
Ask HN: How was your experience using gig marketplaces s.a upwork, fiverr etc.? - avip
Were you able to find quality customers (as sellers) or quality contractors (as buyers)?
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samrohn778
\- I have completed about ~150 programming gigs on fiverr as a seller. Most of
them are small tasks related to python/ google app scripts. \- My average
selling price is ~50$. Buyers on fiverr are moslty looking for short-term
projects or get some very specific things done. \- It highly competitive,
especially if you are just getting started. Building a reputation through
reviews is very important for potential buyers to find you. \- Best advice
would be to get around 10 reviews by pricing the service around $5-$25(easy to
get gigs in the range). Once you have some good reviews, you will rank better
in their search and have the leverage to charge buyers more. \- Nice thing
about fiverr is you don't have to bid for work as a seller. Potential buyers
will contact you if they find out what you offer through your gig description.
Experience so far has been good- buyers are straightforward and happy if you
give them quality service.

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todd3834
I used voicebunny and that went really well! I’m kind of amazed how cheap it
is to get great voice talent on there.

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todd3834
I used fiverr and it didn’t work out. Can’t really complain because it was so
cheap but I’m reminded of you get what you pay for.

~~~
todd3834
Forgot to mention, I used it to get an illustration made that I wanted to put
on my surfboard just for fun. They didn’t make what I asked for, not even
close and never replied when I tried to get a revision.

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sedeki
Basically: no. Found better luck with Toptal.

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Kagerjay
I only currently use these services as a buyer (e.g. I pay someone for
service)

\- Fiverr

\- Upwork

\- Hackhands

\- 99designs

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Horror stories with fiverr:

\- Fiverr is some of the worst service I've ever experienced. I had to get
someone to do a vector trace. There's only ONE way to interpret a vector
trace, you make a vector off an image. Literally, verbatim copy. It took me
almost 2 weeks to clarify all the details because the guy didn't speak
English. He had good fiverr ratings too... pricing wasn't the lowest nor
highest. I wasted 5 hours explaining something that didn't even need an
explanation

\- I gave someone $200 to make a marketing catalog. I had made a 92 pager and
needed to condense it down to 20 pages. Just need to copy paste files I've
made, etc. I gave him my .indb fill, full assets, everything, annotated
markings of which things to copy paste. One of the highest rated as well. Gave
expectations, design guidelines, reference documents to get my point across.
Results were so disappointing that I ended up doing the work myself

Good things about fiverr

\- Photoshop work. Works wonderfully, I pay someone from UK $5 to $10 an image
for high quality work. He tells me how difficult the work will be based on how
awful my images are, but its within expectations.

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Good things about 99 designs

\- Logo design outsourcing is not bad. I might use it again. Pretty decent for
graphics / illustration work. Can't attest to anything else here

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Good things about Hackhands

\- Good place for needing quick mentor / technical help on a number of issues
I have on projects. Get help within 5 minutes. I have a great guy from India
who I pay $1/minute to resolve technical issues I have with MERN stack.

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Good things about Upwork

\- Upwork is really nice for the buyer. For sellers _(freelancers - I can see
why it sucks, its a bidding war)_. But this is why its so great as a buyer,
you can't have the best of both worlds.

\- If you know how to spec out a job in upwork _(e.g. you know how to do the
project yourself, but inefficiently)_ , it makes things miles easier to find
good contractors. I usually try to have exact design specifications. I put a
short executive summary _(one paragraph)_ , followed by a dropbox link with
full blown design spec details, reasoning for project, timelines, etc _(set
expired link to 30 days)_. The reason I do this is b/c upwork has terrible
privacy policies, I never use the attachment button until someone has been
hired

\- Upwork is fantastic for finding past experience of a seller. I can look
through their past projects, and what the design specifications were for that
project. Its ripe full of unbiased case studies to learn how many companies
operate. Most people don't bother to delete their design specifications from
attached dropbox / google doc links

\- For an additional $29, you can sponsor the job, it gives you twice the
amount of candidates. Not really necessary... but good to know all the same

\- As a buyer, I can set the payment schedule, by milestone, etc. So I don't
get screwed over, upwork escrow has been great thus far.

\- The feedback I get from freelancers is great. Assuming you make a good
design specification _(e.g. videos, links, .docx files, input /output files)_.
You learn a lot about how a solution can be implemented. You get free
consulting service as well... if you are smart you can use feedback from one
developer, to ask a question to another. Its such a terrible thing to do, but
when you have a job that needs to be fulfilled crowdsourcing answers from
experts is not a bad idea. Getting so much feedback lets you effectively
estimate how long projects take, with confidence. Because you use statistics
to your advantage. Even if you know nothing about the technology stack.

\- Example project - I needed to do local batch processing of some files. I
was given at least 5 or 6 implementations, various advantages and
disadvantages of each method. I paid $50 to get an executable file made via c#
and .NET. Another implementation with python.

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There are other services I may try later, or take a hand at becoming a seller.
I usually scope things fairly small so I don't get disappointed by the
results, and generally don't outsource things I don't know how to do myself
though _(albeit, inefficiently)_.

