Unlock Your Freelancing Success: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Profitable Business on Fiverr!
“Somewhere someone is looking for exactly what you have to offer.” — Louise Hay
Ever since the Covid pandemic and the resulting consequences, millions of people have realized that working from home can be just as productive and rewarding as going to the office.
You won’t need to put up with the dreary commute or insufferable colleagues. In fact, companies are now struggling to get people back into the work force because so many of them have swallowed the ‘red pill’.
In other words, they have shifted their mindset, and their perspective on work and traditional job requirements have been dramatically transformed.
Not only do people prefer remote working, but now more than ever before, they realize that they can work for themselves.
This explains why Forbes published an article in 2020 about how the freelancing business is booming (Source). This was 2 years ago. Now freelancing is even more popular.
The good news is that it’s not too late to get in on the action.
If you started today, in a month or two, you’d be getting steady orders… and if you’re good at what you do, you could have a job replacing income in 6 months or less.
You might even earn more freelancing than you do at your day job. Imagine that.
Ultimate freedom!
The ability to work when you want, where you want and with whom you want.
Furthermore, there are no limits on your income. No need to ask a boss for a raise and deal with other embarrassing hassles that are the woes of the traditional employee.
You deserve better than a dull day job, and in this report, you’ll discover how to leverage one of the HOTTEST freelancer platforms online — FIVERR.
Thousands of freelancers are making a good income here, and this lucrative opportunity is still ripe for the picking.
If you’re thinking of going into freelancing, this site is one of the best places to dip your feet in and gain experience before taking on the other freelancing platforms.
Let’s Look at the Pros and Cons!
It would be remiss of us not to mention the benefits and downsides of Fiverr. It’s absolutely necessary that you go in with both eyes open and a dose of ‘hard reality’.
Too often, beginners to freelancing expect to make quick riches with barely any effort… and they think Fiverr is a gravy train that they can ride all the way to a 6-figure income.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
This is a real business… and it’ll take work. If you’re willing to put in the virtual sweat equity, Fiverr will be a very profitable playground for you.
Pros
- Easy to get started
Fiverr was designed to make it easy for beginners to get started.
All you need to do is click ‘Join’ to sign up for an account, confirm your email account and you should be good to go.
- Thriving marketplace
Most marketers struggle with traffic generation; driving traffic (free or paid) to the offers, websites, etc. takes time, money and expertise.
In fact, even experienced marketers are constantly trying to get more traffic because it’s the lifeblood of their business.
You will NOT have this problem with Fiverr.
It’s teeming with people looking to purchase gigs and so on. The site is extremely popular in the digital marketing community and has been in business for years.
All you need to do is offer gigs that rank well and are in demand, and you’ll have more orders than you can handle.
- Getting paid is a breeze
There’s no need to set up payment processors and deal with other tech hassles.
All orders are processed in Fiverr’s payment system and you can always withdraw your earnings to your PayPal account in a minute or two.
- Boost your earnings with upsells
For a conventional sales page, you’ll need to figure out how to add an upsell page or one-click order bump to boost your sales. This is slightly technical and may make newbies fumble.
With Fiverr, once again it’s all easy for you, and you’re encouraged to have upsells to increase your sales.
For example, if you wanted to purchase a logo on Fiverr and did a quick search for logo design, you’d see these gigs show up…
You’ll notice something very interesting here — none of the gigs are priced at $5.
What does that tell you?
It means you can charge more than $5 and make a lot more than $5 per order.
In the past, most gigs were priced at $5 and Fiverr was rigid about it… but now it has allowed vendors to charge what they think their gigs are worth.
One of the logo gigs above costs $75. If the vendor just sold 2 of these a day for 20 days (in a month), they’d be making $3,000 a month.
And that’s just one gig… and a measly 2 orders a day.
Now imagine more gigs and more orders. It’s no wonder the top sellers on Fiverr are pulling in 5 to 6 figures in earnings a month.
You could do it too! With time and a good track record on the platform, the sky is the limit here.
Anyway, let’s go ahead and click on the gig offering a retro vintage logo. This is what you’d see below the gig description…
These are the upsells you can add in each order. The buyer can choose either the basic package or get the standard/premium packages which offer more value.
Here’s another interesting point to note… and it’s quite genius actually…
Notice how the delivery time for a Basic package takes 5 days?
