My Fiverr Journey

[TearFactory]

I didn't buy reviews. I only started Fiverr on the side just for fun, and it took off so well, I dedicated myself to it. Just keep creating gigs until they get really good impressions from the get go (bit of luck I assume) and then you need to keep it up forever. I have done it 3 times, created a well running gig, maintained it, the impressions climbed higher and higher, and then I received a mild or bad review here or there, had a cancellation or extended delivery times, and the impressions swindled, and then that was it. But up until then, it only grew more and more.

I am friends with very successful fiverr sellers, who make 100k a year on there, and they simply never received bad reviews and kept the momentum up. And now they only work with clients that totally love them and are great people. They don't deal with cheap bastards who turn over every penny twice or seem mean from the start. They scan their business partners very closely. And they do it from a position of fuck you. They only work for someone when they can predict a perfect outcome, if they're unsure, or the client gets too demanding or seems unsure, or tries to haggle their prices down (which rarely happens since they are asking A LOT already due to demand, cheap bastards scrape the bottom of the barrel, and then try to get lower prices on the lowest prices already), they just split and say "Sorry, I am not comfortable working with you any further. Good luck".

Nice, appreciate your answer. Do you create multiple gigs for the same job until you find one with good metrics then?

 

[Funiki]

Awesome beginning.
Let us updated , im planning to start in this so i want to learn about everything before join!

 

[Bonvi]

Nice, appreciate your answer. Do you create multiple gigs for the same job until you find one with good metrics then?

I have done it the last time. Maybe it's time to do it again and see what happens.

 

[Nekola]

do u buy fake reviews?? cuz they are risky but i think they are really good

 

[Bonvi]

do u buy fake reviews?? cuz they are risky but i think they are really good

Na, I don't do that. It's tempting, but I think it's overrated. I think people here just want to offer that service to make some money, so obviously they sell it well.

 

[Bonvi]

Will update soon, wasn't in the right headspace. Winter depressions :S

But I just landed my first job on Upwork?! Only took 3 years of applying at least weekly.

 

[content10ment]

How long did it take you from creating to making sales without buying reviews? For each gig you create what do you normally do to it in other to get views ?

 

[GameLabXtention]

Inspired by the other freelancing thread, I decided to keep track of my income on Fiverr, my interactions with clients and profile metrics. My hopes are, that this journal will help me understand what I am doing a little better and maybe find ways to improve it.

I am on Fiverr since a few years, but only seriously earning on there since maybe 2-3 years. I started doing VA work, web research and the likes, now I still do that, but my best gigs currently are web scraping, data cleaning and B2B Leads.


Background:

When I first started with Fiverr, I landed a fantastic gig, that generated 5k impressions per day, and I had so many orders and big projects that I had more work than I had time in the day. Things went well for 9-10 months or so until I got a horrible client, who blackmailed and tricked me into doing more work than I signed up for (A LOT more work!), and paid very little for it all. He even haggled me on the already low prices for my services.

What happend was this: hepaid me 200 usd for a scraping job that should have been at least 700 (but I didn't feel comfortable enough to ask for that much... Imposter syndrome lol), and after I delivered the files to him, he said "oops, this is not what I wanted. I actually meant this and that." But that scraping was a whole lot more difficult due to the nature of a dynamic real estate website where everything moved around and changed container names etc, and for the further pages, there were captcha tests and all that.

I didn't have a lot of work around that time as I just finished two big jobs and waited for something new to come along, so I wanted the money. And this is where he blackmailed me;

I said to him "Look, that big job is so much extra work and nothing as we discussed beforehand, I will have to charge you more for that." Thinking about it, it would be around 2400usd for that job with my set rates, and that is a justified price for the hundred thousand or so entries I had to scrape. "I will need 1200 for this".
His reply was, that he will not pay that much and he will leave me a really terrible review if I don't do "what we discussed beforehand", which is absolutely not what we discussed and agreed on but okay. I used screenshots and marked the fields with red borders that I will access and scrape to avoid any miscommunications like that, but he just pretended that I just didn't get it right.

Now bad reviews are obviously not good and I didn't want to cancel, as cancellations are also not good, but less bad, although it means you did all the work for free as he already has the files and if you cancel, you forfeit your claim to the money.

I was in bad and didn't know what to do, so I thought "Well, it's better in the long run to protect my reputation than to make money. So if I deliver what he wants and work my ass off for free, at least I won't a cancellation and at least a little money...".

He graciously offered 50 dollars extra for that work... What a dick.

Anyway, it took me 7 days to figure out how to do it, it was very complicated work. Once delivered he was VERY pleased and left me a "good" 4 star review, which on Fiverr is bad. Either 5 stars or no good. Anyway, he was very happy with it, he told me in the message, left taht review and then it was my turn to review him.

Green around the nose as I was, I left him a 3 star review saying "We had difficulties agreeing on a fair price and he massively underpaid me". He took that very ill. In a private message he told me he will leave me the worst private review possible (which is where buyers can leave you a review in private, without it being shown to anyone).

