Fiverr sucks. Why? The online marketplace known as Fiverr is a popular venue for making quick cash by offering a variety of online and offline services. Potential users sign up for free accounts and create a variety of gigs. Sellers can then list their services in appropriate categories which can range from social media marketing to graphic design, logo creation and even music lessons and phony testimonials for business ratings. Sounds good so far?Except Fiverr likes to promote that seller involvement can lead to a carefree self employed lifestyle. They do this by shamelessly using their blog to create potentially fictionalized or dramatized accounts of their top sellers success. They then spam their user base via email with links to these anecdotes of miraculous monetary gains. Live like a boss!
I wonder what Robin Leech would say.
Champagne Kisses and Caviar Dreams?
Bullshit!
Perhaps if one desires to slave away at the computer earning third world wages while Fiverr shamelessly exploits it’s sellers by making 20% for doing absolutely nothing. Well nothing except providing a venue to advertise these endless gigs. Sadly, any real advertising is left to the sellers who must spend even more time on social networks spamming their Fiverr links in order to gain a potential sale.
I received this email spam in May 2014. Yet another highly dubious account of making easy cash the Fiverr way.
Really? For payment less then minimum wage?
Yes! Perhaps if that lifestyle includes a cardboard box and skyline view from the underpass of the nearest exit ramp.
I particularly liked the one about the guy who paid of his student loans with the slave wages he earned on Fiverr or Amitbt, a lawyer with a B.A in Economics and a LL.B who is a quitter leaving his traditional lifestyle for the debonaire, suave and risque existence of a Fiverr serf.
It’s quite obvious this dubious marketing is used to drive more customers, both buyers and sellers to the Fiverr website in order to generate more revenue for the digital plantation overseers. The hype attracts potential sellers to sign up and list their redundant services which facilitates an ever increasing profit margin for Fiverr. Seriously, how many separate gigs does a potential buyer need to see for Facebook Likes, Google+ Circles or Twitter Followers. In addition, Fiverr actually offers no real quality control on any gigs listed beyond their useless terms of service which does little to actually guarantee anything substantial aside from maintaining what appears to be a business-like facade.
The whole thing is essentially a cyclical clusterfuck of sub par redundant gigs, massive scammers and non-existent customer service which essentially ignores middle class 99% seller concerns in favor of profitable Elite 1% Tops Sellers who earn them the most cash. Sounds like business as usual in the United States of crony capitalism where Congress has been subjugated by corporate lobbying at the expense of the decimated middle class.
This is not a political rant so I will refrain from digressing. My rant is biased and subjective as a former seller who has personally dealt with the inept customer service, scammers who masquerade as legitimate buyers and of course, the overall idiotic one-sided policy which is negatively biased against the average seller. Apparently I am not alone in this sentiment. Fiverr does indeed suck for numerous reasons.
As a former seller I have documented some of my account particulars. This screenshot is one which reflects my account sales volume and performance.
Now my total revenues generated from all sales including my withdrawal total. This was over the course of two years. Based on Fiverr’s 20% commission rate of $1 USD per order, they made roughly $442 from my sales.
This means outside of the Fiverr commission deduction, I actually made around $2,654 USD. Now consider the two Fiver Blog users who claim to have quit their proverbial day jobs for the lifestyles of the rich and Fiverr. Imagine Fiverr’s commission and profit and how those two fools actually LOST a considerable amount of revenue that easily dwarfs my meager earnings.
Why does it matter?
Remember Fiverr recommends sellers self promote their gigs as part of achieving financial success. In fact, both individuals claim self promotion of their gigs as part of their campaign. If that is so, why then do they not simply create their own websites and use their so-called self promotional skills to promote those sites and services instead of Fiverr. Be a real boss and make 100% profits! Cut out the middle man. In fact, being an upper tier seller making mad amounts of money means cutting costs and reinvesting to gain profits. Paying a useless bottom feeder like Fiverr which does no individual promotion is not only stupid but wasteful.
Revenue should be better appropriated to social networking campaigns, SEO, adwords or even even purchasing gigs on Fiverr to promote and drive traffic to your own websites and services. Turn this shit around and fuck Fiverr, the corporate fat slob who takes 20% and does nothing. Now that’s capitalism at work. Be a boss and fuck the competition.
