Some Frequently Asked Questions About rel="author"

Some Frequently Asked Questions About rel="author"

Google Authorship helps authors get their content associated with their name, so people can recognize them. Not only that, it helps them get going with their PageRank, which ultimately effects the search rankings of their content. And besides showing your author profile picture in search results (which has an immediately positive effect on your Click Through Rate), it also makes more posts by the author accessible to the searcher, hence retaining more value from a single searcher. Since it is such an important question, people ask a lot of questions regarding rel="author" and Google Authorship. We'd like to address some of them with the help of Google in this post.

Some frequently asked questions

Does Authorship work with all kinds of pages?

As it happens, no. Authorship can only work with pages actually written by an author, and not with those that are more generic, say like a contact page. A page show have a clear byline indicated that a certain author wrote this post, and it should use the same name as used on their Google Plus profile.

The page should also contain content by a single author, such as a single article. If it has a continuously updating stream, written by multiple authors, then there's really no point in associating a single author with that content.

Can aliases, or company mascots be used?

They can, but Google prefers that the content be written by an actual human being, and that increases the trust rating for a page. But make sure you link to a legitimate Google Plus profile in the Authorship markup, instead of linking to a company Page.

Can multiple authors be added for a single article?

The short answer is, no. But Google is still experimenting to find the optimal outcome for searchers when more than one author is specified. And you can always add multiple authors for a single site.

Difference between rel="author" and rel="publisher"

Well, rel=publisher helps a business create a shared identity by linking the business’ website (often from the homepage) to the business’ Google+ Page. rel=author helps individuals (authors!) associate their individual articles from a URL or website to their Google+ profile. While rel=author and rel=publisher are both link relationships, they’re actually completely independent of one another.

Should authorship be used in site's property listings or products pages?

Well, property listings and product pages generally are listings property or products that showcase something, and display its features. These are objective details, irrelevant to the personal opinions of a human being. These objective details can possibly be found on another site. For example, you can find the same laptop or smartphone listed on multiple online shopping stores - and they have nothing to with who added their features/descriptions.

The point being, that Google wants to return results that have a human perspective. But there's no such perspective in product pages. Hence, it is discouraged to use authorship for product listings. An author can, however, write a review of a product, and add a much higher level of subjectivity to the content, making it relevant to the individual author.

How to prevent Google from showing Authorship

Not that you should make a habit of it, but there might arise a few situations where you'd want Google to not show Authorship. In those cases, you can remove the authorship markup, which is the most obvious solution. You can also remove the profile and contributor links to the website on your profile. That is a more elegant solution.

You can also set your Google+ profile un-discoverable in search results, and this is the fastest way to get the job done; maybe not the best one though. To do this, go to your Google+ main menu, and click on Settings. Now un-check the box that says "Help others discover my profile in search results". Be warned though. This will disable your Authorship for all sites you contribute to. So this might not be the most elegant solution.

Got any more questions you need to ask our STC team? Please feel free to go ahead and say it out in the comments section below! Peace :)

Up to 90% Massive Drop in Google Search Traffic Worldwide [Case Study]

Up to 90% Massive Drop in Google Search Traffic Worldwide [Case Study]

 

Looks like Google is acting Cowboy again! Forums are getting crowded daily with questions related to a massive Organic Search traffic drop on sites world wide. Almost all sites are effected be it entertainment based, IT orientated, ecommerce or blogs ran on Wordpress and Blogger. All www domains have been seriously effected by Google with a 50%-90% Cruel Traffic penalty without any prior notice or announcement. Matt Cutts blog and his twitter profile are both deserted and there appears to be no updates on what exactly is happening. Webmasters around the world have been terribly hit by this biggest algorithmic change far bigger than Panda or Penguin. The interesting part to note is, Google blogs, forums and the company employees wont utter a word on what just happened on August 16 and August 21?  

Around half of our clients complained recently about a major drop in their traffic. Since we offer SEO consultancy, its our job to keep these sites well optimized. I was shocked with the figures I received from their Analytics reports. Far bigger surprise was when we noticed all blogs of STC Network being terribly effected with a tremendous loss in traffic for the past few weeks starting from August 16th. Based on the free available tools we have online, following are some reports presented as a brief Case Study that would prove that a major algorithmic change has surely occurred on Google's side which the company is neglecting to answer so far.

