I recently decided to try out Fiverr, a site where you can put up a service and charge $5. While it works great for a lot of things, it was an Epic fail for WordPress support questions.
I specifically worded my “gig” to not accept advanced questions or questions that would require me to fix a plugin or do something that took more than an hour. Frankly, I was not even up for dealing for a 30 minute problem because… well $5 is not even worth it and I would prefer to give it out for free or not at all.
Perhaps my expectations are high, but this was only an experiment. I do not know the people who have offered WordPress support for quite a while on Fiverr, but I am certain they have been wasting their time. I have had people asking for plugin support on premium plugins from other places, which means… they probably did not buy the original copy or… in the case they did actually pay, they never even bother contacting the plugin developers. The other requests were to add functions to existing plugins.
It was enough to make me click delete on the fiverr gig after two days.
So, while Fiverr is great for a lot of different services, it may not be worth it for WordPress support. People do not read the gig’s description and want you to bend over backwards. Those wanting to try their own venture, good luck, but you will get a lot of inquiries that will want you to do more than $5 worth of work.
If you are going to get a job done, get the guys at WPQuestions to do it. They will do it right and for a fair price.
Nile,
Thanks for sharing…I’ve thought about putting up Fiverr gigs and I was always afraid of an experience like yours. On the flip side, I’ve purchased a ton off of Fiverr and in the beginning I had a lot of deals go south (canceled, late, never delivered, poor quality, etc). I have learned to be very, very selective. There’s a few other Fiverr-like sites that you might want to check out. Thanks again!
Doug
Frankly I don’t like the concept of creating a gig for just $5 – Unless you can offer the same service over and over, it doesn’t really make sense. I guess odesk is a better place to offer services…
i think its so cheap… or either there is something hidden in it….
Useful post. I was 3 time customer on fiverr and I was lucky. But, in general many things there at low quality, or others finish to cost you $20 from initial $5. Good luck and thanks again!
You’re going to be at a disadvantage with such sites as you’re competing with folks where $5 is the equivalent of a few hours pay at a “real” job in their home country. I gave up on trying to make a buck from these sites long ago because of that. Mind you they are great places to buy services.
Hi Marios! I went in to experiment and see how it would be. I did get a LOT of inquiries, but had to refuse them all due to the fact that they did not read the directions on what the gig would cover. However, I do understand what you are saying. I pretty much stopped doing Fiverr and I hang out at WPQuestions from time to time.
I think that those people are only looking for cheap help. But in some casus you can not just give an answer for 5 bucks because it takes much more time. I am in de SEO business and some people ask me to look at their site and they hope that i can give them the best advice. But hey that takes more than a week of work.
Hi Nile,
I have recently utilized the service of Fiverr to create book images and CD images. I provided the image in jpg and they created the image I wanted. It works really well for something simple like that. But then I tried getting a logo banner done – not so good because that is more complex.
Thanks for the name of the wpquestions site. I did not know there was such a site and I have one issue that really needs fixing.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Feel free to drop me a line about fixing your WordPress site. I am a designer and developer and have been using WordPress since it started and then before it, b2, which is the platform it was forked from.
I agree with Marios comment above $5 in some countries is like hitting the lottery lol. Unless you have an extremely popular gig that you can get done in under 10 minutes it is just not worth it in my opinion.
On the other hand it is a great place to get free traffic to your offers and it is also a great place to buy cheap services. I use Fiverr all the time for outsourcing tedious tasks.
I had been hearing a lot of great things about Fiverr. I’ll be sure to not waste my time checking it out now.
There are some good services on Fiverr, but this type on WordPress support questions just really was not worth the time.
well i think you are right, its simple if you design something or do something that needs time and revision, then their is no point of putting it on fiverr. “give it out for free or not at all.” well said
I used Fiverr to create an avatar for me. It took some time and thr result was less than exciting. I since have reverted back to my own picture. I don’t think I will use Fiverr again
I used their service for a few “gigs”, and mainly found folks that were swamped with workload.
I still have an outstanding that I’ll soon be taking down due to non-interest.
You’re going to be at a disadvantage with such sites as you’re competing with folks where $5 is the equivalent of a few hours pay at a “real” job in their home country. I gave up on trying to make a buck from these sites long ago because of that. Mind you they are great places to buy services.
I did this as an experiment. People were more apt to not read directions, and just ask any old questions…lol