Fiverr is one of the best online platforms for freelancers around the world. It is also helping buyers globally to select the best people for their relevant tasks out of a sufficient pool of talent. They also have the option to set any predefined budget for particular jobs. Proposals from freelancers to buyers keep them engaged as well in this open job market. Once they acquire any order, on-time fulfillment with the best quality submission becomes their top priority.
I had joined Fiver almost five years back but not as a seller. I was looking for some content writer as well as a logo designer. I found a couple of other places as well like Freelncers.com and Peopleperhour.com. I found Fiverr a great platform for freelancers. It was more convenient to select the right person for any Job at Fiverr. At that time, I had only two payment options PayPal and Bitcoin but unfortunately, both were not working in my country and still with the same status. I managed Paypal somehow through my uncle from Malaysia.
In the recent lockdown situation, when most of the people are working from Home and exploring different options for online business or freelancing. I thought to keep my fiverr account alive again. I felt happy to see the debit/credit card option in Fiverr. I have been observing different Fiverr success stories through social media as well. I decided to become a seller on Fiverr. I learned Adobe Photoshop during my lockdown days and made myself good at it. I also had been using Canva for different purposes from the last one year so thought to make few gigs related to designs.
Below were the Gigs I created on Fiverr. So far within one month, I received four orders and one inquiry. Every order was unique in its requirement and helped me to learn a lot of new things. I did mistakes while doing all these orders and even got a 3.7 rating in one of my orders.
- I will design anything in Canva pro in 24 Hours
- I will do a professional logo design for every business in 24 Hours
- I will replicate your logo or Brand name into an amazing 3D format
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| Made in Canva by HMS |
My aim here is to tell you people those mistakes so that you won’t do the same while working on Fiverr and can develop your career in a better way as a freelancer. We should always learn from others’ mistakes because learning through your own mistakes can be too much costly for you.
Before I moved on, Let me show you my one-month income on Fiverr. I earned a total of $24 so far out of which $20 is from my June earnings.
Let’s start with our three Case studies
Case # 1
I used to watch videos and tutorials on different online platforms where people ask about tricks to get first order on Fiverr. In my case, I felt lucky because I received the order as soon as I prepared the seller account. It was the logo design order from a German client. She was also new on Fiverr but explained her logo requirement in detail. I understood and started working on it immediately. I finalized one logo, prepared a couple of mock-ups, and sent the delivery within two to three hours. Then I started waiting for her reply which took my whole night. The next morning, I was shocked to see her reply which was not good. She was requesting me to relook her requirement and my given design was not suited to her business. All my work went in vain and I had to start my work from zero. This time I decided to share a couple of options with her to select from. I searched on the internet for some designs related to her concept, gather some ideas, and prepared 4 to 5 designs. I sent her all options at once to select anyone out of them so that I could send the selected logo in all formats but she did not only accept the order as is with all the options but gave me five start rating. See her feedback below.
Learning from this order:
- Always be patient upon receipt of any order and do proper research for any design related requirement.
- Try to fully understand the requirement of the client before you start converting it onto your canvas.
- For logo design, It’s better to submit a couple of options to the client before the final submission.
Case # 2
I had received the order from my local account for the 3D logo. Upon asking some idea, he sent me a 3D picture of a home. He wanted his logo to look like this home. I thought to make it on photoshop with adobe dimensions but I failed to do it. I tried but couldn’t make it as per his requirement. I decided to delegate this work to someone expert on Fiverr. I published the job request with all the relevant details. I received a lot of inquiries where many were claiming to fulfill my requirements and most importantly within my budget. I carefully selected the seller and asked him again and again if he could make my logo as per the Home picture I shared. He did not deny but my mistake was that I didn’t get 100% confirmation for this idea. Surprisingly when I received the logo, there was nothing as per my requirement. Although his work was superb that’s why I accepted the delivery and gave him a five-star rating to avoid any impact on his Fiverr profile. separately I asked him to check again if he could fulfill my requirement as requested initially. He did not cooperate in this matter further and even shared the png file upon my request.
I downloaded some good 3D mockups from freepik.com and gave my client a better 3D logo which was quite close to his requirement. I faced a hard time to convince my buyer to accept it and finally got success after several attempts.
Learning from this order.
- Don’t try to be over-smart and understand buyers provided sample clearly, ask them for any clarity upfront to avoid any issue at the time of delivery.
- Don’t be greedy, delegate the order with a little margin to someone more expert in it on Fiverr if you can’t fulfill the requirement. Experts also call it best practice for “How to earn money without any skills”
- Explore different options for order completion
Case # 3
My second order on gig related to Canva designs helped me to learn a lot of design-related things.
One day I received an inquiry from a client who was from Singapore. He was not a direct buyer. Infact working as a middle man. I checked his profile and saw many good remarks about this buyer from different sellers. His profile title was also indicating about his job as a middle man on Fiverr.
He asked me if I could make a three-page ebook kind of design on canva and submit it in a pdf form. It was downloadable marketing material for one of her clients in Singapore. This had to be used through Facebook advertisements. I accepted this inquiry and gave my offer of $15. He sent me a couple of samples before I started work on his designs.
I worked for the whole day and submitted my first design copy which he rejected with a lot of comments but most importantly with a solution. All these comments were worth reading. I am sharing all here as-is for everyone’s learning so that you can avoid the same mistakes while making any ebook, catalog, brochure designs, etc for your clients on any freelance platform.
Problem(s):
The whole design is “too busy”.
- The text in the middle is very hard to read. Darken the background so that the text is easy to read.
- Create much, much, much more space between the words. Reduce the font sizes.
Be clean. Minimalist. Focus on words. Space between text.
Problem(s):
- For the 4 boxes, they are too square and sharp-edged. This makes them too unfriendly.
- The font for the 4 boxes are also too small and hurts the eyes when reading. Please increase the font size.
- Please also bear in mind that 95% of our readers are using smartphones to read this – for best understanding, download your PDF into your phone and try to read it.
Solution(s):
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Try to use a friendly design. Here’s an example
Download the PDF on your phone and see if you and your friends can read it comfortably. If not, increase the font size until it’s comfortably readable.
He gave me a 3.7 rating which was not justified but I did not argue with him because his feedback was not bad as well as the learning I received through this order, couldn’t be grasped through self-learning. I loved to learn these things practically.
I shared my one-month experiences on fiverr with all of you and would love to hear from you as well. Do share your feedback, working experiences in the comment section. Your comments will help the freelance community at large.