Five Annoying Life Problems You Can Solve For Five Bucks With Fiverr

Life is filled with tasks we don’t want to do or don’t have the skillset to accomplish. Maybe you need to craft a good resume and business card; maybe you just want advice on learning to code. To solve many of these problems, all you need is five dollars.

Images remixed from originals by Krishnadas (Shutterstock), dwphotos (Shutterstock) and Lightboxx (Shutterstock)

While we like to encourage researching and doing things yourself, you can’t do everything. When you need to delegate, you should. That’s where a service called Fiverr comes in.

We discovered Fiverr a while back, but never really took a close look at what you can do with it. The basic concept is easy to understand: Fiverr provides a marketplace where anyone can provide services or products for five dollars each. (That’s in US dollars, so for Aussies it costs just slightly over $5 right now, but the difference isn’t big enough to stress over.)

I started using Fiverr for a few birthday gifts and odd jobs and found it was a cost effective way to delegate when I needed it, without making any monthly commitments or paying too much. While some jobs cost a little more than $5 if you upgrade them, you can solve all sorts of annoying problems — from learning a new skill to getting a job — with help from the Fiverr community. In this post, we’ll look at how you can use Fiverr to solve five common problems that you may not have the skills or time to handle yourself. We’ll also help you discover how you can solve other, specific issues not explicitly discussed here.

Get A Job

You always want to put your best foot forward when applying for jobs. That starts with a quality resume and a well-written cover letter. In some cases, you may want an attractive business card and personal landing page. Fiverr can solve those problems each.

When putting your resume together, you want a well-organised, proofread document with a simple and functional design. While you can probably handle one or two of those jobs yourself, if you need a second eye, some suggestions, or a visual touch up you can find all of those services on Fiverr, with a turnaround of just a couple of days. Simply search Fiverr for resume or cover letter to see all of your options, or take a look at these:

• A job recruiter will tweak your resume to help you get it noticed

• A career consultant will create an eye-catching resume design

• A legal writer will create an online resume for you

• A writer will proofread your resume, cover letter or any other document

• A job recruiter will write a cover letter for you

• A marketing professional will proofread your resume or cover letter

While you won’t need everything on that list, you can pick an area where you feel you come up a little short and get some help.

If you need to network and want a business card, Fiverr has some very unique options. (Check prices here, though, as postage down under might increase costs in cases where you’re sent an actual card, not merely a file you can supply to a printer.)

• Get a well-designed business card

• Get a Windows 8-styled business card

• Get a fun business card design with a character on it

• Get a business card designed and printed

• Get a business card laser-engraved in wood

Learn To Code (and Other New Skills)

We’ve taught you the basics of coding in both JavaScript and HTML/CSS, but we often get asked what to do next. Although we’ve provided a list of further resources, a lot of people struggle to move forward without someone pointing them in the right direction and helping them out. Learning from a web site gets tough sometimes because you can’t easily ask questions. If you fall into this category, Fiverr can help you out. You just need to choose a programming language:

• Help with HTML, JavaScript, CSS and JQuery

• Help with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and WordPress

• Help with C++

• Help with Python

• Help with Ruby on Rails

• Help with C#, vbNET and Java

There are plenty of free resources around the net, such as Stack Overflow, to get help with your code. In general you should employ these resources first before forking over $5 on a problem you can solve for free. That said, online forums tend to get you help from experienced programmers who will tell you how to fix the problem in a way that you may not yet understand. Furthermore, they may not have the time or the desire to actually fix a problem for you. When you find yourself in a jam a free resource can’t fix, or you just need someone to help you through the learning process, you can turn to Fiverr and get what you need on a budget.

You can learn to do more than just code. Many people teach musical instruments over Skype, including piano, guitar, flute, clarinet and saxophone (among others). You can learn languages such as Italian, Spanish, Japanese, French and German. You can even train your dog. While Skype (or other video conferencing software) won’t replace the benefits of real world interaction, you’ll pay a lot less this way. If you have basic skills and have the willingness to put in the time to learn, you can get some focused, personal help on the cheap.

