Fiverr is what actually has made me the first decent chunk of money, but at the same time, I wouldn’t recommend selling on Fiverr. I was a Fiverr seller from August 2020, until the end of 2021. I am a part-time freelancer, but I quit working with Fiverr because of multiple reasons, which I will discuss in this post. I will also tell you what other freelancing platforms I recommend over Fiverr.
How did it all start?
As a 14-year-old boy, I was quite bored during the pandemic of 2020. I created a Fiverr account, and after forgetting about it for a few months, I got my first order in August, for $5. Read more about my journey on Fiverr here: https://medium.com/@mariusmanolachi2006/how-to-make-over-1-000-on-fiverr-6539ee72d076
It was all going well because making a few bucks from home wasn’t that bad, for a 14-year-old.
What I don’t like about Fiverr?
As a teen, once again, making a few bucks seemed incredible. But at the same time Fiverr isn’t a platform to grow! Fiverr is the go-to for out-of-this-planet cheap kinds of services. See, when Fiverr was founded, all services used to cost $5. Of course, you can close a $10,000 deal on Fiverr nowadays, but the thing is that most people that come on Fiverr search for services really cheap. You will probably find some people that pay a normal amount of money for your service, but even then, it’s not even close to what you can make on other platforms.
For example, I’ve been asked to edit a 15 minutes video for $5. Such a video would have taken at least 3 hours to make. I think that making $0.6/hour is miserable. Sure, I never took that kind of deal, but no matter, most deals on Fiverr are no way near what you should actually be paid. That’s because people with big projects rarely go on Fiverr. I had the luck to be in a great niche and stumble on a few YouTubers and a man that was making videos for a small multimedia production.
Where else should you freelance?
Well, the best option would be to sell on your own website. By placing your services and prices on your website, you get 100% from all orders. Besides that, you don’t have any competition and gigs that pop up that make your customer go for another seller. And you look way more professional. Do I suggest self-hosting all your services? No, definitely not at the beginning. Maybe after you have a big portfolio and a reputation, it might be a good idea to self-host, but the best would be to go on freelancing platforms. The platform I truly recommend for freelancing is upwork.com
I tried Upwork for a few months now, and I am well surprised by the difference in prices. Sure, there will always be people that ask for something done at the price of candy, but generally, customers pay more to freelancers and that’s mainly because of the audience and people that go to Upwork. See, people already created this belief that if you want cheap, but poorly done services, you should go on Fiverr, while Upwork is like the luxury side of freelancing.
