Recently I was on TikTok (don’t judge me) and I came across a video by someone who said that they were set to make over $300,000 on Fiverr this year. I didn’t believe it at first. I remembered trying to make money on Fiverr years ago and it didn’t seem doable. But then as I saw a few more of her TikToks, I saw the proof and I decided it was time to give it a try myself.
Since we’ve decided to move into a travel trailer full time so that we can travel with our family, we’ve had to make some changes to the way we earn money. Previously resselling on platforms like Ebay and Poshmark were a large chunk of our income as an entrepreneur family. But moving into an RV meant downsizing and that meant we couldn’t have the inventory we would normally have.
So I started working on other streams of income and when I saw that you really can make good money on Fiverr, I decided to give it a try. I was shocked that within my first 30 days of my first order I had earned over $1,000! Now I want to show you how you can make money on Fiverr too.
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What is Fiverr?
If you ask Fiverr, they are a “freelance services marketplace” which basically means that they are a website where freelancers can offer their services. People visit Fiverr for one of two things: to sell products or services or to buy products or services.
When Fiverr actually started out you were only allowed to charge $5 for your product or service. So while I had initially tried it several years ago, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort for $5.
What can you sell on Fiverr?
The most common thing to sell on Fiverr is services. There are a lot of different categories from graphic design to blog writing to bookkeeping services. They are adding new categories all the time, but here are their broad categories:
- Graphics & design
- Digital Marketing
- Writing & translation
- Video & animation
- Music & audio
- Programming & tech
- Business
- Lifestyle
- Industries
So as you can see there are plenty of types of services, and products, that you can sell on Fiverr.
How does Fiverr work?
As a seller on Fiverr, you would sign up for an account and create what is called a “gig”. Your “gig” is basically an offering for your product or service. The way Fiverr works is you fill in the blank: I will _______. So some examples are “I will write a blog post” or “I will design a logo for your business”.
When you set up your gig, you set a lot of different options like add-ons, delivery time (how long you’ll take to complete the gig), etc. so you’re basically building little service packages for people to buy.
Once your gig is published, then people who are searching are able to find your gig if it looks like something they might be interested in. If they decide to buy it then you get an order and get to work on the gig.
Once you get your order, your buyer will submit any necessary information for you to get started and then a literal countdown starts based on what you said your delivery time was. So if you said one day, it will start counting down from 24 hours and it’s up to you to deliver your order on time. This part probably sounds a little scary, but as an almost professional procrastinator, having that countdown really helps me get the work done and prioritize what needs to be done first.
Pros and cons of Fiverr
While I think Fiverr is a fantastic platform for selling your services on, there are definitely pros and cons to consider as there is with any marketplace.
Pros of Fiverr
- Built in clients, you don’t have to market yourself if you don’t want to
- Wide range of services you can offer
- You can add upsells/add-ons to make more per order
- No chasing clients down for payment
Cons of Fiverr
- They take 20% of your fee (so if you charge $10, you get $8)
- It can be hard to get your gig seen and start getting orders
- You have to wait up to 2 weeks for your payment to clear
- Because there’s a timer element and your account can be negatively affected by late or canceled orders it can be a bit frustrating
How much money can you make on Fiverr?
Honestly, how much you can make on Fiverr depends on so many different factors. But let me tell you, you can make a lot of money on Fiverr if you do things right. I actually decided to jump back into trying Fiverr after watching a TikTok by Alex Fasulo, who was recently featured in Forbes for making six figures on Fiverr. I took some of her tips and took off running!
When I decided to try out Fiverr to add another income stream before we hit the road as full time RVers in May, I had no idea that I would earn so much so fast. I got my first order on May 11th, 2020 and within less than 30 days I had earned over $1,000!
While $1,000 isn’t exactly enough to pay my bills each month, I truly expected it to take much longer to start earning a significant amount of money because I was new to the platform. Below is a screenshot of my earnings for May and June. Keep in mind that I’m writing this on June 9th, 2020 so my June earnings will be much higher than my May earnings!
How to get started on Fiverr
Now that you’ve seen proof that you can make a good side income, or even a full time income, let me give you some tips on getting started.
>> Want some guidance? My Fiverr Kicktstart course outlines the proven system I used to start getting orders on Fiverr in less than 14 days by standing out against my competitors and attracting clients who are willing to pay more.
What will you offer on Fiverr?
The first thing you’re going to need to do is figure out what you’re going to be selling on Fiverr. I started with freelance writing services not because I have a degree in anything related to it (fun fact: I’m a college drop out), but because I’ve been writing my own blogs for close to 10 years now and I know quite a bit about how to do it.
