Fiverr vs Upwork

Are you into freelancing? Or planning to?

I used to be a Freelancer. The gig economy was my bread-and-butter. I tried my hand in Fiverr and in Upwork. I was working: I coded and wrote many times to get the much-needed money to pay the bills.

To this day I still use Fiverr, in a different way. I am no longer a Freelancer per see, I see myself as a contractor. I bid my way out of the proverbial bag of paper. And in so bidding I've been awarded government and private companies contracts for developing apps.

So returning to our original question. Between Fiverr and Upwork, which is better? My short answer is Fiverr. My long answer is: Fiverr without Fiverr.

Here's why:

When I was using Fiverr and Upwork as a Freelancer, I noticed that the commanded prices at Upwork tended to be considerably higher than those of Fiverr, so, logically, I put my hopes in the former. But the bulk of my work and income came from Fiverr.

I noticed that some of my occasional gigs became regular. And so (against the Fiverr and Upwork rules, I know) we started communicating outside the platforms. I become a de facto member of a team belonging to an app development company. I had this idea to do exactly the same thing that they were doing.

Now I was on the other side of the table. I started ordering small coding gigs on Fiverr (because one can find less expensive alternatives there) in order to contact good programmers. I assemble a “virtual team” (sort of) with capable programmers mainly from Pakistan. And so armed I started bidding for government and private contracts.

I am still in that way. Is it profitable? Sure it is, but there's a cost. It can be stressful because there are legal signed deadlines. But also is very rewarding. You can start working with the monetary advance the agency or private company gives you. You stop thinking like a Freelancer and start acting like a contractor. Here lies a big jump in earnings (but also in the level of responsibility and its accompanying stress).

And so to this day I still use Fiverr without Fiverr.

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