UPDATE#1: A Simple Solution has been shared. Please read:

• Recover your Lost Traffic Due to Google Outage

UPDATE#2: Google just announced the reasons what made a search traffic drop:

• Google Code named it as HummingBird!

1. Algoroo

Alogoroo is my favorite tool and it is the only reliable tool I use when observing changes in Google's algorithms. If you observe the chart below, you would see that the Red rectangular bar shooted high on August 16 and August 21. This clearly indicates that Google has surely refreshed their indexed data twice on these days. August 16 is the day when our blog's traffic along with thousand others dropped by 40%.

 

2. SERPS

Serps offers an extremely useful and tracking free tool that shows index volatility for Google and Bing. It gives a much wider information through different volatility charts on monthly and quarterly basis. If you observe the spikes on the chart below then you would notice that the changes in Google's algorithms dates back to even June 28-29 and July 26. Also observe the spikes on 16th and 21st August.

PS: Click the image to enlarge.

3. SERPMetrics

SerpMetrics is the most comprehensive tool amongst all because it shows major spikes of Search changes for all major Search engines which include Google, Yahoo and bing. Carefully observe below a major spike on 21st August.

4. GoSquared Testimony Proves it all!

Now to prove how badly the algorithmic Change on August 16th effected global traffic then see the chart below which is provided by GoSquared which offers real time analytics for websites. It is a popular service even used by BBC News and The TeleGraph.

GoSquared proved that on August 16th Google was unbelievably down for 5 minutes! People could not access YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, Blogger, Google+ or any service under Google's umbrella. All domains under the company were returning a server error between 23:52 and 23:57 BST on 16th August 2013.

The chart below shows a big drop in the number of pageviews of GoSquare tracking tool on August 16. This indicates that all sites which had the Gosquared script installed were actually receiving no search traffic from Google for exactly 5 minutes and this caused a serious traffic loss for over 40% of all sites using GoSquared. 

This is what that proves it all. Google went down for 5 minutes and yet the company neglected to comment on this global outage.

5. Google could not hide it!

After having contacted Google's Webspam team led by matt cutts and waiting for their replys , we could not wait any longer and thought to inform everyone that the above reports are not rumors but facts which Google accepts itself! How?

Google has a utility called AppsStatus that shows status for all sites under Google's root domain. Visiting this tool today convinced me to write this case study. The pink bullets indicate service outage and amazingly you would see a pink bullet next to all services owned by Google between August 16 and August 17. Since our blog is hosted on Blogger.com therefore you would notice that even blogger was down between August 16-17 and this is the main reason which explains why many of BlogSpot users were facing trouble logging into their accounts because the page kept on returning a server error.

PS: Click the image to enlarge.

So what now?

I am sure its not just you who is effected with this latest Google story but indeed all webmasters worldwide including us and all sites under our network. No one knows if this is a service failure on Google's part, or they have encountered a server breakdown or loss of indexed data or they are experimenting with a new Webspam algorithm but no matter whatever it is, it has badly effected all sites worldwide irrespective of the niche and content quality. Some say it is a new Penalty that Google will announce soon for sites sharing Affiliate products or similar. But I strongly disagree to all such claims because most of the sites that we service are entertainment based with not even a single affiliate link. Some even used to say that the traffic drop is because of summer season in WEST but I believe that is not a valid reason because we have never encountered such a massive traffic drop ever in past 5 years. Traffic during summer season is effected by a minor margin of 5-10% but the SERPs loss this time is as high as 90% for some sites which is alarming.

I would share some tips on what to do in order to make sure you recover the lost traffic. Its simply a SEO trial and error experiment that we think could possibly change things to a satisfying level. Stay tuned for our next post on Recovering the lost traffic due to Google outage.

Please share your precious views and tell us any new story that could contribute to the case study above. Do Tell us if you are one of those who are experiencing a Traffic loss for the past few weeks. Your views on this story could help many people.

Peace and blessings buddies.

---

Disclosure: The above article is just a case study and is not aimed at disclosing any hidden facts or degrading the company. We love Google and it means everything to us. We hope they would sort out this issue soon and would gift back its users all the hard earned traffic.

How To Serve Responsive Images On Your Site?

