Fiverr is a marketplace for professional services.
The name is derived from the service’s original concept – the idea that you could buy services for as little as $5. As the marketplace has developed, and more sophisticated providers have been drawn to it, higher-priced services are commonplace now.
If you’re looking to make extra money, or even create what has been called a “Fiverr Business”, you need to understand how the system works.
There are a number of “tricks” which most people will likely not know about with it.
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Initial Pointers
- Fiverr’s Market Is HUGE & Varied – The underlying idea that it’s only for cheapskates is typically wrong. If you have a great product/service/skill, you’ll find many sellers are able to achieve prices of $350+ for even quite obscure offerings.
- People want to know who YOU are – The biggest problem I’ve constantly seen is that the best people simply share their expertise – they don’t try and wrap it in anything fancy; they use their real name and are honest.
- You need to *adapt* your offering to match demand – This is the biggest mistake most businesses make; rather than telling people what you do, you need to explain it to them in a way which shows how it’s going to benefit them.
Obviously, everybody will have their own experiences with the platform; the following is based on mine…
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Fiverr’s Market
The biggest thing most people don’t really “get” is the scale of Fiverr’s market – it’s huge.
It’s estimated that in 2015 alone, 8,000,000 sales were made on the platform – a gig purchased every 5 seconds.
The point is that MOST people hold themselves back by convincing themselves the “market” isn’t that big, or it’s full of people from developing countries (able to work for a fraction of a Western person).
Whilst these ideas could hold some merit, the simple fact is that the majority of buyers on the platform are from the West (although this is not exclusive), and therefore if you’re able to offer a quality service, there’s definitely an opening.
I’ve found that if you’re able to offer a GOOD service, for relatively competitive prices, you’ll typically attract a large number of buyers.
The key determinant in success is being able to craft an in-demand offer. I’ll explain this in a second, but along with it, you also need the belief that the Fiverr platform is bountiful enough to support ANY service.
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People Want To Know Who YOU Are
Apart from an in-demand offer, I’ve found the more popular “gigs” are created by people with a particular talent / skill.
They are typically very personal with their offer (using their face as their profile picture etc), and will describe their experience in as a matter-of-fact way as possible.
The reason this is important is because if you’re looking at offering a service on the platform, it’s by far more effective to use “yourself” as the product.
In the “business” world, we’re lead to believe that people want as cheaper product as possible – provided by faceless, corporate companies who provide conformity and rigidity.
Whilst this is true for many people, in the “online” services world, it’s actually more profitable to offer YOUR service. Rather than hiding behind some avatar, or fake username, you can now
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Adapt Your Offering
Finally, this is the most important idea that I’ve come across with the system.
The BIG mistake most people make is they think that if they’re good at [insert skill here], people will automatically attribute that to some underlying benefit for their business.
Unfortunately, the majority of people are not very smart, and you really have to explain to them how your service could benefit them – as lucidly as possible.
In marketing / sales, this is called the “offer” – the way you match a “product” to what a market really desires.
In the case of Fiverr gigs, most people will list things like “Portrait Photographer”, “Fitness Trainer” or “Web Designer”.
Whilst these work, they won’t work well. You need to provide a reason why someone should look at what your service is able to do.
This typically means adopting a “juxtaposition” / “niche” – where you’ll become highly proficient with one market, and ignore the rest.
For example…
- “Amazon Product Photographer To Boost Sales”
- “Boost Business Traffic With Unique Professional WordPress Theme Design”
- “Elite Fitness Training To Eliminate Belly Fat Within 3 Weeks”.
I cannot stress enough the importance of this.
Most people will list that they are a “content writer”, but have assert no real skillset/expertise that provides value to the person buying their service.
You need to be willing-and-able to “adapt” your offer to match demand.
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My Story With Fiverr
To explain why the above is important, I started selling services on Fiverr through my friend.
He has experience with software, computer support, network engineering, financial trading and Bitcoin.
Whilst he listed his name / information appropriately, his first “gig” was for “Forex” articles. Whilst he received a few orders for these, the real money came from “Crypto” articles.
Crypto articles have been done a million times on Fiverr, so we didn’t create anything crazy. But what we did do was give users the ability to perceive *exactly* why my friend would be the best choice for them as a writer.
Not only did he have real experience in the technology world, but – most crucially – he’s been talking with a “consortium” from London for several years.
In the finance world, a “consortium” is basically a group of people / companies / banks who work together with a common interest. It doesn’t matter what it is, each has their own agenda.
My friend’s consortium was focused on currency trading… but more importantly, one of the group had been dabbling with BTC. By “dabbling”, turns out he’d become a legitimate Bitcoin millionaire in Dec 2017.
With this in mind, we recrafted my friend’s profile to reflect this unique experience, and insight, to the Fiverr audience – and started receiving a huge influx of orders.
We made $500 in the first week, and about $1,500 in the first month.
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In my own world, I have set up 2 Fiverr profiles.
Whilst both profiles received responses, one of them started to take off quite well.
This was a computer support profile, which I had a HUGE level of experience with – it’s not only my profession but you may argue a “passion”, too.
The main deal with this profile was that I actually knew enough about the market to be very specific in what was offered.
Rather than posting “I will fix your computer for money”, I actually worked at providing particular fixes for different software packages they may have used.
For example…
- I will fix WordPress plugin, theme, page, post, newsletter, WooCommerce errors with code
- I will improve Shopify conversion rates with theme, page, newsletter, CRM code fixes
- I will provision cloud VPS servers on Azure, AWS, Rackspace, DigitalOcean and more
After doing this, I started to keep develop the site that I had built for the thing, and made sure that I was able to include my name, face and story on there.
Soon enough, people started showing up with questions for our service. “Can you fix this problem with WordPress?”, “How do you add a logo on Shopify?”, “My Shopify site won’t convert – any tips?”.
I made sure I went above-and-beyond in terms of answering any queries, and also that any fixes we provided were done on-time and with “added extras”.
The “added-extras” we included were complete “run downs” of improvements the client could make to their infrastructure – either to save money or increase traffic, conversions or back-end processes.
As word got around about the improvements we made, we started systematizing much of our processes; incorporating the likes of Trustpilot and other tools.
The net result was that we were able to give users the ability to receive pertinent support, and we had a reason to keep them updated with more information etc.
$2,500 came in the first month, and continued to grow.
