Freelancing Tips
Making Additional Money As a Freelancer on Fiverr?
A Decent Additional Income Stream
Can you make money on Fiverr?
The short answer to this is yes! I’m not saying you will make a living from Fiverr, maybe you can, but it can certainly be a decent additional income stream.
For me, if I took every request, I could earn between $500-$1,500 of additional income per month.
What I have found is it is best to have several “Gigs”. Why? Because they may not all be in demand at the same time. I have four Gigs.
- Tutor in all levels of Calculus.
- Write technical articles and content.
- Perform technical or mock interviews by phone, skype or zoom.
- Create websites and back-end API’s.
There will possibly be a lot of people out there doing the same thing you are, and you will often see them starting at $5.00. But why not toss your hat in the ring. Don’t be fooled by the $5.00 you see people charge and please don’t charge $5.00 (unless it makes sense.) More on how to charge later.
First thing to realize is you may get a request from one of your gigs that is a variation of what you do, not exactly. Be flexible. The other thing to realize is it may be periodic. Tutoring is an example of this.
Tutoring
Calculus tutoring, that one appears to get the most traction towards the end of the school year, before a school year starts or near exam time. I charge $120.00/hour for that. But it isn’t always what you might think.
Sure, someone might want tutoring on skype or zoom but I’ve also been asked to put together sample questions, grade them and offer assistance. I’ve been asked to solve problems directly, which I will not do, for people needing a good grade. I’ve even recorded a video of me in front of a white board showing how to solve a linear system of equations. The last one is not calculus. Remember, be flexible.
Technical Writing
Sure I’ve been asked to write technical web content. But I’ve also been asked to write a technical manual for a product. That required I learn the product. In that case we negotiated on a price and I created an offer. Again, be flexible.
It’s possible to get repeat work for writing from the client if they like your work.
Fiverr let’s you create three packages for each gig. A Basic, Standard and Premium pricing. You can also negotiate. For my premium I’ll “Ghost Write.” This is for 5,000 words of content with 9 revisions over a 29 day period. This was recently purchased and, if all goes well, will continue to be purchased each month for an unknown period of time. I’m not really Ghost Writing but it’s similar and the $995.00 price was right. This job is interesting because I am writing Help content for an online web application. It involves knowledge of programming as well as math and, of course, writing. The purchaser saw my other gigs and thought I’d be a good fit.
Technical Interviews
This one has had the most variation. I’ve done technical phone and zoom interviews (technical screening.) Sometimes I am allowed to put together the questions and answers, approved by the client. Sometimes they supply the questions and expected answers.
The most varied request was to put together an on-site test for a Lead Software Developer position. The client wanted to give a one hour on-site interview. They would give the test, not me. This involved not only writing questions and expected answers but providing a scoring system for each question in several areas of expertise. It also involved putting together enough information to have them create an Angular (web development framework) application, .NET Core Web API and query a SQL Server database all in one hour. This was a challenging job but fun. They would do the interview, I supplied the hiring challenge for the prospective employee.
This type of gig will tend to be periodic with hiring patterns. Often towards the beginning of the year or towards the fall when a company is planning to hire for the following year. This, again, can give you repeat work if a company hires contractors periodically for short-term projects.
Creating Web Sites and API’s
This is my newest gig and was inspired by the requirements of the last one involving programming. It’s new and hasn’t gotten much traction yet.
How Do You Price Your Gig?
This is the tricky part and don’t be afraid to tweak your gig’s pricing. As previously mentioned, you create Basic, Standard and Premium packages for each gig. Of course you can also negotiate a price and create an offer. This is what I had to do for the technical interview that involved programming. It just did not fit the gig’s package descriptions.
Regardless of the package for a gig it is important to understand that Fiverr will take 20% of what you charge. That’s a lot!
So, for example, with tutoring, for the Standard package (calculus) I charge $120.00/hour. So I will receive $96.00 after Fiverr takes it’s cut.
Because of the non-calculus request (video of linear system of equations), I set my Basic package to be “general math” at $80.00/hour. After Fiverr I’ll get $64.00.
Of course you’ll be paying taxes so keep that in mind as you set your prices as well. Here a bit of math comes in to play. If you are in a 30% tax bracket and Fiverr is taking 20%. It is NOT 50% of what you charge.
For example, if I charge $120.00/hour I will get $96.00 after Fiverr. This is then taxed at 30% and I get $67.20. If it were the 20% + 30% (50%) of my $120.00, then I’d be getting $60.00. Worse.
Bottom line is, for tutoring, I feel I’m worth $96.00/hour.
As another example, with writing, in my Basic package, I charge $150.00 for 1,000 words. That’s $.12/word. Writers often charge between $.10-$.20 per word.
Charge what you feel your time is worth
Take Away
If you are looking for an additional income stream, Fiverr is certainly one possible place. I like it. There are others. They are increasingly more stringent in their requirements. Upwork and TopTal, for example.
The nice thing I like about Fiverr is you can put out anything and see if you get a bite. It may take a while to get traction. But if you get good reviews and people like your work, you’ll be found more often and possibly form an on-going relationship with a client.
My suggestion is, if you are looking for additional income, try several of these services. Determine what areas of expertise you have to offer and do it. But as I learned,
Be flexible, the requirements might be different for each order.
These are not passive income streams, but they are potential income streams.
Thank you for reading and I hope, if it fits, you give Fiverr a try.
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