These are My Top 10 Tips and Tricks
Fiverr has become a money making machine for many newcomers into the Internet Marketing business for the last eight years. People with skills (and such without any skills) take on Fiverr career to make a living online. I personally, when I started on Fiverr, used all of the money I made to buy SEO tools and courses, to keep educating myself and developing new skills. But last two years, the rules changed so much (for the worst) that from a marketplace for entrepreneurs it became a digital plantation. Fiverr sellers have been pushed so hard, and many great sellers got banned, that day after day people spend so much time working on Fiverr but making a lot less.
So, here I will put my top 10 tips and tricks on how to become a successful Fiverr seller. Remember, these are my opinion, and you don’t have to agree with me. It is my blog, and this is what I think, and you are more than welcome to disagree with me. But I had eight years there, and I know almost to the teeth what’s going on there. Let’s get started.
#1 Never Contact Support
This would be your number one and the most important tip to memorize. All of the bellow tips are not as important as this one. I can’t even stress it enough. If you dare to contact their “support” for some innocent issue or to ask them a fundamental question, you will get punished for that. I’m serious, probably the only time you get in touch with them is if your account got hacked, or your payment didn’t go through, or some extreme situation occurred. For example, if you are in some dispute with a buyer who tried to scam you (there are many of them). Support will first dig into your profile and messages you exchanged not just with that rotten buyer, but they will check on previous conversations you had with other buyers. As soon as they see you said something, you send the buyers links to see some example of the work you’ve done for others, and they will be on your ass giving you a warning or a penalty.
#2 Always Overdeliver on The Work You Do
Yes, to get a constant flow of buyer and to have regular clients, always overdeliver on the work you do. Fiverr buyers are very spoiled and even the slightest doubt they have that you didn’t do good enough they will use it against you. They will harras you via messages, and as soon as you report them to Support, the ban hammer will be hanging over your head.
The more stuff you give them from what you offer, the better the buyers will feel, and they will leave you positive feedback. Have in mind it’s against their Marxist’s TOS to lure feedback for over-delivery. So, never mention up front, in your gig description, that you will do extra work ONLY if they leave you five-star feedback. We used to be able to do that but not anymore.
There are also buyers that are gold nuggets. Rare ones but if you find one you should never be on vacation for them. Be available 24/7 for them and they will pay you real money, not $5 gigs.
#3 Deliver The Orders Fast
Now, this is a bit tricky. From my experience, if you deliver the report very fast, like within an hour or two of receiving the order, the buyer could get jealous. Yes, you read it right the word is “jealous.” I’ve had such buyers, I delivered the order within an hour or so after receiving it (even though it wasn’t express gig extra), and the fucker started bitching about everything. Because he thought: “Wait a minute, I paid $50 for links, and he delivered them within an hour, so he must be making $50 an hour?! While I’m busting my ass to make the site rank this guy gets paid $50?!”. There are buyers like that.
Unless the buyer bought 24 hours express delivery, don’t rush it too much. Let a few hours pass by and then start working on the order. Or finish the order and deliver the report a few hours after that. Check the project he or she is working on. See the website what is it about. Because the chances are, that buyer is buying other Fiverr gigs like there is no tomorrow. So, he or she has probably been shopping around more gigs, and they won’t pay much attention if you delivered the report 8 hours later.
#4 Fast Communication With Buyers
Now, if you want to rise high and fast the pecking order (which is not always a good idea), you have to be able to communicate fast with the buyers. I will keep repeating, but Fiverr buyers are spoiled, and as soon as one sends a message they expect you to be on the other end of the communication line. It’s like a phone call for them: “Hello, can you do this for free and send me the report?”
Install their app on your Android phone or iPhone and continuously monitor for messages. I’ve been sending messages back and forth with sellers at 2-3 AM in the morning. And they love it, and 9 out of 10 will order the gig. Also, always be the one who sends the last word in conversations. For instance, you are done with clarifying the details with the potential buyer, and they are happily ready to order and say “Thank you!” you be the last one saying “Welcome.” It’s like a ping-pong game, I know, but that’s the way it is.
#5 Treat Buyers As Clients
What do I mean by that? Don’t operate like a grocery store, but somewhat like a law firm. Make them feel special, be friendly and generous, never give false expectations to your clients. Ninety percent of them expect miracles for $5 so don’t pour more oil into the fire. Speak from experience rather knowledge. All of the buyers know more than you do, and this is their attitude. Unless you are a software developer creating some fancy code for clients, they are 100 percent sure they know more than you do.
Always check your spelling and grammar. English is not my first language and once I lost a buyer just because I wrote back in some broken English. I wasn’t paying attention to what was I typing, and I saw my poor communication after I sent the message. For example, use Grammarly or some software to check your grammar and spell check before you hit the send button.
