Food for thought - discussion topic

[aaron222]

Pricing Strategies

I don’t hear this discussed on the forum much, but I came across a comment on someone’s gig the other day, the review said,

“I’ve purchased cheaper gigs before and they’ve been low quality, I’m glad I bought yours for a bit more because it’s been well worth the money.”

What are your thoughts on pricing strategy? Is it best to low ball it, to go for amazing deals at ridiculously low prices, or, does that give the impression of cheap gig therefore terrible quality.

Comparatively, do high prices give the impression of high quality and professionalism, OR, does it put customers off who are looking for a bargain, seeing as the website is called ‘Fiverr’.

At what point are you able to demand higher prices? Can you come out like that right off the bat as a newbie, OR, should you go for the ‘BUY one get 10 FREE’ slave labour-like deal.

That was a topic for discussion, now to my actual question. For a writing gig, is it best to go for the low pricing strategies with good deals, or the high pricing strategy to aim for customers looking for premium content.

Thanks for taking the time to read all that. Thoughts appreciated and discussion welcomed.
🙂

Aaron

[uxreview]

I’m mostly a buyer myself, so I’m not sure how much it will help you, but I figured I’ll share buyer’s POV

When I’m looking for a new logo or a writer, I usually start with their gig description, profile, reviews and # of orders in the queue. Price is definitely a factor, but it’s not the most important one. I think you have a pretty good description and if you had a little bit more reviews you could easily raise your price. You’ll probably get level 1 status in a month or two.

When it comes to selling, I don’t do $5 gigs anymore for 2 reasons

• it’s not worth it and I do most of my work outside of Fiverr
• it’s not a rule, but my experience has shown that the quality of buyers goes up with higher rates and my returning customers are the ones who paid the most.

I’m sure there are sellers here with a different experience, so I won’t elaborate too much on selling part 🙂
There’s another post in this forum about raising prices etc. That might give you a little bit more insight.

[jonbaas]

My philosophy: Price your services at what they are worth. Don’t lowball yourself too much just to get orders. In the end, you’ll be losing profit and may get bogged down by those who want the most that they can get, for the least that they can pay – regardless of the quality.

Great work costs money. Find a good middle ground between the “I can get all of this for only $5!” and the “I don’t think anyone will pay that.” Once you find that middle ground, you’ll have found a market where your services, their value, and a reliable consumer base meet.

[aaron222]

Thanks for your response, my thinking at the moment is that the client base for cheaper priced gigs is greater than the one willing to pay higher rates. So whilst I’m in the process of trying to attain more ratings, I’m going to need volume in order to achieve that. Meaning lower price gigs for the meanwhile, even if they aren’t worth my time or reflective of my skills and services. The end goal is to raise prices to a point at which they reflect the work given, aiming at those premium buyers.

This is all experimental however, and I’ll be tweaking my gigs and analysing the conversion rates accordingly until I reach a happy medium.

Fiverrs no cake walk is it haha. Sucks up a lot of time and attention even if you aren’t making sales.

[aaron222]

I fully agree. It’s that sweet spot that takes some tweaking and time to find. Thanks for the input 🙂

[jonbaas]

You’re welcome. I’m happy to help. 🙂

[silkroute]

I try and avoid creating too many options on my Fiverr landing page. It confuses the buyers and creates an ‘analysis paralysis’. I’ve noticed that what works for me is, just keep a basic gig for 5$ and the rest can be negotiated over a custom order. I’ve had 9 buyers in a month since I have signed up and my average selling price in my dashboard stats is 13$, so minimalism it is for me. It leads to custom orders and higher gross revenue than simply creating more options (10/ 15 / 25). All of my gigs are heavily consultation oriented, so it makes no sense to offer a structured pricing chart since I cannot predict the amount of work that will go into any gig which exceeds the basic offering.

For example, I have a ‘I will install an optin’ gig, for which I do precisely that for 5$. They supply their login details, I get the form installed, job done, moving on to the next one.

If they want customization, or a landing page to go with it, or if they want their theme modified to accommodate additional features, or popup forms, or custom functionality like ‘optin popup after X event’ then they enunciate their requirements before they make an order, which leads to a custom order.

Right now, I have two gigs with a broad scope ‘I will be your wordpress expert’ ‘I will modify your studiopress theme’, and both of them have lead to custom offers. I am willing to experiment and create a highly specific gig with no scope for custom work, something like ‘I will install google analytics’ and see if specific gigs convert better than broad offerings.

More options rarely mean more money. Just keep it simple.

[misscrystal]

I don’t want to do orders for which I get a grand total of barely one dollar after using what I need to use. My own resentment seeps in and is not helpful to anyone.

[capitalquality]

A couple of considerations bearing in mind what others have said too:

• until you get your level 1 badge at least it’s worthwhile doing a good deal on your gigs, but don’t sell your soul. Instead of 300 words for $5 over two days, maybe it’s 400 over 24 hours, just for the first orders until you get level 1
• if you’re in a popular area like writing, then you might have to do more to entice buyers
• Also bear in mind that there’s only a limited number of premium customers out there so consider that you may not be able to raise prices quickly. You might have to make more sales than you hoped.