Since the beginning of this blog, I’ve been recommending Fiverr to Beginners. In some articles related to Best Freelancing Platforms to start a Freelance Career. But now I think Fiverr is no more a good place for beginners due to several reasons. Let’s discuss Why you should not start your freelancing career on Fiverr. Moreover, I’ll be sharing some alternative approaches to start a freelance career.
High Competition
The competition on Fiverr has grown massively in the last couple of years. A lot of people lost their jobs and learned to work online. They joined several freelancing platforms, including Fiverr, due to which competition has grown a lot. I see a lot of posts on social media regarding this.
Beginners are unable to rank their gigs and get orders. And those who manage to rank their gigs after a lot of effort. They lose ranking in a few weeks due to the recent update in Fiverr algorithm that shuffles gigs on the first page. It gives opportunity to many sellers but is also not good for those who are providing high-value services.
Read More: How much can you make as a Freelance Web Developer
Poor Support
Fiverr Customer service is one-sided. They always support buyers, no matter whether they are right or scamming the seller. Fiverr will support buyers and ask you to do whatever the client asks. I faced a similar situation where one of my clients asked me to fix a specific problem in his code. When I delivered the order after completing his work. He requested two more error fixes without any payment.
I fixed his code for sake of getting a good review but he didn’t stop there, he kept on asking me to work more. I reported this to Fiverr Support and they ask me to do whatever the buyer needed. After refusing several times, I managed to get my order marked as complete automatically, but the Buyer left a 1-Star Review. This review ruined all my rankings. Keep this situation in mind if you’re going to start a Freelance career on Fiverr.
Quantity Over Quality
Fiverr doesn’t know how good are your services as compared to other sellers. They will prefer to rank people who are getting a huge number of orders. For example. In logo design, some people provide high-quality work with custom design and they spent two or three days on one logo. While other people use templates to customize them and deliver them. They can deliver hundreds of logos in a day. As a result, Fiverr will rank the people with low-quality work but will numerous orders. The way Fiverr works, discourages sellers who are providing high-quality work.
Some Sellers pay their friends to place orders on their profiles. When they get certain more orders and reviews. Fiverr algorithm considers it as original orders and ranks their gigs. This trick has been working for years. You should definitely keep these things in mind if you’re
Scams
With the increase in users on freelance platforms. The Scammers also increase. Trying to scam as a seller and buyer. Most of the scammers take advantage of sellers’ greed of getting 100% payment by doing payments outside the platform. They will get your account details to hack your account or run away with your work. I always recommend keeping your communication on Fiverr as proof of what you’re doing and staying safe with the payment process.
Gigs De ranking
Unlike Traditional freelance platforms, On Fiverr you need to keep your gig ranking to get more orders and buyers. This is hard If you’re getting messages from buyers but you don’t get orders due to overload. After some time, Fiverr will de rank your gigs and you’ll have to put in a lot of effort to rank and get more orders. And If you’re are about to start a freelance career, you’ll have to face all these things.
Conclusion
If you’re about to start a freelance career. I would not recommend choosing Fiverr. I’ve described all the reasons in the above article. If you’ve any recommendations or favorite freelance platforms, you can share it in the comment section.
