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williambryan392

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Posts posted by williambryan392

  1. 8 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

    Of course, but then we get into imposter syndrome,

    This I completely get. But then I see people with half the knowledge/experience selling bad advice and making a fortune. I often say sometimes the most successful people are the most stupid, because they don't overthink, they just execute.

     

    11 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

    Outside of a platform like Fiverr, for sure.

    So do it! Test it! See what happens. We always say don't put your eggs in one basket. Growing in multiple places is a good thing to do.

     

    12 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

    You can't be McDonalds here. Fiverr is the McDonalds.

    McDonalds is an extreme example, and probably a bad one for me to have used. My point is there are some sellers making a fortune through efficient methods and low pricing, and they don't have bad reviews. I always think if they can do it then why can't I. 

    • Like 4
  2. 1 minute ago, visualstudios said:

    It's the difference between being a logistics provider (like amazon) and a dropshipper. The first provides value. The second is just garbage.

    You're not necessarily wrong. I could argue that the dropshipper is providing value because if they weren't they wouldn't make sales. They are getting the product visibility. 

    Either way what's your goal..? Wanna make money? I think that's the brutal question you have to ask yourself.

    I've been asking myself the same recently and I'm trying to decide what to do...

    5 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

    I don't even have enough clients to fill my schedule now, so that's a non factor. To scale, you need... scale

    I price highly, and do the work myself. Like you @visualstudios. It's a good income (recent volatility aside), but I've plateaued.

    I feel that what I'm offering at my price point is like a fine dining restaurant. I'm very proud of what I do, and like to think I provide a great experience. But like a fine dining restaurant, there's a limit to how much you can actually make, and I price a lot of people out of my services. I think you do the same. If you lowered your prices you'd fill your schedule quickly, and if you delegated you'd get more time back.

    So the question I ask myself is should I be more like McDonalds and lower my prices.

    Sure, it'll never be brilliant, it may only ever be a 3.5 or 4 out of 5 (google rating for e.g.), but McDonalds is a billion dollar business. I don't think there is one fine dining restaurant that is because it's just not scalable in the same way. I'd be less proud of my finished product, but I'd sure like the money! 

    I guess the key is finding the middle ground.

     

    • Like 5
  3. 6 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

    Oh, I get that. I just don't understand how it's possible. It certainly cannot be possible for 99% of people, so what's the differentiating factor there? Everyone would want that, but that can't be achieved by the vast majority, so... how to ensure I'm in the minority that gets it? Because I don't see any path there.

    You're right, it's not possible, and that's for a variety of reasons. I think a lot of the time (not all the time) is because people don't take the risk or put in the work.

    The overly simple answer is scale and delegate. If you can do something once in a day, work out how to do it 10 times, or a hundred times.

    Also diversify. Something I've been thinking about is doing a course on career growth. It's a popular gig of mine, and I find a lot is transferrable to different clients. This would mean I could sell whilst I sleep. Could you do a course on video editing, could you sell tiktok shorts, and delegate the work, could you provide a voice over gig and delegate? You might not want to, but I think you could.

     

     

    • Like 3
  4. 57 minutes ago, markp said:

    You can do it much cheaper than this, operating differently from what you described. There are some really hard lessons to learn doing this, and at some point, you have to consider other things like your mental health as well because doing this, scaling to 7 figures plus, will eventually drive you into the ground, one way or another.

    Please go on! I'm curious re doing it cheaper (and still hiring capable people who can deliver a quality end result). How would you operate, if say you were a copywriter (and not just using AI)? Or use another freelance niche of course. Really curious!

    To scale to 7 figures you have to delegate, and if you can pretty much disconnect yourself from the business then you can protect your mental health to a degree. Not saying you're wrong.

    54 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

    Like... borderline unethical, to make so much money doing so little. But hey, people can get away with it, I guess.

    Think it's only increasing in the world of property owners and business owners/CEOs. A million used to be considered a crazy amount of money when I was growing up, kinda like a 6 figure salary. Nowadays less so. Although I still think it's a lot of money!

