Selling on Fiverr – 6 Tips for Making 1k on The Side

Looking to get started selling on Fiverr? We’ll you’re in luck as I’m a top rated seller (with over 700 5 star reviews) and am going to explain why this platform is so useful for making a side income or perhaps even a full time income if you’re ambitious enough.

While I personally don’t suggest trying to make it a full time income as I’ve had numerous unfair issues with the site like my gig being accidentally deindexed for a week or dealing with the rare unreasonable buyer. Fiverr is simply not safe enough to have it be the main thing.

But if you’re looking to build a lucrative side income I can’t think of anything better than this platform. It’s a marketplace where they take care of all the annoying aspects of freelance. All you have to do is fulfill the deliverable.

What is Fiverr?

First, what is Fiverr? It’s a very popular website in the United States, but outside of the US it’s less well known. Fiverr is a freelance platform that takes care of all the technical details of getting setup like the payment processing, reviews, organic traffic, built in sales page, pricing tiers and so forth.

For the convenience and organic traffic that Fiverr provides they in turn take a 20% cut on your earnings. You should view this service fee more as a commission as Fiverr is a large marketplace and once you’re able to establish yourself on the platform, making organic sales from the platform will become the overwhelming bulk of your orders.

In fact, when I first started on Fiverr all my first 100+ first orders were strictly organic. I did no promotion what so ever. Even to this day I still get the bulk of my orders from organic traffic though my blog and YouTube channel exist as traffic sources if I wish to tap into (which I don’t, I get enough orders organically as it is).

Selling on Fiverr – My 6 Bits of Wisdom

So what are some important Fiverr selling tips to know when getting started on this platform? Here is a high level overview of what I suggest new freelancers know and understand:

1. Focus on value and your skills. Don’t be a money chaser. Do something in an area where you have some talent.
2. Make a good introduction video and write a compelling paragraph.
3. Sell your gig for cheap at first to get sales and good reviews. When starting out, you can only compete on price.
4. Build out the three tiers for your gig on Fiverr. You will make more money per sale.
5. Provide good customer service. Deliver on time, respond to messages and keep your clients happy. Download the Fiverr app to help you accomplish this.
6. Cancel gigs orders from difficult buyers or orders that are not within the scope of what you’re offering.

Focus on providing value and your skill set

Providing value means you’re a small part of a solution for someone else. You provide value by having an actual valuable skill. Perhaps that’s video editing, proof reading, you’re great on camera of have an excellent voice for narration.

Regardless, a key focus for beginners is to connect the dots between what people are needing and willing to pay for and what you can offer as a freelancer. Don’t buy into the hype of running some lazy service on Fiverr where you outsource orders to someone else or use some automated tool to do the work.

That’s not value, that’s being lazy and looking for a shortcut. Also, don’t copy. Too many beginners simply copy other successful Fiverr sellers without having the actual skill set and expertise to compete. No one wants to hire an echo of someone better so figure out what you do really well first.

My explainer video mistake

When I first started selling services on Fiverr I started off by creating explainer videos using Powtoon. I read about people reselling services on Fiverr and thought this was a way I could make money easily.

I hated it. I got a handful of orders, the buyers asked for numerous revisions, I did not have any video skill and found it unfun to constantly be editing explainer videos for clients. I made back my initial investment into Powtoon and learned a valuable lesson.

Provide value and don’t be an echo of a more popular creator. We all have different experiences and skills, so focus on what you know how to do that other people don’t and would be willing to pay you. This sometimes takes a few months of trial and error, but it’s the process everyone goes through.

Pick a good account name

If you have some idea what you want to sell on Fiverr go ahead and create an account. Please note that you can not change your Fiverr user name. So whatever username you create that’s the one you’re stuck with.

Again, the username is not a big deal for buyers as long as it’s not silly or borderline inappropriate. If you already created an account to buy services and you went with a goofy user name like kittycatsocks67, then yes you’ll want to make a new account with a better name.

Make a good introduction video and paragraph

Part of your gig page within your profile on Fiverr allows you to set a quick service introduction video. You absolutely need to create a video as it will directly increase sales by 20% or more. For your video you’ll want to record with a proper mirrorless camera and a quality microphone.

You can get by with an iPhone as well, but do your best to improve the audio quality to make it professional sounding. There are plenty of cheap microphones for iPhones that can help with this. We know that not everyone want’s to make video, but with any sales page it’s simply required today.

Your gig’s organic reach is influenced by many aspects, one aspect is your conversion rate (which you can actually see). By having a good description free of errors and a compelling video your gig should be converting visitors into buyers.

Create a Sales Video

Your sales video is extremely important at helping drive sales. My first video was very mediocre, it was recorded with a point and shoot and shoot camera with below average sound and I was quite awkward on camera.

