Should you choose Fiverr for your digital marketing? An Interview With Vered Raviv-Schwarz

Originally, Fiverr reached out to Fit Small Business regarding a new service which they were offering. Fiverr had partnered with Getty Images to offer the purchase of individual images through Fiverr. The announcement did not capture my attention. We receive dozens of these “new product” press releases a month. However, I viewed the product release very differently after speaking with Fiverr’s Chief Operating Officer, Vered Raviv-Schwarz. Fiverr is striving to become the first place that small businesses turn to to meet their marketing needs.
What is Fiverr?

Fiverr is a marketplace where a small business can buy services (called “Gigs”) ranging from the creation of a logo to the writing of articles for a blog. As the name implies, many services are priced starting at $5.
The Skinny On The Fiverr Getty Images Deal

Getty Images is a subscription service, which does not allow for the purchase of images on a one-off basis. While it would be easy to describe the deal as enabling the purchase of individual images through Fiverr for $10, this would be leaving out a very important detail. Buyers cannot directly purchase images! Instead a buyer pays for a Fiverr seller to select and buy an image as part of a larger project, such as designing an advertisement or creating a promotional video. If you have trouble getting your head around this, I did too at first.

The following example may be helpful. Let’s say you need a 728×90 banner created for advertising and you hire a designer to do the “Gig” from Fiverr. As part of the banner, you want an image of small child eating ice cream, so you can pay for your designer to obtain the commercial use rights to a photo from the Getty Images library. Essentially, you are paying for the “raw ingredients” that go into creating the banner. While the designer could find a free Creative Commons image for the banner, access to Getty’s stock photo library gives a much larger selection of high quality images.

The deal with Getty Images is not about selling stock photos. It’s about providing a superior final product to buyers.
My Interview With Vered Raviv-Schwarz

The following Q & A with the Chief Operating Officer of Fiverr is reconstructed based on my notes and does not represent her exact words.
What percentage of the buyers on Fiverr are small businesses?

Around 85% of buyers are small businesses. The majority of both buyers and sellers are from America.
How is Fiverr different than the other freelancing sites?

Fiverr is both easier and quicker to use. Many small businesses want to be able to purchase the services they need quickly, without crafting a detailed proposal on what they want. Also, they don’t want to engage in time consuming back and forth negotiation over price. Fiverr allows small businesses to buy a wide range of creative and marketing services at a fixed price, with a one click of a mouse. Essentially, Fiverr has made the process of buying marketing and creative services as easy as buying a product on Amazon.
How do you deal with more complicated purchases, like voice overs?

In some popular product categories, our search algorithms allow buyers to conduct granular searches and describe what they want by answering a few standard questions. For example, in the voice over category, a buyer can choose male or female voice, American or British accent, etc. by checking the right search boxes. With the answers to these questions, wecan suggest relevant sellers that will meet the buyer’s expectations.
In some categories, there are hundreds of sellers. How should a new buyer decide which seller to pick?

All sellers have reviews and ratings from their buyers. Sellers advance their seller level and exposure based on these reviews, both the number of reviews received and the type of feedback. The best rating Fiverr provides is “Top Rated Seller”. To obtain Level 2 status, the seller has to have a rating of 4.5 stars (out of five) from buyers, and complete at least 50 Gigs two month in a row. Getting from Level 2 to “Top Rated” requires being manually picked by Fiverr’s editorial team, which bases its decisions on comments from buyers to see how well the seller meets deadlines, how responsive they are to feedback, and how strong their communication skills are. While there are many great sellers that don’t have a “top-rated seller” rating, an SMB buyer on Fiverr who doesn’t have time to read through seller reviews can sort sellers by their level.
Vered Raviv-Schwarz – Fiverr

Vered Raviv-Schwarz is COO of Fiverr, and has a long track record as a technology executive, serving in high level positions at Radware, Mediamind and Kenshoo. Prior to joining the tech sector over 15 years ago, Vered practiced as a lawyer, specializing in Corporate Law, M&As and IPOs. She began her career over 20 years ago in journalism, heading the business desk of a major daily newspaper.