    • Like 4
  5. I think there could be multiple factors for anyone leaving fiverr at the moment (or indeed at any time).

    Making money elsewhere.

    AI has potentially hit revenue.

    Just got bored of it.

    Maybe got burned by the level system, and it doesn't look good for the personal brand to be a lower level.

     

    On a connected yet side note, I'm always curious about sellers who tout massive numbers but also have teams. I don't think they tell the whole story. I've been considering a lot how to scale, interviewing some people etc, but have been looking at the numbers to work out if it's worth it.

    So let's have a hypothetical if I were to make 350K in a year with a team doing the heavy lifting...

    Minus 20% fee = $70K

    Let's assume you pay 50% of the gig value to another freelancer as the fee (I think this is actually low but let's give the benefit of the doubt)  = $175K

    You're a volume seller, so you need a VA (or 2), and a team manager. Let's say you hire cheap, @$10K per person per year = $30K (and you're not paying your manager a commission which most ask for).

    Let's ignore software costs to manage this team, bank/FX fees, increased accountancy costs and all the other little things that you end up paying for. We're also ignoring promoted gigs, and seller plus fee.

    We have $350K - $275K = $75K. That's before tax.

     

    Now I'm not knocking it, kudos, if you can build something great, who doesn't like $75K and if you aren't even touching the business due to the hires then that 75K pre tax for probably just doing a weekly or monthly check in with a team manager is pretty darn good. 

    But anyway, I just want to make the point that a lot of the time people see these big numbers and don't see the costs that go alongside.

     

    • Like 4
    • Up 3
  6. 2 hours ago, filipdevaere said:

    2 years ago Fiverr also asked me to join PRO. Back then, something like this rarely happened. I don't know if this is still the case as Fiverr recently gave a very large group of sellers the PRO badge. I don't think many deserved this.

    Same here. I think the barriers to entry are much lower now as they try to swell the numbers. 

    7 hours ago, arbelkimmick said:

    I've only had conversations with 2 other pro members and both express to me that sales slow down pretty drastically when you become pro but the clients are better quality. 

    Buyers with bigger budgets tend to be better buyers, but if you're already pricing at pro levels then I doubt you'll see a difference in quality.

    I think most say sales drop because they raise their prices to meet the requirements. However, there is also a view amongst buyers that when buying pro services you're paying a premium just because they are pro, and a lot of buyers don't want to overpay. Most still come to Fiverr for cost effective purchases. Conversely some buyers only look at pros. Test it and see!

    • Like 5
  7. Note: I didn’t expect this to be a long post but I just started typing and here it is…

    There’s the overarching milestone of replacing my prior FT income with freelancing and now being free to travel/work from where I want to, but the things I’m most proud of are how some of the people I’ve worked with have developed and what they’ve achieved. 

    I know this sounds cheesy but it really makes me happy. To be abundantly clear I am only ever 1% (or less!) of the puzzle that has made them successful, they are the ones who inevitably have to take action and do the hard work to make it happen.

    Coincidentally I just passed 2000 orders, and all my orders involve meeting with the client so I get to know my buyers quite well, and have therefore got quite a few stories. Maybe I should write a book (that obviously doesn’t break NDA requirements!).

    These are two of the stories that make me most proud…

    First one…

    Had a US buyer that worked in a chicken factory/abattoir. Single mom, 1 bedroom apartment, kids kids, minimum wage. A tough life. Unsurprisingly she wasn’t happy and wanted to do something about it. 

    She wanted to do something around high-quality farming (I think her job was the main driver here!) and we came up with a plan. Short version is she created a site showcasing high quality farms/farming, what their story was etc. She initially listed them for free, built some traffic, and then once she had proven she could send their sites visitors from her own she started charging a monthly listing fee. She then added affiliates for some of the farm's products, ads, and got some sponsorship from some other companies. She’s now working with some chefs who are into using premium/healthy ingredients.

