Ben Flanagan

Al Arabiya News

LONDON – Looking for someone to do your homework? Need a photo taken outside the Burj al Arab in Dubai? Or perhaps you have an inexplicable need for a Morgan Freeman impersonator?



If so, the internet – of course – has the answer.



Scores of Arabs have signed up to the US jobs site Fiverr, which offers all of the above services – and many more – for just $5 a time.



The various “gigs” on the Fiverr, spread across more than 100 categories, range from the useful to the downright eccentric.



They include logo design, voiceovers and web programming. Quirkier gigs include offers to send a postcard from almost anywhere in the world, a man who will “say anything you like as Morgan Freeman”, and someone offering to give a Morocco street cat a $2.50 meal – and pet them – for $5.



But with all these Fiverr freelancers offering to work for just $5 – albeit with optional extras at additional cost – is it possible for them to make a decent wage?



Abdesslam Ouakraim, an 18-year-old Fiverr user from Morocco, says that he considers Fiverr a real earning opportunity.



He is advertising two gigs on the site, one designing business cards – which has had more than 135 buyers – and the other designing logos.



He says he has made more than $2,000 via Fiverr in the last six months. “I see it as a full-time job,” he says.



But many others view Fiverr as a quick way to make some extra cash – with all those $5 jobs unlikely to add up to a decent income.



Aladdin from Tunisia, who uses the site under the name aladdindev, says he too has made about $2,000 on Fiverr in the last six months.



His services include doing IT-related homework, creating PowerPoint presentations, and fixing websites – all for just $5 a pop.



“I’m a software engineering student, and I’m using Fiverr to supplement my income and finance my study,” he said.



While the base cost of his six advertised gigs is $5, Aladdin also offers add-on services for larger projects.



But he says he sometimes feels exploited by the service, because he finds himself doing quite complex tasks for low rewards.



“Sometimes I [do] big projects [at] a very cheap cost,” he said. “But I have to work and help myself.”



Fiverr is one of several sites in the booming global “sharing economy”, in which a growing army of online freelancers make or supplement their income via services like the taxi app Uber, room-rental site Airbnb, and the odd-job site Taskrabbit.



But such sites offer very little certainty of reliable work, and lack medical insurance and other benefits associated with regular employment, critics say.



Cairo resident Mohamed ElNahas, 31, says that he uses freelancer sites as a way to supplement his income.



He is currently offering six gigs on Fiverr, including one where he will send a customer a postcard from Egypt with a message in Arabic or English. But he says he has only made about $40 since he started using the site six months ago.



“It is not a huge amount, but… compared to [the] time I give Fiverr, it is OK,” he said.



“You can make the original gig for $5, and additional services for $10, $20 and up to $100 – so if you use it wisely it is rewarding,” he added.



“It is one of many online freelancing platforms I’m using … There is a huge online freelancing market out there, you can’t depend on just one site like Fiverr; all freelancers are using more than one site.”



Umar, who is 34 and based in Dubai, has one fairly popular gig on Fiverr: Photographs of himself standing in front of the Burj al Arab, holding a sign of his customer’s choosing. It sounds bizarre – but he has 31 buyers, and counting.



Along with four other gigs advertised on the site, Umar says he has earned about $500 from Fiverr.



“At this point it is small pocket money. It has the potential to grow as a full-time income but I don’t see it happening for myself in the near future,” he said. “At best it can grow as a decent side income but I don’t foresee giving up my full-time job for it.”



Umar said that one use of Fiverr is for amateurs to learn on the job, rather than throwing themselves into a new profession.



“Fiverr is for hobbyists and amateurs who want to learn new skills by offering them on Fiverr. Once you become expert then you can move to other platforms that pay higher. There are some experts and professionals on Fiverr making full-time incomes, but it takes some time to reach that level.”



With the number of web-based freelancers rising globally, home-grown sites are also springing up in the Arab world.



One is the Egyptian site Taskty, which operates in two cities in the country and is currently looking to expand in the Gulf region.



Taskty offers house services such as plumbing, maintenance, insect control and cleaning. It operates under a different model to Fiverr, but is similar to the US site Taskrabbit.  Ahmed Galal, the chief executive of Taskty, said that freelancing sites such as his can offer workers fair pay because they have lower overheads than regular businesses.



“It’s fair because you deal directly with the professional… You don’t have an office rental or a big hierarchy of administration,” Galal said. “Fiverr is an exception because the prices on Fiverr are very low.”



Some of the workers that sign up to Taskty use it for an additional income, and all are personally vetted by the service, Galal said.



“We don’t want to send someone to your house unless we meet him personally,” he said. “We have a policy at Taskty that we usually keep the number of service providers as small as possible, because we need everyone to keep busy.”



Taskty launched in 2013 and now plans to add additional services – such as private nurses and other home-based medical help – soon. Galal said the site had brokered 1,000 finished tasks this year, mostly in the last two months.



Taskty is attempting to enter the Saudi market, and also has plans to launch in the UAE. Having received early support from Flat6Labs, a tech incubator, Taskty received a second round of funding of about $100,000 from investors in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It is now seeking another round of funding of around $450,000 for expansion in Egypt and the Gulf region, Galal said.



Other online work marketplaces in the Middle East and North Africa include Nabbesh.com, where freelancers and employers post jobs in a variety of categories, including graphic design, web development and copywriting.