Fiverr’s slogan is “What Would You Do for $5?” so a lot of people sign up and offer gigs that they would do for $5. What they are unaware of is that Fiverr takes a $1 commission as soon as a buyer places an order. Then when you withdraw your earnings into your Paypal account, you still have to pay the Paypal fees so you actually end up with about $3.92. So you really need to watch out for this. This makes the slogan extremely misleading, and even scam-ish because it’s sort of fraudulent. Sure, they do mention the commission in the user ‘manual’ or ‘how does it work’ page, but really…how many people actually read manuals and terms of use, etc.?Click here to read some user reviews on why Fiverr sucks. A few weeks ago I wrote an entry about the crazy things people would ask for on Fiverr’s request sidebar section. A good point that someone made on the link I just shared…buyers are normally not aware that the seller only received $3.92 per gig. So they sometimes ask for something that would make sense if the buyer was earning $5, but not the 3-something dollars.
Through my personal experience with Fiverr, I would say it’s an easy way to earn a few bucks (especially if you want to buy online stuff like domains, or pay for hosting fees, etc.) but you really should stick to easy-to-deliver gigs. These are gigs that you will be able to deliver in just minutes, e.g. Twitting a product or a website if you have thousands of followers, voice-overs, and other advertising jobs. You might want to steer clear from gigs that will take you several hours to complete, e.g. a friend of mine offered 5 articles of 500 words each unaware of the commissions and fees.
So as long as it’s something you would do for $1 or $2 then you’re definitely making a profit. If it’s something you would normally charge for a full $5, then don’t offer it because it’s probably not worth it.
Fiverr is buyer’s heaven though, you really can get a lot of things for $5. Someone was offering a bluetooth dongle and other small electronic devices for $5. Sounds good.
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WYSIWYG! I'm a simple person trying to live the simplest life possible - it seems to be the most difficult thing to achieve! I'm an internet enthusiast and I've been a webmaster since early 2007. I like: blogging, developing sites using open source software, social media, computer games, '80s music, comedy & horror, animals, crunching on M&Ms peanut and Smarties!
I ditched Fiverr. I sold a few things on there, but it’s just not worth the time and effort for $3.92. The big issue for me is that buyers expect a $100 service for $5. You can’t realistically expect anyone to spend more than 15 minutes doing a service for $3.92.
Yup, very true. I offered a gig there once which I felt was worth about $5 and people kept asking me for a modified version of it which would normally cost them a whole lot more than $5. That said, there are a lot of great offers there. I would definitely spend money there.