fiverr Archives - Ideal-Helper

One of the easiest, fastest and most fun ways to try out having others work for you is to use the service of Fiverr.com.

Personally, I have played around with it way too much. It is just too addictive to have a simple fast job gotten done by someone else for a seemingly really small price of $5.

It can add up – but it is a lot of fun. You can treat it as a hobby and easily learn the basics of outsourcing: choosing an employee, hiring him and giving him feedback.

Here are some things that can be done for $5 and that I have tried out myself:

I got one of my websites critiqued and discussed via video

Many people offer to write articles for you

It is possible to get your Dropbox account expanded. You’ll have up to 18 Gigabytes of free Dropbox space. This gig is really recommended

I got people to do funny videos for me where they behaved like a clown

I asked another person to write 40 high quality comments on another blog for five dollars

I got myself a Facebook fan page created – without knowing anything about it

Fiver is best suited for jobs that are related to internet marketing or work with a website. So, if you have one, you will find many interesting gigs there.

Gigs are what Fiverr calls its jobs.

Some gigs are really crazy

But you will find really fun stuff too.

From beautiful girls sending you pictures with your name – or any text you want – on partially covered private parts

Until creative videos with costumes or animals,

People taking photos while holding up signs with a text of your choice at different places all around the world

And people handcrafting small gifts and sending them for you.

You name it, you will find it.

Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing to Fiverr

Advantages are:

It’s fast and hassle-free

It’s fun

It’s crazy

There are many possible tasks and you can suggest your own wishes

And it’s pretty cheap (comparative)

Disadvantages are:

It’s addictive

The cost can add up

You intend to buy stuff which you don’t really need. Just for having fun with it.

And one real disadvantage is that Fiverr has grown so big that many people, especially doing gigs related to article writing, internet business and SEO, are taking over the market place. And some SEO related gigs are not so lucrative in my opinion.

If you look closely at some of the social marketing and business gigs, then you probably will find someone better on oDesk or a similar outsourcing service.

One solution for that last point is to check out some of the copycat websites which are similar to Fiverr:

Justafive.com (gigs cost 5, 10 or 20 $, depending on how big they are)

Tenyt (similar, only for 10$ you’ll get bigger tasks done)

Fittytown (also similar, but all gigs cost 50 $. Look here if you need a serious job done at a fixed price)

Those alternative sites are smaller andyou might find more real and down to earth gigs there.

But no matter which of those sites you choose to use, have fun with it. Try to get your feet wet with outsourcing.

Ready for Outsourcing Like the Big Shots?

Have you gotten the taste of how fun it can be that someone does some internet work for you overnight?

Then you’ll want to learn about hiring a virtual assistant in an effective way.

Case Studies

Below I made some case studies of specific gigs I have created and what lessons I have learned from them.

My History of Outsourcing

What is outsourcing to me, personally?

A fun hobby
A useful and effective method to leverage my time
A way to accelerate my business and projects

It has been more than 3 years that I actively work with virtual assistants and outsource online jobs.

Read about the History of Outsourcing in a nutshell and my background with outsourcing.

Definition of outsourcing

Depending on if you are a private employer, a provider (or employee) or a big corporation, there are different ways to define outsourcing.

My answer to the question “What is outsourcing?” in a nutshell:

Outsourcing is relaying a specific task to someone else via internet, one who is able to do the work faster and more efficient than you.

Your valuable time is freed by outsourcing time-intensive and/or repetitive tasks, allowing you to use it more effectively: to make more money or to enjoy freedom from stress.

The most expensive commodity you can have is time. Outsourcing is a way to “buy free time”.

Two things made outsourcing possible:

High speed internet, connecting the world’s communication
Globalization, which makes it possible to livein the US, but hire someone from India or other countries at local wages.

Pros

It’s clear that there are many advantages of outsourcing tedious work so that you are free to do other things.

Everything that can be done on the computer can be outsourced.

You gain more free time

You still get more done

Committing to a VA will make you focus harder on getting results

If you are too lazy to type instructions, you can dictate and record voicemails.

For a balanced discussions of the pros and cons of outsourcing head over to this post.

Cons

I’ll be honest with you: outsourcing is useful for many, not only bosses of big corporations. But it is not for everyone. There are some disadvantages of outsourcing that you should be warned from.

You should be prepared to deal with people from other countries. There can be issues of language barriers and cultural differences.

You need to closely examine all aspects of outsourcingethically,in order to keep a clear conscience. It’s easy to take the low prices of most freelancers in poorer countries for granted.

You cannot outsource everything. Although you can get close, like the author Tim Ferris in his famous book about his Four Hour Work Week.

It is not about taking your job away!

Note that I am not talking about offshoring, i.e. taking jobs away from anyone here on
ideal-helper.com. I honestly believe that most normal, non-entrepreneur individuals could greatly profit from a personal assistant at their side.

If your boss in the US decides to introduce call center offshore outsourcing to his firm, this is another completely
different discussion.

Want to try out the waters without risks?

There is one big platform that allows you to “play around” with
outsourcing small and often fun tasks to other people is fiverr.com.

It is one of the first sites that allows you to let others
work for you on specific tasks – for the small price of five dollars (hence the
name “fiverr”).

What is outsourcing 101 for beginners? Most probably Fiverr.

You may be a simple employee right now. But you can be your own boss now,
if you want to.

What is outsourcing from the perspective of a freelancer?

You can use your day to day skills as a provider or employer. What may seem very simple to you may be invaluable to someone else.

Perhaps you are an expert of making videos and you do that for fun or as a hobby.Oryou have mastered how to render, analyze and optimize photos and can do
this “in your sleep”.

The possibilities are only limited by your skills

Do you think you can outsource your skills?

Your motto as a successful freelancer should be:

“I am doing this service for you. If I don’t successfully do your work, you will get your money back. I will only get paid for good work.”

Everyone can participate in the outsourcing world!

For example:

Do you go hiking every weekend and you know everything of “your forest”? Do you think your knowledge would be useful for someone else?

I am sure it could be. And if you don’t find anyone who needs this knowledge directly around you, you can start and create your own website business about your everyday knowledge.

This is exactly what I did here on ideal-helper.com.

You can also voice out your opinion and experiences to a writer, a website owner or a blogger and get paid for your insights.

You wouldn’t believe what simple stuff you can do for an employer.

Go ahead and laugh when you see what was my first assignment when I started outsourcing to oDesk. To my defense, I am not really a web savvy at that time.

Think about it. There are people out there doing Data Entry jobs full time. You can bet that they are Excel, Word and office wizards.

You don’t want to invest the same
time into mastering a data entry skill if you can cheaply hire someone who has
already done so – and is burning to start working for you.

If you need some hard numbers…

There are some interesting outsourcing statistics out there. What is even more interesting to me personally is that there are more down-to-earth facts.

I interviewed some freelancers all around the world and discussed personal questions with them. This gave me interesting insights into their answer to the question “What is outsourcing?” that sometimes you will see that there are really differences apart from what you would expect. It was interesting to get a look “behind the curtains” of every different countries.

Especially, the comparison of the costs of living from different countries is always an eye-opener.

Outsourcing Experts

Suvidh Marwaha

Suvidh is a CEO from the outsourcing service TasksEveryDay. He shares his insights about what outsourcing means for him and his service in an insightful interview video.

What is outsourcing – in action?

In my mini-blog below, I’ll showcase real-life outsourcing experiences.

Feel free to join the discussion or share your own experiences with virtual assistants below. From time to time, when I make a general observation or notable experience with my outsourcing, I’ll also put the article below.

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