In the beginning of May, we published a blog post explaining our basic premise: We received a $20 donation with the instruction that the money should be spent on the outsource freelancing site Fiverr. The idea was a sound one, so we opened it up to the community. People would suggest Fiverr gigs and vote up their favorites. I would buy the 3 gigs that got the most bulbs (the ballpit equivalent of upvoting), as well as purchase a fourth based on my own criteria. What follows is the result...
- Purchasing
- Scream Your Name Into A Bush
- I will dace in bikini with Vladimir Putin mask
- I will make a stop motion animation for you
- I will promote your ad on Christian podcast
- Results
Purchasing
I purchased all 4 gigs on the same day, and the race was on. I tried to give as little instruction as possible, and I did not want to send revisions, but to let the creators interpret the requests as they would and post the result.
The first thing I found out is that a five dollar purchase on Fiverr actually costs $5.50, as there is a 50 cent transaction fee. The transaction went through the F Plus PayPal account, which would incur a 46¢ fee so that adds up, but I'm unclear how much Fiverr takes as a cut. Please let me know if you do.
I'll list the gigs in order that I received results back. All the videos are at the bottom.
Scream Your Name Into A Bush by e_ressett
Suggested by Down10 | Received 19 bulbs.
Expected Turnaround: 3 days | Actual: 3 days
Gig page on Fiverr
Here's what I sent e_ressett:
The F Plus is a podcast. A number of people are aware of this, but (to my knowledge) zero bushes have been made aware of this fact. Can you please inform some bushes that The F Plus is a podcast?
A couple days later, he responded with an mp4 video for me to download. I am personally quite pleased with what we got.
I will dace in bikini with Vladimir Putin mask by Whosthatgal
Suggested by Lemon (no bulbs)
Expected Turnaround: 4 days | Actual: 4 days
Gig page on Fiverr
Before ordering, I sent a message to Whosthatgal verifying that I could request she dance to a song of my choosing. She said that would be fine, so I sent her an MP3 of This Lady Frenzy remix of Jimmyfranks singing which I felt would best match the menace and terror conjured by watching a dancing half naked woman with Vladimir Putin's head. A few days later, she sent me a video, at which point I had to type this unique piece of correspondence:
So, this is wonderful, except I see in the video that you are wearing underwear and a rubber chicken head mask, but I actually made the order for the Vladimir Putin mask.
She apologized and shortly thereafter sent me a second video as described, but my immediate reaction was that it had the diminished energy of a second take. I thanked her for responding, but am choosing to use the chicken head video as the canonical one, as there is more twerk.
I will make a stop motion animation for you by Candlehour
Suggested by Portaxx | Received 62 bulbs
Expected Turnaround: 8 days | Actual: 7 days
Gig page on Fiverr
This one started out a bit tricky. For the audio to be used, I sent a slightly pared down edit of The Kumuqatxop "Yeah" Megamix from episode 168. However, as that mix contains the words "semen", "menstrual blood", and "what are your sex fantasies?", the creator balked at the suggestion and immediately wanted to cancel. I asked him if I could recut the audio, and he said that would be fine. So I cleaned out the naughty bits and sent a recut piece of audio. He tried to upsell me with some extra features to the video, saying that what I would get is two unmoving characters talking without props or background. Feeling that fit the tone that was meant to be conveyed, and having an unshakeable curiosity towards "What does $5 worth of stop motion animation look like?", I said that fit my needs perfectly. Even with the intial hiccup, the video was completed ahead of time.
I will promote your ad on Christian podcast by Iassist
Suggested by moooo566 | Received 29 bulbs
Expected Turnaround: 14 days | Actual: ???
Gig page on Fiverr
This was a trickier one to think of, because while the idea is conceptually funny, there are two basic problems in that:
- A Christian Modern Living podcast with a demographic of mostly middle aged women is emphatically not what I see our demographic as.
- I didn't want the thing to come across as "I'm trolling squares", since there's ways this could be done that would read as mean spirited.
The gig offers to play your 1 minute long audio ad in the first 10 minutes of the show, so I had a quick beery conversation with Bunnybread and we came up with the idea of a straightfoward ad explaining that The F Plus is a podcast and you probably shouldn't listen to it, which to be frank is good advice for a lot of people. Bunnybread cut the audio real quick and I threw in some public domain music.
Here is the MP3 we sent to her.