Fiverr

Fiverr Review:

Fiverr is a freelance marketplace that allows you to offer pretty much any service. There are web designers; graphic designers; actors; animators and editors — not to mention people willing to endorse your product or make silly videos.

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The challenge for side hustlers who list here is that the site started out with the concept that any job would be done for $5. And, for a long time, most of the gigs listed here were priced at $5 to $25.

Some still are. So you need to be very careful about what you’re offering to make sure you’ll earn a decent amount for your time.

How it works

Freelancers can sign up here with a user name, email address and password.

From there, you create a site profile. This is going to explain who you are; what you do; and what makes you the right candidate for the service you plan to offer. You’ll add a photograph; and potentially link to samples of your past work.

Now you’ll create a gig — or several gigs — to offer through the site. When someone books that gig, you get alerted. You do the job, mark it as complete and Fiver will release payment to you within 2 weeks.

Gigs

What’s a gig? It’s quite literally whatever service you want to offer, broken down into bite-sized pieces.

Let’s say that you’re a hiring expert. You could offer to help with resume writing. However, you need to carefully describe the service you’re offering, what is included and what is not included. You also need to tell the buyer how quickly you’ll deliver the service. Can you turn it around in 24 hours? One hour? One week? Pay attention to the details.

This gig may have a headline like “resume proof-reading.” And your basic offer could be to review the client’s resume for spelling and formatting errors for $15, promising a 24-hour turn-around time.

Gig levels

You can stop there or add level-up services. To clarify, Fiverr allows you to set three gig levels — basic, standard and premium — for most services. So where the “basic” offer might be to just proofread the resume, your “standard” offer might include re-formatting, and editing/rewriting it for content and clarity. Here, you might charge $35.  Your premium offer might include a cover letter and cost $50.

If you are willing to do a revision or two, say so. The more detailed you are about what is and isn’t part of a gig, the easier it is to get clients and good reviews. Both taking jobs and getting good reviews boost you up in the Fiverr hierarchy and make it easier to find more work.

You also want to avoid any misunderstandings that would make the client feel like they got less than what they paid for.

Pricing

By and large, the pricing is up to you. However, Fiverr does have some restrictions. If you’re a general seller, you can’t charge more than $995 per gig. That’s one of the reasons you need to make your service offers bite-sized. You can earn professional rates here. But only if you structure your offers like an a la carte menu. Many Fiverr sellers tell us they earn thousands a month from this site.

However, if you have substantial experience in your field, you can apply to be a Fiverr Pro. This allows you to charge more, elevates your profile in the Fiverr system, and opens you up to taking high-end corporate work.

To be considered, you’ll need to fill out an application and agree to adhere to a variety of best practices. Fiverr officials will review your credentials and portfolio and let you know if you’re accepted.

Fees and Payments

When setting your prices, you also should know that Fiverr will take a 20% commission from your earnings. So, if you charge $100, you’ll get $80. Fiverr automatically deducts the commission from earnings before it passes them on to you.

The site gives you several payment methods to choose from, including PayPal and Apple Pay. Payments are generally available for withdrawal 14 days following the job’s completion.

However, highly-rated sellers can withdraw their pay more quickly. And Fiverr has a faster payment option available for a fee.

Some complaints

While seller reviews are largely positive, some sellers complain about larcenous clients who try to manipulate Fiverr’s algorithm to get work they didn’t pay for.

Specifically, the site’s algorithm emphasizes the number of jobs you’ve completed on time, reviews, and your acceptance rate. If you cancel a job that’s been booked, that goes against you. Bad reviews do too.

So clients sometimes book your services, knowing that they need more than what they’re paying for. If you refuse to do the job, you can get nicked for cancelling. Deliver what they paid for — and no more — and they might give you a bad review. But the site is aware of buyer blackmail attempts and has beefed up its customer service team to try to address them.

If you keep all communication with clients on the platform and in writing, you can show them evidence of the client blackmail. Customer service will remove bad reviews, if you can prove the client was in the wrong.

Recommendations

We increasingly hear freelancers raving about this site, saying that it has become their primary marketing tool. It is particularly popular among those offering remote services in animation and illustration, tech, content creation, marketing, voice-overs and music and video mixing and editing.

However, Fiverr is not the right platform to offer in-person services, such as cleaning, painting, repairs or errands. The right place to offer those services is TaskRabbit.

Want to try Fiverr?

Click here to sign up.

What their users say: (from Indeed)

It’s a good place to start your freelancing career, whether you are a writer, programmer, designer or just anything. You always have a place in the Fiverr community. You can make multiple gigs and offer numerous services at your own rates.

Although I had some great, friendly clients who gave me great reviews, I also had one instance where a client with solely bad intentions paid me for a job just to give me a negative review. However, if you are looking to gain experience in negotiating with clients and working in a highly competitive environment, and need a side job, freelancing and looking for gigs on Fiverr is for you.

From TrustPilot

They have helped me to build a thriving very successful business, allowing me to grow in countless ways. The value is vast. They care about you personally, contact you in person through seller success, and provide big value opportunities.

Best site for expert freelancers. Those who are expert get all. but who are new here, are the real strugglers. Hard to find clients. They are too much demanding for little payment. Still good for earn hustling.

I have been freelancing on Fiverr for 5 years now. It’s a good marketplace for freelancing as evidenced by a lot of competition. However, Fiverr can be a lot better with some changes to the algorithms. It is like you have tons of orders this month, and next month you get only 1/4 orders of previous month.

Bad buyer

So disappointed with customer service. I’ve been a seller with Fiverr for many years, have made 100s of orders, level 3 seller with 5 star rating etc. One annoying customer made an awkward request and asked for 3 revisions. Said they were happy with the product only to suddenly decide to cancel it last minute. Customer Service have been no help so I lost hours of time and was unpaid for all the work I’ve done. They keep repeating the same thing even though I am telling them they are getting the situation wrong. Really discouraging to know that any buyer can get away with this and Fiverr won’t support the seller at all.

Updated 2/5/2023