How To Serve Responsive Images On Your Site?

Responsive Web Design (RWD) has now become one of the the most important web design techniques nowadays, and it provide the cornerstone for modern mobile web development. Implementing a few RWD techniques to your blog can give it the edge it needed, nay deserved, to entice its mobile users to visit more often. So while we're on the subject of implementing RWD techniques, let's talk a bit about serving truly responsive images, because there are a couple issues every webmaster faces when dealing with images, responsively speaking.

Usually, Responsive Web Design has to with fluid images, i.e. images that resize themselves depending upon the users' screen size and resolution. They work fine for desktops and tablets, but the biggest problem with fluid images is, no matter what client the user has, the same image size will be sent to them. The user agent then resizes the image according to the specifications at hand. This can be a problem for mobile data connections, and can reduce load time on a mobile. You can, however, use a number of techniques to serve images of different sizes to user agents.

Picture Element in HTML 5

The <picture> element is set to become a standard for responsive images in HTML 5, and it will allow us to use multiple sources for a single image while deciding the source will be done depending on the screen size. The markup looks as follows;

<picture id="my_images">
   <source media="(min-width: 50em)" srcset="large1.jpg 1x, large2.jpg 2x">
   <source media="(min-width: 20em)" srcset="medium1.jpg 1x, medium2.jpg 2x">    
</picture>

Since HTML 5 hasn't been fully finalized, this element is still being proposed, and is in the testing phase. So it can't be used yet. You can, however, use a JavaScript library called Picture Fill to achieve the same effect. It makes use of span tags, and its markup looks something like this;

<span data-picture data-alt="Some ALT text">
        <span data-src="small.jpg"></span>
        <span data-src="medium.jpg" data-media="(min-width: 500px)"></span>
</span>

WordPress Plugins

If you have a WordPress website, then you're in luck, because there are various plugins you can use to do the job for you.

• Picture Fill WP
• Simple Responsive Image
• WP Responsive Image

PHP Scripts

If you somewhat know your way around PHP, then you can use a custom third-party PHP script to deliver resized images to the user depending upon the users' screen size and resolution. This is by far one of the most stable ways to do the job, and is definitely better than using JavaScript to detect user agent, and render image accordingly.

One such script is the Adaptive Image. Adaptive Image is a small PHP script that detects user screen size and deliver the proper image for that screen size. It does not require the changing of your current <img> markup, but the implementation is rather intimidating for less tech-savvy users.

We'll cover the implementation of these PHP scripts in another post. But for now, you can try the other alternatives, and tell us about your experience with these simple, yet effective responsive web design techniques. Cheers :)

Recover Your blog's Lost Traffic Due to Recent Google Outage

Recover Your blog's Lost Traffic Due to Recent Google Outage

The reason why we delayed this post was that we were actually experimenting on what actually caused a Global drop in traffic and why isn't Google responding on this biggest traffic Tsunami ever. I remember that from July 17th to August 17th MattCutts was on a 30 days self-Challenge of not reading news or using social media. I guess that challenge has already ended but is MattCutts even aware of the recent Google Outage that took place on August 16th, when he was on this "No Social Media, No News" challenge? :> We were not able to find a single piece of information on what exactly happened on August 16th and therefore were forced to do our own experimentation which at least improved our traffic by 10% and we are further waiting for more productive results. The tips below are optimization techniques for both Blogger and Wordpress Platforms. Applying them is indeed the easiest and quickest job.

UPDATE#1: Google just announced the reasons what made a search traffic drop:

• Google Explains it as HummingBird!

If you have not read our Case Study on Google Outage then please first read that:

• Read: Up to 90% Global Traffic Drop World Wide

What Might Have affected your Site Traffic this time?

All services by Google went down for 5 minutes on August 16th, which effected a global loss in traffic worldwide up to 50%-90%. We wrote a comprehensive Case Study to prove that Google actually went into trouble on two specific days and the company has not yet commented on this technical blackout.

A similar failure happened even on April 17th, 2013 when Google Apps, especially Gmail went down for over 30 Minutes and people could not log into this largest cloud based Emailing system. Google quickly commented on this failure by informing Mashable:

We are currently investigating issues with Gmail, Drive and Docs as well as the Google Apps Control Panel. We are providing more information and frequent updates through our Google Apps Status Dashboard, which you can find here.

