I Started Freelancing on Fiverr — And Made Over $1000 in 2 Months
Now, I am aiming for $1000+ per month — and this is my strategy
At the beginning of February, I decided that I wanted to try freelancing.
Mainly, I was bored, thanks to the pandemic and quarantine restrictions. But I was also hoping to make some extra income that I could put toward my savings.
I decided to offer proofreading and editing “gigs” (what Fiverr calls a specific service). Besides my history of reviewing and editing my friends’ writings, I didn’t have much professional experience to back up my services. I just knew that I always loved reading and — without tooting my own horn too much — I believed I was good enough at “changing the dynamics” of people’s work, as one of my buyers put it, to professionalize my knowledge.
There are a few freelancing sites out there; Fiverr and Upwork are perhaps the biggest. I have to admit; I primarily chose Fiverr because of their frustratingly relentless YouTube ad campaign. You know the one, “So, you need a logo? The obvious choice is going to Fiverr!” No, I don’t need a logo, thank you very much, and now please leave me alone.
The following is a short retelling of my first two months on the platform as well as the strategies I used to gain customers, reviews, and income.
February
My email history shows that I received my first order two days after signing up; a buyer needed his social media post polished and returned within 30 minutes. “Can you do this for $5?” they said. “Sure,” I said, and off I went.
Throughout the rest of the month, I received four more orders. One was for $5, one for $15, one for $40, and one for $500.
As a new seller, the $500 order came as an utter shock. I hadn’t expected anyone to trust me with this much money this soon into the process. After all, I had a measly two reviews on my profile.
And yet, I still secured that order. How?
I proactively approached the buyer.
On Fiverr, there is something called “buyer requests.” Essentially, a buyer can send out a request for services they believe do not fit into any of the existing Fiverr categories. The algorithm will then distribute the request to sellers who generally operate within that area of business.
When the $500 request appeared on my dashboard, I submitted my pitch among a flurry of others, not thinking much of it.
A few hours later, the buyer had accepted my conditions and sent me their 80 (yes, 80) texts for editing.
My strategy of putting myself out there had worked.
Even though I hadn’t truly believed that I was “good enough” yet for an order of this magnitude, I decided to take a leap of faith anyway and to put myself out there to be “judged” at an early stage, and it paid off.
After all — what was the worst that could have happened?
From this point onward, taking calculated risks, especially if there was only a small or no chance of them backfiring, became a big part of my overall freelancing strategy.
March
In March, I started to be booked slightly more regularly. In total, I received ten orders. Most were small, of course, but one was for over $100, and three more were for $60+ which, to me, was quite mind-blowing.
I also secured my first repeat customer. Obviously they first approached me disguised as a single-order customer. They only wanted their one book edited.
However, after receiving my feedback and edits, they decided they liked my work. And, to my surprise, they were quite the serial writer. “I have four more books I want edited — you will get them all,” they said. And, so far, I have!
I cannot overstate the importance of repeat buyers.
With every new customer, there is unfortunately always a risk of miscommunication, misunderstandings, or them misliking your work.
Repeat buyers, however, already know you, and they know your work. They, therefore, don’t expose sellers to the same risks as new customers — working with them means reducing your chances of receiving a bad review, or a request for a refund, or demand for work that falls outside the scope of your services or abilities.
Besides, having repeat customers means less time is spent scouring for buyers, and less time is needed getting to know each buyer and their requirements. And, apart from all that, it is simply a nice feeling knowing you have delivered a quality service and managed to build a relationship with a customer.
Although I was unsure about the true quality of my services initially, I tried my best with every single order and went above and beyond what customers had paid for.
After all — who doesn’t want to leave a great first impression that might lead to further orders?
My strategy of delivering outstanding quality to every customer to gain repeat buyers has enabled me to secure a small yet consistent stream of regular income.
Total profit so far
Hard work, a little bit of luck, and the two strategies above have enabled me to bring in just over $1000 (profit, not revenue) in my first two months:
For clarification purposes for those not familiar with Fiverr:
- Net income is my, well, net income after Fiverr have taken their 20% cut.
- Withdrawn is the amount of money I have transferred out of Fiverr.
- Used for Purchases is money I have put back into Fiverr by buying services from other freelancers.
- Pending Clearance is the money that I can’t yet withdraw (Fiverr has a mandatory two-week clearance period for most sellers in which buyers can dispute services received and get their money back).
- Available for Withdrawal is the money that has cleared but I haven’t withdrawn yet.
- Expected earnings is a notoriously false statistic with no real meaning and hence ignored by experienced Fiverr sellers.
My strategy going forward
As the title of this article says, I now hope to be consistently netting around $1000/month in profit by the end of this year, with plans to hit the $2000/month range sometime next year.
How?
Step 1: Reach full capacity
I have been positively surprised by how scalable freelancing on Fiverr is, mainly because I am nowhere near full capacity yet.
I would say that, on average, I have spent no more than 1–2 hours a day doing Fiverr work over the last two months, with an additional few hours on weekend days.
With enough time on my hands, I could very easily scale this into a 3–4-hours-a-day business, with weekends perhaps being full-time.
And with sufficient orders dropping in, I can start making roughly $100 on my best days over the next few months. This will hopefully balance out the days where I don’t have any or few orders to complete, for a total of $1000+ profit per month.
Step 2: Increase my prices
This will likely happen further down the line, mainly because I feel like I haven’t gathered enough reviews yet to justify an increase in price to a level that matches what some of my more experienced competitors charge.
However, as I slowly gain more customers and reviews, I will also be able to slowly increase my prices. I plan to hike my fee of $5 per 1000 words to $10 per 1000 words and one day perhaps to $15.
By increasing my prices I hope to accomplish two things. One, to be seen as a more reputable seller. Of course, price does not always equal quality, but it is somewhat true that Fiverr is a place where “you get what you pay for,” so having higher prices should signal greater trustworthiness and expertise to potential buyers.
Two, having higher prices will give me a better return on my time. A benefit of that is, of course, that it will take less time to reach $1000+ in profit. But mainly I am looking forward to working with more “high-quality” customers. Unfortunately, some buyers come to Fiverr expecting to spend only $5 in exchange for hours and hours of work and endless revisions. That, over time, however, is neither sustainable nor healthy for any seller.
Step 3: Keep doing what I am doing
This may seem straightforward, but sometimes it is important to remember that success just takes time. Luckily, my approach has worked well so far and I expect it to continue working just as well going forward.
And why tweak something that has proven (reasonably) successful?
For the foreseeable future, I plan to keep doing exactly what I am currently doing — proactively approaching buyers and delivering outstanding work day after day until I reach the goals I have set for myself.