    2 years ago she did 50 hour weeks and earned minimum wage doing something she hated for about $1600 a month. Now her business does 5 figures a month, she loves her ‘job’ (she quit the abattoir), her kids each have their own bedroom, and they went to Disney 6 months ago (their first family holiday).This makes me happy, and proud of what she’s achieved. She took action and changed her life.

    Second one...

    About 2 years ago a buyer, mid-twenties, high school dropout called me from his car in a Costco car park before he started his shift. His car had actually broken down there. His job was cardboard-crushing. He’d take the empty boxes of products and put them in the crusher. He sent me a video. It’s the type of thing that would be fun for five minutes, then dull as hell. He rented a room in a house that was pretty cheap, but he wasn’t allowed to have a bedroom door. Weird for sure, and unsurprisingly he wasn’t happy.

    Anyway, he was into fitness, photography, and making films. He had a half-decent video camera that he got for his 16th birthday. We made a plan for him to approach independent gyms and offer to do promo shoots for them. Aside from fuel, his costs were nearly non-existent. After 2 weekends of walking into gyms he had 3 clients/shoots booked. This first month he made $2K. He kept doing it, and each month he’d make a bit more. He quit Costco and built some savings. 6 months later he was in his own apartment (hooray, his own door), his car was fixed, and he had $20K in his business bank account. He then moved to LA a little over a year ago, started networking with other filmmakers, got more opportunities, and also a job in tech sales.

    His business does around $5K a month (he’s not 100% focused on it and is enjoying making art noir films), and $15K a month from his job. He jokes that he makes more now in a month than he used to in a year. He did this in 2 years, from a broken down car in a Costco car park, to 6 figures a year in LA schmoozing with actors and directors. Hard work pays off.

    (Both of these individuals have said before they’d be happy for me to tell their stories).

    I’ve also worked with a lot of other businesses that have grown from nothing to something, or grown from something to something awesome. Some have successfully gone through fundraising rounds, or been acquired which has been pretty cool to see. And some have failed of course. That’s life.

    If you take anything from these stories let it be that hard work beats talent! You have every chance of achieving your goals, but you have to take action!!

    Some other random experiences that don’t necessarily make me proud but I wouldn’t have had without Fiverr…

    A President of an African country (yes it was actually the President, he had his camera on and was in a very comfortable setting to say the least).

    A US Senator and a Congressman.

    Several fortune 500 C-Level execs (I was very surprised they were looking on Fiverr when I got started).

    An 8 year old (or thereabouts) YouTuber with millions of subscribers (his mum was also on the call).

    A UHNW who just liked chatting about random stuff. He walked me around his superyacht on one call, his garage full of supercars on another call and finally from his plane because he was bored during the flight. He never tipped though 😆 

    A Sheikh from the UAE. He did tip generously!

    (So let’s dispel the myth that all Fiverr buyers are cheap, sure lots are budget-conscious, but some have money to burn and are happy to spend it on services).

    Some Fiverr sellers. Not naming names but I expect some are reading this!

    That’s not to say all buyers are great, that’s life, I had one person who didn’t know different countries had different timezones. That was a painful experience. How that person survived until their twenties I’ll never know! Or the 16 year old who expected a 100mUSD investment for 2% of their business which was at the idea stage. Yep, there are people like that in the world.

    Anyway, because of the nature of my work I get to know my clients quite well, I get to know their back story, and also where they end up a lot of the time. You might not have the same visibility of what happens with/to your client, but whether you create logos, make videos, write copy, whatever, you have almost certainly helped someone else achieve their goals or even their dreams. I think that’s pretty cool!
     

    • Like 11
    • Up 1
    • Thanks 1
  8. 5 minutes ago, emmaki said:

    🕐🕑🕒🕓🕔🕕🕖🕗🕘

     

    Sorry it took some time to approve your post. I think it was nighttime for most if not all mods when you posted your prior post. Often it can take quite a bit of time to go through the approval list for content, as well as clean up the inevitable spam and other nefarious content we try to keep this place clear of.

