How do I Start Charging More?

[saraallen]

Hi All, I have put considerable time into developing my shop. My question is how do I start charging more? I need to be earning at least $10 per gig before the fee. Fiverr is worth it if I do $20 a day at around $7,000 a year.



It seems like many people just assume all gigs will be $5. If they order and I need to ask them to purchase a second gig…that seems awkward. How do you make the extras a requirement? It seems like a lot of effort to have to be sticking my hand out for more money when people place an order. Also, will customers just drop off the earth if I start asking for more money?



Thanks

S

[rachelbostwick]

You can add extras to your gig so that people can select more things to buy from you at once. If you feel like you are doing too much work for five dollars, then dial it back. Sell 500 word articles instead of 1000 word ones. Yes, it is possible that you will lose customers, but they are the bargain hunters that you don’t really want to keep as customers, anyway.



Also, if you want to really make money, I’d suggest taking one profitable niche and maximize it rather than trying to spread yourself out across everything that you know. Which gig do you really want to be doing? Take that one and find five different audiences, write a gig that tailors that audience to them. Put gigs that are less exciting for you or unrelated to your focus topic to bed for awhile. If I were looking for a writer and I saw that you have coding, ebay, linkedin, and income generation as well, I’d probably go look for someone who is focused on writing instead.

[rachelbostwick]

And yes, to some degree people will always expect an order to cost $5. Name of the game after all. Always have a reasonable option that costs $5 but makes the customer want more. That being said, I’ve had MORE people offer to tip me, give me referrals, add extras, or order from me again than people that wanted more than I could give for $5. If you’re nice to people, they tend to be nice back.

[emasonwrites]

Like @rachelbostwick said, take a look at your gigs and see what you can cut down on, when it comes to your base $5 offering. I’d say that an hour of data entry or online maintenance is far too much, for example, as is 1000 words for a blog. You have to price your gigs so that the time it takes you do the task is worth your money.



For example, if you want to make $10 per hour (after Fiverr’s cut), you might need to do $15 worth of work in that hour. Taking your blogging gig, if you cut the $5 offering to 500 words, would you be able to do three basic gigs an hour?



You just have to think about what you can do in an hour and lower what your gigs offer to reflect that capability.



If it’s possible, I’d wait to change your prices until you have very few or no orders for whichever gig/gigs you’re going to change in your queue. When I raised my prices, I had only one person throw a fit about it. Everyone else was very gracious. Sure, some people didn’t come back, but most did. If you deliver good work, people will be willing to pay a little bit more for it, I think. If someone does make a stink, I think it’s worth it to politely explain that you have priced your gigs according to what you think your time and work is worth.

[orcatek]

As others have said, extras and product are the combination. Base product needs to be good enough for the buyers who want the fiverr, but the add-ons need to be where you make your money. Faster delivery is always a good option. And look at variants on your gig. Such as selling product description articles, how-to-articles, etc.

[mystic_insight]

Gig Extras 🙂

[rachelbostwick]

saraallen said: How do you make the extras a requirement?

 

This, by the way, is not possible. The whole point of Fiverr, from the customer's point of view, is that you can get something for a "Fiverr." You always have to offer something for $5. But you're thinking that you'll always have to sell that bottom amount to make your averages. You can sell a lot of $5 gigs.... but those $5 gigs will help you meet the right people to make $200 gigs, too. That helps your averages a bit :)

[writerlisaz]

Great ideas here already, so I’ll just add that indeed, the “rule” is all sellers have to offer a basic, $5 gig. Like others said, cut your $5 gig back to something that you feel good about doing for only $5. Make that gig very enticing to those who need something small done. Then add your extras to entice those who want and need more. Let them all build on each other. My main extras are “extra fast” 24 hour delivery, and an even faster (and much more costly) 12 hour delivery. I also do more words for more money, and I’ll offer suggestions and comments as another extra. All of those extras are very popular for my clients, and have helped me tremendously in making more money per gig. I figure my extra fast delivery and/or comments “extra” double MOST of my order fees and that makes me very happy.

[philipholwerda]

Once you’ve developed a “portfolio” of pervious work you’ve done with genuine good comments on your work, with pictures of your work if applicable or demo of work for potential customers to see when they browse your gig then you can up your prices. You will get less orders, especially at first but thats okay because you don’t want to do gigs for $5 forever anyway. Another way to receive better compensation for what you offer is to explain in your gig and communicate to potential customers to send you a message with what exactly they are looking for and what they need from you and that you will send them a detailed quote (custom offer). You can charge more in custom offers as well as it makes the customer feel like they are getting quality service because they know what they are getting for what they are paying for.