Check out Fiverr.com, where the concept is you can buy services or products (or offer them) for a straight $5. You can also post an offer to pay $5 for the service or product of your choice.

There are some standard offerings – to get twitter followers, create youtube videos, make a video testimonial for your product (which means we can all have a smarmy TV commercial for our product now), be a business assistant for one hour, create a travel itinerary – that are hohum to scroll through. However, it’s those of the ‘I can’t believe someone would do this’ variety that has most likely led to the stratospheric traffic of this current Internet fad.

Some of my favorite oddities are:

• Kiks’ offer to ‘write your name on my nail and send you a picture for $5′. You can select a toe or finger and support a ‘starving artist’. Just imagine how much pain Van Gogh would have saved if he’d simply chosen to write the name of his obsession on a body part rather than sending her the ear.
• ‘I will marry you and love you for $5′ from vitalis, who is apparently a 29 year old male living in Haifa, Israel and looking for his soul mate. Why that person has to fork over cash to get him is beyond me. Is there a return policy? Probably not if you’re Palestinian.
• feverrlover says she will ‘put realistic, flirtacious Facebook wall comments on your profile to make everyone jealous’. There is no mention of whether her services are only for men, or if she goes both ways, but as I already have a REAL super hot chick in my life I’ll have to leave the mystery unsolved.
• the rather plainly named ‘kathy‘ offers to interpret dreams for five: “Any dream you have tell me and i will interpret it for you. Even I will give you suggestions on it’. A word to the wise: if she butchers English this badly in the offer stage, nothing good can come of the actual delivery. I’d hate to see what she could come up with between her command of English and my crazy dreams.
• Tandliv will ‘curse out or yell at anyone you want, by call or voicemail’. This could come in handy: bookmarked! Just don’t get me so mad I’ll get out the wallet.
• This one captured my attention: ‘I will write a fictional story about your life as a superhero for $5′. If the kids will give up their Saturday candy money, I might just send this dude a picture of my superpower bowling shoes and see what he comes up with.
• Jesus surely would not approve, having thrown the money-lenders out of the temple: ‘I will pray in Vatican Square for you for $5‘. I wouldn’t take that prayer if you sent me $50, after all the coverage the Catholic priests have gotten lately.
• Ah, here’s the one: ‘I will show you how to read your GIRLFRIEND mind (sic) for $5′, from the aptly named Lovekey. That one I can use! The bonus material for ‘some of the best bar bets so you can earn money from some random people’ seems a bit dicey though. Better make sure they’re drunk first.

I actually did a test before this post, as I was in need of a novel gift for my best friend, Brodie. She and I have shared a love of words from the instant we met, through reading published poets, her suffering my meagre gifts, and exchanging magnetic poetry kits. I wrote to a fellow who promised to ‘write a personalized humorous or serious poem commemorating a person or event in your life for $5‘, and asked if he could do a quick turnaround for me in time for tea the next day with my dear Brodie and included a few details about her. Here’s the response I received:

“Thanks for the invitation but I am just bombed with requests, one of which has me totally perplexed about a last verse. Yours also sounds like a more lofty work with longer words which drain my creative processes. I can crank out the humorous, light-hearted stuff in no time at all; the higher order, however, taxes me terribly.”

Poor thing. It seems even my letter taxed him. I guess $5 doesn’t go that far these days.

What would YOU do for $5? Please comment for free below.