How To Make Money On Fiverr: The Ultimate Guide

Working from home became incredibly popular in the last few years. Whether you lost your job or want to make extra money, finding ways to make money from home can be a great way to achieve your goals.

One of the hottest platforms to help freelancers make money online is Fiverr. Despite its name and original model, you can charge much more than $5 for your services. Today Fiverr is a lucrative platform for anyone who wants to make more money online.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to make money on Fiverr—it’s not as hard as it seems.

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What Is Fiverr?

Fiverr is an online marketplace bringing together buyers and sellers. The jobs on Fiverr are listed as gigs which refer to digital services sellers offer.

Currently, Fiverr has nine major categories, with 20 to 30 subcategories within each category. Whether you’re a writer, graphic designer, or voice-over artist, you’ll find buyers looking for your services on the platform.

How Does Fiverr Work?

Fiverr works with both buyers and sellers. If you’re wondering how to make money on Fiverr, you’re a seller. You create gigs and advertise them to the 3.4+ million buyers already using the platform.

Buyers are individuals and companies looking to outsource certain services, such as web content, bookkeeping, graphic design, and more. Buyers can search the platform using keywords to find the right seller for the job.

They can also ‘interview’ sellers by messaging them before purchasing a gig, asking as many questions as they want about the seller’s experience, offerings, and pricing.

Sellers are the people offering the gigs. Typically, they consider themselves freelancers, offering their expertise to make a side income. Sellers create gig packages to sell their services. 

You can create a gig with one price level or as many as three levels. The three pricing levels are:

  • Basic – This is like an introduction to your services. It’s your lowest-cost gig and should give a teaser of what your higher-cost services offer.
  • Standard – Offer your ‘average’ service in this gig. It should cost more than the basic gig and have a bit more ‘meat.’
  • Premium – This is the top-of-the-line service. Your premium services should go above and beyond what you offer in any other package and cost the most.

When creating a gig, you choose a category, title, and search tags for SEO optimization. Like Google, buyers will search for services using keywords. For example, if you’re a freelance writer, your audience may search for ‘blog writers,’ ‘freelancer writer, or ‘web content writer.’

After buyers discuss your options and choose a gig, they do everything on the Fiverr platform, including making payment. Fiverr has the seller’s back as well as the buyer’s—they protect both parties to ensure a seamless transaction.

Once a buyer purchases a gig, it’s your turn to work. Fiverr holds onto the payment until you deliver the work within the allotted time frame (you choose how long you have to deliver the project). 

After you deliver it, the buyer can accept it or ask for modifications. Buyers have three days to review the finished product before Fiverr automatically completes the assignment, which allows you to get paid.

Sellers earn money 14 days after the project clears until they reach top seller status, which is on a case-by-case basis. At that point, funds clear seven days after completion.

A top seller is someone Fiverr chooses to give the status to because they’ve shown exemplary work, turned all projects in on time, provides good customer service, and has an estimated 1,000 five-star reviews.

Pros and Cons of Using Fiverr

There are so many platforms to choose from when you start trying to make money online through freelancing. Each one has its pros and cons.

For Fiverr, here are what I consider their strengths and weaknesses:

Pros

  • Make some extra pocket money from the comfort of your home
  • Fiverr is a well-established platform that brings buyers to you
  • Guaranteed payment by Fiverr if the client doesn’t pay
  • Freedom to work on projects and with clients that fulfill you
  • Earn extra tips for your hard work and effort
  • Beginners have a fighting chance of securing work to build their portfolio
  • The platform is very easy to use

Cons

  • Fiverr doesn’t verify the buyers beforehand for security
  • Competition can be fierce with other more experienced sellers
  • Fiverr takes a whopping 20% cut of whatever you earn, including tips
  • The platform takes up to 14 days to clear your payments
  • Deadlines can come quickly if you don’t include enough turnaround time
  • Income may not be consistent enough to count on every month

How to Make Money on Fiverr: 8 Legit Categories

Wondering what Fiverr jobs you can even do to make money? Check out these eight legit categories where you can use your skills and talents to bring the clients in like wildfire.

1. Virtual Assisting

There has been a growing need for virtual assistants in the business world as more companies have discovered they require assistance to handle clerical tasks.

