Explain selling to me like I'm a five-year-old

[jarocats]

Yes, I’ve read more articles and forum posts than I can stomach. I still don’t understand the process.

Scenario 1: I offer a gig (never mind that I still don’t understand exactly how to do this). A client wants me to do the gig.

Then what? The client signs on for my gig through fiverr… How, exactly?

How do I return the finished product to the client through fiverr?

If the client is not satisfied, how does the client specify his/her exact needs/request changes?

Not clear enough? OK…

Scenario 2: I offer a gig (I still don’t know how to do this, but let’s pretend I’ve figured it out by now).

Somebody wants my gig (how I find this out, I still do not know).

I do the gig. (Never mind that I still don’t know how I deliver the gig to the client.)

The client is not satisfied with my work. Now what? How does the client notify me (through fiverr?) that s/he wants a modification?

I am totally confused. All I want to do is the freaking work. Do I need an agent or other go-between (i.e., somebody smarter than I am, who actually “gets” fiverr) to do it all for me? Should I offer a job on fiverr to someone who understands how all this works?

What am I missing? Am I thinking the process is far more difficult than it really is?

Or am I just a complete idiot? (You can reply, “Yes, you are a complete idiot,” and I won’t hold it against you; rather, I will agree with you.)

All I want to do is the freaking work. I just don’t know where to go from here.

P.S. Yes, I know that I am really, really good at what I do, but I am this-close to giving up on fiverr. (Of course, that should make other sellers happy; I’ll be one less obstacle in your way to making money.)

[diegow]

Since literally millions of people seem to have had no problem understanding the process, I’m just going to give you a quick & dirty overview and hope you find it useful as a basis to get a more in-depth idea of what’s involved.

1. Create a gig
   Main menu > Selling > My Gigs, click on ADD A NEW GIG, follow instructions.

Congratulations! The gig is created! Customers can now see it all over the Fiverr website (main page, search, by entering your specific category, etc.)

2. Customer sees your gig, clicks on it and then orders by clicking the “Order Now” button.

3. Customer pays. You mostly don’t have to worry about how. Fiverr now holds that money in escrow for you.

4. You get a notification on your “Notifications” menu and an E-mail saying a customer just ordered something.

5. If, when you created your Gig, you’ve set any requirement for the customer to send information or files before starting an order, they are automatically requested by Fiverr, and the customer should attach them to the order.

6. You get a notification on your “Notifications” menu, a permanent one in your “Dashboard”, and an E-mail saying the customer has submitted all necessary information for your order, and the clock is now ticking. Starting now, you should deliver your order within the time you promised, ALWAYS.

7. You work. If you have anything you want to ask or discuss with the buyer in the process, you can send them a message inside the order page (which you will conveniently find in your dashboard) or via an INBOX message.

8. Your work is finished. You enter the order page (which you will conveniently find in your dashboard) and click the DELIVER NOW button.
   You enter a message and attach all the files for the job.
   CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE JUST DELIVERED YOUR ORDER!

9. The customer looks at what you’ve delivered.

— THIS ONLY APPLIES IF THE CUSTOMER WANTS A REVISION ----
— OTHERWISE, SKIP THIS AND GO TO ITEM 10 —

R.1) The customer hates what you’ve delivered. He asks for a modification in his ORDER page, and hopefully enters a message explaining what it is he wants revised.

R.2) You get notified that the customer asked for a modification. You get 24 additional hours to deliver the revision.

R.3) If you’re OK with what the buyer is asking, you start working on the revision.

If instead the buyer is asking something that is unfair (i.e. extra work that isn’t included in the gig), you can either request more money by clicking “OFFER MORE EXTRAS” in the ORDER page, discuss this with your buyer inside the ORDER page, or begin a dispute with Customer Support. These are special situations and I’m not going to explain them here.

R.4) You re-deliver your modified work by clicking DELIVER MODIFICATION, enter a message and attach all files for the job.
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE JUST DELIVERED YOUR ORDER…AGAIN!

R.5) The customer may re-request a modification, in which case you have to go back to item R.1). Otherwise, if he accepts it, move on to item 10).
---------------------- REVISION STUFF ENDS HERE -----------------------

10. The customer decides he’ll accept the work you delivered as final. He’ll either…
    10.1) Rate your work.
    You will get notified that the customer rated your work. You can also rate the customer and reply to his rating inside the ORDER page. Funds for the order start being processed immediately.
    10.2) Not rate your work.
    3 days later, the order will be marked as “complete” (you will be notified of this) and funds for your order will start being processed.

11. 2 weeks after funds started being processed, they’ll be credited to your account. Remember Fiverr will keep 20% of your earnings.

12. You can now withdraw your funds using your favorite method (direct deposit, Paypal, Fiverr Revenue Card A.K.A. Payoneer)

[fastcopywriter]

Just go to Fiverr Academy, google it if you have to, and start watching those videos. They’re very short and very clear.

[fonthaunt]

If both of those posts don’t work, I wouldn’t know what else to say. Just selling a single service on Fiverr is really, really easy using either the steps the wonderful and verbose @diegow gave you, trying the Fiverr Academy as recommending, using any of the help articles on Getting Started from the Customer Support page or just experimenting with making a gig.

