How I Earned $250 in 3 Weeks on Fiverr. Steal My Process.
Hustle as a Freelancer
Looking back in time, I wish I had put more effort into having freelancing as my side-hustle. I still freelance, although, I’m more into blogging and establishing my own website to give out valuable content to all the lovely people out there, including you.
I wouldn’t waste time discussing what freelancing is, or talk about the various niches in which you can freelance to earn money online. That’s because I have already written an in-depth article on that which you can find here. It’s a complete beginner’s guide to freelancing as a beginner.
Now, let’s get to the main subject here. That’s why you’re all here and reading this article. It’s because you all are interested in knowing how did I, a student with no background in digital marketing or even in earning money online, make around $250 freelancing on the most competitive platform, Fiverr. In case you don’t know what Fiverr is, here’s a brief intro-
is one of the world’s largest freelancing platforms. It basically serves 2 purposes. First, to help individuals, business owners, and other buyers to hire freelancers ( the sellers). Second, to help creators, developers, writers, designers and other skilled people to provide their services to their clients ( the buyers). Thus, buyers get their work done by paying the freelancers, and the freelancers earn by working on projects assigned by the buyers.
On this platform, you create gigs and when a buyer comes across one of your gigs while surfing through a plethora of them, either to contact you to provide details or directly to place an order.
What you need to know — Fiverr is a huge marketplace of freelancers. Thus, it’s extremely competitive and unfortunately, several people give up before even choosing to become a freelancer on Fiverr. You are allowed to upload a maximum of 7 gigs on Fiverr.
What you need to realise is that it might be difficult to get your first clients as a freelancer, although, if you’re smart enough, you will start earning a steady income in no time. That’s why I am here to help you with developing some tactics to get your initial clients and start earning as a freelancer on Fiverr.
#1 Make Your Mindset
Before diving into our business of earning through freelancing, it’s vital to build a mindset. Earning money online is not easy as it sounds. However, I understand how tempting it is to realise that you could actually earn money online, be it through freelancing, building websites, or any other way.
You’ll find a ton of mindset manifestos followed and discussed by several other influencers. Personally, I follow the 3Ps: Passion, Perseverance and Potential.
# Passion
One of the most valuable virtues is to have a passion for what you are currently doing or in what you’re about to do. Loving what you do is really really important in the freelancing world. That’s because once you start getting clients, you cannot, at any cost, afford to lose interest in what you’re providing.
This can be really risky and result in negative reviews and even abuses from your clients. Now, I don’t plan on scaring you. It’s just that once you are passionate about freelancing and providing services to your clients, you better hang in there tight. Trust me, you’ll earn plenty when you start getting clients.
Two simple ways which will motivate you to stay passionate-
- You get paid for providing services to your clients.
- You get reviews, which can be used in your portfolios or resumes.
# Perseverance
There are going to be a ton of obstacles when you enter freelancing. That’s when fear finds its opportunity to jump in and stop you from proceeding any further. It acts as an inhibitor. It’s alright to be afraid of all the rumours you may have heard about freelancing, or Fiverr as a platform, or dealing with clients.
I was scared as well. However, you all know right? the only way you can judge something is by trying it out. It’s the same with people. We can properly judge someone only when we have got to know them well. Thus, I’m trying to tell you that go out there and try it out. Obstacles are everywhere, opportunities aren’t.
# Potential
Here’s one of the smart tactics you might want to hold on to. Know the potential of what you are providing. The best way to do that is by asking yourself questions such as — Will it helps me generate enough? Is it something I love and would work on consistently? What’s its demand on Fiverr’s marketplace? Is it too competitive? Which categories are the most profitable ones?
You might feel overwhelmed by these questions initially, but trust me, unless you ask yourselves, research and answer these questions honestly, your chances of getting even a single client is like a needle in a haystack.
So, get out there, do your research, take your time and better enjoy doing all of it. There’s no rush. Take your time understanding the algorithms of the freelancing platform itself, be it Fiverr, Upwork, Guru, PeoplePerHour or any other platform.
I recommend this method because once you have basic info on that platform, it will be much much easier for you to work out on it and eventually it’ll get easier for you to get clients on it. You don’t want to wander like a lost child on freelancer platforms, cause it’s going to be a simple waste of time. You’ll be confused as to which service to provide, how to create a package and other stressful queries.
Ultimately, it’s You who has to choose, be it your willpower or any mindset of yours, remember one thing. Never Give Up. Initially, it will take some time to get clients. However, once you start getting clients, you’ll be proud of the fact that you invested time behind it.
#2 Alpha Active
Each and every platform, be it social media, freelancing, or a forum, demands one basic thing from its creators. It's being active on them. The more you're active, the better are your chances of thriving your business on them.
Fiverr has a similar rule at play. The more you're active on Fiverr as a Fiverr, the better are your chances of getting clients. Wondering how are they even related to each other? There are primarily two reasons. Allow me to elaborate further.
- Buyers on Fiverr get access to a filter whilst searching for freelancers. It's displayed on the upper ride side of the search bar. Thus, this gives buyers the choice to filter out the freelancers by the ones who are online. They mostly search for online sellers to get in contact with the freelancers quickly and establish faster communications. This is beneficial for the buyers as they do not have to wait long hours to get a reply back from freelancers who are offline.
- As a seller, you can accept and send proposals to buyers requests’ on your dashboard. Thus, you should know that the ‘buyer requests’ is dynamic and changes from time to time. To get your proposals noticed, it's necessary that you send your offers as soon as possible. Thus, it's vital to keep checking that section for potential clients.