    • Like 3
  9. I find all freelancing platform comes with pros and cons. The main thing that makes Fiverr better in my eyes is that I don't have to go looking for work, work comes and finds me. I don't want to go hunting for clients. I also like only paying a success fee (promoted gigs and seller plus fee aside).

    I also think that people's Fiverr journeys tend to fall into certain categories...

    • Join, no success, unhappy with Fiverr
    • Join, success, happy with Fiverr
    • Join, success, something changes (AI, new competition, bad buyer review, something else), success drops, unhappy with Fiverr
    • Join, success, more success, happy with Fiverr
    • Join, success, more success, outgrow Fiverr, move on from Fiverr (partially or completely)

    Something to remember is that people are roughly 3X more likely to complain than they are to praise (that classic stat), so whilst Fiverr definitely isn't perfect, and does do things that don't always make sense to us, I think there are a lot of people that are happily just carrying on with the work. I also always go back to the belief that Fiverr is being data-led, and does want successful sellers and happy buyers. I also know that no company gets it right 100% of the time.

    I also think 'everything' used to be better. Maybe I'm getting old though! Airbnb used to be better (it got expensive), takeaway delivery used to be better (it got slower), sweets/chocolate used to taste better, movies/music, lots of things! 

    Anyway @mark_sgp, I always say that if you have Skills, know how to sell those skills, and learn how Fiverr works then you can be successful here. Good luck!

    • Like 11
  10. 3 hours ago, emmaki said:

    Hm? Now, why wouldn't all of the comments be approved in one go? Is there a limit? Is there some sort of hierarchy and second opinion? Did more other important tasks come up?

    No limit that I'm aware of. I think it's just because it's the weekend, and I guess there aren't as many Fiverr forum staff, or volunteer mods around.

    • Like 4
  11. 3 hours ago, smashradio said:

    The evil part of me always wanted to go to Italy and order a Cappuchino at 10 pm. 

    hahaha, I'd like to see it. I think the best case is you'll get a disapproving look, the worst case is they'll refuse, but like I say I'd like to see it.

    I saw a video of a guy adding pineapple chunks to his pizza, and doing other things that go against Italian culture, it's not very well received!

    • Like 5
  12. 10 hours ago, smashradio said:

    I can't handle sweet coffee drinks. In fact, I can't handle anything called a coffee drink.

    10 hours ago, Kesha said:

    Although, I've never heard of it before.

    It's from eastern Europe, some of the ex-USSR countries.

    I don't see it as a coffee, similar to how I see a mocha. It's like a hot milkshake (sounds weird I know), with an undetectable caffeine bonus thrown in. The sweet-toothed child in me likes it.

    In the afternoon I'll often have an espresso. Having worked with a lot of Italians I feel bad/childish ordering anything else after lunch. 

    When it's hot, and/or I'm looking to be healthier or doing OMAD I opt for an iced black coffee. 

    I also drink a lot of black tea with a dash of milk. 

    • Like 4
  13. I always used to go for a flat white, but I recently discovered something called a 'raf' which is basically adding cream and vanilla sugar to a single shot of espresso. If you've got a sweet tooth it's brilliant! 

    • Like 6
  14. On 4/15/2024 at 2:03 AM, momaidi said:

    Are you sure about this? I see many other sellers which are doing the same, I am new in the platform, if it's really risky, I won't do it anymore.
    Thank you

    Fiverr staff ( @milos_siena ) answered this question here (it's not allowed):

    • Like 6
  15. 1 hour ago, nionkhan2020 said:

    Need your best and legal suggestion about the fact while I'm working how could make myself visible in online on fiverr?

    1) This isn't necessary. Staying online doesn't help you to get orders.

    5 minutes ago, momaidi said:

    Well! I use auto refresh in both phone and computer which shows me online 24/7, but honestly if you are busy somewhere being online will have no positive impact as client will be looking for an active seller with quick response.

