Trust....and when you get it wrong !

bysteve23

436 followers

12 years ago

Having recently launched another web site I decided I would try Fiverr to get some content. Not only do I not have the time to write a shed load of posts, but I also wanted different styles within the site, so I turned to Fiverr.

I have used Fiverr in the past for logos and had a pretty good experience of it, so was happy to return.

I advertised for writers and responded with an outline of the sort of thing I was looking for, I also added that I was happy to pay $10 per post if they were up to the quality I wanted - yes I know, I'm the last of the big spenders !

Now, on Fiverr someone says they can do the job and you pay them in advance, so there is an element of trust (or blind faith) involved. Given the cost, I don't consider this to be the greatest risk and I would imagine others probably feel the same way.

Fiverr itself makes it's money by taking $1 from the $5 paid, so the 'author' gets $4.

In response to my request, I got a number of replies, including one that sounded quite promising. As I entered into correspondence with the prospective author, they sent me a message with a file attached, stating they were happy to start on my article but would I check the details in the file first.

I checked the file out with my virus checker etc and it seemed to be ok. On opening it was fine, just a simple word document.

The document outlined a request by the 'author' as follows:

"Please can you pay me direct by paypal as I don't want to loose $1 to Fiverr'

Hmmmm.. my reply;

"Hi - I understand its very annoying to give $2 away to fiverr, and I see you have had work, but I feel as someone who knows something about making money on the internet I must say, don't send requests to people asking to pay outside of fiverr !

The whole thing is based on trust. Your asking me to trust you to do something that I pay in advance for and then you are showing me that you cannot be trusted to even honour your terms with fiverr.

Bad idea mate."

Perhaps I was over re-acting and as said, I know giving 20% away might be annoying, but lets face it, most of us have some overhead or other, but it just seemed that the element of trust had been thrown out of the window.

Was it worth trying to be so devious ?

I certainly value my word far higher than $1 and I hope the people I do business with do as well.

All the best

Steve