Initially, you’ll be limited by how many Gigs you can set up, as well as how many Gig extras (upsells), and Gig multiples (multiple quantities of your Gig’s deliverables) you can offer. As you move up each seller level, you’ll have increasingly fewer restrictions in each of these areas.
These initial limitations might be frustrating if you have a lot of ideas for what to sell on the platform — but try to think of them as a good thing when you’re just starting out. The fewer services you sell, the easier it will be to create a great process around producing deliverables and providing a great buyer experience.
Here’s what I love most about Fiverr:
Setting up a Fiverr Gig will force you to “productize” your services.
Specifically, this means clearly outlining the deliverable that a buyer will receive for a certain price. These deliverables can be further personalized to the buyer’s needs in terms of various packages, Gig extra upsells, and Gig multiples.
The beauty of productizing your services for Fiverr is that they will be easier to quote on the fly, like when a client gets in touch for a custom order. By having some standardization around your offerings, it will also be easier to create processes around executing similar orders — saving you time and increasing your potential outputs.
By having forced limitations at the beginning of your time on Fiverr, you’ll be forced to focus on productizing the services you’re most confident about. With this narrow focus, you’ll figure out how to create efficiencies.
Fellow $2000+/month Fiverr Seller, Shahzad Saaed, talks about a landing page design Gig that he scaled nicely by repurposing templates so that the deliverable was a no-brainer.
I feel a similar way about my UX audit Gig. They’re quick for me to do and I can knock out a bunch of orders in no time.
So what could you offer?
Stew on that for a bit while we go through some important considerations related to setting up your Gigs:
Fiverr Gig visuals: images and video
“Don’t judge a book by its cover” shouldn’t be your guiding mantra while setting up a Fiverr Gig.
In truth, the way you merchandise your Fiverr Gigs will have a big impact on whether people ever actually click through from a related search and make a purchase.
Fiverr PR Manager Holly Steffy shares these best practices:
- We recommend including an eye-catching main Gig image (608 x 410px or higher and similar size ratio). The main image should reinforce the service and be professional and premium looking. It should look professional regardless of the category, and the images should be copyright-free.
- We also recommend having minimal text within the image (20% or less of the image).
- For visual categories, the best practice is to show a single work sample per image.
- For non-visual categories, the image should represent the service being delivered and should instill confidence that the seller is professional and capable of delivering a high-quality experience. However, every Gig image for visual and non-visual categories should have its own unique image.
I’m not sure that my images follow all these guidelines perfectly but they haven’t gotten in the way of me learning how to make money on Fiverr.
I’ve redesigned my Fiverr Gig images recently to reflect my own branding aesthetics:
It’s worth noting that if you’re on the Pro marketplace, it may be useful to include a picture of yourself in your main Gig image — especially if you’re well known in your field.
Besides the main visuals you use to help distinguish your Gigs, you should also consider adding videos to introduce yourself (and your expertise) while also explaining what people get when they make an order, as well as Gig extras they can purchase and why they’re worth the extra cost.
Gig videos don’t have to be a high-production ordeal — just film yourself on a non-busy background, dressed professionally, and clearly articulating the value of working with you specifically.
The Gig description: sell your offer with great copy
Like a sales page elsewhere online, the Gig description is likely what will make the difference between someone buying your Gig — or another seller’s.
So make sure to flesh out the details of the deliverables offered at each level (and Gig extras) to the best of your ability, to set expectations. Doing this also increases your efficiency with producing the deliverable — reducing the chance that someone will want modifications because they didn’t really understand what they were buying.
Try searching for the type of service you plan to offer on the Fiverr marketplace to see how other people are talking about it, including what specific words they use to describe it.
Please note: The section “How does the Fiverr search algorithm work?” offers more details for Fiverr SEO and incorporating relevant keywords on your Gigs. ?
When writing your Gig description, anticipate questions that people will have. Convince buyers that you’re the best person for the job by also making sure to detail your relevant experience.
If you offer other related Gigs, mention them in the description with a call to action for the buyer to check them out.
Don’t forget to format your copy for easy readability so that important things stand out.
Here are some quick tips for great copy formatting:
- Use text decorations (bold, italic, underline) to add emphasis
- Use bullet points to make lists easy to read
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short so prospects aren’t overwhelmed with a wall of text
With all of these considerations in mind, here’s the Gig description for my UX audit Gig:
Upsell with packages and Gig extras
In thinking about how to sell your services on Fiverr, you’ll want to think in terms of basic, standard, and premium packages.
