Fiverr.com
I discovered this website just a few months ago. The concept is simple, if not remarkable. It is a market where people offer services starting at $5. It varies from proof-reading your resume, writing a jingle, sketching something on paper, or even videotaping themselves with your product. 80% of it is silly, but I have used it 5 times.
For me, it is a novelty and I have submitted photographs and had caricatures and cartoons made from them. Originally, the idea was to put together a set of them, frame them and give them as Christmas presents. . . great cartoons, but so-so gift.
There are quite a very consulting-ish services being offered too. Disclaimer, I have not used any of these, but they have process flow maps, PowerPoint presentations, and even Excel formula creation. You can upgrade to $40 for a entire worksheet. Clearly it is not apples-to-apples, but the last excel business model for my client probably cost $100K.
It’s super easy
No surprise, online businesses know how to make it easy to buy. After only 3-4 clicks, you have your project underway.
Great experience
There is a heavy “rating” emphasis because that is the only way to really differentiate between vendors. As a result, whenever I have email the vendor. . . they respond within an hour. They are hyper-sensitive to customer feedback and satisfaction. How odd is this that the $5 vendor is more responsive than my CPA?
This has scale
There are millions of people using the site, and they have raised $50 million in funding so far. To me, this is a sign that 1) the economy is still bad 2) the free-lance economy continues to grow.
What service could I sell for $5?
Brainstorming with my wife, we laughed when we could not think of even 1 service to offer on fiverr.com. Yes, we would like to think it is because our opportunity cost is so high (not worth our time), but also what do consultants do that people will pay for. .
- Developing hypotheses on potential performance improvement
- Aggregating disparate data sets and divining insights from a mess of information
- Conducting insightful interviews to tease out the causes of margin leakage
- Persuading a hesitant client to present the findings to their boss in the board room
- Doing late-night research on published best practices for legal strategic sourcing
Nope, that stuff does not look it will sell on Fiverr.com, Will have to stick to my day job.
Update:
Looking now at 2021, there are just as many jobs that cost $40 or $100 as there are ones that cost $5.