Is Fiverr Over The Hill?

If you have used Fiverr in the past for buying services and have gone to buy a Gig recently you have probably noticed some changes have happened. The thing is because Fiverr was such a low-cost service most people did not mind paying a 20% commission as it was only $1.

Yes, the sellers got a $4 commission for each sale, and of course the more sales they get the more $4 commissions that came in, In Fiverr there were three ways to pay, you could use your Fiverr money earned from selling your gigs. Or you could pay with your credit or debit card or using Paypal. After a period of time Fiverr started charging a 0.50 cent surcharge, this was originally to cover their cost of receiving order money from Paypal or their credit card processors. And fair enough even though not ideal for the buyers they would willingly support this fee in exchange for getting good quality and often low-cost services from Fiverr.

As the money you already had inside Fiverr in earnings was digital and not technically paid out to your Paypal account, Fiverr would not have to pay to receive this money as the fee had already been paid when the original gig that deposited this credit in the account was ordered.

So if you had say $5 in your Fiverr Seller account instead of withdrawing it you could buy a Gig of another seller as Fiverr already had the money digitally in your seller account there was no exchange needed through Paypal as it had already been done and paid for, therefore transactions like these where not charged the $0.50 transaction Fee.

Roll on to today on Fiverr, it is harder to find a service that offers the same value for $5 as lots of the Gigs are now much higher value amounts, in fact, some of them are many hundreds of dollars.

Fiverr have started charging a $2 Fee on each transaction even if it is bought with Fiverr earnings which do not cost Fiverr any fee. That means if you were wanting to order a gig on Fiverr as the name says for $5 . Firstly a $1 is taken off the seller plus a Paypal fee and then another $2 is taken off the buyer that is $3 off a gig that was originally supposed to be $5 that is more than 50%, Of course, they still pay the seller the $4 minus the Paypal fee for receiving the money.

But even if you count a Gig as $7 on Fiverr.com they are taking $3 dollars which is well over 40% of the money even though the seller is actually doing the work.

As a buyer knowing you are paying out over 40% of your money to Fiverr instead of the person supplying the service takes a lot of the original value out of what Fiverr used to be.

So as a buyer on Fiverr I think twice or more times before buying any Gigs there.

As a seller of course, on the other hand, there are other things to piss you off, their new monthly rating system which sucks. A buyer can cancel your order for no reason and when they do you get punished by getting demoted from a level 2 or level one seller to complete demotion to the beginner level.

Even if you have multiple great 100% ratings you get demoted and many of your Gigs are delisted as they are reduced from 20 gigs as a level 2 seller to 10 gigs as a level 1 seller if you get demoted from a level one seller to starter level then they take a few more gigs off your account as well I think it goes down from 10 till 7 gigs that you are allowed.

The thing is as both a buyer and seller on Fiverr I think it has gone down the hill and in my opinion, the greed and stupid decisions continues to piss more people off on a daily basis, It seems completely crazy to me that when people have a system that works really well that they do stupid things to mess it up, my advice to Fiverr would be to have left what’s working alone and stop messing with their buyers (The lifeblood of the company) and the providers (Sellers) who actually do the work so they don’t have to while they can enjoy a reasonable and not extortionate profit. If they want to receive over 40% on other people’s work, maybe they need to move into the government or Illuminati sector or start outsourcing to China instead.

But for a successful website that sells other peoples services their current route, in my opinion doesn’t look like the way to go.

Some advice for Fiverr buyers

If you want to buy a gig on Fiverr and want to actually get more actual services for your money and pay a smaller % commission you should buy multiple gigs at once or you can ask the seller for a custom offer if you want to buy multiple gigs in one or to buy a higher priced gig. If your gigs are ordered separately it will cost you a lot more in service fees.

a $5 Gig will cost you $7 but a $300 Gig will cost you a $15 fee

Please note my account will show up in £ instead of dollars as I am based in the UK but the gig is still $5 for a basic Gig the pound amount shown depends on the exchange rate that day

Some advice for Fiverr sellers

Don’t cancel gigs use whatever methods possible to avoid cancellation or watch your stats decline and your top seller or level 2 or level 1 seller status disappear fast, this normally lasts for 60 days before your account will start climbing back up again. That is if no other people decide to cancel during that 60 day period.