Now… do you really think it takes 5 days to create one basic logo?
Of course not!
You don’t get to be a Top Rated Seller by working slower than one snail attending another snail’s funeral.
Money loves speed… and you have to be faster than that.
This seller probably takes a couple of hours max to create a cool logo… BUT…
He has said it takes 5 days. Because most people are impatient and many will fork out an extra $20 to get it done in a day.
That’s an upsell within an upsell.
Upsellception… brilliant!
And you could do this with any gig. Offer a 3 or 5-day delivery time and charge $10 or more to do it in 24 hours.
- Free to join
No capital required. You don’t need to pay a cent to get started on Fiverr. It’s perfect for students, retirees, stay-at-home moms… and anyone who wants to make a side income without spending anything to get started.
- Seller protection
While most websites offer buyer protection, Fiverr also protects sellers. This will prevent unscrupulous buyers from making you do the work and vanishing when it’s time to pay up.
When a buyer purchases a gig, the funds will be temporarily held by Fiverr (escrow) and the funds will be released to you once the work is delivered. So you’ll get paid as long as you complete the job.
Any issues with buyers can always be escalated up to Fiverr support to get sorted out. So no worries here.
Cons
- Fiverr’s commission
Currently, Fiverr takes a 20% cut from every completed sale. If your gig is $5, after Fiverr’s commission ($1), you’ll take back $4.
If you have a $100 order, Fiverr will take $20. That’s a little steep but this is the price you have to pay to play in their sandbox.
Many beginners will balk at having to pay Fiverr such a hefty percentage.
But if you think about how they take care of the payment processing and offer you so many features to boost your order value, you’ll realize that while the fees are a little ‘painful’, you can still make good money on the platform.
You just need to ‘render to Caesarr what is Caesarr’s’.
Do note that even when you get tips from satisfied customers, Fiverr adds a 20% ‘surcharge’ to the tip and takes its cut from there.
- High competition
This is both a pro and a con.
Because there are so many qualified and talented freelancers on Fiverr, it attracts a ton of targeted traffic and most sellers benefit. A rising tide lifts all boats.
That said, it also means more people are getting on the platform hoping to eke a living on it. Competition is stiff.
If you looked at the image below, you’d see that…
…in the article writing category alone, there are over 71,000 gigs. That’s a lot of competition.
But don’t let that scare you.
Like the Adam Ant song goes, “There is always room at the top. Don’t let them tell you that there is not…”
AND DON’T TELL YOURSELF THAT EITHER!
While the early adopters may have a good track record and lots of gigs under their belt, if you keep doing good work, your seller reputation will get better, and the day will come when you’re a Top Rated Seller too.
It will take you time to get there (which is why we consider this a con), but it’s a temporary one because the cream always rises to the top.
If you’re good at what you do, you’ll rise to the top on Fiverr.
Make sure you’re doing your best work every single time and overdeliver all the time. You’ll get awesome feedback and 5-star ratings.
The more you sell, the more favorably the Fiverr algorithm will look upon you.
Play the long game and be patient. Competition is a good thing and should NEVER discourage you.
- Difficult to build a customer relationship
You can’t add links in your gig descriptions and you can’t give your email address to the customers you get on Fiverr.
The platform is determined to prevent you from siphoning traffic to your own sites off the platform.
This is understandable for business reasons, but it short-changes you because you can’t build your own stable list of satisfied clients (from Fiverr).
You never want to put all your eggs in one basket and it’s worse when you’re building your house on rented land.
If Fiverr were to shut down your account, your freelancing business would collapse overnight. Later in this report, we’ll look at how you can get around Fiverr’s limitations.
This roughly sums up the pros and cons of Fiverr.
Different freelancers will have different opinions — but ultimately, only one thing matters — Can you make money on Fiverr?
The answer is a resounding YES!
Read on to find out how…
Before Even Creating Your First Gig, You Should Do This!
You must know the lay of the Fiverr land. There’s no better way to get a good grasp of the rules than to read their Terms of Service.
As a seller, you must be familiar with their terms so that you don’t flout them accidentally.
For example, if you’re creating multiple Fiverr accounts but using only one PayPal account (the same one) to withdraw funds to, your seller account may be disabled.
