With the increasing demand for freelancers and contract-based workers, it’s easy to see that the gig economy is here to stay. And to make their services readily accessible to those who need them, a marketplace is necessary. This is where Fiverr comes in.
By sharing our thoughts on this digital marketplace’s pros and cons in this Fiverr review of ours, we hope that you’ll find enough information here to help you decide whether the freelancer website works for you or not.
Here’s a Quick Rundown of our Fiverr Review
A lot of times, people read Fiverr reviews because they’re basically looking for answers to questions like, “Is Fiverr legit?” or “Is Fiverr a scam?” The simple answer to such questions is: Fiverr is a legitimate platform. However, whether you’re a buyer or seller if you don’t do your due diligence, you might end up with a sour experience with the platform.
Fiverr is an entire ecosystem with its own unique set of rules guiding engagement and performance on the platform. It puts a lot of work into ensuring that members of its community can safely work and transact on its platform. Sticking with the rules (as a seller) and paying attention to reviews (as a buyer) are simple ways to enjoy your Fiverr experience.
There is a lot of great talent on Fiverr and many notable companies outsource tasks to freelancers on the platform. Depending on the type of service, rank of the seller and other factors, price tags for Gigs on the platform start from $5 and can go as high as $10,000.
Want to know more? Read to the end of our Fiverr review or click on any of the headings below to jump to a particular section.
- What is Fiverr?
- How does Fiverr work?
- Fiverr Pricing
- What are Fiverr Seller Levels?
- Withdrawing your money from Fiverr
- Are there fake Fiverr reviews?
- Fiverr Dispute and Refund Resolution
What is Fiverr?
Fiverr is basically an online platform where digital services are exchanged for money. Freelancers and contractors sign up on Fiverr, choose the service they want to sell from the categories of services allowed on the platform, create a profile, showcase and sell their work to buyers.
Who are the buyers? They’re companies or business owners looking to hire skilled workers to help with short-term projects (like creating graphics for a campaign) or performing one-off tasks (like designing a logo).
Fiverr facilitates these transactions by ensuring, as much as it can, that only legitimate sellers and buyers use its platform. It also provides buyer and seller support.
How does Fiverr Work?
First off, whether you’re a seller (freelancer) or a buyer, you have to sign up by creating a Fiverr account and it’s incredibly easy to do so. Here’s how:
At the top right corner of the Fiverr homepage, you’ll find a “Join” button. Clicking on that brings up a pop-up box with options to join with your Facebook, Google or Apple accounts. Directly below those options, is another alternative that requires your email address.
When you sign up with any of the options, you’ll be asked to confirm your account and voila, you’re in!
What’s more, signing up with Fiverr is free.
Setting up your Fiverr seller account
To start selling on Fiverr, you’ll need to create a seller profile. To complete this process, you’ll be required to fill out a few forms with information that’ll ultimately help boost your chances of landing gigs.
The questions asked are about general stuff (e.g. what certifications you have and where you went to school). You’re not even required to answer all but must complete up to 70% of them before you can proceed any further.
When you’re setting up your Fiverr seller profile, we recommend that you answer all of the questions as it improves your profile, making it easier for buyers to trust you.
After you complete that, you can start publishing your Gigs. A Gig is basically a short sales pitch that describes the service you’re offering. And, yes, you can create more than one gig.
The Gigs you create may fall into a range of categories like content marketing, translation, recording voiceovers, financial consulting, copywriting, digital marketing, logo design etc. And depending on how well and clearly you write your sales pitches, you can attract potential customers to buy your services.
Selling on Fiverr
You can bundle your services into packages — Basic, Standard and Premium — and price each package differently while setting up your gig. Basically, the more the value offered in a package, the higher the price you can set on it.
When it comes to pricing your packages, you have the freedom to choose any price from $5 to $10,000 for any of your packages. Remember to set reasonable prices though. A good rule of thumb is to check out your competition on Fiverr and see what they’re offering at different price points.
You can also add Gig extras to each package and charge more for it. A common example of a Gig extra is expedited delivery where a customer pays an added fee to the standard Gig fee to have the seller deliver the service faster.
Buying Services on Fiverr
As a buyer looking to hire a freelancer on Fiverr, you can use the search bar or browse through the service category you have in mind to find a specific service. Every freelancer’s rating, pitch and starting price is clearly shown on their profile.
You may be able to upgrade your purchase to include Gig extras or a faster delivery schedule in some situations. When you do, you’ll have to pay extra for the service. Before paying for a Gig though, you should read Fiverr reviews of the seller. They were generated by real buyers like you to guide you as you make a buying decision.
Fiverr Pricing
When a buyer is about to pay for an order, Fiverr charges a service fee of 5.5% of the payment being made. This service fee is charged per payment made.
So let’s say you’re purchasing a logo design at $100, then you added expedited delivery as a Gig extra at $25 and left the seller a tip of $15. Fiverr’s 5.5% service fee will apply to each of the 3 payments. Such that your total payment comes to $147.70 instead of $140.
All of the above only applies to purchases of $50 and more. When your purchase is under $50, you’ll be charged a service fee of $2 only.
Note that these are Fiverr’s official fees at the time this review was written.
Now because each freelancer sets their fee, the exact cost of services on Fiverr differs. You can set a budget when looking for sellers to help you identify someone who will do the work within your budget.
As a seller, you can charge anywhere between $5 to $10,000 for your Gigs. Fiverr charges you a 20% commission on every sale you make – including your $5 Gigs.
