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Are you looking for a place to gain clients? You may have heard of Fiverr, but is it any good? Can you make money writing on Fiverr?
What is Fiverr? That’s the place to start.
It’s a micro-gig site, where you create offers for people to buy. The offers are called “gigs,” and they can be anything you want as long as they follow the terms of the site.
As a writer, you can offer gigs to sell your services. Maybe it’s to offer 100 words of blog content for $5 or it could be to offer a gig that offers your email writing skills. The limit is your imagination in creating the gigs.
So, you can make money writing on Fiverr, then?
Well, yes. And no.
Fiverr used to be okay
I’ll never say it was great, but Fiverr used to be a place that I could comfortable set my gigs up and not worry too much. I’d get orders and then write.
There were very few bad eggs when it came to buyers. The site was set up as a good place for sellers to offer their gigs without too much risk or trouble.
This was 10 years ago. I set up my profile back in 2011 and I managed to make a comfortable amount of money from something that was just a side gig.
Things started to go south for me when the owners behind the site decided to bring in levels. These levels weren’t really earned, although Fiverr will tell you that. They were pretty much there as a way to prevent sellers from canceling orders, and that was where the problem was.
You see, when you offer your gigs, you don’t get to say who can order or not. You can ask for people to get in touch first or make sure they read the gig description all you want, but people don’t have to do that. If they want to order from you for something you don’t even offer, they can do that.
It wasn’t a problem at first. I’d just cancel the order and move on. Then Fiverr brought in the levels where you needed to have a specific percentage of orders accepted and completed. Just one canceled order could throw everything off.
That’s not a situation I wanted to be in. As a freelancer, I get to say which projects I do.
The worst part was having my gigs dropped in the search results because I refused to play ball with the system. And that led to not getting as many orders as I used to.
Quite simply, Fiverr has become a buyer’s playground. I don’t recommend it if you want to make money writing. In fact, I left a while ago and haven’t looked back.
How to Make a Living as a Writer (Bell on Writing Book 7) ($)
Make money writing on Fiverr: You won’t make a lot!
When I first started selling my gigs on Fiverr, it was still relatively new and growing. There weren’t as many sellers offering the same as me and I was able to build up a base of clients pretty quickly.
However, I still wasn’t making a lot of money. It was comfortable for the amount that I was writing, but the problem was the limitations at the time. Your gig had to be $5 and that was it.
Eventually, extras were added. From there, you could offer additions to your base service, but you still had to offer something for $5. After all, the site was called “Fiverr.”
The site has grown since. I don’t think you need to have a $5 offer anymore, but that’s what people expect. Buyers want to push you as low as possible.
And I do find the cheapest buyers are the worst to deal with. They have all these demands, want the work done within 24 hours, and expect revision after revision, often canceling to get their work for free. It happened to me and that was the point when I started pulling away from the site.
I could make a lot more away from Fiverr. I didn’t have the limitations Fiverr set and didn’t have to pay the 20% commission to Fiverr for them “promoting” and hosting my gigs on their site.
The limitations caused far too much stress for very little return.
By the way, you can’t take your buyers off the site according to Fiverr’s Ts & Cs. Of course, there are plenty who do, but your account will be shut down if you’re caught.
There are better ways to make money online
My honest opinion is that Fiverr is a waste of time. Sure, you can make money on Fiverr, but I don’t find it worth the stress and annoyance.
My favorite way to get clients is through my own site. I network a lot, and I set my rates depending on the project.
You see, just because two people want a 500-word blog post doesn’t mean they are both worth the same amount of money. One project could take hours to research because of the topic while another is a fun little project that takes 30 minutes to do because all the research is there.
Fiverr doesn’t have a system for you to do that. If you offer 500 words for $5, you need to keep it at that regardless of the subject.
It’s not for me.
However, if you are just starting out and don’t know much about marketing, it could be a way to get some experience. I just think there are better ways than Fiverr to make money online.
MORE: Should you ever reduce your rate for a private client?
How do you make money writing? Have you tried offering your services on Fiverr? Is it something you’re considering? Share your thoughts in the comments below.