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How do some sellers make a living with such low prices?


kholland65

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I constantly see top rated or level 2 sellers (I’m a lvl 2 btw) selling gigs for $5 that I know would take 30min to an hour at least to complete. These people have thousands of orders (obviously). I just don’t understand why anyone would even be willing to do work for what amounts to less than minimum wage. I just don’t see how that is sustainable at all. I honestly want to message these people some times and ask whether they are merely scamming people, or they are just plain stupid. I just don’t see the point in making an insane number of sales, if your net earnings/hr are nothing. It’s one thing if you are a new sellers or level 1 and just need to get some orders coming in to boost your profile. But I don’t see what the point is in doing that if you’re already a top rated seller. Oh and these are Americans as well, so it’s not that these are foreigners where the exchange rate makes $5 worth a lot.

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Everyone can do business and set prices as they want to on fiverr. I wonder the same things myself but that’s ok with me if they want to sell for $5. I did that for years so it’s good for workaholics like me to have lots of small sales. I like 14 hour days seven days a week. When I raised my prices and had fewer orders it felt uncomfortable to not have to work so hard. I’ve always been that way and probably others are too.

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Guest hanshuber16

I am sorry, but not everyone works on Fiverr for a living (i.e. Fiverr may not be their only source of income).

They might be having a full-time job/other sources of income off of Fiverr and might only be selling on Fiverr just to earn some additional income on the side or to keep in touch with certain skills they have that might otherwise go untapped in their day job.

Such people might not really be working on Fiverr for the money. :thinking:

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I am sorry, but not everyone works on Fiverr for a living (i.e. Fiverr may not be their only source of income).

They might be having a full-time job/other sources of income off of Fiverr and might only be selling on Fiverr just to earn some additional income on the side or to keep in touch with certain skills they have that might otherwise go untapped in their day job.

Such people might not really be working on Fiverr for the money. :thinking:

@hanshuber16 I agree with you, being me one of those that doesn’t work on Fiverr for a living - as I have said it many times. 😉

My bag of likes is empty, so here’s for you 👍

PS: This quoting bug is driving me crazy 🤨

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I should have phrased this differently. I’m not necessarily just suggesting that they can’t support themselves fully on fiverr with those prices. I don’t. But the principle of value should still be the same. Why would anyone want to work for a few dollars an hour even if it’s not how they make their living? I rather spend that time doing something else for that amount of money, same reason I tell some buyers to get lost that try to low ball me. Working for $2/hr is not a good use of my time. Those hours would be better spent doing other things.

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Guest hanshuber16

@hanshuber16 I agree with you, being me one of those that doesn’t work on Fiverr for a living - as I have said it many times. 😉

My bag of likes is empty, so here’s for you 👍

PS: This quoting bug is driving me crazy 🤨

being me one of those that doesn’t work on Fiverr for a living

So am I. 😄 I just enjoy doing what I do that it is one of my favorite “pastimes.” 😜

My bag of likes is empty, so here’s for you 👍

I’ll gladly accept that. Thanks. 🙂

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I was selling gigs with the starting price of $5 when I first joined. The job I was doing would take me 20 minutes max. A lot of buyers would order extras from me as well so I was able to get to the 50% of my office salary in a month by working a lot.

50% was not 100% but it worked well for this kind of a limbo period when I was trying to figure out where to go with my career and all that and help me not to struggle financially.

It all depends on the parameters of the gig. The time/resources it takes versus the monetary compensation.

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I should have phrased this differently. I’m not necessarily just suggesting that they can’t support themselves fully on fiverr with those prices. I don’t. But the principle of value should still be the same. Why would anyone want to work for a few dollars an hour even if it’s not how they make their living? I rather spend that time doing something else for that amount of money, same reason I tell some buyers to get lost that try to low ball me. Working for $2/hr is not a good use of my time. Those hours would be better spent doing other things.

Working for $2/hr is not a good use of my time.

If you are doing work you love here and can’t do any place else, the money is secondary.

Also, you are building up a good reputation that will allow you to raise your prices later on if you want to.

