The Good- The Bad- The Ugly - Making Money on Fiverr

 

The Good:

Fiverr is a site where you can make money doing what you love. You can buy and sell just about anything for $5. The majority of people who sign up won't get rich using Fiverr, but I can say that it is definitely a legitimate source of side cash.

The first time I discovered Fiverr, I was hooked. I couldn't believe all the unique things I could buy for just $5, from someone singing a personalized song, to a testimonial video, or someone Photoshopping your logo on times square.

So here is the lineup of benefits to using Fiverr:

• Make money on the side
• Buy gigs to help your business
• Build your clientele
• Make friends and meet amazing people from all over the world

At first glance, I didn't think I had much to offer for $5. But then I realized that people came to me for opinions on their music all the time. I enjoyed helping people with their music. I think that's part of what  made me a sought out DJ, but... the amount of inquiries became overwhelming. Critiquing someone's song actually takes time- time I just didn't have, because I was busy working on building an enterprise for my family's future. It was when I discovered Fiverr, that I realized I could be charging for this service instead of turning people down, so.....

A little under a year ago, I started a profile on Fiverr.

This is my profile. I recently made a withdraw, so you can see my current balance is $36.

Currently I charge $5 for a song rating, and $15 for a rating with a full written critique.

Since my song rating and critiquing gig did fairly well, I started adding more gigs such as: Voice Overs, Contracts, Song Edits, Virtual Assistant, and others.

There are tons of things to help grow your pockets, and your business at Fiverr. I could add more gigs to make money, but I don't want to overwhelm myself because I've still need to have time to build the enterprise, write books, raise kids, and write this blog. But as you can see, you can do as little or as much as you want. Fiverr even has a vacation feature you can use when you get too busy.

I've personally used some amazing editing services, critiquing services, and I even found an amazing guy in Canada who helped me solve my blue screen of death on my computer. How amazing is that?

The gigs start out at $5, but then can go up to $160 with the gig extras. So you can spend a little or a lot- or you can make a little or a lot. On each transaction of $5, the seller makes $4 and Fiverr makes $1.... or now $1.50 because they recently added a 50 cent surcharge.

So far since the Spring of 2014 until now Dec. 2014. I've made about $1,000 on Fiverr, and I've gotten to work with awesome people from all over the world. A thousand bucks isn't much when looking at a year's income, but it's definitely a start of getting paid for doing something you love.

The parts that are blue on the map are where I've made sales in the world. The areas in the darker blue mean that there have been more sales in that area.

The Bad & The Ugly:

I've also learned that there are some things to watch out for on Fiverr. There are some shady characters offering "real" traffic to your website, or tweeting your product or service out to their "following". However, gor the most part, they are not legit- despite the thousands of 5 star reviews. Most of the people who gave them 5 star reviews don't know what they are even looking at... all they comprehend is that their site visits are going up. The reason I say this is because most of the site visits are bots making the visit ticker go up on site. As far as the twitter/facebook shout out's go, do yourself a favor and have a look at their interaction on the social platform. If there's little to no interaction on the tweets or facebook posts, don't waste your money. It is also likely that their facebook/twitter "following" are bots too.

I've personally used one of the gigs above... I'm going to take the high road and not say who tried to scam me. Just steer clear of all of them. I'm telling you from my own experience, loss of time, and loss of money- THEY DON'T WORK!

I paid a guy to send traffic to my fundraising campaign. The guy didn't know I was savvy and had analytics on the campaign page. The numbers of visits definitely went up, hundreds per day even, but...

a.) there were no conversions - no one donated

b.) the campaign analytics said the visits were coming from the same ip address (or something like that - it was a while ago, so I can't remember exactly) But they were exactly the same number of visitors from each country every day. There is definitely something wrong there.

There are also other gigs that offer other similar types of things. As a general rule of thumb, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Think about a psychic telling you what your wining lottery numbers are. If they can tell you, why aren't they wealthy already.

Now think about these people who can send traffic your way.... If they can send it your way, why aren't they busy making millions of dollars with their own traffic, instead of peddling $5 gigs to people like you?

Either way, you have to watch out for these scams. I know it's tempting because you may desperately want to be heard, or get your brand out there, but take the time and do the research, or better yet, pay someone who has a proven track record to get your traffic up.

I know you want the infamous Staples "Easy Button". So here it is:

Now here is the easiest way to get traffic and a following:

Your best source of traffic is going to come from hard work, putting out content, building your following one connection at a time, cross promoting with other like minded people, and being clever in your marketing strategy.

Can I get a "That was easy"?

Ok, maybe not... was worth a try anyway.

However, this is the easiest and fastest way, other than if you have a VIP in your corner shouting you from the roof tops. In a majority of instances, that's not the case. You've gotta build it from the ground up, one step at a time. In my experience, it seems that the "short cut" ends up being the "long road" - and an eye opening hard learning experience.

Back to Fiverr...

You most likely won't get rich quick, you're not likely to even make a living wage unless you live in a country where the conversion is 4-1, and even still... maybe not. But you will make a little extra cash for dinner and a movie on the weekend.

The other great thing about Fiverr is that you can find out if other people value your work. This is a great way to find yourself, your strengths, and what people are really interested in. It's can be rewarding when you see that other people find value in something you have to offer, and not a company you're working for. It's another step to Indie Freedom.

Fiverr is a site where you can "dance to the beat of your own drum".... literally...

If you need some extra cash, and can find something creative, or something of value to offer that doesn't take longer than 15 minutes to do, Fiverr might be worth your while. It does take some time to build your clientele because ratings can be the driving force for customers to buy, however, it doesn't hurt to try something new. You never know, you might surprise yourself- I did.