Get Help With Your Office Or School Work

Sometimes work or school gets overwhelming and you need assistance. A little help can make your work a lot better and teach you how to improve in the future.

Just as you can get proofreading help with a resume or cover letter, you can utilise the same services with business documents. Most of the time, however, you don’t have time to wait for someone to take a day or two to proofread or find that task worthwhile. If you need that service for university, however, you can find a good editor to make sure you turn in a quality paper when it really matters.

Workers will benefit more from a virtual assistant. Using Fiverr, you can hire someone as a virtual assistant for the amount of time you need and only when you need it. This way you can request help when you feel overwhelmed and not have to pay for the times you don’t. If you need help with a specific task, like a presentation, you can find that, too.

Find A Personalised Birthday Gift That Doesn’t Suck

You have to buy a lot of birthday gifts during your lifetime, and finding unique ones gets pretty tough after so many years. Fiverr has a lot of good and cheap options, from fairly standard to super-weird.

If you don’t want an actual, physical product, you can get a strange birthday message from all sorts of people recorded as a video. These come in the form of a birthday rap, children singing, ukulele music, a cartoon, Sri Lankan jungle dance, puppets, a mankini song and dance, or, of course, a ventriloquist clown. If you can think of a way to deliver a video birthday message, someone probably does it.

When you want something outside of the video message category, you can get things like a personalised Android birthday app, pixel art of the birthday boy or girl, a caricature, a customised bracelet, a small felt stuffed animal, a drawing as a Simpsons cartoon, a custom-crocheted object, or even a hat.

If you want anything made for you that doesn’t cost too much in materials or time, you can search for it on Fiverr and often find someone who will make it. If you can’t, you can seek out someone similar and see if they can handle what you’re looking for. While job descriptions might look rigid on the site, if you need alterations you can sometimes get them for free or for an extra fee. You just have to ask. Also, because new people join and leave the site on a regular basis, check back if you can’t find what you want. You’ll probably encounter it eventually, so it helps to plan ahead.

Build A Web Site

Learning to code can help you build a web site, but sometimes you need explicit help or assistance to get a site off the ground the first time. Perhaps you don’t want to do any of the work. Either way, you can find people on Fiverr to help you out.

Full sites cost a lot of money, so to get one won’t come easy. You have to make a few sacrifices, help out, or pay a bit more to get the job done. You can hire someone to help or fix specific issues the cheap, but that only works if you have the requisite coding skills and need help in the planning phase. If you just need coding help, you can use any of the resources mentioned in the previous problem. If you choose to deploy WordPress site, you can find someone to customise it. Getting a full site, however, will often require piecing together smaller jobs and that may or may not work for you. If that’s the case, and you don’t have the budget for a handful of $5 jobs, just keep an eye on Fiverr. If you can’t find what you want one day, it may well show up on another.

Overall, you’ll have the most trouble finding the right person or people to create an entire web site for you from scratch. That said, they do exist and you just have to keep an eye out for the right opportunity.

We’ve looked at how you can solve five annoying problems, but if you’ve got another not listed here you can still seek out help on Fiverr. Just search for what you’re looking for and follow these steps to help ensure a good experience:

• Look for listings with high ratings and the turnaround time you need

• Contact the person providing the service, explain what you want specifically, and make sure they can do the job for you.

• If you have a specific deadline in mind, mention it so you can find out if they can handle your request by the time you need it.

• If you have samples similar to the work you want done, send them along so you set realistic expectations.

If you keep those things in mind, you’ll get work better suited to what you want. Like with any service, always err on the side of more communication. You’ll rarely get what you want if you don’t convey your needs, but a few simple pointers can make the work great.

Before you go off into the world of $5 jobs, you should remember that you can get a lot of stuff for free or handle it yourself. You should use Fiverr to give you freedom when your time comes at a greater cost than a small amount of your money. You should delegate when you need it, but also do things yourself the hard way on a regular basis. Convenience is good, but balance is better. Don’t forget to keep both in your life.