But the problem this time is different. The outage this time effected Google's organic search traffic. Well optimized sites saw a massive drop of over 50-90% drop. The forums are crowded with anger and waiting for a positive reply but looks like this time we need to help the sinking ship ourselves.

Here are some of the problems and their solutions that might have resulted out of this latest Google outage story or new Google Penalty story:

Problem#1 : Precious loss of Indexed entries on Google servers

Google's databases that stores indexed data might have been badly effected which caused lost of several entries. Google bots gather newly updated content using sitemaps which are XML documents. Whenever you update your blog, your sitemap gets updated with a new tag entry, this entry pings Google through your webmasters account and that's how a Search robot gets informed when to pay visit to crawl and index the newly published content.

Solution#1:

If this assumption is the least right then a possible precaution would be to refresh the sitemaps you have submitted to Google. Follow these steps:

1. Log into your webmasters account
2. Go to Sitemaps
3. Check all boxes and hit the Resubmit button. Give Google at least 24 hours to refresh the new entries.

Tip For Blogger: Submit sitemaps containing at least 500 URLS. You can use our Multiple sitemap Submission tool to create total number of sitemaps for your Blogger blog.
Tip for Wordpress: In your XML sitemap plugin limit the number of posts to at most 500 or 1000. Add both these sitemaps in your webmasters account.

Problem#2 : Poor Quality Content  [True Definition]

A striking question that we often hear is Poor quality content and how to identify that you have written something that is poor in quality? The answer is simple, any post or page on your site that is of no value to Google users. Now what exactly could this content be. Following are some topics that come under this category:

1. Tags
2. Labels, Categories
3. Archives
4. Author Pages
5. Paginated Pages
6. Duplicate Content
7. Content with only links
8. Content with Less word count (less than 300)
9. Broken Links
10. Affiliate Links & Affiliate Posts!

• Don't Miss! 30 Recommended SEO settings for Blogger

I have taken care of almost all these types of SEO mistakes but the last one is something that I doubt this time and that is repeated posting on Affiliate products. We often post on Discount coupons with repeated use of keywords and product details. This pays no value to Google users but our Readers. After having brainstormed ourselves thoroughly We have come to a decision that such posting deserves to be tagged as noindex and noarchive. Google rarely sends traffic to Pages which shares affiliate products so it would be wise to take a safe side and noindex all such posts that offers no value in long term to our organic search and are meant to serve blog readers alone.

Solution#2:

We have written several tutorials on how to solve issue of the first 9 Poor quality content issues and today we will share an extremely easy and rarely applied method to make best use of your Affiliate posts and yet stay on the safer side. We will talk about Poor content issue#10 i.e. Affiliate Links & Affiliate Posts!

Its pretty obvious that you must always add a nofollow attribute to all your affiliate links but what about the post itself?

Noindex Affiliate Posts, Archives and Search Pages:

For Blogger:
Follow these steps for BlogSpot blogs:

1. Go to Blogger > Settings > Search Preferences
2. Enable Custom Robots header tags and set these settings:

Note: You can now easily noindex archives and Search pages (labels, search results) by choosing the noindex and noarchive options as shown in the image above.

Click Save and doing this will add a new option called "Custom Robots tags" in your blogger post editor. This option will enable you on how to treat a particular post. Whether you want it to be indexed or you don't want robots to crawl it. It has other options too for avoiding translating of post but we are concerned only with the tags noindex and noarchive here that will tell robots neither to crawl nor keep a cached copy of the page. 

Find all such posts where you have shared discount coupons or where you thing the post offers no quality and deserves to be tagged as noindex. Simply select the noindex and noarchive tags for that particular post and hit Update.

Note: This method doesn't add a meta tag under the opening Head tag of that particular page but it will instead add X-Robots-Tag header tag in the HTTP response of that page.
Check the X-Robots-Tag for my homepage:

For Further details please read:

• Read: Settings for Custom Robots Tags

For Wordpress:
Simply install Wordpress SEO by Yoast plugin and visit your post editor. You will find the noindex option just under the Advanced tab,

What then?

Once you have noindexed all poor quality pages and posts on your site, now it is time to refresh the sitemaps by resubmitting them to Google. This will force Google to recheck the URLS and automatically remove the noindexed posts from its entries. That simple!

