Users of Fiverr, Freelancer, and more

If you use one of the following sites as a buyer or seller, please share your opinion with me for my university project with the name of the site you used.

Please scale from 1-3, how compelling was your problem that led you to use one of the following sites:
1 - Not at all compelling or no real problem
2 - Moderately compelling
3 - Extremely compelling, I simply 'had no other choice'

Fiverr.com
Freecycle.com
Turo.com
TaskRabbit.com
instacart.com
wework.com
freelancer.com
angelist.com
Rover.com
vayable.com
thumbtack.com
takelessons.com
zirx.com
handy.com
zeal.com
If it is possible from leave your name.. Thanks

 

Hi, out of the list you provided. I've used Fiverr.com and Freelancer.com. Both I've had good and bad experiences. Not with the website of staff, but the sellers. I've never worked on the sites, I've only ever gone there to find freelancers. I have to say that freelancer.com has a much better system. On Fiverr, there seem's to be more scammers.

 

i have used fiverr, and freelancer... both with mixed experiences.
In short, I refused to ever use freelancer again, one guy that I hired was great, but the freelancer fees (or at least in my experience), were ridiculous. Few other things, problems with staff (lost emails so I cannot share, and cant remember 100% all the BS), but yeah, I refuse to ever use it again.

Fiverr was ok...... but there is a reason I dont do business there. The main reason is that the people that work there are all 'short term'.
I would say I spent over $1k via fiverr, so I have had alot of different experiences.
I used fiverr, as I thought it would be a good way to get some things done. Such as a set of images done via the same artist for a website. Was happy to pay 4 gigs per drawing... (might need 20+ images for the site) and I have done things such as 20+ gigs as a milestone for a coding project, then 20+ gigs for next stage, etc. While we often say gigs, addons for gigs is also done quite often.

I hired a few people, If they were any good, I would try to take them private, and in any case, I always paid them MORE then what they asked for, in some cases at least double, in one case for some fantastic images for my site, I even paid 4 x the amount. And I still had people quitting the fiverr platform. The cost to me was horrendous. Some times, you need one person that you can work with from start to finish on a project, be it graphics for a website, or coding something custom from your site. Alot of the 'stuff' I have paid for I was quite happy with the results at the time, but long term, nearly everything I purchased has been 'scrapped'. IE, trying to get a large set of images for a site was impossible, even if you pay alot $$ extra, as the workers quit, if you cannot find someone who knows that API, or whatever,then you scrap their work, start again, and its just rinse and repeat.

I have wasted alot of money, that I never would have spent, had I known that the people I was hiring were:
1. only available short term
2. not interested in being available for hire in the future

I have no plan to ever use any of these sites in the future at all. I avoid them as if it were the plauge. If you have money you do not need, then by all means, throw it away.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean by Freelancer, the fee's are ridiculous. May I ask you what you use now?

I first began using Odesk, but since the change, I never went back. I would like to know your opinion as I have spent thousand's on these types of sites and wouldn't mind getting my future money's worth.

 

Right now I use nothing. I do know some people that are good, that I can trust and I can hire directly for some things (and they trust me to get payment within 24 hours of submitting), but right now I pretty much stopped hiring, and I dont plan to start hiring again anytime soon.

 

In your list, I have only used fiverr.com and freelancer.com. In fiverr, I have earned nearly $2000 but if all sellers I met would have been good, understanding, and honest then my earning would have been more than $10,000.

Freelancer.com is a good site but the only drawback with them according to me is their fees. They charge heavily from their users in many ways like taking tests and more and this increases the price of projects and services you buy. Freelancer has bought other portals also. I remember after passing out college I joined a site scriptlance.com and made more than $10000 there in sometime but then freelancer has bought that portal. Freelancer has also bought warriorforum I think.

 

Yes, thats a good approach. I 've done the some, meaning once I've found a good freelancer, I now pay them directly and work together on Skype etc. Over the years I've had many different freelancers and now I know what to expect from them, I sought of give them a sample project and I know if they do the task without minimal effort, there the right one for the job.

 

Yes, that's correct. They have brought out WarriorForum. Since then they have been trying to change things around there too. The new feed section is what everyone is complaining about. Direct links from emails are now going to to the feed and not the forum. Removing the signatures and not being about to quote messages.

 

I have used all these services to buy as well as sell.
My selling experience was very bad on Fiverr. Someone purchased products worth about 1200$ and then raised a PayPal dispute after one month. I have heard similar experiences with many sellers.
It took me many email exchanges with paypal and fiverr, and about 4-5 months to get the money released.
Fiverr has many buyers who try to take advantage by raising dispute in paypal after receiving sellers' product or services.

 

I used to do freelance work back when I was in college. The most useful platform I found myself using a lot at that time was Upwork. Apparently, it's not on your list.

 

Hi there, as a Fiverr seller I'd also like to chime in.

I've made about $4000 on fiverr so far, but oddly enough I sympathize and share experiences with @matt_62. I read his post and 'Oh man, that is so right' and 'Fiverr's really does encourage this whole short-term work basis thing', but contacting people out of fiverr can lead to a ban so it's terrifying for sellers to go beyond that. Buyers have to fear scammers and losing money, sellers fear the unscrupulous same tainting them all with a bad brush, and people who bilk them out of their own work, and fiverr itself deciding to suspend their account.

As @BrookeHarper noted, Upwork is the better platform. But others might recognize it better by its former name: ODesk.

However, fiverr does have its virtue mostly in comparison to Odesk and Freelancer. While it reverses the whole 'post a job and get freelancers to bid on them' scheme, putting the onus on the buyer to sift through the available 'gigs', it is a much more less complicated and intimidating process. There are those who prefer this, I think. The pricing is now more flexible with Custom Offers instead of the crazy only-multiples-of-$5 increments of before.

Fiverr also seems a better platform for small tasks and creative works. The much more casual theme seems geared more towards online needs, like say... articles/reviews, banners, voice-overs, graphic arts, etc. You're more likely to have good experiences in looking for assistance in creative works than business and marketing.

The whole 'wait about two weeks after getting paid by your buyer for your money to clear into your account' rule remains such a pain in the ass though. Yet few fiverr clones and alternatives really prosper. It remains such a mystery to me, what is it that it's doing so right compared to other platforms with actually more reasonable seller-centric policies?

 

I use Fiverr and Freelancer.com. I generally use Freelancer for hiring people for long term services where as I use Fiverr for small jobs like making sign ups, editing lots of data, forum work, etc. It's a hit or miss most of the time when hiring people, you really don't know what you will get until you have atleast a week of working with them.

 

I am a top seller on Fiverr. I recommend it to any freelancer who seeks a great community of fellow freelancers, and a great place to host their individual services. Of course, as with any freelance marketplace, hard work is required in order to stay relevant and successful. Just posting a service, and expecting to be inundated with sales isn't a good long-term strategy. The sellers that see the most success on Fiverr, are those that treat their gigs like a business.