Assuming it may be a tedious task to keep your PC or laptop switched on? I got a solution for you. Apparently, Fiverr launched its own mobile app back in 2015. Fiverr’s mobile app can help you chat with customers, submit work, track your earnings, withdraw them and check buyers requests as well. This method saves a considerable amount of time. Personally, that's how I got a majority of clients.
#3 Kill It With Keywords
Here comes the most fascinating part of your role as a freelancer on Fiverr. Keyword Research. So, before you panic and give up on this platform altogether, let me help you understand that you won’t have to step out of Fiverr to research ranking your gig on the platform.
In other words, I am going to reveal the most basic, yet most amazing keyword research tactic which I personally use to rank my gigs on Fiverr. This is one of the major ways through which I got my clients.
Conducting keyword research on Fiverr is really simple. All it demands from you is your time. So to begin with, you must know that when you create a gig, you need a headline for it, like this one below-
Thus, you need to understand that buyers won’t come across your gig randomly. Your gig’s headline needs to have the keywords which the buyer searches for on Fiverr’s search bar. In short, it’s known as user intent. Thus, your gig’s headline needs to consist of keywords (the more the better) that are present in those entered by the buyer on Fiverr’s search bar.
How to conduct keyword research on Fiverr?
As promised, everything is going to be done on Fiverr itself. So let’s get started.
- For the sole purpose of research, switch your seller account to a buyer’s account. How to do that? Simply click on this ( in the header)-
- Next, you’ll be taken to Fiverr’s homepage similar to what a buyer comes across. Something like this-
- Now all you need to do is enter your keyword in the search bar and hit “Enter” on your keyword. Let’s take Logo Design as an example. This is how it looks-
- Now, all you need to do is start noticing the headlines of those freelancers who are ranking on the top. Notice which keywords have they emphasized upon. If needed, you can even click on their gigs and explore how they’ve presented their gigs for their clients.
- Study their package features, what do they offer? Study their Gig description as well as the tags that they’ve used. This will help you understand the gig algorithm in a much much easier way. Do this for some time daily and you’ll be good to go.
This is how I did my research on Fiverr and eventually got clients on gigs.
#4 Replying to Buyers’ Requests on Fiverr
One of the factors which play an important role in getting potential clients is by replying to buyers’ requests. Now I understand you will be having a ton of questions such as What is Buyers’ Requests? Where do I find it? How do I reply?
To answer these, I will explain the Buyers’ Requests section and Where exactly you can find it? It’s simple. Buyers’ Requests on Fiverr refers to a section on Fiverr where Buyers can put in their requests. By requests I mean what work do they want to be done from Freelancers.
What happens next is that freelancers having gigs in those categories can find them on their Buyers’ Requests section here-
Thus, if the Buyer is searching for some work related to “Website Development”, then all the freelancers having gigs in that particular category will get that particular buyer’s request shown in ‘ Buyer Requests’ section.
Note- Keep checking your Buyer Requests tab consistently. Initially, as a beginner on Fiverr, your Buyer Requests tab might be empty. Thus, I sincerely recommend that you create as many gigs as possible (up to 7) and keep a thorough check on the tab. I got 50% of my clients from the Buyer Requests section itself. So, don’t lose hope.
#5 Tips on Tags
If you’re a seller on Fiverr and have published gigs on Fiverr, then you’ll know what I am talking about. Yes, whilst filling out your Gig details as a seller, we come across a tab at the bottom of the first page. Something like this-
This is the section where you need to input your gig related keywords. It’s really simple and if done right, your gig shall easily get exposure from potential buyers.
Thus, there’s a simple trick. One which I have mentioned previously in the section above. Simply switch to a Buyer’s account and start noticing the gigs which rank high on your specific category. Take your time and keep exploring.
That’s all. Now enter 5 of your researched tags in that section. See? Really simple. This tactic helps your gig gain impressions and clicks.
#6 Optimize Your Gig Images
This is one of the easiest methods of getting your seller profile optimized. Yet, a majority of freelancers are unaware of this. How does optimizing your gig images help you get noticed? The answer lies in Google images. Every time you upload an image for your gig, don’t forget to rename the image before uploading it as your gig image.
Renaming your image relevant to your gig service would boost your gig’s chances of getting noticed. How does this help? Whenever someone searches for a keyword related to your gig service, your gig image is going to appear on Google image. That link can get you, potential clients. Personally, I follow this method and have noticed an increase in my gig impressions.
My Final Thoughts and My Secret Sauce
Once you get your initial clients using the tactics mentioned above, you might want to use what I personally use to earn consistently. I simply try to convince my clients and enter into long term contracts with them.
- What I do is, create custom offers for them once they’re convinced and show them how I will carry out their project. This establishes further trust among each other.
- Tell your clients about your other gigs, it might be possible that you indeed hit a jackpot doing this. This will help boost your confidence as well as your money. Thus, this is how I earned my first $250 freelancing on Fiverr. You have the potential to earn even more!
Fiverr is an amazing platform and thousands of people have earned plenty from it. So, next time you feel scared or indecisive regarding using Fiverr as your go-to-freelancing platform, just read my article and hopefully, you’ll be motivated. Before I leave, I have a question for you.
What would be your tactics to get clients as a Freelancer on Fiverr?
Let me know in the comments.
Originally published at https://passivepenny.com on July 11, 2021.
