Amid eCommerce Store Launch, Fiverr Touts Studio Gigs In Q3 Results

Fiverr, an online marketplace for freelance services, reported a 42 percent year over year revenue gain for the third quarter of 2019 on Wednesday (Nov. 13). The company filed for its initial public offering (IPO) back in May.

For the third quarter of 2019, the company’s revenue stood at $27.9 million. Fiverr also said that full year 2019 revenue will grow between 40 percent and 41 percent. When the company filed for its IPO earlier this year, it showed that the Tel Aviv-based company’s net losses grew from $19.3 million in 2017 to $36.1 million in 2018. Revenue grew by almost 45 percent, from $52.1 million to $75.5 million.

The latest Fiverr earnings report comes amid changes in the global gig economy that includes the increasing use of digital marketplaces to match workers with employers, and more focus on instant and other forms of payments to gig workers. As for Fiverr, it grew its active buyers in Q3 2019 by 16 percent year over year, to 2.3 million. Spending per buyer, meanwhile, increased 15 percent year over year in Q3, reaching $163. The company also said its take rate for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2019 stood at 26.6 percent, which compares to 25.2 percent for the same period last year.

“The growth of our active buyer base was driven by continued and consistent cohort behavior, further gains in performance marketing efficiency, and our latest product and technology enhancements,” said Fiverr Chief Financial Officer Ofer Katz. “The strong growth in spend per buyer highlights our continued success in moving upmarket, and we continued to expand our industry-leading take rate.”

The company has been more than a bit active recently, launching what it called in its financial statement “the first four industry stores on our platform: Gaming, E-commerce, Architecture and Politics, enabling us to further expand our catalog and deepen our relevance and market share among larger businesses.” As well, the company touted growth in its new Fiverr Studios offering, “with hundreds of freelancers now offering Studios Gigs that are, on average, seven times larger than an average Gig on Fiverr.” The company also reported significant growth in Q3 in Germany, which is credited largely to its “summer brand campaign in Berlin.”

Fiverr also recently launched an eCommerce-based store with the intention of helping online businesses with services that support all their needs, the company said in a release. Through the new store, businesses that use platforms like Magento, Shopify and Woocommerce can search for services like SEO, drop shipping, web design and development. And businesses that have a presence on marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon and eBay can search and select services such as photography, photoshop editing, product research and channel advising, among many others.

“The eCommerce industry is a trillion-dollar market with consistent and rapid growth,” said Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman. “Yet nearly half of U.S. small businesses don’t have a website, so there is a huge opportunity for many of these businesses to capitalize on the growing eCommerce trend. We have seen rising demand for eCommerce related services on our marketplace and the launch of a dedicated industry store allows us to address this growing market with a more verticalized experience and enable our buyers to bring their eCommerce businesses to the next level.”

Sales from eCommerce are growing and expected to make up 13.7 percent of all global retail sales. Also on the rise are direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, which have a different set of business needs than traditional retailers.