Here is how I created an additional revenue stream on Fiverr that is now chugging away for me every month.
I had a Fiverr account that was dated back to 2019 but had only used it for getting some logos now and then.
In a parallel world about 3 years ago I worked pretty hard to create a revenue stream on a contracting platform called PeoplePerHour and this still generates work for me all over the world for website design and eCommerce. I did this by really hustling hard the with a model that worked something like.
- Apply for tons of work and do it a decent budget price and quickly.
- I also uver delivering in a lot of cases to get solid reviews. Ove delivering doesn’t always mean time either it can be adding a Privacy Policy, installing a plugin for backups. Its the little things.
- I also communicated really quickly as clients tend to be a distrustful of these type of market places.
It worked pretty well so much so that I even did some design work for PeoplePerHour themselves and at one stage was in their top 5 WordPress developers. Covid and a ton of normal work meant I didn’t give it as much attention but I still get a job a month out of PPH (and am working to reboot the number of projects I get there atm)
So to Fiverr.
Fiverr has a reputation of people doing work for $5 but that is far from the case as there is a huge range of prices out there for all types of work and it would make you slightly dizzy to look at. I do think that type of seller exists but read on.
The Internet is also awash with YouTube videos and blog posts on “How to Rank on Fiverr:”
I watched and read a lot of these. Most of them spoke to optimising your gig (Fiverr term for your offering), using the right keywords and doing great work and getting good reviews.
But when you are starting from ground zero you won’t get any work from a gig no matter how much you optimise your gig. Believe me, I tried for a couple of weeks. Nothing.
Then I implemented the “Kieran Daly Fiverr Domination Plan (TM)”
Firstly I asked myself what Fiverr as a company wants.
- To make money – they take 20% of every contract. So if you are doing lots of projects they will be making money.. So more jobs, more money – reward the contractor on Fiverr. No surprises there.,
- They also want happy customers. If a customer is unhappy with you then they give you the Fiverr heave ho and you stop ranking. Fiverr has a very tough ranking metric and if you get a bad review or a a gig canceled (it happens) then your metrics get hurt.
- They also want good contractors who deliver on time and well. That’s a given and they have strong metric tracking for that.
So how to get rid of tumbleweed and get work in the first place?
ASK OTHER PEOPLE
For about 6-7 weeks I routed a lot of my small maintenance style, quick fix work through Fiverr and offered my clients a discount to do this as they had to register and set up an account and go through a few hoops to be on Fiverr themselves.
In addition, I applied for Fiverr’s Pro program and instantly forgot about it as I thought you had to be a Fiverr ninja to be accepted and at that stage, my total earnings were $0.
So over those 6-7 weeks I did work for clients who I actually knew through Fiverr. They were nearly all small 1-2 hours jobs so my stats were great and my volume of jobs was decent too. Money was low.
Then one morning – ping my first request for a job came in on Fiverr that wasn’t sourced proactively by myself. I of course delivered and over the next couple of weeks I got 3-4 more gigs.
Then I got an email saying I and been accepted into the Fiverr Pro program. I attended a one-hour webinar for onboarding and bam I was on the specific Fiverr Pro marketplace site for one of my gigs.
This was the game changer on two fronts.
As a result, I then started getting 1-2 gig requests a day. Now I didn’t accept them all as some were not suited to me but over the coming weeks I was doing 2-3 jobs per week on Fiverr.
In addition, I started doing paid promotions. Yes paying Fiverr to be seen even more. I have spent about $1500 to make $6500 so a third of my Fiverr income to date has been through paid promotions. You may scoff t it but would you pay $000 to make $6000 – of course you would – and so have I.
WHAT NEXT?
At the moment I can only promote 2 gigs and I am only promoting 1 as I have other gigs but they haven’t met the criteria yet. One si for landing pages and I think once I do promote this I will get traction as is popular.
I am thinking of trying out Seller Plus to squeeze some more life out of Fiverr and see if it helps get more orders.
Once I hit $20K even though not Top RAted Seller I am going to increase my prices just a little and get more revenue out of the exact work.
An Important Note
99% of my order contacts have been through contact NOT through direct orders so in retrospect I am sure I could possibly have quoted higher but due to my prices being in the 200-400 area it was difficult but I am going to add $50-$100 to all my prices for a month and see what happens