How to Build a Business on Fiverr

[zackreynolds]

If you spend any amount of time on the Fiverr forums, you will see relentless posts from new sellers wanting to know how to turn the gig they just posted into a full-time business immediately. They may not realize that is the question they are asking, but people want to know... how do I get more orders, now!

At the root of these questions is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Fiverr works and is intended to work.

I have been selling on Fiverr for about two years now. I became eligible for top-rated recently, and I'm hoping to achieve that honor shortly. All this to say, I'm not just blowing smoke.

With that being said, here are a few of my observations:

 

#1: You cannot open a seller account on Fiverr and expect it to be a full-time business right away

The way Fiverr works and is intended to work is built on seller reputation. And just like the real world, reputation takes time to build. When I first started my Fiverr business, orders were few and far between, and so I relied on my main job to provide my income and worked on Fiverr on the side. I faithfully responded to messages when they came in, and did the best job I could on the orders I received. I adapted when gigs I did not originally think were going to be popular started getting more attention and orders, and spent many hours learning new skills so I could get better at what I was doing. Over time, my reputation began to grow and I became more and more busy until I was able to transition to doing Fiverr full-time earlier this year.

 

#2: There are no shortcuts that will lead to long-term success

I think the way to best understand this is if you look at how SEO has evolved over time. Basically, the objective for search engines is to return the most relevant results for the person searching. But what has happened is as search engines adapt their algorithms to return more relevant results, people constantly try to figure out how to game the algorithms to trick the search engine into prioritizing their site or content. This has been a back-and-forth game for many years, with Google as the main face of the search engine algorithm to trick and beat. 

What happens, however, as Google adapted and got smarter was that people who were gaming the system ended up getting de-ranked, as Google began to rely on the behavior of the people searching. If the results of a search was content people were not interested in, Google began to de-rank that content in favor of the content that people were actually looking for.

So the best way to rank high with Google is to actually have what people are looking for (what a novel concept, right?)--whether it's awesome content, amazing products, etc. If you're just offering cookie-cutter content or products, you might as well fuggedaboutit ("forget about it" for those of you not versed with NYC lingo).

So what does SEO and Google have to do with Fiverr? Because the same thing happens here. People constantly want to "game" the Fiverr search algorithm so that their gig will show up first (thus the string of age-old terrible advice like: "Always on-line 24/7!"). 

But here's the thing. Fiverr learned from Google (and other search engines), and relies on the behavior of buyers to help determine where gigs rank in the search algorithm.

So what does this mean practically?

It means if you want to succeed on Fiverr, you need to be offering something worth purchasing. You need to ask yourself, "How can I provide value to my customers?" If your only answer is, "I'm going to edit their picture," then my suggestion would be to take your Fiverr business a little more seriously and think of it as a business, not a hustle (and I don't mean hustle in the sense of working hard, I mean hustle in the sense of taking people's money).

 

#3: Always be looking to improve yourself and your business

One of the ways my Fiverr business ended up taking off was because a gig I did not expect ended up taking off, and I ended up spending a lot of time and hard work learning and improving my skills in that area, which led to more work, which led to more time improving my skills, and so forth. At the end of the day, I ended up building an entirely new skillset to fill a need. My advice in this area is to stay aware of where you can improve your skills and the value that you are offering your customers. It may be the gig you original offer, or it may be something else entirely. So don't be afraid to offer something different or something new--just make sure you can deliver (aka over-deliver) on what you promise.

 

#4: Fiverr will take you seriously if you take it seriously

So with the acknowledgement in place that it will take time to build your Fiverr business, if you take it seriously and treat it like a business, Fiverr will treat you like a business.

Even though my Fiverr business is primarily a single-person operation, I think of things in relation to how it works in a real business (which it is). So when I look at my gigs, I'm thinking of them as my sales department. And my sales department is in charge of representing my products 1) accurately and 2) in an attractive way. 

When I get messages from buyers, I don't operate with the trite motto, "The customer is always right," but my underlying value statement is that what I am doing for my customers is saving them time and making their life easier, and that both of those values are only actually valuable for the customer if they can access that value (aka, is my product actually usable), so that is my goal with every interaction.

I won't bore you with every facet of my business, but my point is that I take each customer seriously. My customers can tell, and Fiverr can pick up on that through their algorithms. So as I take delivering value to my customers seriously, Fiverr takes me seriously and sends more customers my way.

 

#5: CONCLUSION & FINAL TIPS

1) Recognize that it will take time to build a reputation on Fiverr.

2) Work hard to build & keep that reputation

3) Have a value statement for your business that you deliver on to each customer

4) Stay alert to how your Fiverr business will naturally adapt and change over time, and keep in step with that (the gig(s) you start with may not be the gigs that are the most successful).