtual market stall to getting your first gig and presuming a smooth transaction, at least earned some money. If the money only takes care of your current needs which is how the majority of the world lives, then you could do better by investing your effort in not only something that will pay you as you work but be churning out your financial sustenance long after you leave the larger part of the work activity behind. Check out my No. 1 recommendation for making all your effort count not just for now but for your future.
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References:
“Fiverr.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiverr.
“Fivver Reviews – 1.8 Stars.” Sitejabber, www.sitejabber.com/reviews/fiverr.com.