It’s stated in the terms that “Fiverr may temporarily disable a Seller’s ability to withdraw revenue… This may come as a result… of associating multiple Fiverr accounts to a single withdrawal provider”.
So if you’re thinking of 10X-ing your Fiverr income by setting up multiple accounts, etc. think again… or go about it wisely.
Another Useful Tip!
Visit the Fiverr help page and read all the support articles there. You’ll gain insights into the platform and understand it better.
Reverse Engineering Successful Sellers
Before jumping into the Fiverr pool headfirst, it would be prudent to see how the top sellers are conducting themselves on the platform.
The best way to reduce your learning will be to analyze the successful sellers and discover what’s working for them. You’ll be amazed at how much information you can glean just by observing them and taking notes.
Here’s just some of the information you can find by doing diligent research:
Gig titles
Keywords in descriptions
The type of images they use
The portfolios
Tags
Pricing
Upsell ideas
Delivery time
Demand for gig (orders in queue)
Customer feedback
Related gigs they’re offering
And much more!
This is priceless information!
Let’s do one just for the fun of it.
If you’re thinking of providing website design as a gig and did a search for it on Fiverr, these are the gigs you’d see…
Right off the bat you can see that the pricing is in the hundreds range. So, pricing your gig at $50 or lower is not recommended.
In fact, it’ll just put potential clients off as they doubt the quality of your service.
Why else would it be so cheap?
You’ll also notice that the words “I will design…” and “I will create” precede a lot of the gigs.
So you’ll want to use those in your title too.
One seller has even targeted 2 keywords in one title — ‘website’ and ‘landing page’.
Does that give you any new ideas?
It should… and you can see he has 400 reviews. 400 reviews are just the tip of the iceberg. Most people do not leave reviews.
Multiply that number by 3 and you will have a rough estimate of how many orders he has had so far.
In this case, it would be safe to say, he has had about 1,200 orders. That’s no mean feat. You could achieve similar success too.
Let’s click on his gig…
From this page, you can see that he has 44 orders in the queue! This seller is in demand.
He takes about 5 days to complete the job — and you can tell what he’s offering for $325.
His portfolio will show you snapshots of sites he has created. This will give you an idea of the quality of work buyers expect.
Could you do the same?
What?!! You could do way better?
Outstanding! You’re going to be highly in demand, in this category.
He’s only offering one upsell here and that’s for extra pages on the site, for $60 a page.
While this is ok… it’s not ideal.
Fiverr rewards sellers with better rankings when they use the 3 tiers upsell feature (Basic, Standard & Premium).
If we looked at another seller’s gig, you’d see these upsells…
Now you have an idea of what else extra you could offer to persuade the potential buyer to spend more with you.
These are just a few nuggets you could unearth when you research the successful sellers in a niche who are offering services similar to yours.
Once again, don’t worry about the competition. You just need to provide more value and you’ll climb to the top of the heap.
One Fundamental Rule to Succeeding on Fiverr!
The sellers who make the most money on this platform are those who offer digital marketing services.
Some of the most popular services are:
- Article writing
- Copywriting
- Facebook advertising services
- Infographic design
- Logo design
- Pinterest Pin Creation
- Proofreading
- Social Media Page Setup
- Troubleshooting websites
- VA services
- Website design
- Website testing
- WordPress help
These are just a few of the many services that are HOT on Fiverr. It’s important to note that ‘popular’ gigs and ‘highest paying’ gigs may not always be the same.
For example, sellers who are offering book cover designs charge less but get tons of orders.
However, copywriters on Fiverr usually charge more and get fewer orders — but may actually make more money. So, popularity is not synonymous with profitability.
That said, your key takeaway here is that if you truly want to rake in the money on Fiverr, you’ll want to offer services that HELP online marketers.
Many marketers are waiting to outsource their work to talented and reliable freelancers who deliver good work on time.
You’d be amazed at how so many freelancers do a shoddy job and drop the ball by being late and giving excuses. The bar is so low that if you just did a good job on time, you’d be very successful. Good help is so hard to find.
That said, there may be a few weird gigs in the personal categories that defy the norm. Like this one…
What a 97-year old witch (or her proxy) is doing on Fiverr is anyone’s guess.
What’s even more startling is that this decrepit old thing has received over 1,000 reviews — which means about 3,000 orders in total.
