One of the surprising bright spots in my side hustle portfolio (my strategy of building multiple income streams) has been Fiverr.
After hearing the incredible story of AnarchoFighter last year, I knew I had to give the platform a shot!
While I haven’t exactly earned house-buying money, it has turned into a nice little revenue source. I’m up $7490 through 14 months, or a little over $500 a month on average.
($920 of that came during a wild 10-day stretch last spring when they featured my gig on the homepage.)
Fiverr is a fun marketplace that is growing each and every day, and is on of the top 100 most popular sites in the US and in the top 150 worldwide.
In fact, just last month they announced a TV advertising campaign to drive even more new buyers to the site. They’re spending money to promote YOU, the seller. It’s entirely a peer-to-peer marketplace — they only make money when their sellers make money.
Like Amazon and other platforms, I think it makes sense to have a “buy button” (or several) on these giant platforms where customers already are and are ready to buy.
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This episode is just me on the mic, and I walk through:
- How I got started on Fiverr as a buyer, then as a seller.
- What gigs I offered.
- Some ideas to brainstorm what gigs you could sell for $5 and beyond.
- How I’m optimizing my Fiverr platform for conversions, positive feedback, and increased sales.
- My plans and strategies to double or triple my Fiverr income in the next few months.
Links and Resources
- Fiverr.com
- How One Fiverr Seller Earned Enough To Buy a House
- The Self-Publishing Platform That Outsold Amazon
- How I Got on the Homepage of Fiverr and Earned $920 in 10 Days
- Using Fiverr for Fake Video Testimonials (trust me!)
- Auto TextExpander for Chrome
- PantheraNetwork (home of Fiverr’s affiliate program; now they’re on LinkShare)
- SEOclerk.com
- Getting paid to read books
If you’ve been selling on Fiverr, or think you might want to start, please leave a comment below and let me know.
And if I’m missing the boat on any killer gig ideas or must-do marketing/sales tactics, let me know as well!
Download the Free PDF "Highlight Reel" from this Episode
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Hey Nick!
Congrats on your Fiverr success and looking forward to hearing updates on this income stream in the future. I’ve dabbled a few times as a seller with mixed success but love absolutely love it as a buyer. I’ve purchased everything from homemade guitar picks to SEO keyword research.
Love the podcast as always. Keep up the great work!
Cheers,
Chris
Thanks Chris — we’ll see if I can expand it a little bit. Would love to get to $1k or $1.5k a month on there, provided it doesn’t eat up too much time.
Hi Chris . I would like to follow your steps
Hey Nick,
I’ve been selling on fiverr for about 2 months now with a recent uptick in orders. I’ve brought in about 150 bucks over the last month or so. I still have a way to go but I love the platform. I’m now working on figuring out how I want to expand my gigs. How did you come up with new ideas?
Best,
Kyle
Sweet! I’m still brainstorming, but I feel like I’m leaving a lot on the table by not utilizing my 20 gig options. That’s a lot more opportunity to show up in search results. I think I’ll try and create some high-value digital deliveries to start with, maybe related to launching a podcast or something like that.
Agreed – after listening to this episode I’m taking a hard look at my current two gigs and thinking how I can spin them into brand new gigs with extras. I think digital deliveries are going to be a big thing. One thing I’ve noticed though is you get better reviews on service based delivery. It shows how much effort you put into it and people respect it.
I had my first Fiverr sell last week by a guy in Denver. Great customer and he left me a nice review. Now I have to hustle and figure out how to market the gig and create more gigs. BTW – I love that you are a Seattle Mariners fan. We’ll get it next year. I miss living in Seattle. Keep up the hustle!
Thanks Dennis — definitely keep me posted! Sooo close this year :)
I always wondered how to kick start a service gig on Fiverr. I had tried unsuccessfully a couple of times and just figured it wasn’t worth the effort. But after hearing of your nice little “side hustle income”, Nick, I think it might be worth the effort after all. You should consider crafting a training course…
Thanks Bradley — I’ll work on putting something together, though most of my notes are in the PDF giveaway on this page :)
Hi Nick
Make sure you take a look at IFTTT it can automate the spreadsheet you were talking about to track you fiverr sales.
I have been a seller on fiverr for about 11 months, I have only made about $150.
