Fiverr is a freelance platform created in Israel to allow users to purchase “gigs” for as little as $5.
Launched in 2010, the service has grown exponentially thanks in part to its accessibility to digital marketers, with everyone from SEOs to Amazon FBA sellers outsourcing simple tasks to experts who offer their services through the platform.
By 2015, stories began to emerge of service providers making substantial profits/profits from the system, with one – SPXMAC – reporting revenues of over $40,000 per month (a remarkable achievement).
With this in mind, people with real skills, experience and knowledge have been brought in to provide their services through the system, myself included.
To that end, I thought it appropriate to share some of the progress I’ve made with the platform. It’s a small number, but it might give some people an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
The Fiverr Online System (How It Works)
The most important thing to appreciate about Fiverr is that the vendor has to create an offer for the client.
While there are many other “freelancer” websites out there, they rely on the client offering jobs/gigs and the vendors contributing by posting offers. The customer then sifts through the offers and makes a choice.
Because of the contrarian nature of the Fiverr system, it opened up a new way for the “freelance” system to work.
Instead of offering work, a service provider can essentially provide a range of “products” / “services” through which they can provide buyers with a more structured, systematic set of work.
For example, if you’re a logo vendor, you’ll sell your logo design service for $150, where buyers can come in, ask questions, and buy.
The point is that this new model is different, and in many cases better, than the previous model. It focuses on the offered product / service and encourages the supplier to systematize the delivery process as much as possible – this allows to ensure even higher quality, lower prices and more efficient service delivery.
If you want to create effective (profitable) products/services to put on the site, the key is to understand what buyers are really looking for and the ability to facilitate it in the most optimized way. This is where I started offering my services.
Products / services for sale
Obviously, every market / platform has its winners and losers.
The most important thing I found about the platform is that there are really “two” ways to list products/services:
- List products / services based on your expertise – if you are a graphic designer, create similar e-book covers, logo designs or website templates for easy money
- List products/services based on market demand – As mentioned, many “digital marketers” use Fiverr as a source of low-cost but high-quality services for their growing online business
The former will probably take longer to bear much fruit; the latter will be much faster, but will allow for less creativity in the proposal.
I tend to try to mix the two – determine what’s popular and give it my own slant.
Some of the most popular listings I have found are Amazon Product Listing Description writing services. The most successful of them is “SPXMAC” who earns more than $30k/$40k per month.
There are currently 3 providers of this service who typically receive 15 to 30 orders per day for their gigs. SPXMAC is definitely the leader.
My experience
To clarify, I did not do this under my own name; I helped a friend set up and we split the profits.
To do this, I started by listing a number of common services on Fiverr based on my friend’s real-world experience (he was in finance).
We started by writing the article – imagining that a number of high-end “financial” blogs (which depend on quality, accurate and relevant content) would want to hire an expert who has been involved in a large number of transactions, trades with a private consortium in London, and is also very well versed in technologies.
I wrote a profile listing that explained his work in the industry, his experience, and (importantly) why he listed his services on Fiverr.
In the last part, I explained that he wanted to expand his personal brand and felt that writing articles for money would be the most appropriate way to do this. Instead of sending guest posts, this would give an instant precedent to whoever was making the purchase.
It seemed to go relatively well (many blog operators bought his articles and used his name/face as the “author” on their sites).
As for the products we offer, we first tested the Forex article writing service. It was not too popular as it is a very crowded market and it usually works cyclically (eg when the USD/GBP currency pair falls etc.).
One thing that did extremely well was the “crypto” articles we wrote for $25 for 10. It was very low, but allowed us to make some progress in terms of reviews/feedback on the system.
Most of the people who bought the packages just let us decide what articles to write (we mostly wrote about current market trends, the importance of blockchain, etc.) – and started focusing on expanding as much as possible.
The “crypto” articles were good (we made $500 each in the first week), but it was unsustainable at such a low price. We both got burned and so decided to bump up the prices a bit, which cut the interest/bandwidth a lot.
However, the feedback was received and the quality of buyers improved significantly, although the frequency of purchases decreased.
Recommendations
The biggest thing I’ve found in my time on the internet is using my own face.
I’ve done a lot of things under pseudonyms in the past. Some of it was legit (running the second largest Webkinz site), but most was just because I didn’t want people to know what I was doing.
While this was a legitimate reason to hide my identity, the simple truth is that it didn’t allow me to grow very quickly. To that end, one of the key things I started doing for my friend was to emphasize the importance of owning your name—ensuring that you highlight your unique experiences, ideas, and knowledge as the core of why someone should consider you.
If you do decide to get involved with Fiverr, I would suggest that this is one of the few ways you can really “own” your name online by providing genuine content. Think of it as an extension of the likes of LinkedIn or Twitter – a “social” touchpoint through which the “online” community can interact with you.