And she has a 5-star rating! Maybe her spells do work.
What does this tell you?
It tells you that you can make money on Fiverr. If this witch can, so can you.
If you’re still doubtful, here are two more esoteric gigs with over a 100 reviews each…
Your First Step
The first thing you need to do is decide what service you’re going to offer on Fiverr.
The hard truth is that you’ll need skills to make money on this platform (to some degree).
- If you’re offering website setup, you must be competent with WordPress or other site builders.
- If you’re offering keyword research, you need to be proficient with tools such as SEMRush or Ahrefs.
- If it’s logo design, you must be creative.
- If it’s article writing, you must have a flair for writing.
Whatever the case may be, you must be good at what you do. If you have no skills at the moment, that’s fine.
Spend a month or two learning one particular skill that you’ll need to offer your service. The more you practice, the better you’ll get.
So many beginners quit because they don’t have any skills. Nobody said this was going to be easy.
Focus on ONE skill… and hone it until your work speaks for itself.
Sometimes, if you’re creative, you could offer a gig like this…
If you visited the official website for Thrive Architect, you’d see that the pricing is relatively steep.
How this seller is able to install the theme for $15 is a question mark. He probably has a lifetime account or he purchased a bundle deal. Only he knows.
As long as what he’s offering is legal and in accordance with Thrive’s terms of service, he’ll be fine.
You can see that he has over 200 orders for this gig alone.
Let’s assume that the people at Thrive don’t allow you to install the theme for others or you can’t get a bundle deal…
You can always learn how to use Thrive Architect and offer services like these.
All you need to know is how to use Thrive proficiently — and you could learn that in a few days or a week.
It’s far easier than mastering Photoshop to create book covers. Or learning to write eloquent articles.
Now imagine offering services with popular software tools like:
- WishList Member
- Elementor
- Ahrefs
- SEMRush
- OptimizePress
- ClickFunnels
- Kartra
See… the possibilities are endless. You don’t need to spend months learning how to write blog posts.
You can offer a selection of services related to popular tools that marketers use.
Many marketers don’t want to go through the learning curve and/or figure out the tech stuff.
They’ll gladly pay you to handle it for them!
Let’s move on…
Setting Up Your First Gig
Setting up your first gig can be an exciting experience but don’t just dive in. You need to be prepared first.
A gig will require a gig title (headline), an image, a gig description, a portfolio, upsells and more.
The best way to create an awesome gig would be to research what other successful sellers have done and model them… as mentioned earlier.
Look at the images used, the keywords in their title, their upsells and their descriptions (and keywords in them).
Sign up for a free account at Keyword.io and use it to research for keywords you can use in your gig title and description. Remember to choose the Fiverr tab when searching.
And it will churn out relevant results like these…
Another technique will be to type in your root keyword into the Fiverr search bar and see what shows up. These are all keyword suggestions that are very relevant to your gig.
If we were to set up a logo design gig, typing ‘logo’ into the search bar would yield these results…
This is similar to the Ubersuggest tool. Just that it’s on Fiverr.
The keywords you use in your title and description are of paramount importance when it comes to getting your gig ranked and showing up in the results when people search.
Use numbers in your title. They’re great for improving conversions. (See example below)
It also helps to be specific in your title.
For example, if you’re offering an article writing service, instead of just saying, “I will write well-researched and informative blog posts” … you should say, “I will write a 1,000 word health article for you.”
Being specific will help you to target an audience that’s huge but still niched enough to get you orders all the time.
Your images are just as crucial!
Use attention-grabbing images but still give the potential buyer an idea as to what your gig is about. Very often, having a human face on the image will help to improve conversions.
Use a video too! Period.
This is non-negotiable. People love videos and having one on your gig will not only place a play button on your gig, but also make it look more professional.
If you’re allowed to use 3 images on your gig, use all 3.
Fiverr loves it when sellers make an effort. It will reward well-optimized gigs with higher rankings.
Here’s an AWESOME Tip!
You can leverage other Fiverr sellers to improve your gig. Here’s how you do it…
Let’s assume you want an image for your Fiverr gig. Guess what?
A quick search on Fiverr will yield these results…
Isn’t that fantastic?
You bet it is!
What about gig descriptions? SEO?
Here you go…
Look at that! Her gig is Fiverr’s choice!!!