Fun Fact: Fiverr got its name from its $5 price tag that was on all the Gigs on its platform when it launched in 2010.
Thankfully, you can now charge more than $5 for your work. However, you shouldn’t put high price tags on your Gigs. If you’re a new seller, take a cue from your competition’s prices then set yours a bit lower when deciding on a price for your offers.
This will make your offer comparatively attractive and could increase your chances of getting orders as most buyers on Fiverr would rather work with older freelancers who have raked up good reviews and thus are higher up Fiverr’s seller levels.
What are Fiverr Seller Levels?
Talking about seller levels, there are 4 levels of sellers on Fiverr: New, Level 1, Level 2 and Top-rated seller levels.
As a new seller, you can offer as many as seven active Gigs at a time. You can also add two more services to each Gig at $5, $10 or $20 apiece. And you even add customised offers for up to $20,000 each.
If you sell actively for 60 days, complete up to 10 orders and meet some other milestones, you’ll be moved up to Level 1. As a Level 1 seller on Fiverr, you’ll be able to have 10 active Gigs on offer per time and 4 additional services per gig.
Consistently deliver up to 50 orders (this includes the 10 from your time as a new seller) and meet other requirements, and you’ll be on your way to the next level.
At Level 2, you’ll be able to create up to 20 active Gigs (plus 5 extra per gig). And you’ll also get to enjoy priority attention from customer support.
The highest seller rank on Fiverr is the Top Rated Seller. To become a top-rated seller, you have to complete 100 orders (yes, it includes all the orders you completed on previous levels). In addition to other requirements, you’ll also need to have been selling actively on Fiverr for 180 days.
Withdrawing Your Money from Fiverr
You can withdraw your earnings from Fiverr 14 days after you’ve delivered an order. This applies to all freelancers on all seller levels except Top Rated sellers. Freelancers at this level can withdraw their earnings 7 days post-delivery of an order.
You can withdraw your earnings via any of the supported channels:
- PayPal
- Transfer of funds via bank account
- Direct deposit into a bank account (only available to sellers in the US)
- Fiverr Revenue Card (aka Payoneer prepaid Mastercard)
Are there Fake Fiverr Reviews?
There has been an influx of fake Fiverr reviews on the website recently. It’s a sad development that has resulted in a number of sour experiences for both buyers and sellers on the platform. This thread, for instance, was created by a Fiverr seller who had had it with fake Fiverr reviews. If you’re looking to start a career as a freelancer, we recommend you do some research and read up on the steps you need to take as a newbie freelancer to avoid a less than pleasant experience.
Even though there are fake Fiverr reviews, most of the reviews you’ll find on a seller’s profile are actually the real deal. This is because of Fiverr’s policy of collecting payment from a buyer – and pocketing its 20% commission – before they can leave a review. So while a couple of reviews might be fake, it’ll cost the seller some serious money to “buy” themselves a lot of fake Fiverr reviews like this.
You may have heard about websites, fora and groups on social media where sellers can get fake Fiverr reviews. Well, they exist. We even found a website where for $20 and more, you can order as much as 8 fake Fiverr reviews.
How to Spot a Fake Fiverr Review
There aren’t exactly any hard and fast rules to telling if a Fiverr review is real or fake. However, a seller’s reviews might be fake if:
- They’re a new seller with lots of great reviews. Thanks to all the factors that determine a seller’s growth on Fiverr, it’s improbable that a newbie seller would have successfully completed that many Gigs. Unless of course they’re super talented (sorta like Kyle XY) or they’re using some software.
- There a lots of them from the same buyer or a few buyers keep leaving vague and generalised reviews. While this could mean that a seller’s Fiverr reviews are fake, it could also mean that the seller’s work is so good that the buyers keep coming back.
- They’re mostly 4 and 5 star reviews (especially for a lower-level seller). This one is a huge red flag because it’s near impossible to perfectly satisy different humans all the time.
- The review was by someone who’s also a seller on the platform. True, sellers buy Gigs from other sellers but it could also be a case of sellers helping each other gain rankings.
- You contact the seller and they’re unable to understand the industry jargon or show their portfolio of completed projects. (Of course, you should contact the seller before making an order. It’s not advisable to do otherwise).
There is a caveat with all of these tips, true. But if you find a seller with Fiverr reviews that tick 2 or more of these boxes, it’s best to avoid buying from them as their reviews could be fake.
Fiverr Dispute and Refund Resolution
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that disputes, order cancellations and refund requests happen in a marketplace. And Fiverr – a digital melting pot of global talent and shoppers – is no different.
Fiverr has a resolution centre where it provides members of its community with different ways to handle conflicts that come up. And it strongly recommends that members use the resolution centre before reaching out to customer support.
Now, when you consider the fact that there are thousands of buyers and sellers transacting daily on the website, the logic behind the resolution-centre-first recommendation becomes understandable. You don’t want a scenario where support is so tied up resolving small issues that they’re unable to speedily resolve priority conflicts.
Disputes that can be handled by the resolution centre include an extension of delivery time, order cancellation request by seller, request for progress update by buyer and order modification request by the buyer.
Fiverr does not offer direct refunds to a buyer’s payment provider. Refunds are made to the buyer’s Fiverr balance credit from where they can be used to make purchases on the platform. However, if you insist on having your refund made to your payment provider, you’ll be asked to fill out a form.
In order to prevent misuse and fraud, there is a limit to the number of times you can request a refund made to your payment provider, and such refunds may incur additional charges.
