Posted by Learn how to start freelancing on Fiverr and see free tips on getting well-paying gigs on the platform.
What is Fiverr?
Fiverr is an online marketplace for freelance services with low-cost providers from all over the world. The idea behind the brand is to streamline the process of hiring or getting hired as a freelancer. The online marketplace cuts out the middleman of hiring, firing, and HR departments. Smaller businesses can get things done on a more case-by-case basis, and freelancers have the freedom of selling their services at any time to any company.
Fiverr allows clients to pay in advance for Gigs, which constitute any digital service, including WordPress design, logo design, writing services, transcriptions, NFT artwork, Twitch graphics, and even voiceover work. Although all services were priced at $5 when the site initially launched, freelancers can now set their price to whatever they choose and can offer package deals or Gig Packages.
How does Fiverr work?
Fiverr works by letting buyers pay in advance for “gigs,” which are any freelance service, ranging from web design to social media marketing to copywriting. When it first started, all gigs were initially priced at $5, but now freelance sellers can decide to charge more or offer services packages. Orders are typically completed within a day or two, but the seller sets the delivery time, which can take longer if the seller has a queue of orders. The seller will receive 80% of the total order value when your order is completed. For example, a $5 gig means the freelancer will receive $4 for a completed order.
There are two ways to view the site, as a freelancer or as a buyer.
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Important terms
- Gig: A service offered on Fiverr’s website. Gig example: “I will write you an excellent press release for $5.”
- Seller: A registered user {freelancer} who offers Gigs
- Buyer: A registered user who purchases Gigs {When a Gig is purchased, it”s called an order}
- Post a Request: A buyer requests services {Gigs} if they have a specific need.
RELATED ARTICLE: 9 Steps To Post A Job On Upwork As A Freelancer.
Tips for Buyers on Fiverr
1. Don’t use multiple accounts
Fiverr only allows one active account per user, and any {caught} attempts to cheat this will result in disabling all related accounts. You can read more about this in Fiverr’s Terms of Service {in short, it’s a way for them to protect users against fraud and abuse}.
In addition, think well before choosing your Fiverr username because you cannot change it once registered.
2. Save your favorites
Sometimes searching the platform is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. And when you do find the exemplary service or, as is often the case, another exciting service in your quest to find the good service, you want to make sure you don’t forget what it is. To avoid that, save them for later in a separate collection, just like you do on Pinterest.
ALSO READ: 15 Fiverr gigs that requires no skill to make money online today.
3. Always contact the seller before buying
The good thing about Fiverr is that it allows buyers and sellers to message each other before an order is placed. Even if you’ve found the proper gig that matches your requirements, don’t rush into hitting the order button. Near the seller’s profile, you will see a Contact me button that pops up into a contact window where you can briefly describe what you’re looking for. This will allow you to know the seller’s reply and learn a bit about them. Getting different answers will help you make a better choice in choosing the winning seller.
4. Use a secret word
When posting a request, add a secret word in the project description, asking sellers to mention it when making an offer to your request. You’d be surprised to see that almost 50% of the order will miss it. This will help you pick out people that haven’t read the request and go with the most motivated ones.
5. Don’t leave bad ratings unless it’s unavoidable.
Instead of leaving bad ratings, message the seller and explain why you are unhappy with the results. This is because ratings are essential to sellers. They will likely offer to fix your issue without any additional fee. It’s better to give sellers a chance to repair things before leaving them a bad rating. Most sellers will appreciate this and will try to help. Even if there might be a slight delay, it’s still a win-win
6. Use some best practices to get faster results.
If you are looking for a fast fix, you will need to pay attention to several things. Besides going after Fiverr sellers that have a good response and delivery time, there are other Fiverr tips to pay attention to:
- After posting a request to the seller community, your project details will go into a review stage. This happens because Fiverr needs to check if your project is compliant with their TOS, meaning that it will take a couple of hours to get your request approved. If you want to get things rolling fast, it is advisable to submit the request ASAP.
- For a fast reply to your request, look for sellers that are marked Online. Look for the Online icon in the upper-right corner of a seller’s profile to see this.
- The minimum delivery time on Fiverr is one day, and a complex project might require several days to complete. The sellers will specify this in the gig’s delivery time. To get it done faster, you can either buy an Extra or message the seller and ask if they’re available to deliver more quickly for some extra money added to the gig.
- For fast handling of a project, keep an eye on the number of revisions included in a gig {listed in the Order Details section}. Some sellers don’t have this specified, though it’s unlikely they will risk getting a bad review for refusing to make an additional revision.
- Use the Fiverr mobile app to communicate instantly with the seller.
