Creating your first gig on Fiverr
Getting a Fiverr account is pretty easy. A bit too easy one would say. Despite the many articles, web pages, reviews and Instagram posts saying that Fiverr the devil in disguise is — I still decided to get my hands dirty and setup an account to post my first Gig.
The first you notice is how much help you get. There is a help bubble for each and every text box. Before you go to next get section you even get a video introduction.
Hands down, the easiest thing ever — idiot proof.
You see that “I will” part there? During my research, I just thought that most of the people there only knew basic English. But no, the people are innocent.
You are forced to start the name like that 🤣
OK, whatever. It’s just branding. But you soon notice, that each and every text box, drop down, upload is very controlled. You can literally write more on twitter.
Constraints are sometimes good too. They probably had problems with spammers and decided to control the content better. An applause for avoiding captchas or human control, smart decision.
Moving along, you get to the juicy part — the money 💵. They tell you quite well that their package based system is good. It is! This is where you also see the whole point of the thing. I work as a software developer, and because of that my offers are usually measured in days of work. That won’t do on Fiverr.
No problem! I just invented something to fill up the three packages 👍. Basic package: a backend web api. I know the price needs to be low, so I plan just two days and invent something to fill the 20 characters allowed (lazy CSS or smart content creation?). I work in euros and have to put the VAT in the price. My usual rate is 550€ per day. Pretty low as is. Add VAT, convert to dollars and round it up and you get 720$ per day. Two days cost then 1440$.
Easy money 🤹♀️
You can only charge up to 995$ per package (as a first time user), way under my usual. But this is just the first “cheap” package. What on earth am I suppose to charge for the rest?!
Time to research! Search for “develop backend” 👉 get tons of results between 5$ and 40$. What.the.fuck? OK, people from southern Asia, no problem. Filter: Germany. Results between 40$ and 90$. At this point I am very suspicious. I work in Germany, no sane person would lift a finger for so little dough — after taxes it’s not enough to even pay the electricity used.
Fine fine, I’ll bite. 285$ for the “cheap” package, 785$ for the second, 895$ for the “premium”. At this point these are just random numbers.
How does one make a profit? Extra services 👏
I knew something was up. Fiverr won’t just promote underpaid work. You can select extra services to boost your income.
Based on the category you choose, you have a predefined set of extras. You can add two more of your own (as a first time user).
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Package 1: 285$ + Extra service: Add Swagger = 450$
It’s something. Obviously overcharging for Swagger.
The description. You can write up to 1200 characters in the Gigs description using their rich text editor. It’s OK, nice an simple — super easy to hack. Decided not to, didn’t want my account disabled on the first try 🐈
At this point, research was again in order. Most others have horrible descriptions, no wonder they only charge 5$. Put my writing cap on, and get some text in the page.
Soon realized, it is not enough to have a better description. I needed to cheat! Always cheat, people!
So I thought to myself: why should someone pick me over some other freelance developer?
Made in Germany, is one of the best selling labels in the world. So I wrote up a whole section about how great it is to work with the tech environment from Germany, quality, punctuality, all the good stuff. Am I terrible person? Of course I am. Let’s see if it worked.
Time to get some pictures going.
This is where Fiverr starts trying to get some money out of you. The first thing they recommend, is that you pay another user to create the images for you.
That is actually always good business. I can get behind that. But I’m not gonna do it. I’m pretty good with Adobe XD. Slap some rectangles together, pick some nice colors, choose a nice font an presto: my pictures look better than 95% of the gigs.
The fact that the website has disastrous CSS didn’t scare me. I changed the pictures until they all fit everywhere on the site.
The content is delayed. Don’t be surprised if it takes a while for you gig to show up in the search results. It takes a few minutes, pretty fast in comparison to other tools. An applause for that 👏
Weirdly enough, you can only upload three pictures, one video and two PDFs. Yes, you can upload PDFs — one does wonder, why put a 1200 characters limit, when people can write whole novels in the PDF? Who on earth will download the PDF for a 5$ gig? A sarcastic applause to that feature 😅
Now the Gig is online and for everyone available. I am more expensive than the first five search results pages combined. Curious how that will work out.
Your question is probably this: will I actually have any success? will I continue to invest time in Fiverr?
Yes. Sure will, want to see those $$$
By the way, they take 20% from all your revenue.
