May 7, 2020

How to Make Money on Fiverr

Nick Making Money 4 Comments

Today I’m focusing on a money-making opportunity that is literally open to anyone. It involves advertising your services on a website called Fiverr.

What is Fiverr?

Fiverr is a US-based site that lets anyone advertise ‘gigs’ (tasks) they are willing to perform for five dollars – hence the name, of course. You are also allowed to charge more than $5 as you gain positive feedback and experience.

Gigs range from the serious (e.g. write a press release) to the creative (e.g. design a tee-shirt – see cover image) to the downright quirky (e.g. write your message, name or URL in chocolate). Most gigs are services that are delivered electronically, though there is nothing to stop you selling physical products if you wish (you can charge extra for postage).

Fiverr was launched in 2009, and they recently revealed that freelance earnings via the site now exceed a billion dollars. Whatever your skills or interests, there is bound to be a service people will pay you to provide there.

Of course, you may already have noticed one potential drawback. Five dollars is only around £4.03 at current exchange rates. And in fact it’s worse than that, because Fiverr’s fees and charges have to be deducted, meaning that you will only receive about $4, or £3.22, for each $5 gig you complete.

Read on, though, because there are techniques you can use to boost your Fiverr income to something far more substantial. But first, you will need an account…

Getting Started on Fiverr

Joining Fiverr is straightforward (and free).

Navigate to the Fiverr homepage and at the top, click on ‘Join’. A sign-up box will then be displayed.

Fill in the fields for your email address, username, and password (your choice). Read and accept the terms of service, and complete the inevitable captcha form. Then click the Join button. You will see a page displayed with a message that says ‘Activation link was emailed to you’.

Check your email for a message from Fiverr with the subject line ‘Fiverr: Registration Confirmation’ and click the link inside the email message. You should then be taken to a page on Fiverr that says, ‘Account successfully activated. Hey, this is a great time to edit your Profile.’

Congratulations! You’ve completed the registration and sign-up process for Fiverr. Make a note of your user name, password, and the email address you used to sign up so that you can log in again in future.

One other thing you should do as soon as possible is to fill in all the fields in your profile, including a picture of yourself. It’s important to have a completed profile, so that potential clients can see the person they will be dealing with. In addition, your gigs will only be eligible for extra (free) promotion on Fiverr when your profile has all the blanks filled in.

Finally, you will need a Paypal account to receive your fees. If you don’t have one already, you can sign up here. As you will be running a business, you should get a business account rather than a personal one. Note that Fiverr operates primarily in US dollars, but with PayPal it’s very easy to change one currency in your account to another.

Listing Your First Gig

Once you’ve decided what service you are going to offer – spend some time browsing Fiverr for ideas if you’re not sure – you’ll want to list your first gig. Here are six tips for getting off to the best possible start…

1. Very important – create a high-quality digital image that’s relevant to the gig you’re selling. This will be different from your profile photo. Make the image colourful, vivid, and expressive. It should stand out and draw a potential customer’s eye.
2. Add keywords to the listing for your ad. This is important, too, as it increases the number of views your gigs will receive. The more views you receive, in general, the more sales you are likely to make.
3. Write a thorough, easy-to-understand description of your gig. If you’re unsure how to do this, search for other gigs that are generating a lot of ‘stars’ and positive comments.
4. State a realistic length of time it will take you to deliver the product. Get this wrong, and the negative comments will affect your ability to sell that gig in the future.
5. Provide clear instructions to the buyer. This will save you hours of answering unnecessary emails from customers. Tell them exactly what they must do, how they should do it, and what they can expect. If you still receive the same questions repeatedly, add another sentence or two to your instructions.
6. Consider creating a video to introduce your gigs.

The latter is becoming more and more common on Fiverr. For some types of gig nowadays, having a ‘gig video’ is virtually obligatory. In your video you can talk about (and preferably demonstrate) the service you are offering.

As well as adding interest to your listing, using a video will increase the exposure to your gig, not only on Fiverr, but in the search engines as well.

You can also use YouTube to promote your Fiverr videos. As Google owns YouTube, there’s a good chance your Fiverr video will be shown high in Google’s search results for your selected keyword/s.

If you don’t have a dedicated video camera, you can, of course, make perfectly serviceable videos nowadays using a mobile phone, smartphone, or even a webcam.

Another option is to use screencasting software, such as the free web-based Screenr. This will allow you to record a video up to five minutes long showing whatever is on your computer screen with your spoken commentary over it.

And, of course, there is no shortage of people on Fiverr offering to create a gig video for you!

