Fiverr Adds New Product To Connect Freelancers With Corporate Clients

The global freelance platform Fiverr is launching today a subscription-based product designed to make it easier for corporations to work with freelancers.

Fiverr Business, the new product, is designed to help corporate teams and departments collaborate internally while also managing freelance talent. It includes access to a dedicated “customer success manager” and tools to support enterprise clients’ use of freelancers.

The launch is a response to the increased demand for remote talent during the coronavirus pandemic. 52% of companies are allocating more of their budget to freelance services, according to a recent survey of 2,000 firms by Fiverr. 

“In this remote world we are living in, we are giving them better tools for better collaboration,” says Shira Levy Barkan, general manager of Fiverr Business. 

The major freelance platforms have been stepping up their relationships with corporate clients who need freelancers’ services as more companies shift to the use of flexible talent to maximize their budgets or to bring in expertise they don’t have on staff.

Fiverr Business now offers such clients access to an executive assistant, known as a “customer success manager,” for account setup. The customer success managers will help curate freelancers, using the platform’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to identify them and then winnowing down the list based on factors such as the workers’ past projects. 

“You give them a background on the project, and they will send you a list of top freelancers,” says Levy Barkan. 

Companies that use the service will have access to several tools to support stepped-up use of freelancers. Teams can build a private “black book” of trusted freelancers and privately share it within their group. This fits into a trend in which more companies are building private “talent clouds” of well-vetted freelancers. 

The program also offers access to project management tools including email, Slack and Dropbox, through a Fiverr Business account they can use for a variety of project management tasks. The platform allows companies to control and track budget approvals and project status, manage groups and handle reporting through governance and administration tools. 

For freelancers, the project will be an opportunity to do more work for enterprise clients, according to Levy Barkan.

“What Fiverr offers them is a great opportunity to go upmarket and work with a lot of businesses and teams together — not just work one on one,” she says. “They can work with them on more complex projects than before. There will be more ways to interact and communicate with those teams. We’re opening for them a lot of opportunities, especially in these unique times we’re living in.”

Fiverr connects businesses of all sizes with freelancers who work in more than 400 categories, such as graphic design, digital marketing, programming, video and animation. Fiverr reported that 2.8 million customers in 160 countries bought services through the platform in the 12 months that ended June 30, 2020.

The company, founded in 2010, was originally known for introductory deals that freelancers offered for $5. However, many freelancers now do much more extensive projects through the platform.

Rather than having freelancers bid on projects, Fiverr operates on the “service as a product” model. Customers purchase projects based on the rates and delivery times freelancers publish on their profiles. “All of the services are very productized,” says Levy Barkan.