A few months ago, I started offering web design services on Fiverr as a part-time freelancer. My motivation in doing this wasn't primarily about making a lot of money - I just wanted to test whether freelancing itself was something for me. However, whatever your motivation for starting to offer your services on Fiverr, you probably also have one question: Is it still possible to succeed as a new Fiverr seller in 2019? Whether as a buyer or seller, someone who visits the gig economy platform for the first time will be overwhelmed by the huge range of services. And once you create your first gig on the platform, you'll quickly recognize: You're no longer competing with local agencies and freelancers, you're now competing with people from all over the world. How is it supposed to be possible to stick out there from this seemingly endless amount of sellers? I think anyone who has ever thought about selling on Fiverr knows these fears – I had them too. But as I can already tell you, it is definitely still possible to grow a successful business on Fiverr. And in my case it was even easier than I originally thought. To succeed on Fiverr, you need a basic understanding of how these platforms work and what their goal is. With this article, I want to help new sellers who might be as scared as I was at the beginning. With a deadly simple strategy, you will learn in just 5 steps how to quickly get your first projects and build a strong presence on this platform. 1 — Create professional, thoughtful gigs
First, I think it's definitely time well invested to design your gig carefully. A good concert should stand out with a professional look and a certain uniqueness. A professional look is essential because it can already differentiate your service from all the others that look rather untrustworthy and questionable - and you'll find plenty of them on Fiverr. So make sure you only provide relevant and clear information in your gig description and profile. Additionally, it may be helpful to answer common questions in the FAQ section of your gig. This way, customers know in advance about every detail of your service. And besides, a nice profile photo will work like a charm – people like to know who they're working with. Uniqueness is something that seems almost impossible to achieve on Fiverr these days. However, try to find at least some aspects that make your service different. Think about some of the other services you could offer within your core competencies – such as Wordpress sites that not only look good, but are also optimized for SEO. For example, I advertised that I was a native German speaker. As people usually prefer to communicate in their native language, I noticed a lot of interest from the German audience. 2 — Set an irresistible price
A good looking concert alone won't do the trick. Once we've created our gig, we need to make sure it appears at the very top of the search results. We can use a simple trick for this: Set an irresistibly low price. I know this may sound painful at first because we want to make money on Fiverr instead of working for someone else for almost free. However, this approach definitely pays off in the long run because it follows a simple but effective strategy. This strategy is based on Fiverr's ranking algorithm and its several factors that determine whether your gigs are high or not. In general, there are two main aspects that greatly influence the ranking algorithm: prices and reviews. Since the latter requires an existing presence on the platform, and we don't have one yet, we can only use price as our leverage in the first step. Therefore, setting a low price until you have a significant number of positive reviews can be a nice tweak that instantly increases your visibility. And as a small consolation, buyers on Fiverr have the option to leave a tip at the end of each project. Since many buyers actually have a bad conscience about not paying you more than a pittance, they often leave a tip. So even if you offer your services at low prices, it is very likely that you will earn more than that. 3 — Be online, respond quickly.
Subsequently, you will soon receive the first messages from potential clients. Now it's your turn to act. One of Fiverr's key metrics is seller response time. Therefore, it is very likely that they will value fast-responding sellers more than slower ones. Although it can be annoying at times - a quick response will be very beneficial for your ranking. And remember, our main goal is to get the best possible rating to get our first clients quickly. You don't even have to immediately respond in detail to every first message. For example, there were several situations where I didn't have time to really react. Then I just sent a standard message where I appreciated the client's interest and let them know I'd get back to them later. Also, try to be online as much as possible in the early days. Platforms like Fiverr aim to enable interaction between freelancers and clients – as quickly as possible. Given the scenario that a client is looking for a specific type of service, it only makes sense that Fiverr ranks sellers who are always online higher. Fiverr thus guarantees that the client will find a suitable partner for cooperation within a few minutes. And Fiverr is also interested in creating as many interactions as possible. It wouldn't be really smart to reward infrequently active sellers with good ratings. 4 — Collect reviews
Once you've created your cheap gig, you should be able to get your first projects off the ground quickly. Since Fiverr is a platform where reviews and referrals matter the most, these first projects are really important. You will clearly know that after you receive your first 5 star reviews, your rating will generally be much better. So it's definitely worth doing some work for almost free upfront if you can get good reviews for it. So make sure that you definitely over deliver in your first projects and be as pleasant as possible to the client or customer. In general, most customers are already satisfied if you communicate clearly and regularly with them and deliver everything on time. 5 — Raise prices
At this point you have completed your first orders on Fiverr, congratulations! Once you have your first reviews, you should see an increase in concertgoers. The last step in this strategy is now to increase the prices of your concerts according to the increasing number of reviews. We can do this because, as I explained earlier, we are now able to gain influence and visibility on the platform more and more from the built-up brand of trust that is based on excellent reviews. So we are not only dependent on low prices. My suggestion is to increase the prices after at least 3 reviews. But that's something you have to figure out for yourself. If you're still not getting that many offers from clients, keep your prices low. However, if the combination of low prices and excellent reviews leads to a number of offers that become difficult to manage, raise the prices. Conclusion
This simple strategy I laid out in this article has worked perfectly for my niche - web design services. However, I have to admit that there are probably sections on Fiverr where this approach is not so easy to use. For example, most logo design gigs start as low as $5. Obviously, you have no chance of downselling in this section. But even so, use this article as inspiration and motivation. It's still possible to succeed on Fiverr in 2019. All you need is a well-thought-out strategy – which can even be as simple as this.
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