Fiverr - What it is and why your career as a freelancer starts with it

So as promised, here comes a "guide" of sorts on how anyone can become a freelancer today. Deadsimple for some, deadheard for others.

So what is Fiverr? Well basically fiverr was a website launched five years ago with the slogan "Browse. Buy. Done.". It's a marketplace like any other webshop, but instead of selling items such as iphones or t-shirts, it sells services.

Now I was among the first freelancers on the site, back in 2010. Back then, you would put up an ad on the site for some type of service that you offer in exchange for a fiver, 5$. Today the site is a lot different, you can make money up to several hundred USD for any service you offer via special addons to your small little five buck gig.

Fiverr has several million different services being offered right now and it doesn't matter if you need someone to post a flyer for you in another country or if you need some quickly made blog posts, they definately have at least one freelancer offering exactly what you're looking for.

Fiverr has more than us professional freelancers though. Girls (Mostly) willing to sing songs written by you, people willing to do voice-overs and such. Pretty much anything you could ever want that is digital is offered. So why should the rest of us make money there and not you?

So being a huge marketplace with millions of offers up many would assume that the competition is fierce and that it would be impossible for an amateur to get into the Fiverr game. This is one of the reasons why a lot of people are scared of freelancing. But the fact is that the freelance market is so large that people forget that the competition between freelancers is much smaller than one would imagine.

Lets take one of my largest freelance niches for example. I translate from Swedish to English and from English to Swedish. Now, there are only about nine million people worldwide that know Swedish fluently enough to work as translators Among them, about two million are too old to work. Another four-five million are already employeed in basic 8-5 jobs. Another 1 million are students. The remaining one million? 200k of them are sick and go on wellfare, another 100k are employeed in higher positions or are academics. Then we have a few hundred thousand that are unemployeed. Which leaves us with what, maybe 70-100k that could do what I do? Among those we have lazy people and people who want to get a job. Which leaves us with about 1000 people who can do what I can do.

Now here comes the funny part. I said people who know Swedish fluently but how many of those are actually good with language based skills like writing? One of the most popular areas of freelancing happens to be webdesign and graphic related skills.

Actually, I can count my competition on Swedish translation, at this moment there are 18 people including me who work with translation. There are about fifty more or so, but they consist of people who haven't put down any time to get any real customers so they don't count as real competition.

Now, how would I go forward? You see Fiverr is easy, you put up a gig about what you want to do for five dollars. Translate a few hundred words, design a logo, design a template for a blog or something like that. If you have any type of skill, you can most likely profit on it. Just check out the weird things that sell there, I mean really, there is a girl there doing a killing by recording herself for 15 seconds on webcam to say anything the customers want. I mean seriously, if she can make money (Mostly based on her looks is my guess) then so can you with your hobbies or skills.

Now remember to make your profile on Fiverr/Freelancer/Odesk look real. If you're not too shy, use a picture of you and don't worry, the odds of your friends ever finding your freelancer profile is zero, so far no one I know has ever found my profiles, mostly since they are too lazy to work as freelancers.

Now it actually is important to fill out your profile info. Make sure to list whatever skills you may have that the customers might need for their business. I mean really, just list everything you excel at.

Tip:Dumb the info down, don't use overly advanced terms to describe it, makes it much easier for your customer to understand. Say you design logos instead of "Graphical design" for example. On my old account, I literally had "I translate shit to Swedish" as part of my description.

Now for posting a Gig. In my opinion, it's best to check out your competition. Look at the best selling gigs in your field and see what they offer. Especially look at the gig descriptions since the best selling gigs probably have the best, most catchy descriptions.

Now, for pictures just go with anything, no one cares much about them unless you work with anything graphical, if it is then you MUST put up some work that you've done to showcase your skills.

Now on Fiverr, there is always the issue with "Gig video". It's basically a feature that allows you to upload a short video about your offer. Now most sit in their webcam and talk in a message. Some record themselves while doing whatever they offer.

Now, I already know most of you are trembling going "Oh but I am too shy to talk in a message, way too shy to show my face!" Yeah, I know. I have never shown my face on a webcam so trust me, if anyone knows a way around this it's me.

You see, you need a gig video. Or well, need is a strong word but basically it's been proven on Fiverr that having a video increased the sales chance with 200%. Now this might sound bogus but it's true, and I will now tell you why.

1) People will think of you as a more serious seller if you have ANY kind of video. Since a video means you've put time into your gig offer, more than the others who have just a basic text description.

2) Buyers can search specifically for sellers with video, so this means your offer wont even show if you don't have a video. Many buyers use this function to only get the most serious sellers.

I will go more into depth of how you can whip up a sales video with little work put into it but still all that extra sales value. That post will be released in the coming week so stay tuned for it! For now lets move on.

Now the last step is of course how we handle the competition. Basically, the trick is to crush the competitor by being better.

Now for this I will once again go on my own field, Swedish translations. Most sellers working with it on Fiverr will translate 500 words to or from Swedish for 5 dollars. The delivery time is usually between 5-10 days. Now, how can I beat that?

Alright, for starters, I know I can translate way more than 500 words in 30 minutes. In thirty minutes I can translate about 700 words if it's just a simple translation. Alright, so instead of translating 500 words like everyone else, I'll go with 600. This means I am already providing a larger quantitiy than my competition. But hold on, I am new to the field and the competitors have a ton of reviews and sales already. Lets make it 700 words, in other words, an estimate of 30 minutes of work per gig.

Alright so time limit. 5-10 days you say? Well sucks for you, I'll put it on three days and offer to have it completed within 24 hours in exchange for five dollars extra, a so called Gig Extra.

So as you can see, I am better and faster than my competition. Now, with a gig video and some examples of my work and any buyer will see that I am way more high-class than any other translator there. In other words, even though I have 0 sales and 0 reviews, I can guarantee that I will have made a sale within 24 hours.

Now to end the awfully long blog post, lets see how much this offer alone could earn me. Now at a minimum, the minimum amount of orders would be 1 a day. That means between 25-30 a month. 30x5 is 150$. Now about half of the customers tend to go for the Extra Fast gig extras, no matter what gig it's about. The end result would then land between 200-300$. That's for this gig, at a minimum. Now most freelancers offer about 5-10 gigs. They do some varied work since if you can translate, that means you can write for example. I don't only translate in Swedish I also write articles in Swedish for bloggers and such.

Now most people in for example translation, writing and such, they order more than one gig per placed order. My average for 600-800 words, tends to be three orders per customer. Now lets say I have 50 customers (I tend to get between 40-60 a month for translation). Lets say 20 of them place just one single order, and the rest place double orders. The first twenty garner me about 150$ for ten hours a work, that is 15$ an hour.

Now the remaining thirty order 2-3 translations per gig. Now, some will order Extra Fast, some wont. Lets say I get a total of 70 translations from those thirty, that's about 450$ for 30 hours of work. So a total of around 600$ for a total of around 40 hours of work. Now thats for one gig. I barely use Fiverr nowadays but when I did, I would have about four-six gigs running at the same time, work about three or four days a week for six-seven hours. For a total of about 2500-3500$  in monthly wage, if you can call it that. Now sure, we're not talking a high salary, but do keep in mind that I only worked half-time compared to a normal person and on top of that I would work directly from home. In my opinion, it's the best part of being a freelancer.

Now that should give you a good idea on how Fiverr works. If anything is unclear or if you want some more in-depth info on anything, don't hesitate to leave your opinion or question in the comment section below. Until then, enjoy. Please share this blog post if you found it interesting or helpful.