In other words:
- What’s the most bare-bones version of your service?
- What can you do to provide more value in a standard package compared to your basic offering?
- What deliverables would be associated with a package that includes all the bells and whistles?
Here’s how I set up my Gig packages for my UX audit gig:
There are buyers that represent diverse budgets on Fiverr, so you might as well offer options to appeal to them all, by creating packages that make sense for different use cases.
Besides packages, you’ll want to create upsell opportunities by setting up some Gig extras.
Gig extras provide buyers with the opportunity to order more of the same deliverable (like more pages audited on my UX audit Gig), get your order delivered quicker (like a fee for one day turnaround), or complementary services (I sell a gig extra for a UX audit on my SEO audit Gig and vice-versa).
I highly recommend offering options for one day turnaround if you can stay on top of these orders — this is an easy moneymaker.
Just make sure to be realistic with delivery dates in general.
Give yourself enough time to fit in a surprise one day turnaround order on top of your regular workload. Or forecast your likely Fiverr workload and set aside time for it on your calendar.
To give you an idea about how this works in reality, here are the Gig extras on my UX audit Gig:
You’ll notice that some options are pre-populated suggestions based on the Gig category, like testing additional pages or offering additional screen recording minutes. Additionally, some of the Gig extras options I’ve added in are based on what customers have asked for in the past.
Using Fiverr means standardizing your offerings for each Gig. But by employing the strategic use of Gig packages and Gig extras, you’ll make people feel like you’re trying to cater to them specifically — and they’ll appreciate that.
Set expectations with Gig requirements and the FAQ section
The best part of using Fiverr is that it facilitates sales without you needing to do any business development work personally.
You can further cut down your work on back and forth communication with a thorough FAQ section and Gig requirements questions.
It’s important to put forth the effort necessary to properly set up these sections, because to me, the whole point of using Fiverr is to help cut down on time spent on business development — allowing more time to focus on the work, itself.
Use the FAQ section to proactively answer people’s questions. Specifically, the FAQ should anticipate common questions about your process and deliverables.
Here’s the FAQ for my UX audit Gig:
If you’re stumped right now, you’ll find that your Fiverr inbox will offer plenty of ideas for FAQs after you launch a new Gig.
Once you get the same sort of question more than once, that’s a good sign that you’re not sharing everything people really need to know before buying your Gig. You won’t realize how annoying it can be to answer these messages over and over again until they become a frequent daily occurrence.
That said, some buyers won’t take the time to read through your Gig description (and supportive details) before getting in touch with their questions. Try not to be annoyed — we are all guilty of skipping ahead to get in touch with customer support directly over trying to browse FAQs.
Another best practice for your FAQ: share the specific questions that you ask on your Gig requirements after a person places an order. This will help buyers visualize working with you.
One major limitation in terms of what you can share in your FAQ (or elsewhere, publically on Fiverr) is clickable links, like those that would lead to similar projects shared on your portfolio.
That said, you can upload examples of your work directly to Fiverr to serve as your portfolio.
Gig requirements for programming and tech Fiverr Gigs
Setting up Gig requirements is useful in terms of minimizing back and forth with a project while ensuring that you’re creating a final product that your buyer will be happy with.
Wondering what to ask your customers in the Gig requirements section?
Fiverr PR Manager Holly Steffy shares that common basic requirements in the Programming and Tech category include:
- Website URL and log-ins
- Hosting log-ins
- Photo or text that should be included
- Examples of inspiration from other websites (if the seller is creating a new website for the buyer)
- Ask the buyer about their business and their goals for the website
Here’s another perspective — what I ask buyers on my UX audit Gig:
How to price your Fiverr Gigs
According to Holly Steffy, PR Manager for Fiverr, when sellers are considering how they should price their Gig, they are asked to consider the following:
- If they work offline, how much do they charge offline?
- How much do they want to make per hour (and how many hours would this job take)?
- How much does their competition charge on Fiverr, especially those who are at the same level and with the same amount of experience and skills?
- How much does their competition offline charge for this service?
If you want to learn how to make money on Fiverr, you’ll have to be competitive with similar Gigs in your category — at least to an extent. Being on the Pro marketplace changes the rules to allow for more variations in pricing while still delivering on quality.
Hee’s the most important question you’ll probably want to answer before getting started on Fiverr:
“Do I really have to start by pricing my Gigs at $5?”