When you are self employed it’s rare to start out making a decent hourly rate. It’s not unusual for self employed people to work for a while losing money.

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Guest mark_robert88

Hi everyone,

You raise one point that “How can they sell services in 5$”
other hand they have couple of orders in queue at one time.
So, if you search in their gigs packages you can see one thing they offer very small services in 5$. And that’s cool business tips, Start from low price.
I think, they Top seller not one man. They are 2 - 5 people team.

I suggest you, buy services from new sellers because they work with full off their energy.

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I constantly see top rated or level 2 sellers (I’m a lvl 2 btw) selling gigs for $5 that I know would take 30min to an hour at least to complete. These people have thousands of orders (obviously). I just don’t understand why anyone would even be willing to do work for what amounts to less than minimum wage. I just don’t see how that is sustainable at all. I honestly want to message these people some times and ask whether they are merely scamming people, or they are just plain stupid. I just don’t see the point in making an insane number of sales, if your net earnings/hr are nothing. It’s one thing if you are a new sellers or level 1 and just need to get some orders coming in to boost your profile. But I don’t see what the point is in doing that if you’re already a top rated seller. Oh and these are Americans as well, so it’s not that these are foreigners where the exchange rate makes $5 worth a lot.

I constantly see top rated or level 2 sellers (I’m a lvl 2 btw) selling gigs for $5 that I know would take 30min to an hour at least to complete

You might be surprised to find what people have set up to make what looks like a 30 min job be a five minute job. Or what takes you 30 mins can take someone else a lot less. An example was a seller who used to offer 1000 words of writing for $5. He did that in 10-15 mins max. where it would take me over an hour to write 1000 words.

Some of the SEO sellers offer things that are basically automated, even when its big orders.

Some logo designers use a list of specific templates which they customize.

So many things that people will have picked up and figured out over years of doing the same thing.

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It might be that they just changed their location to the US or they just have a team of people working for them so in reality they don’t do any work but just supervising

Yes, very true. There are sellers who use VPN to appear American, but actually live elsewhere.

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I should have phrased this differently. I’m not necessarily just suggesting that they can’t support themselves fully on fiverr with those prices. I don’t. But the principle of value should still be the same. Why would anyone want to work for a few dollars an hour even if it’s not how they make their living? I rather spend that time doing something else for that amount of money, same reason I tell some buyers to get lost that try to low ball me. Working for $2/hr is not a good use of my time. Those hours would be better spent doing other things.

@kholland65 You are right! I raised the same issue a few weeks ago about pricing and market valuation. When we are driven by Quantity over Quality, we will be digging our own graves.

There are more than a 1000 Whiteboard Animators on Fiverr and I am one of them. I have been selling Whiteboard Animation here for more the 3 years and completed more than 500 orders. One thing that bothered me all these years is the pricing of many sellers. We know very well that a custom whiteboard animation video costs more than $1000 outside of Fiverr. In Fiverr, the price ranges from $5-$350. Majority of the sellers offer amazing animation for very low prices. Some offer a complete package …
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Never thought about that. Very well could be.

The prices on the gig page mean very little. Now my situation is different, but I was consistently selling above the advertised price for a long time. Add to that extras, tips, etc. - There are a lot of variables at play here. A lot of the cheap services are automated “click a couple of buttons and it’s done”, so they need volume to make money, therefore they must be cheap. Outsourcing is another option - you can pay 200-300 dollars a month and get someone working for you full time easy. If you are selling 1000 $5 gigs per month… do the math.

However, there are A LOT people underselling themselves on this platform, for sure.

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I’ve thought a lot about this, too. The people in this forum have made great points (that maybe the seller is new and building a reputation, maybe they’ve found a way to automate the process, etc), but there are some low-priced gigs that boggle my mind.

For example, one of my direct Fiverr competitors sells a full beta read of a 50,000-word novel for $10. They are a Level One seller and have extraordinary reviews saying how thorough their feedback is. It would take me at least 25 hours to do something like that, and even if I love what I do (and I do love it), earning $10 for 25 hours of work is ridiculous. I just can’t compete with that. And it sucks. 😕

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