As a virtual assistant on Fiverr, you are responsible for completing several duties such as data entry, emailing potential customers, or cold calling clients amongst other things. 

The amount of money earned by doing this varies from $5 to $100 per job depending on your client and skill level with each task requested. If you do well, you can land yourself a repeat client!

2. Freelance Writing

The copywriting gig market is booming on Fiverr. If you know how to write grammatically correct and have a strong attention to detail, there’s a ton of money to be made in creating content for products, books, websites, and blogs. 

Lots of people are making money blogging and are eager to hire additional writers to help them produce more content. A single job can go as high as $5,000!

3. Website Development

Making a website for an e-commerce company can be highly lucrative on Fiverr. One of the sought-after services in this niche is to have your own site developed or technical work and coding completed, which can earn you between $100 and $2,000 depending upon how much work goes into the job.

4. Graphic Design

If you’re a graphic designer, consider selling your services on Fiverr. You can sell gigs that range from $5 to $1,000 like designing logos or creating cards and designs for clothes!

5. Translation

If you can speak multiple languages, it’s a great skill to market on Fiverr. You can offer your translation services or even teach people new language skills in which they’ll pay between $100 to $1,000 per job.

6. Transcription

As time goes by, podcasts and videos are becoming increasingly more popular. Having these transcribed into text is important for many content creators.

Like well paid YouTubers, content creators want to share their message on various platforms, or include it with their audio or video content. 

As a transcriptionist, you’ll be writing the scripts of the audio or video files. These usually pay per audio minute, up to $2 per minute. If you’re a fast typer, you might be able to earn up to $50 an hour as a transcriptionist.

7. Social Media Marketing

Having experience with social media could earn you a pretty penny on Fiverr ($50 to $1,000 per job), depending on the amount of work needed.

As the dependence on being online increases, more businesses are turning their marketing budgets toward platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to get their products and services out there. 

Some common tasks include target audience research, caption writing, hashtag management, graphic creation, content scheduling, engagement, and even ads management. 

If you need some initial startup funds for software or scheduling tools, check out these bank account bonuses that will pay you $100 to $3,000 simply for opening up a bank account!

8. Bookkeeping

Many businesses either don’t understand how to do bookkeeping properly or just don’t have the time to keep everything organized. That’s where you come in. 

It’s a highly technical job that you might need some experience, education, and software to be able to reliably handle. But, once you have the required skills and tool, it’s a gig that people pay a highly hourly or project rate for. You may even have clients sign-up to work with you monthly.

How to Become a Fiverr Seller

Learning how to make money on Fiverr is easy when you follow these simple steps.

1. Sign Up for a Fiverr Account

You’ll need to sign up for a Fiverr account, providing your name and email address to start. 

Fiverr will send you a confirmation email, and once you confirm your email, you can create your Fiverr profile, which is the first step to becoming a Fiverr seller.

2. Create Your Profile

Your profile is how you stand out and get buyers.

This is your time to shine. Use your profile to showcase your expertise to get buyers to choose you over the competition. 

There are just under 1 million sellers on Fiverr, so you must find a way to be unique and get buyers to choose you over others. Research keywords to use in your descriptions and provide as much background as possible to show you are qualified to do the job.

3. List Your Gigs

The final step is to create your first gig. It sounds overwhelming, but Fiverr does an excellent job breaking it down to make it easy for anyone to start a Fiverr gig.

  • Choose your title – Use keywords in your title and make it engaging. This tells buyers what services you offer. Give them a reason to click on it and learn more.
  • Choose a category – Choose from one of the eight categories, including graphics & design, digital marketing, writing & translation, video & animation, music & audio, programming & tech, and data.
  • Choose a subcategory – Further niche down your services by choosing a subcategory within your category. This helps you target the right audience.
  • Enter search tags – Think of search tags like keywords. What words will buyers use to find you? Enter them in your tags – you can enter up to five.
  • Set your pricing – Sellers control the price they charge, services they offer, the timeline for completion, and the number of revisions they’ll include.
  • Create a description – Your description is another opportunity to showcase what you can do. Use your keywords here and work on selling your services as an expert.
  • Ask for requirements – Think about what you need to complete the job. What questions do you need buyers to answer? Put all of this in the requirements section. It eliminates a lot of the back and forth so you can get right to work making money on Fiverr.
  • Add to the gallery – If you have images or documents you can use to show off your work and better help your gig description, add them to the gallery to increase your sales.

