Supplementing Your Home Business Income $5 At A Time (2024)

I stayed away from offering Fiverr Gigs for a very long time. I really didn’t see how someone could make any good money offering one-off services for $5. Last year I read Connie Brentford’s How I Made An Extra $1200 Per Month At Home Using One Free Websiteand it really got me thinking about how I could make money on Fiverr to supplement my home business income. After many months on the site, here are a few of my tips.

Be Unique – If you are hoping to rely on Fiverr’s internal promotion alone, it is almost imperative that you come up with something unique to offer. There are hundreds of Gigs offering to write website content. It can be difficult to make yours standout. Putting up a Gig to write strictly About pages on the other hand may catch a few more Buyers.

Be Profitable – In order to make your Gig as profitable as possible there should not be a lot of back and forth. Buyers should be able to answer a few questions immediately upon ordering and the next correspondence should be order delivery. I would not put up any offer that I can’t complete within 15 minutes. (Approx. $4/ gig x 4 gigs/hr = $16/hr)

Be Professional – If there is a problem, relay it with your Buyer immediately. If you can’t deliver on time, let your Buyer know before the deadline. Don’t push the Deliver button and then ask for more time. If you know you can’t complete the job, allow your Buyer the opportunity to get it done elsewhere or reschedule time sensitive tasks they have tied to the order.

Cross-Promote Gigs – If you create Gigs around your expertise, you will likely find you have several that complement each other. When delivering an order, inform your Buyer of other offers that may be of interest. For example, if your Gig is creating an About page for a new website, upon delivery direct Buyers to another Gig creating a press release announcing their new site.

Upsell – Gig Extras are where it is at! As you level up you will have the opportunity to increase the sale to well over $100 offering “add-ons.” Do not waste this precious space with offering a second helping of the original Gig, instead offer something that compliments and increases value. If your Gig is for a 350-word article, offer to make it 500 words for an extra $5. If you are selling a Tweet, add a Facebook mention for another $5.

Ask for a Tip – Don’t waste a Gig Extra asking for a tip upfront. Instead, make it a separate Gig and link to it in your delivery message.

Use Tags – Tags are the keywords people search for to find your Gigs. Take a look at the Tags being used by the best sellers in your category.

Promote Your Gigs – As with any income opportunity, you have to market if you want it to make money. Announce it on your blog, make a YouTube video, write a press release and advertise in forums and on Craigslist.

Ask for Promotion – Your order delivery should not only ask your buyer to leave feedback, it should also invite them to Collect and Like your Gig. These tools are great for both internal and external promotion.

Show Off Your Work – Fiverr has a few great features to get your Gigs converting; video and portfolios. A video introduction can be uploaded with your Gig description and can really make it stand out. It may even get your Gig featured on the site. And if you are a little shy, you can always hire one of the many Fiverr Sellers that offer this service. If you are offering any type of design work you should have the portfolio feature enabled. The Buyer will inevitably decide whether their design is displayed, but who wouldn’t want the additional free pub?

Be Careful with Guarantees – While offering a guarantee can close the sale, you have to be realistic about what you can and cannot guarantee a customer after the order leaves your hand. You don’t know their experience or reputation. It’s one thing to guarantee they will be happy with an article, don’t guarantee things like first page search results, guest post or article acceptance on a certain site, conversions, etc.

As the title states, I think Fiverr is great for supplementing a home business but I don’t think it should be your entire home business. Fiverr prohibits outside communication so there is no way to get Buyers on your email list for service notifications nor can you easily make a repeat Buyer an offsite customer and cut Fiverr out of the middle. This is an extra money-maker but not a business model.

Get additional Fiverr tips here.