Why Fiverr is a Waste of Time for Designers
During the summer after my freshman year of college, I wanted to make a some extra money on top of the internship I had. I set up an account on Fiverr (unaware of any other sites for freelancing) and made a gig for logo designs. The other intention was to build some experience working with clients because I figured, at the time, hiring managers would look favorably upon the “real world experience” in my résumé. About two months, ~20 organic customers, and 80 custom logos later, I pocketed about $250.
Woohoo.
At that time I thought it was great, don’t get me wrong. But my effective hourly rate was probably something abysmal like $5/hour. Looking back on it now, there are just much better platforms to make money as a designer, Dribbble being among the best in my mind.
Back then I knew I was worth more, but in the name of “experience”, I was willing to sell my designs for the price of a coffee. Bad move!
Why Fiverr is a waste of your time
You have to start at the bottom if you ever want to get to the top, and the grind required to work your way up simply isn’t worth it, because of three main reasons:
- Fiverr takes 20% of your earnings. It’s how they make money, sure. But you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) play by those rules. There are other platforms that let you keep 100% of what you make.
- You’re competing with a 100+ other generalist logo designers, all charging $5 for a logo with 3 iterations. As a new account with no credibility, you’re essentially forced to start there. Doing cheap work when you know you’re worth far more absolutely guts you of motivation. Save yourself the gray hairs for later.
- Middlemen get in the way of you making your money. This is the worst possible way to get paid for your labor. We can think of payment on continuum something like this:
100% upfront -> 50% upfront -> Paid once the work is complete -> Paid a number of days after getting work done.
Asking for 50% upfront is by no means a strange ask, and clients who are worth it won’t bat an eye at that. Don’t subject yourself to a paycheck that is both delayed and has 20% taken out.
4. A decent amount of the client work you do is not portfolio ready. You’ll get some requests to design pretty dumb looking stuff. That time would be better spent making logos for fictitious companies. Having a portfolio of fake, good work is always going to be more beneficial than ugly, real work.
Dribbble is the superior option
You make more money and only pay $15 month to have access to the freelance board. A single logo job could reasonably pay at least a few hundred dollars.
Build a small portfolio in the design medium you want to niche in, and apply for freelance jobs frequently. You’ll 10x-100x your money on projects there no problem.
More on how to optimize your ability to make money on Dribbble coming soon.
