How to make money on Fiverr

Fiverr.com is one of a number of freelancing sites where you can offer one or more services. The hook with Fiverr of course being that the ‘gigs’ start from as little as $5.

Fiverr was launched back in 2010 when the founders, Micha Kaufman and Shai Wininger, decided to create a marketplace where people could buy and sell digital products. The site has grown significantly over the last 10 years and reported revenues of $107 million in its most recent accounts (2019).

How does Fiverr work?

It’s a blindingly simple model. People sign up to the platform and create a list of services that they are able to provide. Generally they would offer 3 levels of that service with the most basic costing $5 and the cost increasing with the complexity of the additional services offered.

When someone has a requirement to outsource a particular task then they can go onto Fiverr.com and search or browse for relevant ‘gigs’. The two parties can message using the in built messaging platform to agree the details of the job and once all is agreed they can place an order.

Once the order is complete the buyer will be notified so that they can check the order meets their requirements and complete the transaction. If not they would ask the vendor for some revisions until it was satisfactory.

What sort of gigs are there on Fiverr?

Pretty much anything you want done from animations to video creation, blog posts to funny voicemail messages. There are currently eight main areas and each of those has a large number of sub sections.

Graphics & Design: Logo Design, Web Design, Tattoos, Designs for T-Shirts etc.

Digital Marketing: Social Media Marketing, SEO, Email Marketing etc.

Writing & Translation: Articles & Blog Posts, Scriptwriting, eBooks, Press Releases etc.

Video & Animation: Whiteboard Animation, Intros & Outros, Spokespersons Videos etc.

Music & Audio: Jingles & Intros, Songwriting, Voiceovers etc.

Programming & Tech: WordPress Website, Databases, Desktop Applications etc.

Business: Data Entry, Market Research, Lead Generation etc.

Lifestyle: Online Lessons, Celebrity Impersonators, Gaming etc.

What should I do?

What skills do you have? If you are a dab hand at creating and editing video then you could offer a range of services revolving around that. Are you a skilled designer? You could create a gig selling T-Shirt designs or Logo creation. If you know how to design websites or code then those can be some of the highest paying gigs on Fiverr.

What can you do if you don’t have any specific skills? There’s nothing to stop you using software to create something that you can resell. Eg. YouTubers will need intro/outros for their videos.

There are a number of ways to create them – placeit.net has over 400 YouTube Intro/Outro animations that you could use just by adding the channel/business logo and in no time you can have a professional looking piece of video. Click on the image above to see an example.

It costs just $14.95 (plus tax) per month (£12.01 + VAT). They are also doing 50% off their annual plan at the moment.

So if you only managed to sell 1 basic gig per day on average you’d make roughly 10x the cost of software every month. One video would likely only take 15 minutes or less including all emailing back and forth with the user. Ok, so you aren’t necessarily going to become a millionaire but combine that basic gig with more complicated offerings or different types of offerings in the same niche and you might be making $20-$30 per hour before tax while actually having little or no real skills to offer.

I live in the UK and even with a minimum wage of £8.72 (for over 25’s) I’d be a lot happier earning £20-£24 working from home with no commute or travel costs than flipping burgers, waiting tables or working in a shop. Given the recent covid-19 pandemic, I personally would not be that keen to work in a public facing job at all. If you live in a country with a lower cost of living then I imagine even 2 or 3 basic $5 gigs might make quite a difference to your income.

How to get sales?

Obviously you need to get people to view your gig in order to make some sales. The usual sort of tactics you would use anywhere else on the web will apply. Make sure you have good quality descriptions, high quality examples of your work and make sure your tags use the most relevant keywords/phrases. Try and make thumbnails look eye-catching.

Some Example Gigs

Video testimonials. These are a great way to promote a product and companies will often pay for authentic looking testimonials eg just done on your phone.

Transcription services. Creating a written version of what’s said in a video or audio file can be a popular service and could be done semi-automatically using google voice to text.

Document/File conversion. There are a surprising number of gigs offering a conversion service for different file types.

Remove backgrounds from images. Yes, this is a gig that is listed by quite a lot of sellers. Again software solutions can make this relatively painless to do.

Virtual Assistant. A lot of small companies might need some help with basic admin tasks.

I would suggest the best thing to do is go and have a look at what gigs are on there and then decide if you are able to do them or if some software could make it possible. Then look realistically at what you could make per hour. Will it pay more than minimum wage?

Here’s a link to a story about someone that’s making it happen right now on Fiverr.

Affiliate Income

It’s possible to generate affiliate income from Fiverr in two ways. The more obvious way is that Fiverr has an affiliate program that you can sign up for and then get paid a commission for referring people to Fiverr. You can also get a commission for referring individual creators on the site.

How to make money on Fiverr: Final Thoughts

There is another way to potentially make more money on Fiverr. Drop-servicing. This is like drop-shipping but for services rather than physical products. It’s basically just applying the oldest selling technique in the book – arbitrage. Eg. On one of the other freelancing sites you notice there are a number of sellers offering a service for let’s say $20, they all have good reviews so there shouldn’t be too many issues with delivery or quality of work.

So you create a similar service on Fiverr but with an additional markup. You then act as an intermediary between the buyer and the creator. Essentially you have created your own agency.

I’m going to try adding some gigs to Fiverr and possibly some of the other freelance sites and I’ll give you an update on how it goes in a future post.

James.