Need Help?

Remember that the traffic loss this time could be due to any reason, we can only propose the best possible tips to ensure you get a step more closer when it comes to a well optimized site. The poor quality content on your site should be immediately removed by using the method described above. You do not need to deleted poor quality posts, just noindex them!
Let me know if you needed any help. Please do inform us back after a week or so, to let us know how this method brought a change to your overall site traffic. We will try our best to keep Blogger community updated with all latest SEO techniques that are applicable. Wish you a happy blogging experience and a happy Traffic recovery! Peace and blessings buddies. :»

Is It True That Google Plus Activity Has No Search Ranking Benefit?

Is It True That Google Plus Activity Has No Search Ranking Benefit?

“Does having a strong presence on Google+ affects your presence on Google as a whole? Or more precisely, does it have any direct impact on Google’s search rankings? “. This is one for the debates, as people often dispute it, essentially because the Google Plus share link is a dofollow link, which means it passes PageRank. But as Google's Matt Cutts told us time and time again, Google Plus activity might not actually give you any search ranking benefit, as suggested by one latest study by Eric Enge, co-author of The Art of SEO and a speaker at SES SF 2013.

 

The study by Enge, named Direct Measurement of Google Plus Impact on Search Rankings, draws attention to a surprisingly shocking result. It shows that Google+ has no direct impact on your Google rankings. Google+ can increase visibility of your post, which ultimately leads to more traffic,, but then again, Facebook or Twitter can do the same as well.
Here is a video interview between Eric Enge and Greg Jarboe on this study:

The Study

Stone Temple Consulting took three different websites that were on the internet for the past two years. Two articles were written for each website. One of the article pages was used as the “Test Page”, and the other was used as the “Baseline Page”. Both pages were standalone, and were implemented without any links to them from any source.

Both of them received an initial set of Google+ Shares, 6 for the Test Pages, and 40 or more for the Baseline Pages. A group of Google+ influencers (Those who have large no of following) shared the Test page. The participants were also instructed to only share the page, not to link or visit the page, unless absolutely necessary.

• The pages were tracked from the end of July 2013 to September 15, 2013.
• At each stage, each share was accompanied by a strong disclaimer very similar to the following
• All pages were monitored to verify that no links were implemented to the pages. Tools used to monitor links were Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, and Ahrefs.
• Results were tracked daily over the course of the study.

Analysis

The study was conducted for three major goals:

• To see if Google Plus would drive discovery.
• Does Google Plus drive page indexing?
• Whether Google Plus shares have an impact on page ranking.

Page Discovery

In terms of discovery, Enge said

"In my opinion, it is highly likely that Google+ drove discovery of the content."

The Google Developers page for implementing +1 buttons states that;

“By using a Google+ button, Publishers give Google permission to utilize an automated software program, often called a “web crawler,” to retrieve and analyze websites associated with a Google+ button. “

While this does not say they will index it, or rank it, it does say that they reserve the right to crawl it, and it was important enough for them to explicitly state that they might do so.

And it all makes sense too. The study revealed that it took Google Bot only 6 minutes to find the pages after the first Google Plus share.

Page Indexing

During analysis, Enge found that Google+ shares probably drive indexing. All the six articles (2 articles, on each of the 3 test pages) initially appeared in the Google index 10 days later.

Page Ranking

"We saw no evidence of Google+ shares driving ranking," Enge said. "Once we saw that a page was indexed, we were immediately able to find search queries for which the page ranked. However, this does not mean that the shares were driving ranking. As per the original Sergey Brin - Larry Page thesis, each page on the web has a small amount of innate PageRank. This PageRank by itself might cause a page to rank for certain types of long tail queries, even in the absence of any other signals."

For example, one of the test pages had 10 search phrases. As the chart below shows, there is no pattern to the rankings since the page appeared in the Google index:

You can see from the above graphs that rankings have no specific pattern.

Final summary

According to Enge’s study;

• Google+ shares do drive discovery.
• Google+ shares probably drive indexing as well.
• No evidence of ‘Google+ shares driving ranking’ was found.

Interview of Eric Enge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfNbTzjvRGI

What Are The SEO Benefits of Using Tumblr For Content Marketing?

