Jump to content

I just became a Level 2 Seller. Here's what I've learned so far


mikewc

Recommended Posts

I joined Fiverr 3 months ago in order to help get my freelance web development business off the ground. After a couple weeks of making no sales with web development gigs, I decided to try out a writing gig. I knew writing would make me less money, but it would also make me super happy if it worked (I LOVE writing). Turns out, other people liked my writing.

Fifty orders later, I’m a Level 2 Seller. Here some of the lessons I learned along the way. I hope they’ll help you out as well.

Send out offers every single day
That’s Sunday through Saturday. You have 10 offers to use every day. I rarely use all 10, but you should at least try (especially if you don’t have any sales yet). In your offer messages, be friendly. Say hi! Make it clear that you know what you’re talking about and that you can help. Give the buyer an idea of how you will approach solving their problem. Tell them what you will deliver, and then…

Overdeliver
If you are a new seller, you can’t afford to be proud. You have to put your customer far above yourself, and give them an amazing experience. I was, and still am, underpaid for the service I provide. I’m fine with that (no, I don’t LOVE it). I recently raised the price on my main gig and I’m still chugging along. Somewhere down the line, I’ll rework the pricing again. It takes time. You just have to…

Be patient
Far too many people want success RIGHT NOW. Those are the people who give up after a week or two of no sales. Those are the people who deparately throw money at “experts” to tell them the secrets of getting rich while working from home. Please don’t be one of those people. If you offer a service that is truly worth anything, someone will eventually pay you to do it. You just have to keep putting yourself out there. Eventually, you WILL get your first buyer. When that happens, remember to…

Communicate
This is a tip I didn’t follow for my first couple of months on Fiverr. Once the order was initiated, I wouldn’t message my buyers until I was ready to deliver. While this worked out okay for me (mostly because my deliveries were within 24 hours) I would highly recommend messaging your buyers at least once while you are working on their order. They will appreciate the update, and it will keep you honest and working.

If you procrastinate, you will be tempted to lie to your buyers. Don’t do that. Be honest and let them know if you’re behind. All of my buyers have been understanding when I fall behind. The most important thing is that you deliver a product that is useful to your buyers. One way to make sure that happens is to…

Revise until your buyers are happy
Don’t use Fiverr’s “revisions” tool unless you know what you’re doing (i.e. you’ve been providing your service for a while now), or unless you set the number of revisions to “unlimited”. Limited revisions make buyers worried, and rightfully so. If you haven’t established a trusting relationship with a buyer, they have no reason to expect you will deliver them what they want. If you want to create that trust, you have to show them that you have their best interest in mind (and you BETTER have their best interest in mind).

If a buyer isn’t 5-star-review happy with your delivery, fix it. Keep fixing it until they have no choice but to give you a 5-star review. If you can’t do that, maybe you should be offering a different service. You may be recultant to offer unlimited revision due to the inevitability nightmare customers. The best way to avoid that problem is…

DO NOT work for troublesome buyers
If a buyer make a request that you can barely understand, it means you’re going to have a hard time communicating with them throughout your order. If a buyer seems over-demanding before you even say hello, there’s a good chance you’re going to have trouble meeting their expectations. You need to have a good radar for detecting troublesome buyers and you need to AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE.

Troublesome buyers almost made me quit a month into my time at Fiverr. They made me feel like they could take down my business with a single bad review. And, to be honest, they might have been able to. I truly believe that the customer is always right, because they’re the ones paying you to make them happy. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you have to please someone who is unpleaseable.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If you guys find this post helpful, I’ll do more in the future. I’d be happy to go more in-depth on any of these topics. I’d also love to hear what you have to say about the things I mentioned. I’m sure some of you disagree with something I wrote; I want to hear from you!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Usually these types of posts are superfluous, but your guidelines are the same ones I applied when I started out. Very common sense based, and excellent advice. You have to be relentless when it comes to sending out offers, even when it’s definitely not what you want to do. Communication is another big one, as you mentioned. Customers like to be kept in the loop, even if it’s just a progress update with no samples.

Good stuff, Mike, and congrats on level 2!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with you. Even if I’m only two weeks on Fiverr, I do almost exactly the things you mentioned. First of all, it’s important to get customers at all. If you got some, you can start managing things.

I did also start here with having in mind to make some people happy with my experience as sound engineer, but it seems, people are more interested in my vocal and writing skills than listening and engineering. But I’m happy and I’m patient. One day, more people will come, maybe. 🙂

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for reading and thanks for the response! I also noticed that some of the “tips” posts were kind of lackluster, so I tried to bring a little more substance. I hope to write some more helpful posts in the near future.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for the help ! Not quitting is hard when you have no sales but of course,we’re not going to have dozens of buyers paying a hundred dollars to get a service from someone they don’t know anything about. I had my first orders,all of them were through Buyers Request ! We just have to be very patient and keep improving ! Maybe adding a link to a portfolio kind of blog in the description could help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...