    2) You know autorefresh isn't allowed @momaidi, and you've just admitted to Fiverr that you use it. This is one way to appear offline... permanently. 

    • Like 4
  16. 24 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

    But wouldn't Fiverr flag you for "location inconsistencies" if you "worked from wherever" and travelled a lot and then used your device to work on Fiverr (Which would then stop you from taking part in the level system)?

    Edit: Though I assume it should be okay if, as staff said, you contact CS each time you want to travel somewhere before working on Fiverr (which isn't really much freedom that way). Though the many people who got flagged for location inconsistencies weren't told they needed to contact CS before each journey somewhere. (eg. there's no policy page about it as far as I know).

    Didn't realise we had to tell anyone. In the last 3 years I've been in 10-15 different countries, and in those places on lots of different wifi networks. Never had a problem. I expect 'location inconsistency' could refer to a number of different ToS violations. Just speculating. Anyway, I'll share my super fancy set up later...

    • Like 7
  17. On 4/8/2024 at 11:40 AM, hzsmith said:

    Personally, I've been selling for about 1 year on Fiverr, and I very much welcome the changes and I'm confident that they're meant to help out the new sellers that are willing to learn the ropes and for the seasoned sellers that are open to addapt, relearn and rethink their strategy. Don't drown in the negativity and discouraging flaming and bashing that's all over the forums right now,

    Very well said, it's nice to see some positivity / a 'can do' attitude.

    • Like 2
  18. 8 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

    Realistically, most of the new features are useless. The service is quite expensive for what it provides, and I am sure a lot of Fiverr sellers that had a special price will downgrade. I will keep the $20 package to see buyer insights and withdraw in 7 days, but I won't pay double that for instant withdrawals that I use from time to time or RTO that's not necessary in my case. 

    I don't use all the features (maybe I should), but coupons for example really don't appeal to me, neither do instant withdrawals although I have used it once or twice. I really love buyer insights, RTO and my SM.

    I feel that the SM is the thing that moves the needle for most people. If your SM is great you maybe don't mind paying a bit more, if they're not, and you don't use all the features then I completely understand downgrading. 

    Ultimately we all have to decide how we want to grow our 'fiverr business', and for some it's not worth it, for some it is.

    • Like 3
  19. 26 minutes ago, emmaki said:
    • Not increasing your price by 50%/100% for "price alignment" without adding new values/features
    • Not lying about "locked-in prices" for above group of sellers
    • Improving the quality of existing features
    • Better and more consistent quality of SMs

    I could counter by saying they have added new features since launching it (RTO for e.g.), and have only now increased the prices. New features aside, inflation could be a justification in itself.

    Going back on locked-in prices isn't cool so no disagreement there.

    I haven't really kept up with the improvements, but I think in addition to launching new features haven't they improved the keyword tool? Not sure about the other features.

    SM quality does seem to be a recurring issue for some on the program, so again no strict disagreement. I do sometimes wonder if people overestimate how much an SM can do though, but they should certainly be available to you and respond in good time. Unsurprisingly though good people cost good money.

    Years ago I had a team of success managers, and for a client to be eligible they had to meet a recurring revenue requirement to be admitted to the program. The SM didn't come with a fixed fee, but the company charged a percent of the client revenue as an overall fee, and in turn the success managers earned commission based upon client revenue growth. 

    • Like 3
  20. 3 hours ago, terrygrantvo said:

    only ever fire it up when I need RTO.

    3 hours ago, newsmike said:

    isn't there a waitlist once you quit to rejoin? 

    I would think with 99.9% certainty that there is.

    I would also think that you would go to the bottom of the waiting list.

    There is also the inevitable cost in time/effort (however small) for them to onboard/offboard sellers to SP, so you may well go to the bottom of a 'secondary list'.

    Fiverr no doubt has a retention/churn metric for sellers on SP, and it would be something that they want to keep as low as possible, so they may avoid readmitting someone for fear they will only churn again.

     

    • Like 5
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