How to sell well on Fiverr
As of today I’m a level 2 seller on Fiverr. In this article I would like to share some tips and tricks on how to sell well on Fiverr, how to deal with difficult customers and orders that you can’t do right.
How to start selling
In the beginning you need to find what you will be selling. My advice would be to start small and see how it goes. Do not rush out with “I will make you a perfect website” or ” I will write a book for you”. Remember, most buyers are looking for $5 work and are willing to offer more if they see that you are doing a good job.
5 steps to start making money
- Think of the things you can do within 30 minutes. Remember you get 3.95$ for a basic gig (Fiverr takes 20% commission of all income + a withdrawal fee).
- Find similar gigs on Fiverr. See how you can improve your listing compared to those.
- Post the gig.
- Create some variations of your gig and post them as well. Some gigs sell much more than the others. Sometimes you just need to word them differently. Make at least 3 similar gigs and see which one sells better.
At one time I had these 3 gigs that did essentially the same:
Naturally, the gig that earned most money had most impressions, but also required more work.
- Make changes to the gigs that have low number of impressions.
Damage control
Some customers are difficult to deal with. Not everybody will be satisfied with your work. Try to avoid situations where a customer may expect something more of you.
Check list for when you get an order:
- Do not rush to start to work on the order. Analyze if you completely understood what is required of you.
- Did the customer provide all the details? If no – check if you can alter your gig to demand the details. In this way your time won’t start until the buyer provides all the information.
- Check out the customer. Most of the customers are there to actually buy your services. Some of them may be trying to scam you. Click on the buyer’s name and see what you get. Does the buyer offer gigs? What kind of gigs are these? If the buyer offers just the same gigs as yours, my advice would be to cancel the order right away. Same goes for buyers with bad ratings.
There will still be people who are not satisfied with your work. The best way is to talk to them as early as possible and show your work in progress. Next best thing is to cancel the order. They will get their money back, and your ratings won’t be hurt. If you still got bad feedback, here is what you can try to do;
- If you did really bad work – try to analyze why. Weren’t you clear enough in the gig? Maybe you are just not good at it? Remove or change the gig. Create a new gig if possible.
- It wasn’t your fault? Can you prove it? Contact Fiverr support and ask them to remove the feedback.
- You weren’t at your best this time, but have a lot of good ratings otherwise? Do not leave the buyer a really bad feedback telling that he is an ass! Future buyers will read it and see that you talk shit about your customers. Instead, be positive and honest. Say you are sorry. Do not try to explain what went wrong. Then change your gig to avoid similar situations in the future.
In my case it was an article that the buyer was not satisfied with. I wrote the article that was useful to my readers, while the buyer wanted an unconditional praise of his product. I told him that we don’t do it. He agreed to proceed and then just left 3 stars. What could I do? I answered like this:
“We are sorry we couldn’t make you satisfied, but it is very important for us to keep the quality of our articles high. We do not write “product review”-only posts, we make high quality articles with content that is useful to our readers. Thank you for your order!”
This didn’t work out for me. I didn’t have any more orders on this gig and had to eventually delete it.
Many people report that their sales drop after they receive a negative feedback. Although I found several evidences that if you do it right it won’t matter. If you do a good job and resolve issues diplomatically people will order from you again and again. Here is an example of a very saturated type of gig “I will write an article of 450 words”:
A buyer didn’t like the article at all and gave the seller 1 star. The seller just communicated back with “Thanks for your comments” and went on selling the gig to other people.