A few years latter I redid the video (because I then started making YouTube videos and built up the skill) and noticed a big spike in orders with a more professional looking and sounding video. For recording your video, step back and write out a simple 1 minute script:

• Introduce yourself.
• Explain why you have the authority to offer this gig.
• Use language that connects with your audience to show that you understand the problem they have.
• Explain how you can help solve it.

Please note that Fiverr does have specific video requirements, one being that the video has to be a small file size. So don’t record anything in 4k or even 1080P. 720P is just fine for Fiverr.

Sales paragraph

This paragraph should quickly outline the value of your gig, what clear benefits people get from purchasing from you, what to expect if they do decide to make a purchase decision and to leverage bullet points, bolded text and to highlight important sentences.

You don’t want to overdo it with the text but in general you’ll want to have an introduction paragraph that’s followed by bullet points and a conclusion paragraph. If it’s important for buyers to contact you first then bold that at the top or bottom of your paragraph.

Create an FAQ

Last, create an FAQ overtime with your gig where you genuinely answer frequently asked questions. Not only does this help reduce the amount of messages you get, it provides another spot for you to emphasis important aspects of your gig as well as your experience.

Sell your gig for cheap at first

As a brand new Fiverr seller with no reviews and no history the only thing you can compete on is price. Yes, no one want’s to work for $4 per gig order (after Fiverr takes their cut) but it’s required in order to build up momentum.

What’s excellent about Fiverr however is that they want talented people on the platform, they want to promote new up and coming sellers. So help your gig and your profile by providing outstanding service for cheap and focus on getting reviews and honing your gig to fit perfectly with what people want.

You may even get labeled as a “rising star” on Fiverr which will help your new gig standout so you can make that transition from a beginner to a solid, established level 2 seller. Once you start getting organic sales on a regular basis , have a solid 30+ reviews and hit level 2 status, then consider increasing your price point.

Have 3 pricing points for your gig

While years ago Fiverr only allows sellers to sell gigs at a $5 price point, Fiverr now allows sellers to price their services at multiples of $5 as well as the ability to set tiers for your gig.

Take advantage of this and come up with three pricing points to offer your potential buyers. On Fiverr there are numerous companies and professionals who can, and are willing to pay for quality work. By providing multiple tiers, you’re able to make much more money and provide more value and flexibility to your buyers.

Each tier should have a clear description of what the service that is being provide is exactly and how it is different from your other price points.

Provide good customer service (really)

As part of your Fiverr profile you’ll have different metrics which influence how much exposure your gig receives such as sales, reviews, repeat buyers, replying to messages and so forth. As such, providing good customer service and replying to messages promptly is a required aspect of being on Fiverr.

I suggest you download the Fiverr App to your phone as when you receive a new message you can reply right away or mark it as spam. If you fail to reply to less than 90% of your messages in a month what happens is that your profile will be demoted a level.

Levels are not actually that important, what’s more important is to make sure your metrics are good. That way you’re happy, Fiverr is happy and your customers are happy. Fiverr will be less inclined to put a low performing gig in front of an audience so reply to your messages.

Cancel gig orders from difficult buyers

Simply put, some buyers are ridiculous and expect the world for cheap. Instead of dealing with difficult people simply cancel the order. Even if you provided excellent service and the buyer is proving difficult, cut your losses and cancel.

Difficult people won’t leave good reviews and are not worth working with. Also cancel orders that are not inline with what your gig is about. For example, you have a proof reading gig from a non-native speaker where they more need you to do a total rewrite of their paper.

Do Fiverr levels matter?

From my experience Fiverr levels don’t matter in terms of organic exposure on the platform. They become more important if you transition from being a solo creator on the platform to building out a small team of people where you’re managing multiple gigs.

Higher levels can have more gigs available so if your business is based on Fiverr, being demoted a level for a month (the typical punishment) can often result in you needing to turn of one of your gigs. But if you’re selling 3 or 4 gigs then it does not matter.

Fiverr cares about making money and will promote gigs that have good metrics and a good conversion rate. Instead of worrying about your level, focus instead on your metrics like your gig conversion rate, your feedback and various ways to incrementally improve your gig.

Contact support and join the forum

Fiverr provides a ticket support system. In any dispute they will side with the buyer over the seller, even if the buyer is being unreasonable. Fiverr support otherwise is helpful and replies to messages within 24 hours.

If you have any issue with your gig, perhaps another seller copied you and you want to report them or a buyer order from you and wants you to do a service that is outside of what you provide then reach out to support.

Last, Fiverr has a helpful forum which you can join to interact with other buyers and sellers.

Selling on Fiverr Conclusion

Fiverr has proven to be a reliable, lucrative side income for me. I don’t have to do any sort of marketing or promotion, I don’t need to follow up with clients on payment, I don’t need to worry about social proof because my 700+ 5 star reviews speak for themselves.

If you’ve been thinking about getting started selling on Fiverr then do it. Think about your skill set and what people want. Create a gig, sales video and quality paragraph selling your gig. It takes time to build up your profile but long term it is worth it.