I’ve used both Fiverr and Steemit for hiring people and being hired.

I hired writers and translators in Steemit, and also was hired in Steemit as a writer for the Steem Wiki. Well, I hired myself to contribute some articles to the Steem Wiki and the amount of Steem I received as compensation was based on the amount of work I did. The bulk of my earnings in Steemit come from my articles. After I publish my articles in Medium, I copy them over to Steemit to earn the digital currency, Steem.

Right now, using the latest exchange rate, 1 Steem is worth a little less than $1. The amount I make per article varies but I used to average around $100 per article. Now it's around $40 as Berniesanders has decided to add me to his downvote war list, along with the entire country of Korea.

I know this may sound odd, but because Bernie has decided to target me, reducing my rewards, it has made me re-think my strategy on Steemit and dive deeper into trying to go big. In a weird way, he's forcing me to become more resourceful, successful, and creative. So, @berniesanders, thanks for taking away my rewards, so that I can better find ways to serve the Steemit community in a more effective and bigger way, and also find more success and attract more followers here.

While you can indeed take away my Steem, you cannot take away my followers, my dignity and my creativity and intelligence that is unstoppable. It is my hope that one day we can have a conversation, as I have tried a few times to find out more about your life, but you have declined my offers.

I have a new mission and focus for Steemit, one that I am very excited about: to disrupt Fiverr with Steemgigs, with my new partner, @surpassinggoogle.

Steemgigs is his baby, but I will facilitate and oversee some of the art direction, marketing and outside social media in order to make this a successful venture. I came up with a similar idea about a year ago, but I didn't have a partner. Now, I have a solid partnership with a person whose vision is closely aligned with my own.

This article was written for Hackernoon which has an audience of 114,000 active readers. So, keep that in mind when you're reading this.

Being on both sides of these platforms as a freelancer and an employer gives me a very good perspective about the future of the gig economy.

The Steemit platform is monetized which means every article I write in there generates a certain amount of money. But there are also side gigs now in Steemit and an official Steemgigs account that connects people seeking gigs with those offering gigs. Steemit is a very new platform (1 year old) but it contains unique features that Fiverr and other centralized companies cannot compete with.

Here are five solid reasons I think Steemgigs could disrupt Fiverr in the near future.

1. Freelancers can make a lot more money in Steemit than Fiverr.

I will give you the example of a Steemit user named @fisteganos. He lives in Nigeria, where the average salary is $60 per month. He was hired by @kus-knee to write a transcription of Dan Larimer’s speech. Here’s the original gig instructions. So, after the gig was finished, @kus-knee paid @fisteganos 50 SBD ($50) for his work transcribing the video into text. These two people were connected by an amazing Steemit community member, @surpassinggoogle, who started the Steemgigs project. He has good people skills, so he acts as a go-between to help people find each other. Ok, here’s where it gets interesting: after @fisteganos completed his Steemgig and was paid by @kus-knee, he wrote an in-depth Steemit post about his experience, which went pretty viral. He made an additional $394 from his article that detailed his positive experience. Here are screenshots of this article:

And here's his reward:

A couple things to understand about why Fi Steganos was so successful: he is a very passionate writer, hard-working, trustworthy, transparent, humble and also has a big heart.

When I found his story, I too, almost found myself in tears. Here’s why, this is from @fisteganos story:

Earlier this morning, he took me way back to my introductory post and I cringed. Who was I expecting to read that badly formatted post? Well, I can say that now thanks to @kus-knee. I have unfortunately slowed down on here but I haven’t forgotten all the goodwill I have received over time.
For @kus-knee, I would have done the gig for free without thinking twice about it!

So, you see that the community aspect of Steemit is responsible for bringing people together? Fiverr has no community aspect. I know a lot of you reading this will be skeptical due to the number of scams that exist on the internet but I will show you how the reputation system in Steemit is superior to Fiverr’s.

2. The reputation system in Steemit allows for easy discovery of trustworthy individuals to hire.

Next to each user’s name is a number which represents their reputation score. People who are popular, who do good work for the community or who are successful bloggers tend to have high reputation scores. Rep scores go up when others vote for your blogs and comments. People with very high rep scores can make people with low rep scores go up dramatically by voting.

Everyone starts out at 25.

Here’s how it works: if you try to pull scams, the community will downvote you, which makes your score go lower. There are plagiarism bots (one called Cheetah) that detect plagiarized content from the web. There’s also a dedicated team that searches daily for plagiarized posts. Once you fall below a reputation score of 0, your posts are greyed out, which means people can see them only if they “unhide” them. Basically, this is Steemit’s form of a prison. There are ways to get out but it takes a lot of work and a person with a high rep has to do it. Obviously, the system in Steemit is currently flawed because big power users can abuse their stake and downvote whatever they want (due to the 12 hour downvote-only time). I'd like to see this removed in the future.