#6 Always Check The Profiles of The People Who Send You Messages
Many times you will be busy working on orders, and at the same time, someone will message you with idiotic questions about the services you provide. These types of messages most likely come from your competitors. They want to see a sample report, and this is their game, they want to look at the whole thing. Not a sample link but all of the links you provide.
Don’t answer them right away. Let the sender wait for an hour or so, and you go and check if that’s a Fiverr seller too. If it is, then you have a card in your hand. Because if they start bitching about something with the order you go and order their gig right away. I’ve done this twice with buyers who were Fiverr sellers as well, and avoided been scammed by them. One of the cases was so funny. The idiot, order from me a gig on submitting a PDF document to document sharing sites, and he ordered with a gig extra total of $10. He wanted to see the list of all sites I use for submission. As soon as he got the report, he started sending a modification after modification. Claiming these are not document sharing sites and the whole shebang.
So, I instantly ordered his gig for $5 on “Manually creating 100 blog links to your site” or some other shitty name like that. He delivered the report within 2 hours, with all of the gratitude and fireworks of his great work. The first link I say in the report caught my eye, and this was a Money Robot submission. I replied back with order modification and let him know that. Long story short, he left me a five-star review and I did the same for him. But be careful, most of these scammers operate with multiple accounts. They have a few seller accounts and a few “buyers” accounts. They use these to spy on competitors and get the information from them for free and make gigs on the same job.
#7 Do Not Be Loyal to Fiverr
Try to attract regular clients and work with them outside of Fiverr. The minute you open your Fiverr account and you get your first order the clock starts ticking on you. Sooner or later you will be banned. I’m dead serious about it. No matter what kind of gigs you offer, sooner or later Support is going to getcha. So, with clients that you work on a regular basis try somehow to sneak a link in the report to your skype or better if you have a website. You may offer them 10% lower price than you have on Fiverr or not. It depends on the work you do, but most will be happy about that because buyers pay fees too. It used to not be like that, but the Marxists got so greedy that they imposed charges on the buyers as well. And another issue I know from clients they face is if a buyer receives a refund, the money goes into their Fiverr account and can only use the funds for purchasing other gigs. They can’t get the money back into their credit card or PayPal account.
On top of that when you get banned on Fiverr (and you find this blog post looking for what and why it happened), you will have clients to work with and not run out of money. I was loyal to Fiverr and never did that. I thought the game is fair and I play by the rules. Up until I got my Fiverr account disabled without any explanation. If you don’t follow this tip, then when the knife gets stuck in your back, it will hurt a lot more. Any chance you got to get a client outside do it without feeling guilty.
#8 Don’t Make Your Gigs Look Like a Landing Page
Buyers are fed up with reading sale threads all over the place. Regular buyers want to get what they paid. Don’t promise them “manual” stuff if you don’t do it manually. Just don’t mention things you don’t do. People aren’t stupid they spend a fortune on gigs so they know what they should receive from you. If you upload a video make sure it’s you in the video talking, not some whiteboard animation video. False expectations always lead to negative feedback. Which is something you want to avoid, right?
#9 Participate in The Forum
The Forum is like their coffee break room. You will meet all kinds of idiots there. Some of them are good, some of them are not but try to hang around there. Support is following that closely so avoid controversial topics. Because “Show me the man, and I will show you the crime” is very much valid on the forum as well. The place is carefully monitored, and if someone says something controversial I’m sure this will be marked in their profile for “later punishment.”
Hang around topics on how to do better, more clients, welcome threads and so on. It’s a Marxists place, so if you stick your head above the rest, it will be noted. I never participated because never found the topics interesting. Most of the people knew little to nothing about the stuff they do. They copy/pasted other people’s gigs and bitch about why they can’t make any sales. All of the gigs I had were unique, and I was the first one to stick my head above the rest.
#10 Withdraw Your Money Regularly
I read this tip a few other times before when I was a seller, and I thought it was silly. I always thought of Fiverr like that’s my bank account. In fact, I trusted them more than my bank. I withdrew money only when the balance was $500+. Luckily, the night before I got banned I withdrew $570. I was even thinking of doing it in the morning, but something made me do it. Thank You, Lord, for the tip!
In the beginning, as soon as you make $50 – $100 get them out. Don’t leave the money to sit because you never know what to expect on the next morning. If you make lots of cash then withdraw daily.
I can probably write 100 more Fiverr tips and tricks, but I believe these are the top 10 most important ones. As of writing this blog post, I’m sure I will have comments bellow from ex-sellers who were just like me and got punished for nothing just like me. Let’s wait, and we shall see. I want to hear your story too.
By me a beer, if you found this post useful.
