Although Fiverr had been around for a decade, I didn't really discover it until 2021. Amidst my drive to upskill, I was looking for something to learn and was curious about the services that people was offering. I became fascinated with the possibilities on offer and its sellers came from all over the world.
When I was a teenager, I opened up a small eBay shop. I sold new goods that I had bought elsewhere for a bargain although I must point out that this was an very occasional hobby. It tied in with my slight obsession with getting a bargain and making a profit. On rare occasions, I also sold a few used items of my own that I no longer needed.
(Wix stock image)
This year, I decided to become a freelance Fiverr seller, offering services that I was skilled in. I knew I really enjoyed helping people on a one-to-one basis. As I had years of experience in civil engineering, my plan was to offer my expertise in mock interviews, coaching advice, CV writing and cover letters for this industry.
I also offered tutoring services in British English, focusing on conversation practice. As a UK native, I noticed that this was an area in demand because students often lacked the opportunity to speak English in the real world. Whilst there were plenty of online English teachers, there were not many native English speakers that offered lessons at an affordable price.
Setting Up
Fiverr calls its services "gigs". To begin advertising my services, I had to create gigs for services I wanted to offer. This involved writing catchy titles, service descriptions, creating "packages" for different levels of service, setting prices, stating inclusions and exclusions and advertising imagery/videos.
Each job category had specific criteria that sellers have to set. For example, number of revisions for CVs or length of lesson for a tutoring lesson.
Once my gigs were set up, the platform advertised this to its customers. Except, the first few weeks were painfully slow.
The First Week - Building Knowledge and Marketing
As a new seller on the platform, I did not have any customer reviews.
In today's online world, reviews are king (most of the time).
For every service you offered, there were at least a dozen sellers offering something similar.
But every seller had to start from zero once upon a time and somebody had to take a punt on me eventually. It was just a matter of waiting patiently and making it attractive enough for buyers to choose you over the others.
My core strategy was to set out my unique selling points and to offer a below average price for services in this category. These were reasons for buyers to choose me over the other sellers. Whilst this meant I was working for less than favourable rates, I took a long-term view.
I would attract the first few customers and provide them with an exceptional service that any buyer would consider a bargain. In turn, these buyers would be more likely to leave a positive customer review. This would get my profile and gigs noticed by Fiverr's algorithm and hopefully push it up the rankings.
Fiverr gives its sellers a dashboard which allows us to see the number of impressions and clicks each gig has received. This is a key indicator of the impact my marketing materials were having on visitors.
Whilst I received some impressions during the first week, I did not receive any serious enquiries. I did however receive messages from individuals who Fiverr identified as "spam". They often left personal contact information, saying they needed help with something.
The big red flag was that it was nothing remotely related to my gigs. Perhaps they identified I was a new seller and thought they could tried something. For the record, sharing personal contact information is not allowed on Fiverr and doing so could get you banned.
The Second Week - First Order In
New spammers continued to message me, at least two per day. I learnt to ignore them as Fiverr's system automatically detected most of these. If they didn't, I would have to respond as my profile ranking is affected by my response rate to buyers. For each message I didn't respond to, my response rate would drop along with my response time, the latter which can be seen by buyers.
One afternoon, I received a message from somebody who was interested in getting my help with their CV. They had joined their current company as an apprentice and had not produced a professional CV before. I scheduled a free phone call with them to discuss their needs. We ended up talking for around an hour.
They told me that they wanted to look for a job with a different company but this would be some time in the future. Being a STEM Ambassador, I was sympathetic and gave them some advice. They decided to postpone the CV until it was time for them to make a move.
In this case, I gave my time free of charge. That was fine with me, having mentored young people for many years, I was only happy to help. But I couldn't do this for every customer, time was valuable and I needed to make a return eventually. I decided to set some solid boundaries.
A few days later, I was contacted by a civil engineering student who was interested in a mock interview. There were very few sellers offering this service but I guess it was my UK background which resonated with them. After a brief discussion, he confirmed a date and made a payment.
This was my first order on Fiverr. I spent hours preparing for the interview and writing up notes. The actual session lasted over 2 hours which was more than the 90 minutes paid for. I imagine the customer knew he was getting a bargain and he gave me a glowing review. This helped put my profile on the map as with evidence of customer satisfaction.
The First Month - Slow and Patient
A week went by and I did not receive any further orders, just a few enquiries. Some customers would message me, ask some questions and gave a strong signal that they are intending to order. But they don't and I have wondered whether it was something that I said.
In hindsight, it is normal for this to happen because buyers are just making initial enquiries, change their mind or stumble upon another seller who are cheaper or more suited to their needs.
I was wondering whether I needed to adjust my gig descriptions, change the marketing visuals or even pay for advertising. I was beginning to think this may be an extremely slow journey.
Three weeks in, I received a message from a parent wanting me to tutor their son English. They had some specific requirements and then swiftly placed an order for the first lesson. It went well and they immediately placed an order for a further 6 lessons. This was my first repeat order. It felt satisfying to know that my services are appreciated.
A few days later, a university masters student contacted me to assist them with the recording of some English phonetic phrases. This was not something that I offered at the time but they had seen my English tutoring gig. After understanding their requirements, I agreed and created a custom offer.
The task turned out to be more specialised than expected. I was determined to deliver the job to the highest standards so spent hours to perfect the recording. There was some to-and-fro but finally the client was happy with the outcome. How do I know this? Because they gave a tip that doubled my asking price.