He did, and all my impressions went from thousands a day to under 50 a day and didn't rise again for 10 months. I only survived due to recurring clients with long lasting projects.

View attachment 378958

I then was shadow banned, didn't get any new orders, and just when the last order was done from the recurring clients (the projects just concluded), it lifted like 2-3 weeks later and I finally started getting traffic again, but never as much as I used to have back in the day.

So, ever since that, I am struggling on the platform and try to have a steady, good time again.

Focus:
The thread will monitor my impressions, as I personally think they are the most important thing on Fiverr. The more people see you, the more potential clicks you get, the more clicks you get, the more potential new clients you get. If you have very few impressions, then the chain reaction will result in very little work.
I will try to improve them to get more exposure and land better jobs.

I'd also like to journal about client interactions, as some clients are a breeze to work with and others are just godawful people who will drain your soul and just make it all horrible and terrible.

And I will try to learn new "tricks" to sell and make an income.

What do I do? What is my current skill set?

I started with doing VA work and manual research, Data Entry and everything people wanted me to do manually.

After a while, I got tired of doing it all by hand and started to learn coding, Python in particular. Just did various youtube and udemy courses until I had the basics down, but wasn't sure (and still not very sure!) what to do with it.
As of now it's mostly webautomations (log in scripts, interacting with websites etc), and data scraping on various platforms. Depending on how easy or difficult the website is, I am either using Selenium or Beautiful Soup.

Another big thing I do, is data cleaning with pandas and openpyxl, mostly in excel. Really messy lists with a lot of typos or misaligned data in columns that needs to be sorted into the right columns etc. I have a client coming back every month or so for a data matcher, I built once, which brings in a huge chunk of money for me. Usually around 800-1000 dollars a pop. I wish I had more clients like that, but I am not sure how to find them.

Current process is to use chatgpt, outline what I want to do, get a script, and then I end up going back and forth a little until it has the right general direction down, and then I end up tossing chatgpt to do the rest by hand. It makes it a little quicker this way, so I don't have to figure out where to start. It's basically like picking up a halfway done project and just finish the rest. Maybe one day chatgpt will be able to complete projects on its own, but so far it's rubbish. It only saves you time in the beginning of setting things up, which libraries and the general approach, but applying actual logic, that works, is not a thing as of yet.

The next big thing I do is that I scrape B2B data. Depending on how much I can find, I still do this only half manually and I don't think my sources (apollo, sales navigator) are the best for the job, as sometimes I get a request, look it up, find very few entries (only a few hundred when you'd expect thousands), and they end up hiring someone else, who then finds thousands of entries for them. Or the client has a specific list that he wants to reasearch, and when I look, I only find 20 % or less of those companies on Apollo at all, but then someone else seems to do the job right (I end up stalking a little and go back to their profiles a few weeks later to see reviews of the freelancers they hire).
So I am really not sure where they are looking!

A lot of orders end up not being taken up, because I can't find enough.

What do I do to improve my situation?
On the site, I am learning flask and plan to maybe learn Django, I am also currently doing a course at the uni for Frontend Web Dev.

GOAL:

My goal is to have a steady income over 2000 dollars a month there and get back to at least 3k impressions a day for any of my gigs or 10k in total (1k a day per gig each).
Either by improving current gigs, make new gigs that reach it with my current skill set, or learn new skills to sell.


Impressions today:

So as of this very moment, I am getting maybe 3k impressions in total per day for 10 gigs according to Fiverr, but that may not be too accurate.

VA: 237
Scraping: 11
Data Cleaning: 119
B2B Leads: 2

I won't bother with other gigs as I make most sales through these.

Earnings:

• Earned so far in September:​

  US$498
• Payment being cleared:
  US$380.00
• Open Orders:
  US$520.00​

Earnings on Fiverr are in three categories:
1. Earned so far (which is after Fiverr's cut (which is 20%) and after the order was completed and paid out.
2. Payments being cleared (which are completed orders, but are still in the pay out period of 7 days. If you are elligible, you can pay out early for a 1% fee, I used to have that but not any more)
3. Open orders (Fiverr orders take 3 days to auto complete after delivery. So either the order has not done that yet, or it's not delivered at all yet. The sum is before Fiverr's cut, so 20% of it still go to Fiverr)


As you can see, it's a slow month, but it's not as bad as it could be, the big client hasn't ordered yet, and I am still waiting for a few follow up orders from other clients, that I worked with in the past and indicated that there is more to do (like 5-6 or so), and I am also discussing tasks with like 3 clients as well, where I expect a couple of orders each in a few days, too.

Sorry for the long post, I hope this will evolve into something useful for others (I know there aren't any techniques here) but for now, I mostly created it for myself and kind of sort my thoughts about this and keep track of it.

Good luck mate, Hoping for your success.

 

[Assclown]

Good luck. Any tips for getting impressions on gigs?