Perhaps these two should forgo with the reliance on their secular academic background and opt instead for some visceral street smart advice from the likes of Tony Montana:
Getting back to my Fiverr experience, here is an additional screenshot of my account rating which stood at 99% and level 2 before Fiverr decided to pull the plug in a most deceptive and scumbag manner.
Notice my account received 184 positive reviews, only one negative and 154 un-reviewed orders which did nothing to increase my rating or restore the 100% coveted status. Nice that Fiverr does not oblige it’s buyers to leave reviews, especially when it is extremely difficult to restore the damage done by even one negative rating. Fiverr like Ebay, favors the buyers who spend as opposed to sellers. This is true concerning 99% of the average sellers who are not a part of the infamous 1% “Top sellers” list.
In any case, I noticed my account all of a sudden stopped receiving any orders whatsoever one day. It was unusual because I generally received orders on a consistent basis, especially after 2 years and having a level 2 account with a 99% rating. I generally received an order or 2 within a 3 to 4 day span. I logged in and checked my account thinking perhaps I enabled the vacation status by accident. Nope. A quick cursory glance showed all my gigs were active and enabled. Nothing seemed on the surface to be amiss.
I then looked at the impression indicator for all 20 of my gigs. I did this over the course of a few days. It never changed and remained completely at zero! WTF? Seriously this was either a major bug in there system or those cocksuckers ghosted my account which means only the account owner/seller can see the gigs listed and active, but in actuality they are not showing up in the Fiverr search.
This means no buyers see my gigs and I get no orders. No sales means no money. Those fucking bastards and they never even had the decency to email me or informed me after 2 years as a level 2 seller with 99% consistent rating and close to 3K in revenue.
In any case, I had to contact these useless idiots via support and hope for the best.
Considering these fools have a reputation for nonchalance and lack of care, I had no other choice. I opened a support ticket as follows:
I received the following response which was vague, generic and akin to a typical corporate cut & paste job. Nice way to deflect user inquiries by making it sound official and concerned but with just enough aloofness to appear as George Carlin would say, completely Full of Shit!
This guy must think I am stupid or as dense as his coworkers if I was to believe this piss poor excuse for ghosting my account. I mean what the fuck is with the generic corporate-sounding idiot-speak: editorial guidelines and terms of service. I wrote a concise inquiry and was asking for exact and specific answers. What I got back was a robotic unconcerned dickhead of a response.
I had to press the issue and inform this peon that I was not buying his dismissive bullshit response. Rightfully pissed off I continued…
and continued….
I never did receive any response from support. I did not expect to considering how they handled the entire issue prior to me contacting them through their support system. My account for some reason was subversively ghosted in order to penalize me for some reason. Support mentioned having too many gigs denied which was false considering I had the same 20 gigs listed and available for the longest time while my account was active.
In addition, prior to this happening I remember for no apparent reason – two of my gigs were suspended for no reason. I did not edit the content and both gigs were in complete compliance with their terms of service. One gig was offering Myspace services and another Soundcloud. Nothing out of the ordinary or felonious. As a result I later re-edited these gigs changing the images and simply cut & paste my text content and resubmitted without issue. Both gigs went live and were in active status. After that is anyone’s guess.
I never trusted Fiverr as a seller. My suspicions were confirmed after doing numerous searches online and reading others experiences on forums. Fiverr typically ignores sellers needs and always seems to side and justify buyers, even scam attempts which are rampant and account for many negative feedback and denied gigs. Fiverr is ONLY concerned with making money off sellers. In the end, sellers are just digital serfs being paid slave wages by scumbag operation run by a bunch of shylocks.
Finally since my actual account on Fiverr was never banned or suspended (Fiverr never had any reason) I decided to get creative with my profile. I think this new approach does justice and serves as a final testimony of how ludicrous and hypocritical Fiverr is as a business.
Fuck You Fiverr!
Update: It seems the useless peons at Fiverr support feel it was prudent to respond to my creative use of the Seller bio with a direct link back to this blog post. Yet they ignore my internal message, which incidentally took them several weeks to even notice!
Yup, I bet you scumbags don’t like information addressing how shitty your customer service is towards sellers. Once again, Fuck You Fiverr!