At the end of the first month, I had completed 3 orders and had 3 5* star reviews. I was delighted to see that all of my customers were happy with my work. But it was not time to increase my prices in line with the market because I was afraid that it would put orders to a stop.
Learning Big Lessons on the Job
I realised that it is very common to be ghosted by potential customers making an enquiry. I have probably had as much as 50% of people who ask one question and then ignore me after I write a response within the hour. All of this is effectively wasted unpaid time but this is to be expected in business.
Occasionally customers are asking multiple sellers the same question and will choose the one they like best. Sometimes, customers are not even sure of what they need so they go away to have a rethink.
A few will ask to pay you outside of the platform. Of course this is against Fiverr rules and I refuse. Not doing so could get the seller banned. There are numerous things that sellers have to be aware of to ensure they don't fall foul of the rules.
I often received repetitive questions so began to create a comprehensive FAQ for anyone viewing my gig pages. It saved me a lot of time responding to each person. I would recommend that you state this at the top of the gig description to make people aware.
I noticed that the sellers with the most positive reviews tended to be pushed to the top of the page. Which of course gave them even more exposure and even more customers. That's how it works.
Bad reviews, especially when one is just starting out, are a no-no.
If you have none or very few reviews overall, this could kill your profile forever. Most sellers are rated at 5 stars as it seems to be customary for buyers to give this rating, perhaps to avoid offence.
The bad review might not even have anything to do with you, just a rogue customer. This seems to be quite an outrageous position of power that could determine the livelihood of any new seller looking to use Fiverr as a source of income.
So one has to bend over backwards at the beginning to make sure that the customer is happy. If they are not, then it might be wise to offer them a refund and cancel the order. Time and energy is spent, but online reputation is something that is hard earned. I would take the long term view.
The custom offer is a great feature in my opinion because it allows sellers like me to tailor the order to suit the buyer. I can offer an expanded service such as additional options or secure repeat orders from customers which will provide a stable income source for a certain period.
Standard packages may not suit the buyer so if custom offers were not possible, I may have lost some customers and had to do work for an unfair price.
Two Months Later - A Steady Flow
But not to fear, the orders came in steadily. Initially, it was once a week, then twice a week or now nearly 2 months later, I receive multiple confirmed new orders every week. I have received reviews for most of the orders, all of which were positive.
In July, I ranked on the first page for online tutoring, language tutoring, English teacher and civil engineering for more than a week.
Fiverr's algorithm seemed to favour my gigs, probably because of the positive reviews to my gigs in a relatively short period. I was pleased and received a stream of queries on most days, some of which converted to orders.
However I was still doing work for below market price and often, below UK minimum wage. This had to change. I had now built a reputation for great service and was recommended by my customers. It was at this point that I decided to begin to increase prices across the board to a more reasonable level.
Because Fiverr contains sellers from all over the world, it is tough to compete solely on price. It does not help that the UK has a high cost of living compared to most countries. I had to now focus on quality and differentiation of service which would be hard for my competitors to match.
I focused on my background and what I could offer customers with my experience and insights. I bundled related services together, like CVs, cover letters and mock interviews.
For tutoring, I targeted what I knew was a common problem in English learning: lacking the opportunity to speak English. I also emphasised my native British English with a video and description focusing on the British aspects.
I have had several students come to me because of my engineering background. So I would recommend that anyone wishing to sell on Fiverr to state their background as it can help.
I have also rejected buyers who have approached me about engineering technical support, proofreading and doing their English tests for them (which violates TOS).
None of these were gigs I advertised. Not only was I not interested but they seemed to think that absurdly low rates were acceptable for something that required a high level of effort.
Granted, there is a long way to go before I can make a full time living from this. But that is not my plan for the moment, and I have a small personal target that I would like to hit in terms of customers, reviews and revenue.
Fiverr and its payment provider takes a fairly large cut of every order (around 25% for me but it may be different for you) as well as charging the buyer a service fee. This could give the buyer the impression that Fiverr is only receiving this fee and nothing else. There are also exchange rate fees to consider.
Most customers neither understand nor care about this, some even believed the seller was keeping 100% of the payment. However I have found that a few back down on negotiating price when they realise this. Ideally, transparency should be improved so that the buyer knows exactly where their money is going.
The system appears to protect the buyer in most aspects of a transaction. For most sellers, payment funds are only accessible a minimum of 2 weeks after an order is confirmed as complete.
In tutoring, if someone has ordered 5 lessons, the order can only be confirmed as complete once the final lesson has been delivered. If the lessons take place over the course of 5 weeks, then this would mean that the seller does not receive a single dollar until around 7 weeks after the first lesson.
It could be a risk for the seller because if the buyer changes their mind after 2 lessons, there could be a dispute. This is a drawback and discourages sellers to advertise work for multiple lessons. If an order exceeds $50, there is a way round this by setting milestone payments but an average tutoring lesson costs $10.
Overall, the platform has given me access to customers from all over the world, thanks to its reputation as one of the top freelancing sites. I hope to reach Level 1 Seller in the short term. Freelancing on Fiverr has given me an additional stream of income whilst building an online reputation for quality service.
*The entirety of this page purely contains personal opinions drawn from my own experiences and observations. The writer does not take any responsibility for missteps made or losses incurred by any person as a result of information on this page. This page is not endorsed by Fiverr and does not claim to accurately reflect the platform's actual or latest policies. Please refer to the website for actual terms and conditions, procedures and rules.
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