Fiverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Let us get one thing straight: I am a capitalist. I believe deep in the recesses of my heart that if you can convince someone to pay for something that you can do, more power to you. And if you can convince them to pay double, well, double the power.

Recently, I needed a simple task done that I didn’t have the skill set to do (create a logo) and my friend Suzen of Omaginarium Marketing suggested that I try “fiverr” because even if it stunk, I’d have only lost five dollars. I had no idea what fiverr was. Suzen knows a lot of things that I don’t know about stuff like that, which is why I ask her those questions. Anyway, fiverr turns out to be this website (www.fiverr.com) in which people offer their services for five dollars.

The services vary. You can have someone design a logo or a post card, write a letter, edit a letter, or, really anything you can thing of. And when I say anything you can think of, I mean anything you can think of. One man offered to rub chocolate on his belly and sing happy birthday in a video. Another man offered to write your message on a beach in Jamaica. Several people were willing to be my Facebook girlfriend for a week (or more!) to make other people jealous.

This is the kind of thing that endlessly fascinates me. I get why people would sell services for five dollars. They need to practice. They need to build their portfolios. They are unemployed and have nothing else to do. My guess is that if you have a lot of these things set up on your computer, it only takes you five or ten minutes to do what you are being asked to do, which works out to $60 an hour, which ain’t a bad living if you can get that many takers.

I get the impression that a lot of these things are things that people would do for free only, hey – if I can get a random stranger to give me five bucks to do it, why not? Like the plethora of guys who do a good Morgan Freeman or Christopher Walken impression and will record any message you want in the celebrity voice for $5.

Seriously – would you not spend $5 to have a cashew tree planted in Guatemala in someone’s name? What a great birthday gift! I mean, maybe not as good as the video of the creepy clown singing happy birthday, but for that little bit of cash you can buy both!

So that made me think. I mean, everyone has a price. What ridiculous thing would I be willing to advertise on the internet that I’d do for five dollars? Also, what kind of self-confidence does it take to assume that someone, somewhere might actually pay good cash money to have a video of you in an aluminum foil hat wearing nothing but a pair of tube socks and balloons in strategic places?

I’m truly afraid that my children will find out about this. They will do anything that doesn’t involve cleaning, folding laundry, or yard work for five dollars.

I also wonder how sincere some of these people are. Eighteen people bought and positively rated the “I will meditate on your love life for twenty minutes” service. Apparently, concentrated thoughts about a perfect stranger’s love life are a) worth something to someone; b) specifically, $15 an hour; and c) fill a hole in the market that couldn’t be found elsewhere.

It has never once occurred to me to fork over money for someone else to think really hard about my love life. And I wonder if the meditator is really thinking about the meditatee, or just buying some pizza and beer with the meditation money and hoping against hope that karma isn’t real.

People really do pay money for this kind of thing. Four hundred some odd people paid some guy to “be the secret admirer they NEVER wanted.” That’s $2,000.00, assuming no one bought any of the add ons, which include $20.00 for a personalized birthday wish.

So. What would you do for five dollars? What would I do for five dollars? What would you like to see me do for five dollars? (No. No no no no no. I won’t do that.)

Lori B. Duff is the author of the Amazon ‘Hot New Release’ Mismatched Shoes and Upside Down Pizza, a collection of autobiographical humor essays. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/loribduffauthor For even more information and updates, go to www.loriduffwrites.com