As you can see, @fisteganos has a rep score of 64 which is very high considering he joined 5 months ago. This reputation system is better because it is more comprehensive. It’s easy to tell the good people from the bad in Steemit and this is because people will show their true colors on a social network. Steemit allows people to form friendship bonds which go well beyond the scope of “business”. It is more similar the way tribes formed, with friendship bonds coming first, then business second. It’s a more natural way to find business partners. Plus, if someone didn’t fulfill their Steemgig, they would instantly lose their reputation and no one would ever work with them again in Steemit. Word travels very fast.

3. Anyone can become like a stock owner of Steemit.

Because everyone has a chance to earn Steem tokens, anyone can become invested in the future wealth of Steemit. With Fiverr, you’re just a cog in the wheel of someone else’s money dream. You have no chance to become a stock owner of Fiverr. Your options are very limited.
Everyone has a choice whether to keep their Steem tokens inside Steemit or exchange them for other currency (usually Bitcoin and fiat). When you decide to keep them inside of Steemit, you become more interested in having the value of your Steem go up. Because of this, you end up wanting to share Steemit with your friends and family. You become an organic extension of Steemit, as self-interest takes over. If Steemit is healthy, then your investment is healthy too. Everyone wins.

4. Steemit is not exploitative like Fiverr.

image credit

"This whole parasitic App has got around to making toil, alienation, and wrecking your health aspirational"

• @hieronymus_burp from Twitter

There was explosive outrage when this Fiverr ad came out which resulted in Fiverr being eviscerated by a journalist. Read that article here: http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/fiverr-advertising-campaign-doer-exhausted-freelance-woman-controversy-outrage

Fiverr’s prices are exploitative. While someone in Nigeria could in theory make a decent amount on Fiverr, someone in the United States could not. I’m sorry but a bunch of $5 gigs are not going to cut it for most people. Steemit levels the playing field in a lot of ways, because it allows anyone to make money and it doesn’t exploit low prices. The amount of success one reaches is largely determined by a number of factors, but it’s not restrictive, and is more holistic. This is because one’s success lies with the community, not just two people, employee and employer. The more you do for the Steemit community as a whole, the more money you will make (as a general rule). Of course, early adopters have a distinct advantage.

Many of the most successful posts, which go up into the thousands of dollars, are written by programmers, who have spent weeks if not months building applications for Steemit.

When they post the results of their hard work, the community compensates them. It ensures that the programmers continue building applications for the Steem blockchain. Steemit can be a place where dreams are hatched, cultivated then released. It is a totally different paradigm to anything else on the internet.

5. Communication is not restricted on Steemit like it is on Fiverr.

I recently read about a Fiverr gig that went pretty bad and the main cause of this was Fiverr’s restrictive communication rules.

Apparently, you can only use Fiverr’s platform to communicate, which means you can’t do a Skype call, email or video conference. Steemit has no restrictions whatsoever with regard to communication, so you are free to communicate in any way you wish, whether it be Skype, phone, email, video conference, whatever. This freedom allows you to dive deep and find people who resonate with your business ideas on a very profound level. I talked at length via Facebook messenger with the creator of Steemgigs to find out if we were matched up with our visions, goals and dreams for future projects. It turns out that our phone conversation was the catalyst that led me to realizing the real power of Steemgigs in its ability to transform society for the better. Without that conversation, I would still be trying to assess the personality and character of @surpassinggoogle. Now I know he’s the real deal as far as mission, passion, empathy and drive.

You can now follow Steemgigs on Twitter, @steemgigs to keep up to date with what’s going on with us:

Please follow us to spread the word about this amazing new Steemit project that has the potential to disrupt Fiverr and give back the power to creators. We will need all the social media help possible!

And if you’d like to either hire Steemians or get hired for Steemgigs, sign up for a Steemit.com account and follow @steemgigs. @surpassinggoogle and I are working together to expand Steemgigs and create some real value for both freelancers and employers. @surpassinggoogle has a dream of facilitating 5000 Steemgigs and I think once the benefits are understood, this number could go a lot higher. We are committed to making this happen.

I have been notified that there is a delay currently with Steemit.com signups because of the huge numbers of people wanting an account. There are a few other ways to get an account, so for further reading about this, go here to read @timcliff's solution. This has not been the case previously, and from what I understand, it is because Steemit has gained popularity in the past few months, so the traffic has become bigger than previously. They are working to resolve this bottleneck.

And the last reason I think Steemit will disrupt Fiverr is because Steemit is more fun.

Cheers for making it through this lengthy post. I didn’t even cover all the reasons, only the main ones. I will be curious how many reads it gets on Medium......And remember, if you have a steemgig to offer, make a post and use the hashtag, #steemgigs. Likewise, if you're looking for a gig, make a post, and use the hashtag #steemgigs. As we find others (hopefully people into organizational design), we can refine the way this works. For now, @surpassinggoogle can help connect these people together.

Thanks for reading,
Stellabelle