According to Zety, the examples of the type of professions that comprise Gig economy include Freelancers, Consultants, Independent contractors & professionals, Temporary Workers. It has seen a rise in the last decade with more people preferring a free lifestyle over fixed income jobs. According to Edison research, for 44% of gig workers, their work in the gig economy is their primary income source. The Millenials are more likely to opt for freelancing. Statistics show that 38% of 18-34 year-olds are a part of the gig economy.

In addition to 44% of gig workers having it as the primary income source, an additional 3%-10% of workers in mature economies and more than 30% of workers in developing countries reportedly use the gig economy as their secondary source of income, according to a study by BCG Henderson.

Fiverr is a marketplace for hiring freelancers who have posted gigs of the services offered by them. Fiverr is playing a pivotal role in optimizing the Gig economy because of the below-mentioned reasons:

1. Marketplace: Opportunities for more people

As a platform, Fiverr gives access to a vast pool of freelancers through its Gig marketplace model. The marketplace model has opened up the opportunities for the people globally to take up freelancing career that was earlier opted for by a few due to lack of exposure to the services and opportunities. Freelancing enables people to choose the lifestyle they would like to have, and the Fiverr model has encouraged and enabled people to look outside the box of a fixed full-time job and choose Freelancing as their career.

- Prospect for a side-hustle income:

Many people struggle to make their ends meet even with a full-time job, and looking for an additional income source. While others want to try things out with the different skills they possess. The latest study on Millennials by Deloitte shows that 64% of the full-time workers want to do ‘side-hustles’ to make more money. Fiverr has become a platform to helps freelancers generate a side hustle income with the skills they already possess; and also to try out other types of work to figure out what they would love to do, and do best.

- Diversity of services:

Fiverr is a platform for freelancers offering a wide diversity of services under one roof that is helpful for a business. The services offered are categorized as under:

• Graphics & Designing
• Digital Marketing
• Writing & Translation
• Video & Animation
• Music & Audio
• Programming & Tech
• Business
• Lifestyle

Depending on the requirement, companies and businesses choose the category of services they are looking for. There are several sub-categories to help prospective buyers refine the results.

- Transparency:

The marketplace model enables complete transparency of the pricing of services and expectations from the freelancers. Some of the services like ‘Writing’ require freelancers to take up a test. It determines their level of expertise in the skillsets. The result of the tests is shared with prospective buyers to give them an understanding of the same. The buyers can share their feedback on the quality of output by a freelancer, which helps other prospective buyers decide if they could trust the freelancer for the requirement.

2. Provides affordability of talent hiring:

Fiverr started as a platform offering services (posted as gigs by Freelancers) for $5. That is how the name ‘Fiverr’ came into place. It allowed scores of people looking to start their freelancing journey to join the platform, and they could trade off the investment of time and efforts for finding the clients for a lesser revenue. With developments in the company over 9-10 years, the clause of $5 gigs might be non-existent now, but it remains a platform to hire talents at an economical cost resulting in budget-saving and cost-cutting for the companies.

3. Focus on Quality of services:

Fiverr, through its model, encourages a Quality-first approach. To succeed on Fiverr, it is inevitable for freelancers to provide higher customer satisfaction to their clients. The freelancers work hard and sometimes walk extra miles to match up to the expectation of the clients. A satisfied customer is more likely to give a positive review, which is imperative to getting more clients. With the classification as a Top Rater Seller, Fiverr recognizes the efforts of freelancers with more positive reviews and ratings. They have provided a bigger picture and an opportunity for new freelancers to mark their growth with a rise in the levels. The beginners on the platform are termed ‘new seller’, and depending on the quality of their service, reviews, and the no. of contracts bagged by them, allocates the tag ‘level one seller’, ‘level two’ seller and so on. It assures a prospective buyer of quality and clarity on what could be expected.

4. Fulfills the Demand-Supply Market Gap of Freelancing Industry:

Remote working and freelancing have seen a meteoric rise in the last decade. According to the data, Remote working has grown by 159% from 2005-2017. The freelancing data suggests that there are 57 million freelancers in the USA alone. Though the precise data of the global count of the no. of freelancers, it is estimated to be 1 billion. The Covid-19 pandemic has only given the much-needed boost the industry needed.

Remote working has opened up the possibilities of hiring talent globally without having to set up an office. Now, the companies can hire high-quality talent at a much economical cost resulting in the rise of demand for quality talents. Fiverr is fulfilling the gap by bringing close to a Million Freelancers and remote work aspirants under one roof thereby, saving the head-hunting time for companies.

5. Becoming the extended arm of companies:

The trend of outsourcing has risen as well. Companies prefer outsourcing the work to specialists or experts and freelancers in a particular field rather than hiring in-house. Requirements related to Web Designing, Graphic Designing, Animations, Video Creation/Editing, Content Writing, Digital Marketing, etc. are exceedingly outsourced. Hence, a platform like Fiverr has become an extended arm of the companies as they can rely on the freelancers on the platform to deliver quality output for their requirements. It also helps companies enhance their productivity as they can focus on their business growth by saving them time, money, and efforts of the hiring, training, and managing in-house employees for the above tasks.

Conclusion:Fiverr has generated opportunities for many aspiring freelancers and made it easy for organizations to find suitable talent for their requirements. The model of gigs makes Fiverr a SaaP (Software as a Product) venture. Hence, there is no doubt that Fiverr is optimizing the Gig economy, and in the upcoming years, would be the pioneer in shaping it.