First, let’s get past the name, it’s pronounced Fiver the second “r” is not pronounced and usually causes some confusion. Fiverr is considered a freelancer website. This simply means you can go there and hire someone to do a job you cannot do or just don’t have the time to do it yourself. Or maybe you just don’t WANT to do the task yourself.
Fiverr has been around since 2010 and has grown in popularity. In the beginning, most jobs you could hire were $5 but then you paid for extras or rush projects. While you can still find many gigs at $5 the starting prices have increased depending on the task you are looking to hire for.
With Fiverr, you can locate someone to do just about any task you need whether it be video, music, graphics, writing, translation, programming, business function, marketing, or just about anything in between.
Seriously, the sky is the limit. Let me pose a couple of quick scenarios of how a business owner might utilize the services found at Fiverr. Sometimes you are the brains of the outfit but just have no clue to get it done. One scenario would be that you’ve come up with the idea for a book but you’re not a writer. Just go over to the Fiverr website and search for ghostwriters. You can find hundreds of people that would write in your genre using your outline. Many offer three levels of services, a 2000-word short story; a 5000-word story, or a 10,000-word story. Be sure that they offer to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and sign over copyrights to you as well. If you’re not familiar with Ghostwriters, it doesn’t mean someone that writes horror stories. But, it does mean someone that writes without penning their name to the material meaning you can utilize it as your own work.
This comes in handy if you want to publish a lead generation ebook or report, or maybe even a full book about your business to hand out or sell.
In the writing category, you can also find people to write your website content, articles, blogs, technical writing, resumes, cover letters, social media profiles, and script writing for videos, speeches, and podcasts. Even the writing of case studies, white papers, and grant writing, just to name a few.
You can also find graphic services for book/report covers, website images, book illustrations, cartoons, caricatures, t-shirt designs, logos, stationary, business cards, and other limitless possibilities.
I’m intrigued by the voiceovers and spokesperson-type videos. You can find voice actors and spokespersons to create a wide range of videos for your website, promotions, and more. I’ve used this portion for a client and it went over well. In this case, I used a female voice-over where they created the audio and I added it to the video I had created for their business. For this case study, a female voice outperformed a male voice in conversion studies.
While I’ve been blessed to do all of these services myself there are just times when it is easier to hire it out to get the job done while I work on other tasks for the project. You as a business owner can not be everywhere at once and meet the goals you’ve set for yourself. I take pride in my work and prefer to do it myself because for certain things it just has to be you. But there are some tasks having someone else do it is a relief to have it done and Fiverr has helped me do just that.
Another way that I myself have used the Fiverr service is in an emergency I had received a file from a client to use in a video production for a project. The audio was distorted with background noise, the person speaking was way too close to the microphone, and nearly unusable. I spent a few hours myself filtering and cleaning up the audio and thought what am I doing this for? I’m not going to get it to a place that I will be happy with. I searched on fiver for audio file repair and located a person that was able to fix it for $30 for me.
A valuable lesson to learn here. Your time has a price tag on it too. Obviously, if you’re in a service-based industry that I’m in you know different tasks bring you certain rates. Are you costing yourself more money doing it yourself when you can have someone else do it for a lot less? Had I continued to fiddle with it myself I would have not made any money from that project. By outsourcing to Fiverr I came out ahead and my customer was happy.
You can find some really cool gigs on this site to increase the professionalism of your business as well. Better PowerPoint presentations, PDF reports, you name it. I could go on and on about all of the resources you can have handled for you with Fiverr but instead, I’ll wrap up with some pointers.
When searching for your project check out their ratings. A five-star rating from only five reviewers may not mean a lot. Sure the price may be cheaper but you don’t want to be the person breaking in a novice at that task. Also, review their portfolio or work samples to make sure the style or results are what you are looking for. Obviously, you wouldn’t want somebody that focuses on fantasy fiction to write a product review on digital widgets.
Next, be clear you understand what you are getting and what the person providing the service needs. For example, if you need a video file repaired or edited you may have it in one format and they request it in another. To clarify you have a .wmv and they want
.mp4. While they may accept your file type they may charge to convert it to the file they want to work with it. A good Fiverr profile will be clear in what you get in receivables as well. Also, be sure to check to delivery time. There is a difference between response time and product delivery. Response time simply means the time they’ll respond to your project on clarifying what you want/need to be done.
Finally, check the prices. It may say $15 on the project page but before you order there is usually Basic, Standard, and Premium pricing with different options. You can compare the pricing to see what’s included in each.
I’ve utilized the Fiverr service myself for various projects I can only think of one case the designer just didn’t come up with what I was looking for. Being a designer myself that can be a challenge to have someone else design something. In this case, I was too close to the project and decided to outsource it. Fortunately, the designer refunded the project since they couldn’t provide something I could use. I can honestly say with Fiverr you can get the service you need at a decent price in a timely fashion.
I’ve actually thought about becoming a seller on the site just to see their process and see how it works on the other side. Possibly some voice-over services or graphic design.
I hope you’ve found this review useful when you think about outsourcing your next project or getting the assistance you need with getting your task completed.
