Fiverr vs. Upwork

 Fiverr vs. Upwork

Which one is best for you in growing your business, finding a part-time or full-time freelancer, timestamps below, along with some other helpful videos that include videos on the best and worst Fiverr gigs, as well as a full case study on how to hire on Upwork, which includes a job template. So here, we're going to look at Fiverr. Then we're going to look at Upwork and wrap things up with which one is the winner.

So let's kick things off with Fiverr and what it's good for. So Fiverr is essentially productizing services. The whole purpose of the site is to make it easy for us as business owners to find the exact service that we need, set some little parameters in terms of what extras we want, and then we order it and we are done. It's supposed to save us the headache of actually coming up with a project plan, doing a job posting, going through the hiring process. Get straight to the work, for the advantage for the freelancer is that they don't have to submit proposals and go back and forth with what things should and should not cost. They get to put everything front and center. The big advantage of this is your ability to find exactly what you need extremely quickly. Fiverr is the best solution when it comes to projects that are going to take less than three hours or projects that are under a hundred dollars.

Now, all of these recommendations are based on over 10 years of experience, hiring freelancers on both Upwork and Fiverr, spending thousands of dollars. This isn't being pulled out of thin air. When it comes to Fiverr, here's a list of some of the top gigs we recommend using Fiverr for. Now there's a little asterisk next to voice actors and that's because they wind up being more than a hundred dollars. But in our experience, it's been a lot easier to find great voice actors for whatever you're looking for on Fiverr.  Even though it's more, it's just saved us a lot of time and headache versus looking for voice actors on Upwork. It was just a lot easier on Fiverr.

So that's the only exception we had in terms of the hundred dollars’ gig recommendation. Now, what is Fiverr not good for? Well, Fiverr is not good for complex projects, where you want a… you have a longer project timeline or you need a lot of customization.

Yes, some sellers do offer revisions, but the way sellers make money is by being able to rinse and repeat their service as quickly and efficiently as possible. They're not looking to have you or me go into a gig and then start asking 21 questions for different revisions or customizations.

Upwork is going to be better for that. Now, before we move on to Upwork, I have one tip and three warnings when it comes to using Fiverr. Now, a pro tip here, especially if you're on a tight budget, using Fiverr is to look for relatively new gigs. Now, these new gigs might not have any reviews if only just one or two, but the advantage is you're probably going to get more for your money. The simple reason is new freelancers to Fiverr are much more likely to provide more for the same amount, if not less because they're trying to build up their profile. Now I'm in no way, shape, or form saying that you should take advantage of these new freelancers. I'm just saying you should take advantage of the fact that they want clients. They need clients and willing to do a little more work in exchange for a review and get their profile up. So it's a win, win situation. I'm in no way, shape, or form saying that you should just go on Fiverr and look for new gigs and try and take advantage of them because you know, they are trying to grow their gigs and their profile.

Now there are three warnings. The first warning is whatever you do on Fiverr, pretty much winds up staying on Fiverr. If you ask for a refund. Their refund policy puts credits in your Fiverr account. That's not going to go back to your PayPal account or card. I know there's a lot of confusion about that. Just keep that in mind when you're putting up more than a hundred dollars for a gig, number two is going to be the type of gig that you need to avoid. The final warning before we move on to Upwork is to always read the fine print when you are ordering gigs. What's very cool about Fiverr is they do have multiple gig levels now. You can go from standard to premium, platinum, gold, silver, whatever the seller decides to call it. But if it's not explicitly stated in the description of the gig or the pricing tier, then it's probably not included. Don't assume anything when it comes to what you're going to get when you are ordering. If it's not there, it's probably not delivered or included and you need to pay an extra fee or you can contact the seller ahead of time and ask if something is included or how much more it would cost for that thing to be included. Make sure you just read the fine print.

Now let's go ahead and go over to Upwork. Now in contrast to Fiverr, Upwork is all about the long-term. If you're looking for… if you have a complex project, it's going to take more than five sentences to explain, or you're looking for a long-term person that you can start building relationships with, which is what I think Upwork is really good for.