My main gig is a spreadsheet gig. I offer to make a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers or Google Spreadsheets.
https://www.fiverr.com/le0nard0/create-an-excel-spreadsheet
I think my issue is the simple $5 gig takes to much time, and the gig is too open ended. I have been thinking about narrowing it down and creating multiple gigs for different types of spreadsheets but I’m not sure if there will be a significant benefit.
Any suggestions?
Brendan, if I order will you help me set that IFTTT recipe up? That sounds awesome :)
I think I’m going to try something similar — creating more focused gigs to see if I can capture more relevant (and hopefully higher converting) search traffic from within Fiverr.
Really enjoyed listening to your insights and journey on fiverr. Love the interviews but also the love the shows when we get to listen to more you nick too! Love some of your ideas for gigs. I remember when i started on fiverr wresting to come up with my first gig idea. I now find i have the opposite problem where i have ton of ideas but not enough time to execute them all! Perhaps i should sell my ideas as a gig?
Haha yes! “I’ll send you 50 Fiverr gig ideas for $5” — People would totally buy that!
Consider it done! ;-) Ps forgot to say i like the idea of mentioning extras in feedback comments. Will give that a try! Cheers
I loved this episode Nick. Besides the extra money, it sounds like you are having a lot of fun with this side hustle! It’s something I need to investigate- thank you for all the great tips.
Thanks Melissa! It’s been a pretty fun one :)
Great stuff Nick,
Fiverr has grown phenomenally over last few years. Some services that I use from fiverr are worth more than $100 and I get it for $5 (check my site’s logo) :-)
And, I totally love it !
Very helpful. Thank you! I’m participating in this side hustle experiment. So your tips (esp the affiliate network idea) are spot on. I hope some of the tips convert – for me!
Woohoo good luck with the challenge!
hi Nick,
I’m not so familiar with the fiverr platform but it seems to me like a bit of an embarrassment to designers, no?
Logo’s for 5 dollar, wordpress for 15 dollar? I mean, who can live like that.
Maybe it’s more about quantity and no quality because the result you get is quite unoriginal?
I’m not pointing fingers, just wondering what your thoughts are on this?
All the best,
Lynn
You’re definitely not alone — there are tons of designers who wouldn’t touch Fiverr with a 10 foot pole. Yet others are finding a way to make it work and lead people into their higher value services.
I would love to put poems and greeting cards in Fiverr but I guess I am nervous. I read so many blogs and I would love to be successful. I know I have to jump and pray that I land.
Congrats! I’m finding a lot of freelance work on Fiverr too.
Just started on fiverr, I write and do online research and also facebook promotions
hi Nick,
Diana psoted somthing about freelance work..how do you get freelance work at fiverr>
It’s largely a freelance platform. For example, one freelance service I used to offer on there was proofreading. You craft your service and create the gig.
Hi, Dan Villarreal here, American expat living and teaching in Taipei, Taiwan. Thanks for posting this. You’ve motivated me to explore Fiverr in my quest for great side income enroute to becoming a Freerange Human!
Dan V
I am the sole breadwinner for my family, and what I bring in is just NOT cutting it, and I am on this site and others daily, trying to formulate a plan and get something going, or we will surely suffer…
I just don’t know what I can “sell” or “teach” someone that I’m actually really good at!
Thank you so much, Nick. Your word is inspirational. I have been working on Fiverr as a Frontend developer seller since 2014. And I earned $12K. Begging of 2 years, I did any related job to development for 5$. But last two years revenue blast like YO!
If need help don’t hesitate. I do budget friendly. ;) :D
Thank you again.
I’m thinking about starting a proofreading service where people send me documents in MS Office format and I read and edit them for spelling and grammar errors for a per hour fee. Not sure what to charge per hour of my time, but I can only do it part time, up to 15 hours without going over the 1170 a month I can make without losing Social Security benefits. I am a part time college student looking for a part-time, 15 hrs/week, side hustle and am skilled at finding spelling and grammar errors in everything I read. I want to be able to adjust my hours to my college schedule, and a side hustle will allow me to do that, where in a regular job, I won’t get my class assignments done if I have to work. If I have an essay due and I don’t show up because work made me come in, I will lose that part of my grade and possibly fail the class; I see it happen to other students all the time. If I want to continue to get financial aid, I have to keep my grades up and that is my top priority right now.
Hey Chris,
I love reading about other sellers journey on Fiverr. Are you still using the platform and how are things going?
PS. Found you through Pintrest!
Cheers
Derek