They actually endorse her gig. So why wouldn’t you use this service to get an awesome gig description written for you.
Let the expert do it for you when you’re a beginner. As you gain experience, you can write and tweak your description.
It may seem a bit pricey at $80, if you’re just starting out… but it’s an investment that will pay for itself many times over when your gig shows up and you can get an avalanche of orders.
Remember how we mentioned earlier that you should have a video for your gig?
But maybe you don’t know how to create one… No problem.
Easy peasy.
What’s important to understand here is that Fiverr itself is a very useful resource with tons of gigs that will help you succeed on the platform.
You can always tap on the expertise of other sellers to improve your own performance on Fiverr. All you need to do is search for them.
So where were we?
Yes, optimizing your gig.
The rule of thumb is to ‘fill in the blanks’ so that your gig looks complete.
You have an option to add a portfolio — So add it.
You have an option to add upsells — So add them.
Can you add subscriptions? You can? — Yup! Add them.
The more ‘blanks’ you fill up, the better you will rank.
Remember this!
Fiverr wants to profit. It’s a business entity that seeks to make as much profit as it can.
It can only do this if you are selling well. The more money you make the better your gigs will rank.
It’s simple business sense.
When you offer upsells, you’ll make more money for yourself AND Fiverr.
Let’s assume you offered 3 tier packages while Bob the clueless newbie only offered one.
Whom do you think is going to show up more frequently in the searches?
All things being equal, your gig would show up more. Because you have more to sell. The customer order value will be higher. Both you and Fiverr will make more money.
The customer gets more value. You get a higher payout. Fiverr gets a bigger commission.
It’s a win-win-win situation. Everyone is happy… except Bob who is wondering why no one is ordering from him.
Ranking your gigs
If you followed the pointers above, your gigs would be optimized well and rank favorably.
When using images, remember to name them after relevant keywords. Every little bit helps.
Initially, when your gig goes live, Fiverr will give it a little nudge in the search results just to give you that little bit of help.
If your gig title, images and description are good, you’ll get a few orders.
However, there are also other factors that play a part in your ranking.
Your responsiveness is one of them. You’ll want to respond to messages as fast as possible, preferably within 1–2 hours.
You should install the Fiverr app on your mobile phone and leave your status online. So it’ll look like you’re always around.
The feedback and ratings you receive will impact your rankings too. 5-star ratings will always place you in good standing with Fiverr.
It’s important to note that there’s also an internal feedback system in Fiverr.
Once an order is completed, the buyer has a chance to leave private feedback on your service.
Only Fiverr will have access to this feedback and NOT you. So even if a buyer leaves a 4-star rating and posts a positive comment on your gig, in private, they could easily give you 1 or 2 stars and hurt your ratings.
This is why it’s imperative to be polite and professional in dealings with all your buyers, and overdeliver on all your gigs.
If you’re not getting orders…
Either your gig is not optimized or it’s too niched down. Or as mentioned earlier, you have negative internal feedback.
If you’re a new seller, you need to give it time.
Gaining traction on Fiverr is a slow process. So don’t quit your day job just yet.
Keep at it and max out your gigs. These are the gig limits…
· 7 Gigs (No level seller)
· 15 Gigs (Level 1 Seller)
· 20 Gigs (Level 2 Seller)
· 30 Gigs (Top Rated seller)
New sellers get up to 7 gigs. Use them all up. This will help to increase your chances of getting orders.
Marketing Your Gigs
Instead of only relying on Fiverr to drive traffic to your gigs, you should also do whatever you can to drive traffic of your own to your gigs.
But don’t send the traffic blindly!
This is what you need to do. Buy a domain and add it to your hosting account. Install WordPress on it.
If you have no idea how to do that, you can always hire someone on Fiverr to do it for you.
Next, install the Pretty Links plugin on your site.
With this plugin, you’ll be able to create unique links to all your Fiverr gigs while having the ability to edit these links later.
There’s a very important reason we’re doing this — to make you independent. You’ll see what we mean further down.
To market your gig, you may post about it on social media sites like Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook groups and so on.
You want links from all these web properties pointing to your Fiverr gigs.
Every link you post on your social media or blog or anywhere else, should be a link you generated with your Pretty Links plugin.
Not all links will be a success, but as time goes by, you’ll notice that some links are getting a lot more clicks than others.
