20% fee? Is it worth offering service in Fiverr compared to other platform?

[raj_el]

In my opinion, it's a yes and a no pending on the situation. Compared to the other platforms in the market I have to say, Fiverr is not really on the competitive side of things. The fees are so steep that it's up a big chunk of your margin making the efforts almost not even worth the time. To make up for the losses you would have to increase the price of the gig and wish that someone would pay for it. In my case, this has happened a few times. Someone needing an excel report with a turnaround time of 12 hr. I charged $120 and did the work in 30 min with all the required data. Take note, all the required data. If the customer doesn't even know where to start, what data needs to be provided, the work may take 30 min but if the data required takes longer to get, the work just got longer. Which then, impacts the time delivery, potential overlap on your schedule.

As far as the steep fees goes, the longer the time to get the job done due to lack of requirements, the less value the project becomes. That's how I quantify it that is. I am curious what other freelancers in the platform think about this.

[donnovan86]

15 minutes ago, raj_el said:

The fees are so steep that it's up a big chunk of your margin making the efforts almost not even worth the time.

You realize you can charge people more to make up for those fees right?

15 minutes ago, raj_el said:

As far as the steep fees goes, the longer the time to get the job done due to lack of requirements, the less value the project becomes. That's how I quantify it that is. I am curious what other freelancers in the platform think about this.

Why would you start a project without complete requirements?

[raj_el]

Sometimes, customer would just place an order. If the buyer doesn't contact you first and just place an order because they like the price of the gig you are locked in. I don't know about you, but my account doesn't really provide the option to prevent orders from being entered or have a button that says start. You can increase the price of the gig but there's always a cap on how far you can increase before it becomes an unreasonable cost to the buyer then they go look for someone else cheaper. 

Again, you can increase the price all you want but it's about what the buyer is comfortable of paying. No matter how much of a specialist you are in the field, there is always someone out there who can deliver the result cheaper than you. So is 20% good enough or can it be improved on?

 

Edited January 20 by raj_el

[vickiespencer]

1 hour ago, raj_el said:

I don't know about you, but my account doesn't really provide the option to prevent orders from being entered or have a button that says start.

Some of my gigs have a button that says, "Request to Order." This feature is available through the Seller Plus program, where you have the option to turn on the request-to-order feature. 

Edited January 20 by vickiespencer

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, raj_el said:

So is 20% good enough or can it be improved on?

It's always been the same. Fiverr is a business, so I can only assume they want to earn more, not lower that. If they lower the margin or keep it the same, there will be other ways they try to make money, see things like Promoted Gigs or Seller Plus, as Vickie said. 

1 hour ago, raj_el said:

I don't know about you, but my account doesn't really provide the option to prevent orders from being entered or have a button that says start.

There is that Request to Order feature from Seller Plus that you can use. You can also write in the gig package and even in the description that people have to contact you first. There will still be things that you might not be able to do, but in general once you pass a certain price, people are way more careful about how much they spend and what they are spending it on.

Edited January 20 by donnovan86

[navid_zafar]

As long as freelancers receive a sufficient amount of work from any platform, the associated fees don't pose a significant concern.