Did I even do this right? Are my expectations wrong?

[j_strath]

PLEASE bare with me I have a lot of disjointed questions about how to thrive on Fiverr. I'm new to Fiverr (despite having joined in 2017). So a few things, is there a way I can view other people's profiles so I can compare what good gigs are even supposed to look like? How do you find work? You just sit and wait and hope you are seen purely through keywords? I'm comparing my experience here to Upwork (also joined recently) and at least there you get job listings you can apply for. Feels more proactive, albeit just as unproductive. But is there no job listings or any proactive measures on Fiverr?

Looking at a lot of the advice for finding work, I feel like I'm just running into an error, because as someone who has practically zero social media presence, any self promo I'd do is just shouting into the void especially when people are already not interested in being sold something. Social media feels so insincere to me, I know for a fact I am not optimizing there very well at all which I should address. I suppose I'm just feeling overwhelmed about what I need to fix or where to start to get back into freelancing because a lot of advice seems to function on the assumption you already have some street cred and notoriety.

My only freelancing experience was from roughly 15 years ago through a forum for photo retouching. Think things were smaller back then so if you were competent at retouching, you got a lot of work. But now that things are different, and I'm trying to push my art, it is SOOOO soo bleak. 

Having got my vent out of the way, am I allowed to post my profile here to get some constructive criticism at least? Like is my profile just all wrong in terms of being appealing to clients? What's the next step if you don't really have anywhere fruitful to push your services? I won't post my profile yet incase that's against some rules for the forum. 

 

[melanielm]

4 hours ago, j_strath said:

there a way I can view other people's profiles so I can compare what good gigs are even supposed to look like?

Sure. Go to the main page as a buyer (or in an Incognito browser when you're not logged in) and look through gigs. You can click on the seller's profiles easily.

Things were a lot easier 15 years ago. Competition etc. has made it necessary to stand out. You can't offer what other people offer if you want to succeed as any type of freelancer. I think it's a lot more about building an entire business/brand than it is simply selling on Fiverr (or any other platform).