This one is going to be released in a few parts as I am trying to keep from posting novels every time I post something like I did in Big Hosting Problems. I’ve talked about Fiverr before. In Big Guy on Fiverr, I had someone from Fiverr write on what it is like working through Fiverr. I have also supplemented content creation using Fiverr to acquire about a few posts to help fill in gaps when I needed content to try to meet my “post every day until the end of 2017” goal to kick off the blog and wrap up last year. All of these posts have been tagged “fiverr contributed“. I initially started with Fiverr because it seemed like a good way to get some quick, small pieces of work done for somewhere in the ballpark of five dollars.
Now I want to change gears a little and talk about what is maybe a darker side of using Fiverr (and probably other freelance marketplaces). I will also note that I reached out to a few people at Fiverrr for comment on this, but no one ever answered me. I still think Fiverr can be a viable solution for quick jobs that you need to get done, even blog post, but you have to put in some work to make sure that the deliverable you get is acceptable.
Just What CAN I Get for 5 Dollars?
It turns out, not really much at all. Honestly, I wouldn’t expect to get much for 5 dollars, but Fiverr started on the premise of paying 5 dollars to get quick, easy tasks done. Fiverr has added the ability for sellers to add multiple packages that can cost as much as the seller wants to charge. Typically what you will see is a seller offering three packages. The “basic” package is usually the traditional, 5 dollar package, but it can cost more. Then you usually see “standard” and “premium” packages. When you click to purchase a gig from a seller, the standard package is what is usually selected by default.
While perusing the Articles and Blog Posts gigs, you typically see the basic package offering 200-700 words with 0 to 2 revisions. If you move up to the standard package, you usually get between 500 and 1000 words with 2 or more revisions. Lastly, the premium tier usually offers you 700 or more words with 3+ revisions. The standard and premium versions will frequently come as packs of articles as well, so maybe in standard you get three, 300 words articles instead of the one that was offered in basic while premium may get you 5 300 word articles. It really varies by seller, but these are just some examples that I have seen the most.
Gig Extras
On top of having multiple package offerings, Fiverr also added the ability for sellers to add “Gig extras” to their offerings. This means that a seller can offer more features to a buyer on top of the package that was purchased. These can range from reducing the delivery time to adding more words to an article, to more research, to adding references, to anything that the seller wants to add. Offering these extras allows the seller to provide the buyer with more bells and whistles for a little more money.
Custom Orders
If you have a request that is not on the list, you can also contact the seller directly to discuss what you would like to do. I had one of these one time where the guy was offering to write funny dialog for comedy bits. I asked if he could just write something in blog/article form. He was able to do this and sent me a customer order with the price of the gig. I’ll talk about this more in another part, but I recommend reaching out to your seller whether you need custom modifications or not. You will learn a lot.
Five Dollar Balloon
As you can guess, the cost of each gig can balloon pretty quickly, and you end up pretty far away from your initial five dollar starting point. Even if you go with the basic package for five dollars, once you add on a couple of gig extras, ask your seller to add some custom work in to make your delivery unique, and pay for express delivery, you could be looking at 20+ dollars for the one gig. I don’t know about you, but if you are doing this for a blog that is just starting, 20 dollars a post is not really sustainable. In order to make our “post every day” goal at the end of last year, I spent about 120 bucks. I also probably spent enough time dealing with it that I could have done most of it myself… more on that in the next post.
Do you Fiverr?
Do you use Fiverr or any of the other freelance market place services out there? If so, let us know what you’ve used it for in the comments or drop me a line via the contact form. I may use some of your examples in the next parts of this post. In the next article, I will be describing some of the issues I have run into while using the service, and then I will follow up with an article on what you can do to get better results. Until then, stay Big!
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