Why Small Businesses Are Outsourcing More Work to Freelancers

Why small businesses are outsourcing

Time is the pressure point. A Small Business Expo survey found that 46.5% of small business owners see having more time as the single biggest improvement they need. For an owner balancing sales, customer service, finances and day-to-day operations, that shortage can affect more than convenience: it can leave specialized work undone or push it into evenings and weekends.

That helps explain why companies are turning to freelancers. Fiverr says business hiring through its platform has risen 260% in recent years, according to its 2025 Economic Impact Report. The figure points to a sizable shift in activity on the platform, but it doesn’t show whether businesses are creating new freelance work, moving existing work online, or switching from other ways of finding contractors.

That distinction matters. A platform’s growth can reflect changes in where work is booked as well as changes in how much work businesses need. The scale is notable, though the figures don’t tell us how much of that growth reflects new demand versus shifts in how businesses source work.

Fiverr estimates freelancing adds $319 billion to the U.S. economy, equal to 1.1% of GDP, and says freelancers in top markets earn an average of $52,000 a year, according to its report. Those estimates provide a broad picture of the sector, but they don’t describe what a typical small business spends, how consistently freelancers find work, or how earnings vary across services and experience levels.

The arrangement can work for both sides. Small businesses get help with tasks they may not have the time or in-house skills to handle; freelancers can use projects to supplement their income. A business can bring in a specialist for a defined job without adding a permanent role, while a freelancer may gain access to clients beyond their local area. The trade-off is that each project still needs clear expectations, review and coordination.

Actor Victoria Carroll, who joined Fiverr in 2018 to pursue voice-over work, told Entrepreneur she earned an average of $1,000 to $2,000 a month within her first year. In her second full year on the platform, she made $70,000—more than she had earned before. Her experience illustrates what can happen for one freelancer; it shouldn’t be read as a forecast for others, since demand and earnings can differ widely by service and circumstances.

Ten services owners are handing off

For owners weighing where to bring in outside help, Fiverr lists these commonly outsourced services. The range runs from creative production to technical and language work, which reflects how many different needs a small company may have. A list of popular categories can help frame the choices, but it doesn’t establish which service will be most useful or cost-effective for a particular business.

What outsourcing changes for owners

This is more significant than it looks: outsourcing can give a small business access to skills without requiring it to keep every specialty on staff. But contracting a task doesn’t make the task disappear from the owner’s workload. Someone still has to define the brief, share the necessary materials, assess the result and decide whether revisions are needed. That coordination takes time too.

Here's the thing: the value depends on the fit between the task and the outside help. Work with a clear deliverable, such as editing a video or designing a book, may be easier to scope than an ongoing responsibility whose priorities change week to week. And yet even a well-defined project can require back-and-forth before the final result meets the business’s needs. If you're working in this space, the useful question is whether hiring out a task frees enough time or adds enough expertise to justify the cost and oversight.

(And this is the part most people overlook.) A list of services and platform growth figures can make outsourcing sound straightforward, but they don’t capture the effort involved in choosing a provider or maintaining quality across repeated projects. The numbers here are underwhelming as a guide to outcomes: they show reported scale and one individual example, while leaving the typical business’s results unclear.

For owners, the practical implication is to treat outsourcing as a way to allocate work, not as an automatic cure for limited time. Start with the task itself: what needs to be delivered, what information does the provider need, and who will review the work? The answers help clarify whether an outside specialist can take meaningful pressure off the business. Sometimes, that’s enough.

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Why Small Businesses Are Outsourcing More Work to Freelancers