Posted By By Jonathan Chevreau
I recently delivered my debut “Ice Breakers” talk at the local (Port Credit) chapter of Toastmasters, an organization I highly recommend for anyone who wants to polish their public speaking and leadership skills.
I began by pulling out a $5 bill and dropping it at my feet. I asked how many audience members would pick one up if they saw a stray fin on the sidewalk. Most would, but also admitted they probably wouldn’t bother to stoop to pick up a penny or a nickel. I also remarked that when you pull a green $20 bill out of your wallet and consider what it can purchase, your attitude to that bill’s value is probably about what it was to a purple $10 bill some two decades earlier. Inflation, it seems, is forever with us.
If this is inflation, bring it on!
But if you ever wanted a concrete demonstration of the value of a lowly blue $5 bill, then go the website fiverr.com. That’s FIVERR, a “fiver” with an extra R. You may even see ads for this site elsewhere here at FindependenceHub.com and many more.
FIVERR is a wonderful example of the global trend to technology-enhanced outsourcing of personal and business services. You search for some task you want performing and a bunch of people from anywhere in the world offer to take on the “gig” for as little as $5. They may want to upsell you, which is perfectly fine, but my experience with the site was it did exactly what I asked for the price offered. The cover of the first of my two new e-books released in November, and shown below, was designed for $5 (US dollars, mind you!).
The other gig I needed to publish the e-book at Amazon was to format my Microsoft Word manuscript into the format required by the Kindle. This task too was performed for $5. I don’t know where in the world these people are located. I assume some are in the United States but for all I know — and as in the case with 99 Designs, which we looked at back in the summer — it could be half way around the world, where $5 may buy what $100 purchases in North America.
You can offer gigs as well as utilize them
It costs nothing to join fiver.com and of course you’re as free to be the provider of services for $5 a gig as you are to be the purchaser.
In fact, if there are any services out there that readers think I could perform for $5, drop me a line at jonathan@findependenceday.com.
