While there may be challenges ahead for these stocks, there are also several tailwinds expected to be behind freelancing and the gig economy in general. In this Motley Fool Live segment from "Ask Us Anything," recorded on June 1, Fool.com contributor Travis Hoium takes a closer look at Fiverr (FVRR 3.69%) and Upwork (UPWK 2.42%) stocks.
Travis Hoium: I like them both. I think they are are good basket of companies just in this general trend. This is going to be an interesting case of, if you take a look at the long-term revenue trends for, let's just take a company like Fiverr, because I'm the most familiar with that, is the last two years going to just look like a blip on their growth chart? But the growth continues to be up and to the right? I think that's going to be the case. I mentioned earlier on, I think we're just starting to see the beginning of the gig economy, however you want to talk about it, be a disruptive piece of business models. This is going to allow small businesses to compete with big businesses just the way that Shopify did with Amazon. Shopify was successful because somebody wants to sell some good or service. The want to make a really good website. They want to have a good experience. They want the shipping to be easy, but they can't do all of those things themselves, so Shopify came along and said, "Hey, we'll do this software-as-a-service for you."
I think the same thing is happening with what Fiverr is doing. I really like the low price point. Somebody mentioned here that they are a US freelancer and a place like Fiverr does make it hard to compete when you're competing with service providers who are in lower-cost parts of the world. That is a challenge as a supplier on the market, but there's also many different price points, and you can search based on geographic preferences, you can search based on quality levels. I mean, as I've looked at getting graphic design work done, you can get something done for $30 or $3,000. Usually, the quality of work, just like happens in markets, corresponds with what you're paying for things. I think long term, there's going to be a lot of tailwinds behind that kind of business and the freelance business in general and the gig economy in general. There's going to be bumps along the way. I'm absolutely admitting that and would predict that that will continue, but I think there's going to be a lot of tailwinds too.