What Are The SEO Benefits of Using Tumblr For Content Marketing?

Tumblr is one of the many social networks out there. But it's not just another social media network. Many people underestimate the usefulness of Tumblr, even though it has huge potential for SEO and social media marketing. Tumblr is quickly growing in popularity. But still many people are unaware of its benefits. So, in this post let's talk a bit about Tumblr, how it works and how to get started using Tumblr for online marketing. And most importantly, what are the SEO benefits of using Tumblr?

What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a blogging and social networking platform that hosts more than 131 million blogs and is among the top 15 websites in the United States. Tumblr was founded by David Karp and currently owned by Yahoo. Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme's HTML.

• Social Networking and Blogging combined
  Tumblr includes both blogging (and microblogging) and social networking features. Tumblr has all the blogging functionality of a blog platform such as WordPress, blogger, etc. Tumblr also include all the social networking features of a social network site such as Facebook or Twitter. This makes Tumblr a unique platform.

Why Tumblr is a big deal?

• More than 131 million blogs as of 20th September.
• Tumblr is among the top 15 websites in U.S.
• More 50% of Tumblr users are under the age of 25.
• Many people are switching to Tumblr (most of them are teens).
• Tumblr has unique 300 million monthly visitors.

By 2011 Tumblr had three times more blogs than WordPress. Today Tumblr is the largest hosted blog platform on the web having 300 million blogs. And a large number of world’s largest, leading brands have presence on Tumblr.

Tumblr also has a huge potential for SEO and social media marketing .With user numbers and popularity on the rise, it’s a perfect marketing tool for businesses.

Tumblr – The Benefits?

1) Customization

You are aware that impressions do matter. Tumblr allows you to customize your page. Choose your layout style and find a design that matches your page’s theme. A variety of themes are available. Choose the one that fits your business.

2) Dofollow links

Most blog software creates allows you to create a link to yourself when you comment on a blog post. Links bring traffic to your site when they click the link, but each link can also count as a “vote” for your site with search engines. These backlinks increase your page rank and help your site rank closer to first in search engine results. Dofollow blogs create normal links that count as a vote for your site.

Tumblr offers you a Dofollow backlink for each link you share, which is the biggest advantage. Unlike Facebook or other social media, sharing on Tumblr can actually do you good outside of that social media, and aside from bringing you traffic, it will also help you increase your PageRank.

3) Tumblr tags

Tumblr features a unique tagging system. If you want to add a tag, simply start typing a word and Tumblr will suggest you the relevant tags. Unlike Facebook, Tumblr tags are already used for content discovery. Thus by using relevant tags, there is a good chance of your content to be discovered.

4) Microsites

You can use Tumblr to quickly set up simple, easy to manage and free microsites (Now called as Simple Sites). You can even use your own domain name with these microsites.

Microsites can also be used for redirection to your main website. By building a sleek microsite with quality content would increase your page rank within months.

5) Branding

Tumblr is an excellent platform for promoting your brands. With Tumblr becoming more and more popular, it’s a perfect marketing tool for businesses that are trying to extend their reach. With more than 300 million unique users, you can easily promote your brand. By posting quality content, you will have a strong online presence on Tumblr. You might have heard that “the best marketing strategy online is to Be Everywhere” - Pat Flynn.

10 Alternatives to Fiverr : Make Up to $25 per Gig!

10 Alternatives to Fiverr : Make Up to $25 per Gig!

Fiverr originally started out as a new and very unique concept. There were only the big freelancing websites like Elance and Freelancer etc back then. So Fiverr brought a very refreshing change. Whether you are a proper freelancer or just a regular office-going guy, Fiverr gives you a chance to earn some quick bucks so you can cover up your extravagances. Fiverr is also a great place to get your freelancing career started. But the trouble is, Fiverr only allows you to earn $5 minus their commission per gig. For some people, this might not be enough. Luckily for them, many alternative websites to fiverr have emerged over the years. Fiverr was such a success that many others adopted the idea and came up with their own version of Fiverr. Most of these aren't very good, but some might just be better than Fiverr! So here, we will discuss about the top 10 alternatives to fiverr you must try.

 

Why not Fiverr?