4. Publish and Market Your Listings

Your last step is to hit publish and get the word out about your gig. As you learn how to make money on Fiverr, don’t overlook the need to market your offerings. 

Social media is a great place to share your link, as is LinkedIn. If you send many business emails, include a link to your profile in your email signature.

How Much Money to Expect as a Beginner Seller on Fiverr

Of course, everyone wants to know how much money they could potentially make on Fiverr. 

Like any job or side gigs, it depends on what you offer and how good you are at what you do. Since you’re in charge of pricing, you control how much you make per job.

Look at the industry norm and use that as your basis. Do you offer more than the average person or less? Are you a beginner without a lot of expertise to back you up? 

If so, you probably should charge less upfront until you build up your portfolio, but if you’re an expert, feel free to charge much more.

On average, beginners make $100 to $300 in their first month as they get established. As you market your gigs, get more interest, and get raving reviews, you’ll make more sales and increase your earnings.

Most importantly, you get out what you put in, unlike passive income streams.

How Much Does Fiverr Cost?

It costs nothing to create a profile and start selling on Fiverr. Once you make a sale, though, Fiverr keeps 20% of each sale. For example, if you charge $100 for your service, you’ll earn $80 of it, and Fiverr keeps $20.

That might sound like a real bummer, initially. But, the platform is widely recognized and many potential clients go there first to search for freelancers. You’ll probably make more than you would’ve on your own if you’re just starting out.

Tips to Maximize Your Fiverr Sales

Every seller learning how to make money on Fiverr should know how to maximize their Fiverr sales. It comes down to using the right keywords and knowing how to stand out.

Optimize Your Titles and Descriptions

Like I said earlier, use the right words in your title and descriptions. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. 

What terms would you search? If you aren’t sure, analyze your competitors’ keywords or use a keyword research tool to find out what’s popular.

Offer Multiple Gigs

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. For example, if you write, think about which categories you could write in and create a gig for each. Doing so diversifies who sees your profile and gigs and increases your chances of making more money.

Deliver High-Quality Service

The more five-star ratings you receive, the more buyers you’ll attract. Just like when you buy something online and read reviews, buyers will do the same. If you have great reviews, it gives buyers more confidence to invest in you.

Increase Your Levels

Fiverr has four seller levels—the higher your level, the more buyers you’ll attract.

  • New Seller – Everyone starts as a new seller. You can have up to seven gigs, add up to two extra services for extra money, create custom offers, and receive your funds 14 days after the project clears.
  • Level 1 – After you’re a seller for 60 days, have at least ten orders, earn $400+, and have at least a 4.7 star rating, you’ll reach Level 1. You also can’t have any warnings in the last 30 days.
  • Level 2 – After you’re a seller for 120 days, have at least 50 orders, earn $2,000+, and have at least a 4.7 star rating, you’ll reach Level 2.
  • Top-Rated Seller – Top-rated sellers get the most exposure, so this should be your goal. You must be a seller for 180 days, have 100 orders, earn $20,000+, and have a 4.7 star rating to achieve Top Seller status.

Take Advantage of Gig Extras

Even new sellers can have gig extras—or extra services you’ll offer in addition to your gig. Think about the services you offer and what the ‘cherry on top’ could be. 

Offer these services for an extra charge. It could be as simple as a faster turnaround time. Think about your target audience and what they may want when creating your extras.

The Bottom Line

If you want to learn how to make money on Fiverr, it’s not that hard! It all starts with finding something you’re good at and that buyers want. Think about small business owners who need to outsource certain services because they’re tired of being burnt out working in their business.

There’s great potential in earning a decent side income by offering Fiverr services. You control every aspect of your offer and take advantage of Fiverr’s popularity to market your services. Just pay Fiverr 20% of each job sold—it’s a win-win for everyone.

About John Pham

John Pham is a personal finance expert, serial entrepreneur, and founder of The Money Ninja. He has also been fortunate enough to have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and U.S. News & World Report. John has a B.S. in Entrepreneurship and a Masters in Business Administration, both from the University of New Hampshire.

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