Stop Losing Money to Fiverr: The Top Creative Freelancing Sites To Stay Away From
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Fiverr is widely-known as the worst place to start a freelance career — but it’s not the only online freelancer marketplace with unfair policies and hidden fees. Some of the largest freelance websites are also the worst offenders.
The Truth About Freelance Marketplaces
Millions of freelancers post job listings on freelance marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, Guru, and Funnel each month. What makes some of these marketplaces better than others?
The answer has to do with fees and promotions.
Just a small percentage of the freelancers who post their listings on marketplaces like Fiverr ever manage to secure well-paying assignments. When they do beat the odds, an even bigger percentage of these freelancers are forced to hand over a chunk of the money they earn in the form of fees they owe to the marketplace owners.
That’s right! Marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork actually charge freelancers to work. Upwork charges a 20% fee initially, and that fee doesn’t drop to 10% until you get billed for $500 with the same client. Fiverr charges anywhere from $1 to $5 per gig, or 20% of the total cost.
Other marketplaces, like Guru, charge clients the fees. On Guru, buyers are expected to pay $40 per month and a 5% fee to find freelancers offering the services they need. You can bet that most buyers pass those costs along to freelancers by paying less for assignments.
Funnel is one of the few freelance marketplaces that doesn’t charge any fees to freelancers (sellers) or clients. Not only that, but Funnel actually helps creative freelancers stand out from competitors online by featuring users in the company’s monthly email newsletter and on its popular social media accounts. Although the company is still young, its founders are actually working to create a community of creative people, rather than just being a job posting site. That makes Funnel stand apart as one of the best marketplaces for freelancers in 2022.
Hidden Fees & Unfair Pricing at Top Freelance Marketplaces
Most creative professionals get into freelancing as a way to diversify their revenue and experiment with different ways of making money. What they don’t expect is all the costs involved in posting and finding projects through some of the most well-known freelancer websites.
Setting up a profile on these websites is easy. It’s usually as simple as uploading a profile picture, adding some brief descriptions, and choosing a category, like Writers, Photographers, Videographers, or Graphic Designers. Some freelancers even go so far as to upload a portfolio to show potential clients.
That’s when the real work begins. Most freelancers will create their own gigs as a way to let potential buyers know they are available for work. Freelancer websites connect freelancers (sellers) to customers (buyers), so you’d think this part would be easy.
How much a freelancer earns depends a lot on which websites they use.
On Funnel, freelancers get paid top dollar for gigs. That’s because freelancers set their own prices, and they don’t have nearly as much competition as those freelancers who use larger websites, like Fiverr and Upwork. Another benefit for freelancers on Funnel is that Funnel doesn’t charge users any fees, so creative professionals get to keep every dollar they earn through the platform.
If only that was the case on every freelance marketplace, right?
Struggling to Get Paid
Shadiness is lurking around every corner in the freelance industry. Marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, and 99Designs were supposed to make freelancing safer, but they’ve actually increased the struggles for a lot of creative professionals who work primarily online.
Fiverr’s cheap pricing model makes it a place that’s known for attracting cheap clients. Most of these clients don’t care about quality, they just want a quick assignment that costs around $5 or $10. That’s not a way to build a sustainable freelancing business for most photographers, videographers, or graphic designers.
Another problem is that some freelancers have to wait weeks — or even months — to get paid once they complete their assignments. That’s especially true on Fiverr, where the company technically owns the clients and all payments must be processed through Fiverr’s system. Freelancers are required to wait at least 14 days to access their own funds on Fiverr, and they are absolutely prevented from contacting their own clients outside of the Fiverr platform.
Too Much Competition
How do you stand out as a seller when your portfolio is listed among millions of others on a freelance website?
Having too much competition on some freelance websites causes some creative professionals to lower their pricing. That’s the wrong approach for anyone who is hoping to turn freelancing into a business.
Funnel is one of a handful of top marketplaces that actually promotes its sellers and helps them find high-quality clients. Funnel features its sellers’ profiles in regular email blasts to users, as well as social media posts. This helps creative professionals get noticed, so they don’t have to slash prices to get assignments.
Best Marketplaces for Creative Freelancers in 2022
Feedback and reviews from thousands of creative freelancers make it clear that some marketplaces are better than others. The biggest marketplaces have plenty of buyers — but also so many sellers that it’s hard to get noticed. The only way to stand out and get gigs on a site like Fiverr is to severely drop your prices, and that’s just not sustainable for most creative professionals. The hidden fees that Fiverr charges aren’t fair, either.
Thousands of freelancers have made the switch from Fiverr to Funnel, so they can stop paying unnecessary fees and start finding more reliable, high-quality clients.
If you’re ready to double, or even triple, your income as a creative freelancer and stop paying service fees for posting your gigs online, sign up for Funnel’s marketplace and list your services as a creative professional for FREE. Click here to learn more.