[esthernyambura]

@diegow nice explanation.

[sue_mcl]

perhaps you could buy a $5 gig from someone else to help you understand how it works?

[capitalquality]

Having not been on here long myself I can still remember some of the non-intuitive aspects of setting up a gig, so just to add only a little to @diegow’s excellent summary

• I find it easier to use the menu that drops down from the little down arrow to the right of your username (there are menus all over the fricking place)
• from there you can select ‘create gig’ from the ‘selling’ sub menu
• when you’re creating a gig save each page as you go. Fiverr’s a little buggy and a little fussy.

[capitalquality]

Oh, and the order process is pretty intuitive when you get an order. The only thing is when you want to deliver something make sure you do the ‘deliver now’ option and not just send a message with an attachment. The clock only stops when you ‘deliver now’.

[cyaxrex]

To be honest, if you’re a Silicon Valley I.T. geek (like your profile says you are) and seem to be frustrated with how complex Fiverr is, I’d have to go out on a limb here and say that yes, you probably are an idiot.

I don’t mean that in a horrible way, but you did say that it would be okay to leave such criticism and I couldn’t resist. I wouldn’t say that you are a complete idiot, though. Nor for that matter, a dangerous one. This being the case, once you have things figured out, the good news is that you will likely have a significant edge over the “how do I mek sells” crowd, not to mention the scammers and completely untalented people who populate certain gig categoreies.

In this case, good luck!

[misscrystal]

It seems hard to believe that this would be so confusing for a silicon valley I.T. geek. There isn’t anything that should be confusing to anyone with an understanding of how to use a home computer.

Maybe online sales are not right for you. Everyone is different.

[idostuff4u]

Where’s @emmaki?

[cyaxrex]

I’m afraid that it’s entirely possible that she verbally discombobulated the wrong disgruntled buyer and got taken out earlier today by a Fiverr buyer contracted Greek hitman… Of course, it’s also entirely possible that she’s just busy working. She is an in high demand TRS after all, not like us lowly level 2’s.

[eoinfinnegan]

Keep her away from this post, I can’t stand the sight of blood!

[idostuff4u]

😃

[idostuff4u]

She’s probably busy working… Contracted Greek hitmen don’t do $5 Gigs 😃

[cyaxrex]

Have you seen buyer requests or the bidding areas of some other sites? Some people would sell their first born child for a $!

In fact, right now people in Venezuela are apparently hunting dogs and cats for food. In this case, never underestimate what some people will do for money or in times of scarcity.

Hopefully, of course, emmaki is just rather busy. In fact, who knows, perhaps she’s actually out and about in the real world doing exciting real world things!

I did that a few days ago and plan to today even though I’m forgoing a nights sleep to get an insane order finished on time. - The up side is that in 10 hours time, I’ll be sipping an ice cold beer, tooting on rich cigarette after rich cigarette and putting the worlds to rights, all thanks to good old Fiverr!

[emmaki]

My internet was gefickted all day. I spent most of the evening and night making up for lost time.

Cy said what I would have a lot more charitably. He gets a silver star from the School of Racist Bullying. All I really have to add is LOL because this thread is now indexed in Google. I realize it’s popular to label yourself a geek these days, but as any nascent dweeb who was a total geeky spotty nerd before tech became $$$ knows, you’re crap at it. Did you mean to abuse the fact that you were born in the right area at the right kind of place?

Different things, really. If this stuff confuses you as a geek, I’d hate to see how you deal with loading up DOS PC games in 1994. You are shining a huge torch into your ignorance here. Get rid of that shit pronto. Write about grooming kittens or something.

[emmaki]

<rubs neckbeard, dandruff flutters>

Yeah OK that was a bit harsh. But even the worst of mek sells figured out how to mek sells. You indicate you can’t even be arsed to read a few articles–or watch some videos. Really? If you want a polite version of all this, read what Cy said. I’m just bringing out the idiot site of it here.

If you want ELI5, go to reddit.

[emmaki]

All the more for me, my dear.

[david_ff]

I have to be honest as well… It’s completely baffling that you can’t even figure out on your own how to set up a gig. I’m not one to be harsh, but navigating to the forum and posting a question in the “seller’s tips” section is more difficult than setting up a gig, and you seemed to figure that out… I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not, because Fiverr is so intuitive you would have to be a complete…um…non-IT nerd to not understand. Please tell me you’re joking…

[misscrystal]

It could be that just as Einstein had some problems with tasks of everyday life, one could be such a geek/genius that the simplicity of setting up a gig and delivering an order would be impossible to understand.

[eoinfinnegan]

Yes, exactly.
When I read this OP the first word that sprang to mind was Einstein,
The second, third and fourth were he, is and not, respectively.

[misscrystal]

The writing is good. I do not get a sense of stupidity. I think this is not the venue for the OP’s talents. I’m sure he is indeed good at what he does.

[emmaki]

Wouldn’t Einstein be more of a nerd? He definitely wasn’t a dweeb, and geek doesn’t really fit. I like all the photos you see of him in flip flops at the beach, totally not caring about what he looks like because he’s too busy coming up with incomprehensible physics and stuff.

[misscrystal]

His brain is preserved and studied. It has an extra lobe.