The Fiverr threat

So today on the radio I heard the Fiverr regional director talk about their plans and current state. What caught my attention was the following.

Both chat and gigs will be localized. Meaning you can write your gig in basically french and somewhere in Germany will read it in German and they will start the chat in German....Fiverr will translate it and the French person will read it in their native language.

Obviously this opens a lot of doors for non native speakers but also brings its challenges and threats. Someone in China has a low living costs compared to in the US. The differences in wages in the long term overall Will become less on a world scale but the expenses will stay the same in those places until it catches up.

Where do you guys see chances and challenges with where globalisation is headed.

Fiverr is just an example but what Fiverr is to digital agencies could be anything else. When it has been accepted to order from AliExpress and wait 3 weeks, and it has been accepted to outsource your site to a guy 10000miles away. What stopping it to reach to other markets. How do you guys forecast/try to adapt to this changes ?

I dont think this is too much of a threat for 2 reasons:

- there was already google translate which is quite good, say 95%+ depending on the language,
- people can always tell the difference between a native or not, as translation tools are still not at the level of a native speaker (and this could take some time).

Then it depends on the task of course. But competition from developing countries is nothing new, not something I am particularly concerned about. Focus on quality and you will do fine.

safeSEOboost said:

I dont think this is too much of a threat for 2 reasons:

- there was already google translate which is quite good, say 95%+ depending on the language,
- people can always tell the difference between a native or not, as translation tools are still not at the level of a native speaker (and this could take some time).

Then it depends on the task of course. But competition from developing countries is nothing new, not something I am particularly concerned about. Focus on quality and you will do fine.

Click to expand...

Google translate was indeed already there but it takes the hurdle away to copy paste each chat message and no one would go translate manually with Google translate the gig details. And auto translate has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. And people always will be able to tell the difference but such measures has helped local sellers in China to sell their goods to the world through AliExpress through similar methods via autotranslation. Even Google reviews does this if not mistaken.

And you point is also valid on focusing on quality. This path would however consolidate the lower end of the market. My point being even with Fiverr pro or Amazon or AliExpress ..they also have now premium brands having a digital store on these websites. Would it become a case where having an own website no longer is profitable or sensible and you are better off to post on Fiverr,upwork etc ? Even search results are affected by it whether selling products or services.

We saw this happening in various markets which allowed a handful of companies racing for dominance in exchange of profit. For example Groupon/ Zalando even Just eat are mostly running financial losses but are marketleaders and once everyone is out of the way they hike up a bit but there is no one to challenge their position because of having scaled that big.

So the thread is not perse targeted to claim all is lost...but more a brainstorm thread to predict with the limited information where this is headed in 5 or 10 years and how to adapt to it preemptively. Always best to fix your roof when it's not raining I think

I'm not sure how this is much of a threat at all? If more and more low cost of living places gain access, it should open up more opportunities to the low cost talent pool. If anything, the greater competition *there* might drive prices down even more. Like safeSEOboost aid, focus on your quality if you're in competition with any of them. Otherwise, might as well just arbitrage it out? Great topic.

@Hansj80

You seem to be confusing a service based business model and a product based one. They are not the same.

Selling a product on Amazon, eBay or whatever else is nothing to do with hiring someone to write some code or design a site!

I understand what you are trying to say but they are two different business types.

Most businesses today are set up with a goal of a buy out so will often run at some kind of loss until they can be purchased / acquired or can float and cash out with a change of direction. Having a website and selling on something like Amazon or eBay is just a sound business move it's another market place and another place for you to reach your audience.

I don't think moving away from having your own site is going to change any time soon ALTHOUGH I personally do see the "internet" change as we know it just become app based. Websites will become the old out fashioned thing and apps will turn the internet into portals where if you need something you open an app direct to that product / service rather than searching or browsing for it BUT I think that's way off yet..

As for your original service based post. There will and always have been remote workers, that will never change and if nothing else is as far as I'm concerned now "normal" removing the language barrier just gives you a greater chance to reach a different talent pool that was not accessible before because you didn't speak X language.

People can tell when it’s non English speakers translating the competion from cheaper countries has been here for awile