So take a look at the different categories on Fiverr, look at what other people are offering and figure out what you have experience with that other people might be able to pay you for.
Sign up for Fiverr and fill out your profile
Obviously you’re going to need to sign up for Fiverr. Once you do, make sure you add a picture of your face and fill out your profile. And yes, I did specify a picture of your face. I think the biggest tip I got from Alex Fasulo was to add a photo of yourself so people can see who they’re working with.
Tips for a good Fiverr profile
- A photo of your face
- Fill it out completely
- Add some information about yourself and your experience
If you need some ideas, go look at the profiles of the people who are offering similar services to the service you plan on offering.
Setting up your gigs on Fiverr
Fiverr has different levels of sellers that help to showcase sellers with more experience. When you first sign up, you’ll be a basic seller which gives you the following benefits:
- 7 active Gigs
- 2 Gig extras ($5, $10, $20)
- 5 Gig Multiples
- Send Custom Offers, up to $5,000
- Earning clearance: 14 days
If you want to read more about the different levels you can click here.
Because Fiverr gives you 7 active gigs I really recommend creating at least a couple. They can all be the same service, but just word the title differently and use a different graphic for the gig. This will help you have more chances for people to see your gigs and then you can see which one gains the most traction for you and adjust accordingly.
For example, I wanted to just write blog posts for people. But I wanted to have a lot of gigs up to give me a better chance of getting orders. So I had several gigs:
- I will write for your blog
- I will write a blog post for you
- I will write a 500 word blog post in 24 hours
- I will write a high quality blog post
I don’t get a lot of orders on all of my gigs, I have one that gets me probably 95% of my orders and I’m sure that’s because the more people order a gig the farther up it’s bumped in search so more people will see it.
When you’re setting up your gigs, you will need to fill out a bunch of fields such as the title, tags, category, description and more. It’s all pretty self explanatory, but I want to talk to you about the description and the gig image.
How to write a Fiverr gig description
The best way to write a good gig description is to look at the descriptions of others who are finding success. This doesn’t mean copying them. Please don’t copy. But you can simply look to see what kind of information they provide, how they word it, etc. to see what’s working in terms of convincing people to hire them.
Your gig image
For your gig image, I want you to use a photo of your face. Like I mentioned in the profile section, you want people to see who they’re working with. You can use Canva (they have a free option) to create a nice looking graphic using a photo of your face.
How to get more orders
Once you have your Fiverr account set up and you have several gigs posted, it’s time to wait for your first order. This is the hardest part. I believe I got mine within a couple of days, but I was sure no one would order from me. But after that first one I started to gain some traction and got more and more with my highest day being 7 orders in one day.
Tips for getting more orders on Fiverr
Here are some tips for getting more orders on Fiverr to get you started, but I also recently did a dedicated post outlining how to get more orders on Fiverr too!
Work for cheap (at first)
Most people will lean towards items that are cheaper and this isn’t any different when hiring for a service. When I started I had all of my gigs priced at $10 for a 500 word blog post. I had my prices a bit higher for longer posts, but most people bought that cheap $10 blog post. After getting around a dozen orders at $10 and getting some five star reviews, I tried upping my price to $15 to see if I would still get orders. Within 30 days I’m now up to $20-$25 for a 500 word blog post. I won’t stop there, though, I plan to raise it even more as I get more reviews.
So if you want to gain traction and start getting orders and good reviews on Fiverr, you might have to suck it up and work for less money than you want for a while.
Do really good work
Just because I was working for $10 (really $8 after the fiverr fee) didn’t mean I rushed through my orders and did a crappy job. Nope. I took my time and made sure to deliver something that my clients were happy with and guess what? My first 7 clients all came back and hired me at least one more time because they were so happy with the value they got from my service.
Deliver quickly
Instant gratification is a thing. Once you get an order you can bet the person who paid for it is counting down the hours until you deliver the order. Working quickly is key to impressing your clients. When you create your gig, try to pick a delivery time of 3 days or less. If you can pick 1 day delivery that’s even better. Why? Because people can filter by delivery time and most people who do that will pick the fastest possible options.
That’s about it as far as the basics for making money on Fiverr! The important thing is to get started and figure out what works best for you.
I hope you enjoyed this post on how to make money on Fiverr as much as I’ve loved writing it. I’m not even 30 days into my Fiverr journey and I think it’s going to be one of my best income streams as we transition to businesses that are 100% online and need no inventory.
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