Here’s what I’ve found to be true:
If you’re starting off by jumping straight into the Pro marketplace, the answer is: definitely not. In fact, pricing your Gigs too low on Fiverr Pro may signal that you’re out of your league compared to other sellers at this level.
On the other hand, if you have no tenure on the platform and are starting completely fresh, having at least one low priced Gig can work in your favor in terms of building up your metrics, orders, and ratings — all necessary for levelling up.
The key to delivering quality without burning out lies in offering a service that you can complete quickly.
For me in the past — before levelling up — these have included five-minute screen recordings for my UX audit Gig and SEO audit reports that are generated automatically by one of my favorite SEO tools, with some commentary about what issues to fix immediately and why.
All that said, once you’ve acquired some social proof from being a reputable seller (higher levels and/or great reviews), there’s absolutely no reason to offer any Gig starting at $5.
How does the Fiverr search algorithm work?
There are many factors that determine how a Gig ranks in relevant search.
Like Google, the specific details regarding Fiverr’s search algorithm are a trade secret. But it seems fair to assume that components might include:
- How many five star reviews you have total and your average star rating
- Total orders completed
- Seller level
- A weighted average of your metrics, judged on a scale from “good” to “bad” (anything under 90% seems to fall in the realm of “bad”, at least according to the requirements for maintaining Seller levels)
- Strategic use of keywords in your Gig title, description, and uploaded image/video file names
Though dated, a 2015 Inet Solutions article suggests Gig views and orders in queue as additional potential ranking factors, which makes a lot of sense to me. Just Entrepreneurship shares some additional thoughts on ranking signals and relevant tips to adjust your gigs.
If you know the basics of on page SEO in general, you’ll be well prepared for setting up a Gig optimized for Fiverr search.
The main difference between these two types of search?
On Fiverr, your interactions with customers are going to have just as much of an impact on your placement in relevant search as the way you optimize various settings on a Gig.
Here’s another possible Fiverr search ranking factor:
If you’re late to deliver a Gig, Fiverr deploys a banner that chastises you for being late, with a notice that doing so can reduce orders by 10%.
It’s unclear whether this is because of a search algorithm factor or because of buyers’ reactions to your average delivery time metric on the Gig page (or both).
Fiverrcast Episode 13 shares some additional tips for Fiverr SEO, endorsed by Fiverr by nature of being published on their blog:
- Create a Gig for each specific service so that you’re not underoptimizing for related keywords.
- Make sure you’re categorizing Gigs correctly.
- Don’t stuff keywords (overusing them to the point of coming across unnaturally).
- Flesh out your Gig description with copy that uses relevant keywords.
- Understand that image file names affect Google indexation. Fiverr’s First Ever Super Seller and Official Ambassador, twistedweb123 (Adam) mentions that it’s important to name your Gig’s image files according to what you’re delivering.
During this Fiverrcast podcast episode, Adam also says: “Fiverr tells [Google] to try and use the first kind of sentence or two of your description to show in the search engine results”.
A Google search for my username and the word “Fiverr” returned templated responses that didn’t pull directly from my Gig descriptions:
So with that said, I didn’t agree with every characterization of SEO they generalized about on the aforementioned Fiverrcast episode about Fiverr SEO, but there were good tips shared all the same.
Furthermore, this podcast episode shares tips that help with a mix of internal search and indexation on Google — but not either topic independent of the other.
But here’s something that we can say definitively:
According to Holly Steffy, PR Manager at Fiverr, the top searches in the Programming & Tech category include the terms: WordPress, E-Commerce, Website development, Shopify, and Website Design.
Here’s one last thing we have some Fiverr guidance for regarding how search works: how to use search tags to get more impressions on Gigs.
Some Fiverr search tag best practices include:
- Using tags to describe the specific services and industries you serve.
- Max out your ability to add five relevant tags.
- Don’t try to use special characters and duplicated terms — they will be ignored.
Fiverr vs other popular freelance marketplaces
CodeinWP shares a list of seven popular WordPress freelance marketplaces and job boards but that number is really just the tip of the iceberg. For every specialized niche, there’s a marketplace where you can find people to help with related tasks.
When it comes to freelancing, two big names tend to dominate the conversation in terms of where to maintain an active presence: Upwork and Fiverr.
Upwork and Fiverr: mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs
Both Upwork and Fiverr have been making bold moves to grow their spheres of influence.
Specifically, Upwork merged with two companies of a similar nature: oDesk and Elance.
Keep reading the article at CodeinWP. The article was originally written by Maddy Osman on 2020-01-06 07:52:11.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.