7. Do a trial run before requesting a more significant project
If you have an extensive product coming up {with a value of $100}, you’ll often be better off commissioning a small project first to gauge a seller’s quality. To do this, you can do a small trial order with 2-3 sellers. This way, you’ll have a better chance to get the more significant project running without unwanted surprises.
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Tips for Sellers on Fiverr
1. Hack your gig title to get a more sharable URL
A URL is generated from your gig title when you hit publish on a new gig. It can also never be changed. If you want something shorter and more memorable, which always helps promote your gig outside of Fiverr’s platform- you’ll need to use a little hack when you first create your gigs. Write a few words as possible in the gig title field- a minimum of 4 that accurately describe your gig. As soon as you publish your gig, you can then go back in and edit your gig title to something more appropriate. It’s such a slight difference, but it adds another level of professionalism to your approach that most Fiverr sellers are still oblivious to. In addition, you can also generate a shortened “social” URL through your Fiverr seller dashboard.
2. Use Keyword Modifiers to get more exposure to new gigs
Here is a list of gig modifiers you can experiment with:
“24 hours”
“fast”
‘unique”
“custom”
“bespoke”
“using illustrator”
“using photoshop”
“with after effects.”
These are very niche-specific, so it’s worth doing the necessary research to see which modifiers narrow down your competition, as not all of them will.
3. Eliminate competition by niching down your gigs
While this might seem like another angle on the last tip, it’s different because it changes your gig’s introductory offer.
Most people understand the idea of niching down- in that you’re targeting a smaller subset of a bigger market-but few people {especially on Fiverr} seem to execute on this properly. You also need to go deeper into a subcategory to identify where clients spend their money. This idea isn’t to guess your way into a profitable niche but to identify top-selling gigs by looking at the correlating data. In the case of Fiverr, the closet data is the number of reviews a gig has. While there’s no magic formula for this, it’s simply a case of navigating into your chosen subcategory and noting down any gigs with many reviews. The more pages you sift through, the bigger your sample size and the better your understanding of SELLS.
4. Leverage your Fiverr username for a boost in search visibility
If you haven’t already started your Fiverr account or plan to create a new one for whatever reason, this one is for you. Fiverr is heavily reliant on keywords to understand the nature of a gig, whether these words appear in your gig title, description, or tags. You may not know that Fiverr caps the number of times you can mention your keyword in your gig. This restriction is likely in place to protect the user experience since sellers will naturally start spamming gig descriptions to rank higher in the search results. There is one sneaky workaround you can leverage if you’re just starting out on Fiverr. Putting a relevant keyword sums up the majority of your gigs into your username; you can squeeze a little bit of extra relevancy onto each of your gig pages.
5. Move away from $5 gigs and raise all your package prices by at least 50%
While you can technically charge as little as $5 for your services, Fiverr has actively moved away from the $5 marketplace model. Most buyers today will only expect to see that as an absolute minimum. There’s probably more to it than you think. Not only can it be easier to get clients with a premium price tag, but the clients themselves than to be much nicer to work with. They’re friendlier, know what they want, communicate, are less picky, and, most importantly, are happy to pay extra for quality. Raising your prices is a rigid barrier for many freelancers, but you need to get comfortable with it if you want to start making some severe cheddar on Fiverr.
6. Encourage people to favorite and share your gigs for a cheeky boost in rankings
You can favorite any gig with a click of a button, either from the search results page or the gig page itself. At the very least, many favorites contribute to your social proof, which will also help conversions, so it’s a win-win. You can also participate in some of the “favorite exchange” groups on Facebook but bear in mind that Fiverr hates group manipulation, so abusing it could get your account banned. It is advisable to do it in moderation instead.
7. Create a Gig-network to multiply your customer lifetime value
While you can wait for Fiverr to send you new leads, you can effectively double or triple the value of your existing leads through the power of a gig network. A gig network is an effective strategy, and it’s essentially just a series of gigs that offer a logical next step for your clients, a natural progression from one purchase to the next. This usually requires a more holistic approach to Fiverr that most people never even stop to consider. It means no longer creating services from individual gigs but using individual gigs to create a single, unified service.
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8. Incentivize Referrals by bribing your existing and past clients
Here are some ideas you can experiment with:
An improvement on what they just received, whether that’s an upgrade on the actual deliverable or something extra to enhance it.
Double up on the deliverable, such as two logo concepts instead of 1
A free order for every person they refer to you
Once you have your incentive nailed down, it’s just a case of messaging your clients after they’ve left a 5-star review.
Lastly,
You must ditch the post-and-pray approach if you want to start making money on Fiverr because it doesn’t work.
Fiverr’s algorithm runs on a set of principles that, once understood, allow you to turn this once low-level platform into a powerful sales engine for your freelance business.
You may also like to read our latest article, HubSpot career: 9 career opportunities in PR.