There're a few legit reasons why you would not want to stay with Fiverr. It might seem very attractive, but it does has short-comings. Firstly, it doesn't pay you very well. Now I know people make hundreds of dollars off it every month, but considering the effort, is it really worth it? %5 is sort of a bottleneck which you might want to eventually break out of.

Secondly, you don't even earn a full $5. Fiverr commission is 20%, which is huge by any standards! So essentially, you only get $4, and the remaining one dollar goes to Fiverr. Imagine you complete 200 gigs in a month. You will only get $800, where you could be getting a full grand. That's just $200 down the drain!

Fiverr is no longer what it once was. It started off as a fun place where people could make use of their creativity. But over the years, it has become quite competitive. Much more complicated jobs are being done now for a much smaller price. Let me give you an example. I spotted two different gigs on fiverr. One promised to "Suggest a professional name and motto for a website," while another said, "I will create an attractive dynamic website using HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript for $5."

Do you see the injustice? The guy who suggests professional names probably is a natural at this. He might hardly take 10 minutes to come up with a good name and slogan. But the web-designer has to work for hours, just for a petty $4. Both these guys will earn the same. The point is, Fiverr might just not be worth it if it takes more than 30 minutes t complete a gig. In that case, you need to look on to alternatives, some of which we have right here for you.

Top 10 Alternatives to Fiverr

1. GigBucks

GigBucks is is a very popular alternative to Fiverr. It hosts gigs for all the categories found on fiverr. It gives freelancers the opportunity to charge an appropriate amount of money for their services. A gig can be anywhere in the range of $5 to $50, definitely a big step up from the $4 on fiverr. Just like Fiverr, joining is absolutely free. And you can post as many gigs as you like. A must try for existing fiverr users or other people.

2. Zeerk

Zeerk is another big fish up for grabs. Working at Zeerk can be much more worth your while. You can charge as much as $100 per gig! Now, services can charged appropriately and no one needs feel left out! For small jobs such as $2 or $5 jobs, there is no commission! And I thought Fiverr was cool!

3. SEOClerks

This is one of  my favorite websites. It contains gigs relating to SEO, internet marketing, and other such web services. The great thing about it is, it offers the widest range of money you can ask for your gigs. You could either ask for $1 for a petty job, or you could ask as much as $999 for a high value project. Web masters would love this website. Just visit it and see what i'm talking about.

4. TenBux

TenBux is very similar to Fiverr. A lot similar, in fact. It has a similar interface, which is simple and easy to use.  It has almost all of the categories Fiverr has. Only big difference is, it allows $10 per gig, twice of what fiverr would allow. Out of the $10, you get $8, which is the exact commission rate as it is with fiverr.

5. FittyTown

FittyTown is another website that offers a large amount of money for almost the same things hosted on fiverr for far less. It allows gigs of only $50, nothing more, nothing less. After deduction, you will get $40, a 20% commission deduction. But overall, it's a good website that you must try. Who knows you might get lucky :)

6. Dollar3

This website is a lot better than fiverr or some of its alternatives. For one, it pays out through both PayPal and AlertPay. Here, you can host any type of gig for $5, and some other multiples of 3; $3, $6, $9, $12, $15, $27, $45, and $90. Not bad eh? Sign up now and show the world what you've got!

7. TwentyVille

Here's another good alternative. If offers much more than fiverr does. You can host gigs for either $10 or $20. The commission remains the same @ 20%. So you will get $8 or $16. Still, you're better off with this than you are with fiverr.

8. Tenrr

This is another copy, if not a clone of fiverr. The name, you can see. But the interface is a little similar too. The good thing is, it has a lower commission rate than fiverr. And it allows you to post gigs ranging from $1 to $10. So that's pretty useful as far as categorization of work is concerned. But the problem here is, giggers have to post gigs with lower and lower rates to attract clients. And I must say, $1 is too low for any kind or work, unless it involves suggesting a name or slogan or something.

9. GigMe5

Website similar to Fiverr. The interface works very similar. And the services are the same too. $5 gigs, 20% commission etc.

10. Fourerr

Another website very similar to fiverr. Only, it hosts $4 gigs. The rest is the same. 20% commission, payment through PayPal, similar interface, etc. Not better than fiverr, but definitely worth a shot.

That was a list of our top 10 alternatives to Fiverr. If you have more, then do share them with us. Hope this post helped. Go on and try these websites out! Good luck :)