The Crowdsourcing Blog

This site has been up for a while (it was reported on Techcrunch a a month and a half ago) but I stumbled on it again recently and reminded of how great this idea is.

Fiverr’s tagline is it’s whole business, you post things you would do for 5 dolars, and then someone who has it done pays and gets it done.

“Buy. Sell. Have Fun”

Most important than the services beeing offered, I believe, is the fun part. Some of them are not so usefull, or are limited at that, but they’re fun. They provide you to a story you can tell your friends. It’s cool.

It’s almost like a services exchange site, because the $5 part is mainly simbolic – but it sets the bar on the type of services that are offered.

So it is essencially a crowdsourcing services business.

Some of the off-beat services out there that you can buy are:

• I will read your palm for $5
• I will have my cat morris mail you a letter for $5
• I will catch & Release A Fish For You In Delaware and Make You A Personalized Video!!! for $5
• I will burn a small paper effigy of your enemy for $5
• I will sell you my eternal soul for $5

I mean these are just silly and fun, and I bet there’s someone out there buying them!

But there are other non-silly ones there (all very well categorized):

• I will walk your dog around NYC for a half hour for $5
• I will restore an old photo for $5
• I will translate into perfect spanish or catalan an up to 50 words essay. for $5

From what I understand, Fiverr’s business model is they take a 20% commission out of every transaction ie $1, so to be a sustainable business they have to have a lot of these services rendered.

No idea how their current volume is or what are their plans for the future, but they are getting some attention. First the Techcrunch article, then a mention on NBC:

We sure will be keeping our eyes opened for this startup in the future.