Your Pretty Links dashboard will show you exactly which links are getting the most clicks.
From here, you can either leave things as they are… OR… you can create a website where you offer the same gigs you’re offering on Fiverr — at either the same price or a higher price.
Now, all you need to do is edit your Pretty Links (which are getting the most traffic) and point it to your own site where you’re selling services to the buyer directly.
No Fiverr. No 20% cut.
Of course, you’ll need to set up payment processing and all the other tech stuff — but this extra work will mean that you’ll be getting orders where you’ll keep most of your earnings without paying Fiverr a cent.
Furthermore, you won’t be totally dependent on Fiverr and can build your own freelancing business that’s solely controlled by you. That’s true freedom.
Going beyond Fiverr
There are 2 ways to reduce your dependency on Fiverr.
1. Sign up with other freelancing platforms like Upwork, ProBlogger, Freelancer and Guru.
2. Build your own site where you offer your products and services and market these.
By signing up with different freelancer platforms, you’ll be reducing your risk while also increasing your chances of getting hired.
You never know where you’ll get work from. The principles are mostly the same across all freelancing platforms. Though with other platforms, you may need to bid for work, etc.
Nevertheless, if you do a good job, have a solid portfolio and sell yourself well, you’ll get repeat orders and be successful.
With method 2, if you wish to have orders coming in through your own site (and cut out the middleman), you’ll need to drive your own traffic either with social media marketing and/or paid ads, etc.
Generally, these methods are for more experienced marketers/freelancers who want to increase their profit margin.
Once again, more work and knowledge required, but definitely worth the effort.
Siphoning Traffic from Fiverr
It’s ridiculously difficult to get your Fiverr customers to join your email list or visit your own website. To do this, you’ll need to be very creative.
For example, if you’re offering a keyword research gig, you could deliver a free report showing the buyer how to SEO their site. You could have a link in the PDF pointing to your website where your gigs are.
Zip up the file (with your report in it) and deliver the work to your buyer.
Curious buyers who read the free report and find your website just may start buying from you directly, if you offer slightly lower rates than what they’d get on Fiverr.
Just reduce your usual price by extra 20% (which Fiverr takes) and you’ll immediately be cheaper.
You can always make more money by offering upsells on your website which are priced the same as your Fiverr gig. Only difference is that you now keep the 20%.
So look for ways to drop links within your delivered work without it being obvious. You won’t always be able to do it all the time, but in many cases, you may find an opportunity to do so.
Your mindset and strategy
Initially, it may seem like an uphill struggle. The orders will be slow to come and your impatience will make you wonder if it’s all worthwhile.
Relax. It will get better.
Start off by pricing your gigs low. Fiverr has tons of buyers looking to get a quick, cheap deal. They’ll hire you without a second thought.
If you do good work, they’ll be back for more. When it reaches a stage where you have a steady stream of orders, you may increase your price in $5 increments.
Finally, you’ll reach a stage where you’re charging what you’re worth and repeat customers keep buying your gigs because of the value you deliver.
That’s where the magic’s at.
With time, your seller standing will improve and the trickle of orders will snowball until you have too many to handle.
Keep marketing on social media and learn more about traffic generation and other business models such as affiliate marketing. Always keep learning.
While waiting for orders on Fiverr, you can also learn to build your own website or try your hand at promoting ClickBank offers, etc.
Don’t pigeonhole yourself into just freelancing.
In fact, by trying and learning more, you’ll become a better marketer and be able to offer more in-demand services on Fiverr.
There may even come a day when you have 2 income streams — one from Fiverr and one from affiliate marketing or your ecommerce site.
All because you tried a different marketing model instead of only freelancing.
Now you’re earning more and may even decide to quit freelancing so that you have more time to scale up your other business.
Ultimately, freelancing is about trading hours for dollars (unless you’re doing arbitrage).
You may double or even triple your earnings with business models such as affiliate marketing, selling your own products or even domaining.
If you’re contented with your freelancing earnings, that’s fine. If you want more, you can use it as a stepping stone to bootstrap and build an online business that makes you 5 to 7 figures a month, in time to come.
Start small. Grow big.
Fiverr is fantastic opportunity for you to make a wonderful income.
Grab it and may the odds ever be in your favor.