 

[Bonvi]

How long did it take you from creating to making sales without buying reviews? For each gig you create what do you normally do to it in other to get views ?

I just create the gig, get custom made gig images, make sure the title is seo, and then publish. Took off immediately pretty much

Good luck. Any tips for getting impressions on gigs?

Yes, but you won't like it: If you get none, there is no way out of the pit except creating a new gig. Do that until it takes off, then make sure it stays up. No rearranging delivery date, no bad reviews public or private (anything under 5 stars is bad), no order conflicts. If you keep delivering your impressions will grow more and more.

 

[gail61]

interesting, wish you the best

 

[Bonvi]

Damn. 100 dollar order, we discussed everything, had to cancel the order in the end. Client didn't check his own source link for how many entries there are, then decided "just go scrape google is easier" and then tried to haggle for 10 dollars and I just flat out refused. Like cmon. Why haggle me down to 20 from 30 (I was selling him the data I could find on his link). What for? 10 dollars bro. No. Out of principle. I rather get nothing, even if it pisses me off.

I was just excited, first order on upwork, first time I ever got a reply for my connects, too.

 

[RoyalSEO12]

Good progressive, wish you good journey forever

 

[Nw_Work]

I didn't buy reviews. I only started Fiverr on the side just for fun, and it took off so well, I dedicated myself to it. Just keep creating gigs until they get really good impressions from the get go (bit of luck I assume) and then you need to keep it up forever. I have done it 3 times, created a well running gig, maintained it, the impressions climbed higher and higher, and then I received a mild or bad review here or there, had a cancellation or extended delivery times, and the impressions swindled, and then that was it. But up until then, it only grew more and more.

I am friends with very successful fiverr sellers, who make 100k a year on there, and they simply never received bad reviews and kept the momentum up. And now they only work with clients that totally love them and are great people. They don't deal with cheap bastards who turn over every penny twice or seem mean from the start. They scan their business partners very closely. And they do it from a position of fuck you. They only work for someone when they can predict a perfect outcome, if they're unsure, or the client gets too demanding or seems unsure, or tries to haggle their prices down (which rarely happens since they are asking A LOT already due to demand, cheap bastards scrape the bottom of the barrel, and then try to get lower prices on the lowest prices already), they just split and say "Sorry, I am not comfortable working with you any further. Good luck".

Fiverr once you get to level 2 seller and above either you will make it, burn out or get banned either one of these.
So better diversify into posting your gigs on WhatsApp groups, Reddit and FB groups and get direct customers

 

[Bonvi]

Fiverr once you get to level 2 seller and above either you will make it, burn out or get banned either one of these.
So better diversify into posting your gigs on WhatsApp groups, Reddit and FB groups and get direct customers

What about upwork? How to get work there? Any tips?

 

[Nw_Work]

What about upwork? How to get work there? Any tips?

Upwork same system like freelancer com basically pay to play means they give you free 10 connects every month if new user some get 100 connects u have to use these to apply for jobs and guess what each job costs 12-20 connects to apply and nearly 5-20 applicants applied same job too so very low chance of getting job, they also introduce gig like function but that also same like fiverr need struggle a lot to get sales. So if you looking for slow income which is very random then it is good or if you have money to spend to buy connects and try to apply as much as possible and get jobs but may or may not be worth considering commission of platform and also that platform charges something called contract initiation fee of $5 also from payout you expect to get from the every new contract

 

[Bonvi]

I apply to 2-3 jobs since probably 2 years now lol. Never turned into something.

 

[Bonvi]

October I made 1308 in 16 orders, 488 still clearing.

But my gigs are not improving. I have very little to do at the moment. Getting anxious again. Been in this position before and it got better again, but I hate it.

The Upwork job went through, I am waiting for the escrow to pay out. I got 30 dollars (not including the upwork fee yet). I hope that this maybe leads to more orders, not sure. But might try again more in the future.

I guess at some point I will have to start a new gig and see how that goes. I have written down some ideas, but the paper with those is back at home and I am currently in London for another 1-2 weeks or so.

Havent updated in ages, I must do this more regularly.

 

[Bonvi]

Damn, only 2 new orders, and both from recurring. My impressions don't rise. I put a new gig up with a video, hoping the video will make it stand out. It's a boring video though, not even an ad, more just like a quick clip of a terminal printing messages (indicating the script is working) that I once sent to a client.

But I guess that video is better than no video.

Any other ideas?

 

[Adindustry]

Damn, only 2 new orders, and both from recurring. My impressions don't rise. I put a new gig up with a video, hoping the video will make it stand out. It's a boring video though, not even an ad, more just like a quick clip of a terminal printing messages (indicating the script is working) that I once sent to a client.

But I guess that video is better than no video.

Any other ideas?

Start playing with Canva in your down time and get a feel for how it works.

Give yourself tasks to do with it, such as going to a random website and making a logo for it. Make Pinterest pins for random articles, make Youtube thumbnails for random videos etc.

Once you get good and quick you start to build more gigs around graphics.