3 learnings from Fiverr

In putting together this blog, I have become fairly well acquainted with Fiverr; I thought I'd share some of my learnings.

For those of you who don't know, Fiverr is an online "marketplace for creative and professional services". Fiverr allows you to shop for cheap deals on things like editing services, translation services, graphic design, voice overs, and even blog post writing. I used Fiverr to commission the logo for this blog and recently I commissioned my first cartoon (you can view it here).

3 learnings from Fiverr

1. Anything worth having will cost you more than $5

Most things that you want will cost more than $5 (and that's $5 US); in some cases, much more. The base price for both my logo and my cartoon was $15 US. However, as with most things, there's always a catch - upselling is the name of the game. Aside from charging more money for the complexity of the gig (that's the official term Fiverr uses for the service you are procuring), I have noticed two main ways they will try and upsell you: the first is the source file; and the second is the commercial use license which, according to Fiverr grants the buyer "a perpetual, exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide license to use the purchased delivery for Permitted Commercial Purposes. Unless clearly stated otherwise on the seller's Gig page/description, all intellectual property rights of the purchased delivery are hereby assigned to you."

2. Fiverr hosts genuine artists and designers

The good news is that you do seem to get what you pay for. I was satisfied with both my logo and cartoon purchases, which came from sellers who knew what they were doing, and who completed the gigs swiftly and courteously, including responding to my feedback and undertaking revisions. I found it more difficult to find someone I liked the look of to produce an infographic that was within my budget. There were a lot of sellers to sift through and many seemed to be using standard software tools that I could access myself. Eventually, I found the substantial mark-ups for purchasing commercial licenses (which I somewhat grudgingly have made a decision to purchase) a bit grating. Ultimately - and with considerable help from my partner - I made my own infographic instead of buying one. You can see my attempt here. 

3. A picture really does paint a thousand words

Economics aside, one of the things I most enjoyed about working with the artists on Fiverr is that it has helped me clarify my thoughts and communicate my ideas in ways other than by writing. In both cases, while I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted, it was exciting to see how these would be interpreted. I was also pleasantly surprised that what I had commissioned was not exactly as I had imagined it would be. These are experiences I would like to repeat.

Will illustrations increase engagement with my blog?

This is the million viewer question. It is early days for me in the blogosphere and my page views are modest but growing. I will leave it to a later post to provide a more detailed summation of my engagement stats. I think that adding illustrations has increased the rate of engagement with my twitter feed and that that does seem to have flow on effects to my blog. However, at this point, I am really taking this as an article of faith.