Some Further Thoughts on Fiverr (I've Gotten to Know Her a Little Better)

Breaking News: Shakespeare is dead.

If you've been following my work for a while (and who hasn't? I'm basically fascinating), you know that a few months ago I wrote a post over at Budgets Are Sexy (which I titled, "Fiverr? I Hardly Know Her!") wherein I wrote about my experience with offering a service over at Fiverr.com (a website that facilitates people offering goods or services for $5 a pop).  In general, I wrote that Fiverr was a good way to make a couple bucks so long as you didn't mind essentially working for sub-minimum wages.

To give you an idea of the riches you can earn, you should know that the service that I offer over at Fiverr is the writing of sonnets.  For the most part, nowadays it takes me between half an hour to an hour to write one of these poems, which means that I'm earning a cool $4 to $8 an hour.  For those who are curious about why I'm not earning $5 to $10, remember that Fiverr takes a 20% cut out of each seller's profits (not to mention the fees that Paypal takes out for the privilege of accessing your money).

While a 20% take may elicit (justified) comparisons to extortion by the mafia*, I don't have a lot of options.  It's not like the purchasing of sonnets is in high demand.  Were I to build my own website in which that was the only service I offered, I suspect I would have many fewer customers.  I suppose that if I charged a high enough price, the lowered number of customers might be a trade off, but for the time being I plan on sticking with a high quantity of customers.

So just how much have I made on Fiverr, you ask?  Since September of 2011, I have made $132, which means that I've been paid for 33 sonnets.  To put it mildly, this isn't exactly life-changing money.

So why do I keep on doing this, you may ask?  To be honest, I told myself that once I earned $100 that I would take my posting down.  But then Fiverr did something curious; they added seller levels (the higher the level you reach, the more add-ons you can add to your listing).  I assume that they knew that I was going to bail from the site, and so they made it more like a video game.

I am only a lowly level 1 right now, but I dream of the day when I can become a level 2.  Really.

"He's think about leaving us?  ADD LEVELS! STAT!"

Adding to my desire to level up is the fact that I am not really viewing my sonnet-writing as money-making anymore.  Instead, I view it more as a puzzle for which I receive a small reward if I can finish on time.  This also makes it more like a game to me, and it is usually something that is fun rather than something that is a pain.  Writing sonnets forces me to use the creative parts of my brain in a specific, tangible way.

How about you?  Have you ever offered a service on Fiverr or a similar website?  Let me know in the comments.

*My favorite mafia joke?  Why doesn't the mafia like Jehovah's Witnesses?  The mafia doesn't like *any* witnesses.

Photo one by Blimy24.
Photo two by illustir.