Imagine you've got a photo of yourself or a friend which you really like, but you know it could be made perfect with just a little Photoshop magic. Except you don't really know much about retouching photos yourself so you're a little stuck. What you really need is a friend or helper who can just do it for you, maybe in return for a few drinks. How will you find that person? Well, these days we have Fiverr.

Instead of hassling your friends, you can browse Fiverr to find someone offering the right sort of services. You can even check out examples of their work and ratings from previous customers before you ask them to do the job. And when you make the deal, you're only promising $5. It's only as risky as asking a friend to do you a favour and promising a few drinks in return. How's that for a great idea?

What's Fiverr?

In short, Fiverr is a marketplace, connecting people who have skills they'd like to sell for $5 with people who want small things done for $5. The $5 price point is crucial and leads to some fascinating offers.

Sign-up is quick, directly through Fiverr or even quicker with a Facebook login.

What Do People Sell for $5?

On Fiverr, there are people selling Photoshop skills, offering to draw pictures for you, offering to post postcards from a particular country, offering virtual assistant duties, posting special family recipes, singing happy birthday, offering critiques of websites, giving tourist advice of their local area, songwriting, giving industry advice, writing your name in Chinese calligraphy or elvish, taking photos of messages in coffee froth, proofreading and all sorts of other random offers.

Browse by popularity, rating or the type of service and you'll get a feel for the variety of skills available on Fiverr. The ideas are wild and varied — some of them are so unexpected! Browse away and you'll find yourself thinking "Hey, that would be cool. Yeah, I'd pay $5 for that!".

If you do want to buy someone's services, Fiverr links into PayPal to make payments simple.

What If No-One Offers The Skill I Want?

If no-one's offering the service you're after specifically, you can also advertise as a buyer in need of that service. To do this, look for "Request Gigs" in the right-hand column. Say what you'd like done for $5 and see if anyone takes you up on your offer.

What Could You Sell For $5?

As you've seen, there are many possibilities as to what you can sell through Fiverr. What is clear though, is that people selling their skills must quantify exactly what they will do. For example, "I will proofread one essay under 2,000 words within three days". If you don't specify how long the essay, how many essays you will proofread or how long you will take, things will get confusing for the buyer. Also be careful if you're offering to post things — think of how much it would cost to post worldwide before you offer!

It seems as if some sellers are trying to undercut others by offering to do an incredible amount of work for their $5 fee. That sort of thing happens everywhere — just don't buckle to the pressure if you think you're worth more (which you are). Browse the site thoroughly as there are some very imaginative offers out there which would be quite useful for the buyer and yet easy for the seller to do. Let them inspire you into profitable ventures.

At the top of most pages in Fiverr is a box where you can offer your services for $5. Start there and it will allow you to add more details in the next page, including specifics and an example picture. They also make it easy for you to share your Fiverr service offers with your friends on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere.

What Else Might You Use?

Obviously, Fiverr isn't the only online marketplace for services in the world. There are many other ways you could solicit services or offer your services for hire online. The Facebook Marketplace is one of the simpler examples, followed by Craigslist. Any freelancing marketplace shows some similarity to Fiverr, eg. PeoplePerHour or MicroWorkers. Also worth considering are the other tools listed in this article on how teens can make money online.

Despite all these similar market options, Fiverr still has a unique selling point - that is, the $5 price tag. This encourages both the buyers and sellers because it's an appealing amount.

What is the best service you've seen on Fiverr? Have you found it easy to use? What do you sell through Fiverr? Let us know in the comments!