Promoting Your Gig

Fiverr is one of the top 200 sites on the internet and attracts huge amount of traffic – so the very fact of listing your gig there will ensure plenty of people see it.

You should, however, make an effort to promote it yourself as well, especially when you’re just starting out and don’t have much of a track record.

Every Fiverr gig has its own unique web page URL, and you should share this as widely as possible. Put it in your email signature, and post it on Facebook, Twitter and any other social networks you belong to. If you use online forums, include the link in your signature text (most forums will permit this). If you’re a blogger, blog about it too.

As mentioned, it can also be a good idea to create a gig video and post it on YouTube. This is another site that generates huge amounts of traffic, and can provide another route for potential buyers (and search engines) to find you.

Techniques for Boosting Your Income

At first glance the earning potential of Fiverr looks limited. But with a little imagination, you can effectively boost your returns many times over. Here are three top techniques you can use…

1. Do the Work Once, Sell Multiple Times

This is a technique anyone can use, even if they are brand new to Fiverr. For example, you could write a short report or e-book and sell it through the site multiple times. This is slightly against the spirit of Fiverr, but I’ve seen plenty of people doing it. Here’s one current example…

‘I will list ten great under-appreciated horror movies by cult and old-school movie directors for you and write a brief synopsis for $5.’

I assume this individual has already written his report and simply sends it to anyone who pays the $5 for it.

One top tip here is to make it sound as if you are personalizing your offer for each recipient. As in the example above, refer to the reader as ‘you’ and explain exactly what you (and your report) are going to do for them. Essentially, by this method, you could sell the same report dozens of times, potentially making hundreds of pounds or more from a single short report.

2. Offer Multiples and Extras

This is really the key to making big money on Fiverr. ‘Multiples’ simply means that a client can buy the same gig from you multiple times (e.g. if you are offering logo design for $5, they could buy five different logo designs for $25).

Extras are additional features you offer on top of your basic gig. For example, someone offering to write a 250-word blog post for $5 might offer a 500 word article for $10, and so on.

As a newbie on the platform you will be quite limited in the multiples and extras you can offer. Currently you can offer just two gig extras ($5, $10 and $20) and five gig multiples

Once you have ten gigs on Fiverr completed with no complaints against you, you will be promoted to what the platform calls Level One. At this point you can add more multiples and extras to your gigs. The most you can charge for extras is $40 at Level One, and $50 at Level Two (for which you require 50 completed gigs).

You can read more about Levels on Fiverr, what is required to achieve them, and the benefits of reaching any particular level on this page of the Fiverr website.

As an example, a Level Two children’s book illustrator by the name of Yahyadaan (see screen capture below) is currently offering to draw a picture in black and white for $5. Paying $15 gets you a colour illustration, and $30 gets you a full colour illustration with ‘high quality detail’ and commercial use allowed. You can also pay an extra $10 for rapid delivery (within a day). The latter is a very common extra, incidentally, and in effect triples your fee for a basic $5 job.

The ability to offer multiples and extras greatly boosts the money-making potential of Fiverr, so it’s well worth putting in a bit of extra effort with your first few gigs to ensure you get good feedback and are quickly promoted to the higher levels.

3. Ask for a Tip

Buyers on Fiverr generally realise they are getting a good-value service, and many are happy to pay a bit extra to recognize this. This applies especially with US clients, as tipping there is pretty much a way of life!

There is an etiquette to asking for a tip on Fiverr, and you shouldn’t just demand one. The preferred approach is to set up a separate ‘tip gig’. This is just like any other gig, except you don’t have to do anything in return.

Just include a link to your ‘tip gig’ when delivering your gigs and let clients decide whether to pay. If you have given good service, there is every chance they will. As an example, here is a link to a tip gig for a Fiverr member I worked with a few years ago, although I see that her account is on hold (maybe she has moved on to bigger and better things by now).

By using the techniques set out here, you should realistically be able to generate a substantial part-time or even full-time income on Fiverr, while doing something you enjoy from the comfort of home.

• Although in this post I have focused on making money from Fiverr, of course it can also be a great way of getting assistance with a wide range of entrepreneurial and personal projects. I have hired other Fiverr members on various occasions for tasks ranging from designing a banner ad to removing malware from this blog after it was hacked. In general I have received excellent service for keen prices. And while on the subject, I highly recommend the WordPress specialist named Zerotech who came to my rescue in the aforementioned hacking attack and got my blog back to normal within 48 hours 🙂

Good luck, and if you have any comments or questions, as always, please do post therm below.