The Batshit Crazy World Of Fiverr

Just a few weeks ago, I received a message about the merits of Fiverr.com as an option for outsourcing the shit that I’d normally be too embarrassed to outsource.

The Fiverr concept is simple. What would you do for five dollars? Given that my blog readership, according to Alexa, is stay-at-home males earning over $100,000/year, my guess is probably not a lot. I could hand you five dollars and you’d probably wipe your ass with it, buy a Justin Dupre LP, burn a month’s worth of traffic on Friendster…or whatever.

Five dollars is nothing to an affiliate. But unsurprisingly in the climate we live in, there are a lot of college students out there who will do some crazy ass shit for five bucks. They won’t even think twice about it. And after spending just five minutes browsing through the weird and wonderful listings on Fiverr, your little affiliate nostrils should be standing on end from the waft of opportunity.

Fiverr is a wet dream for cheap monkey labour.

I have no idea how we reached the subject, but just last night over dinner, my girlfriend was telling me how she’d used Fiverr to send some poor bastard to college with the link to her fashion blog pasted on his head. Literally, scribbled across his forehead. It only cost her $5 for the cranium-based plug, but how many eyeballs would it reach? There can’t be too many college kids going to class with a website scribbled across their face.

Now upon inspection, you’re going to find that a lot of Fiverr is somewhat retarded. There are freeloaders looking to make a fast buck by selling you things like “A poem for your sweetheart, just $5!”. Well, I’m sorry, but if this is the sort of thing you’d buy, I pray that you be scammed until the cows come home.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll see a few interesting proposals like this:

This dude is willing to get off his ass and deliver your fliers across a city in the name of five bucks. How much do you get paid for the average dating lead?

I was linked to a very interesting article by Phillian on Twitter about a company that built an entire empire with lawn signs. If you haven’t read the story, you really need to. It’s a classic example of how offline marketing can be executed quietly and effectively for insane riches. I haven’t delved too deeply in to these possibilities on a personal level, but one look at Fiverr and it gets the mind racing.

I see countless opportunities every day to advertise across campus sites and reach hundreds of eyeballs. One particular member is happy to pin your flyer to twenty different noticeboards across a university site. And for just five dollars? Well, you don’t need me to do the maths for you.

It’s not just cheap plugging that Fiverr is good for. Take a look through the category listings and you’ll see plenty of opportunities for grabbing cheap audio soundbytes, professional looking videos and christ knows what else.

I was particularly interested in the audio voiceover offers. Pay $5 and you can have some raspy sounding stud muffin spit out your acai berry transcript with the audio eloquence of Michael Buffer in his youth. Anybody who does PPV should be able to relate to the trend that landing pages with audio tracks are MUCH more effective at capturing the user’s attention. Unfortunately my accent is far too English to get away with recording homemade soundbytes. I resemble a sort of lobotomized robot from outer space to the average American ears. It would capture their attention for all the wrong reasons.

For other affiliates, there are opportunities on Fiverr to snap up legal and customized dating images. Some women are happy to accept $5 to take a picture of themselves holding a sign in front of some low budget webcam.

I doubt it’ll be too long before some poor bitch is forced to smile at her reflection of “Looking For 25-30 Year Old Guys”.

I guess all you need to know about Fiverr is that it’s a mixed bag. You will find money stealing scammers, no doubt. But you’ll also find some creative souls without a penny to their names who will do some good work for five bucks. And failing that, you’ll find some willing slaves ideal for the donkey work you’d normally have signed, sealed and delivered straight to a hut in Venezuela.

Check it out and see what you can find.