Then Upwork is probably the way you want to go for your particular project. And I've personally found a great deal of success. Hiring people long-term as virtual assistants for SEO, content writing, copywriting, managing ads, and even doing web development. Although there's a big Astros next to web development, because if you don't understand what the web developer is doing, if you don't have a basic understanding of coding or you don't have a basic understanding of WordPress, then you need to pay more for someone who knows what they're doing, because there's no way to check their work. I have nightmare stories from when I was first getting started with my first business, where I was up at 3 or 4:00 AM, trying to figure out how the heck to fix all the broken stuff a WordPress developer had done. And because I was new to WordPress, I had no idea whether or not what they did was correct. Now, of course, the disadvantage of Upwork is you do have to take the time to create a job posting and then go ahead and go through proposals. Maybe do some auditions, maybe do some background checking, and it's going to be a lot more work to hire someone than it is on Fiverr. So that's why I recommend using Upwork for more complex projects and longer-term projects. Because sometimes if you just need someone to proofread something for you real quick, or do some quick photo editing, it doesn't make sense to go through that entire process. Just go to Fiverr and find a gig for that. Now, before we move on to the final, which one I think wins between the two, let's go through some warnings with Upwork because there are some pitfalls you can fall into when you are just getting started as a client on Upwork. The very first one is I highly recommend not paying extra to boost your job posting. When you're going through the Upwork job posting process, towards the end of it, they're going to ask if you want to spend anywhere from the last time I checked, it was 30 bucks. I'm sure it's changed by now. They'll 30 to $50 to upgrade your account for a month or get more freelancers to apply to your job posting. And that's not necessary. In my experience. We have posted over 30 jobs to Upwork just in the past two years alone. And we've never once had two little people applying because we didn't wind up paying for that.

Now, this does lead me into the second warning with Upwork, and that is they've recently made a lot of changes, recently as in over the past 12 months, where they're giving a lot of preferential treatment to proven freelancers. If you're on a tight budget and you're not looking for the absolute experts in the field, you're looking for more kind of like the middle of the rung, or you're just looking for someone new because you're on a tight budget and you don't have a lot of money to hire a freelancer. You're going to find that it's a lot harder to find people at the lower tier than it is in the proven bracket and by the lower tier. I don't mean like they're terrible at what they do.

I just mean lower tier as in their profile status. The newer profiles are going to be pushed to the bottom, and it's a lot harder for newer people to even apply to your job. When you're doing job postings and you want new people, make sure you make it really clear in your posting. You're looking for someone new because the freelancers might have to be paid to apply to your job. They want to know that you're looking for free people. That's a warning and a tip, I guess, at the same time and the final warning I have for you is to go hourly, especially if you're not quite sure what you're looking for.

Go hourly because Upwork will have screenshots of the freelancers’ computers. You can check in on a weekly and daily basis. I highly recommend staying on, on top of those screenshots.

Both of these solutions aren't all that consistent, whether or not they side with the client or the freelancer, I'd say it's 60% client and maybe 30% freelancer in depending upon the type of gig or type of project payment structure. What not.

Okay.

That's enough.

Let's go ahead.

Definitively answer the question. If you, for some reason only wanted to choose one of these, which one would I recommend Do you choose? And actually, I would recommend you go with Upwork. It's really hard to be being able to put up a job description of exactly what you want and then having qualified people come to you, as opposed to you spending hours on end scrolling through five, or trying to find the perfect gig, or reaching out to three or four different gig people, like when you are reaching out to three or four freelancers on Fiverr and asking them 21 questions about what is or is not included in their gig.  I do have another pro tip for you, is what I liked using Fiverr for, especially when we're doing designs is getting a lot of ideas done. something that I did in the past with some of our books, is we went over to Fiverr and we hired upwards of 5 to 10 different eBook designers and they all designed different covers. Then we took all of those covers. We looked at what we liked, what we didn't like, here, just a few of the ones that we had, and then we went over to Upwork and found a professional, and that way we knew exactly what we were looking for and we were paying a premium price of that professionals’ time because we had a much better understanding of what type of design we were looking for.

That's one way that you can use both of them, but I'd highly recommend it. Just go with Upwork, unless it's something that is a task. That's just a one-off thing because the relationships that you build and the process of hiring and well, unfortunately firing as well is going to make you a much better entrepreneur and business owner in the long run. Even though the fees might wind up being a little bit higher at the beginning with Upwork, it's well worth the extra effort.

Thank you guys for being with me till the end of the blog. See you in the next blog stay blessed.

JazakALLAH!