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Improve My Gig Checklist


blaisefaint

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Dear Fiverr Seller:

I didn’t take a look at your gig, but here is a checklist that may help:

  • Polish your English: spelling, grammar, punctuation, and so on. Are you trying to reach US English speakers or international English speakers? Make sure your phrasing is consistent with your target audience.

  • Remember that buyers are on Fiverr so that you will solve THEIR problems. You are here to provide SOLUTIONS. There is no place for negativity in your copy. Don’t say, I live in a third world country, every day is a struggle, and things are bad. There are people who travel the world to find the things of beauty that make each country special. Find out what these people are saying about your country. Everything is awesome! Refer to “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. “Never criticize, condemn, or complain,” ESPECIALLY in your SALES COPY!

  • Your log line:

Please include one and make it speak about you personally. Avoid cliches and generalities.

*Your profile image:

This should be a real photograph of you. Please use a clear, high-quality headshot showing your smile. Avoid selfies if you can. If you take a shot in a mirror, flip the image horizontally.

Some people prefer to brand themselves as a company, with a logo. I disagree with those people, but agree that this is a matter of personal preference. My point is, if you’ve branded yourself as a company with a logo and you’re not happy with your results, I suggest that you try branding yourself as a person with a photo. See which way gives you the better result.

  • Your profile text:

Give the Buyer a name by which they would be comfortable addressing you, either your first name or Dr., Mr., Mrs. Whatever. People feel awkward talking to companies – they want to talk to people.

Again, you should be speaking specifically about yourself, while focusing on how you are here to help the buyer. Try to use YOU more than I. Your goal is to create positive associations in the Buyer’s mind.

  • Your gigs: New Sellers can have 7 gigs. You should have 7 gigs! Once you have 7 gigs, once a week you should take a hard look at all your gigs. Revise or replace your weakest gig. Once you are at Level 1, you will have 15 gigs. At Level 2, 20. Be thinking NOW about what those 20 gigs will be. Bear in mind that you can PAUSE gigs at any time. For example, you may have a Valentine’s Day gig that sells great in February, but that you pause for the other months of the year. You might choose to DELETE this gig on Feb 15, and repost the next year.

If having 20 gigs at one time is too much, you can pause any number of them, but it’s good to have them available to run when it’s convenient for you.

If you consistently review and improve your gigs, over time you will have just the right number of top-performing gigs that you need to succeed on Fiverr.

  • Gig Title:

Does your gig title stand out? I suggest you look at similar gigs and brainstorm some keywords to make it pop.

  • Gig Description:

You have 1200 characters available to you here; I suggest you use them.

A suggested format for your gig descriptions:

Open with 1 or two short sentences that sum up the gig and what it offers.

WHO I AM – Try to complement your profile without overduplication

WHAT YOU GET – focus on Benefits rather than Features

WHY YOU SHOULD BUY FROM ME

RECOMMENDED GIG EXTRAS

I strongly recommend that you hire a copy writer to write the copy for your first gig. This is an investment that will pay off in more sales more quickly. If you are worried about the expense, remember that your gig description is 1200 characters, or about 240 words. If the copy writer has a gig of 1000 words, you may be able to work out a deal for them to write descriptions for up to 4 gigs.

You can study these gig descriptions and carefully modify them for your other gigs.

Many Sellers recommend that you buy gigs from other Sellers on Fiverr, so that you have a sense of what it is like to be a Buyer. This makes it easier for you to relate to the Buyer’s concerns.

  • Video: 30 to 60 seconds. If nothing else, put together a slide show of your portfolio images. If you can provide video of yourself talking directly to the buyer, this may help.

Every gig should have a video! People expect it today, and are more likely to watch a video than read your copy. Learn to make great videos that get your point across in an engaging way. I’ve seen reports that suggest that in 10 years, video will be the dominant form of communication on social media.

Gig Pictures: You can have 3 images, and you should have 3. Please avoid stock images. Your images should be personal to you and to the gig you are providing. If your images or video have text, that text should be consistent with the text in your gig description. For example, if your packages are called Basic, Supreme, and Deluxe in the text, but your images show Standard, Super, and Super Duper, you will confuse the Buyer, who is more likely to move on than to try to figure out what you mean.

  • Your packages:
    Generally, Sellers offer more as the packages move up in price. I suggest you brainstorm some variety so it seems like the upgrades are more than just numbers. Think very carefully about the packages from the Buyer’s point of view.

For example, if you offer revisions for the base package, but not for the upgrades. the buyer probably will wonder why they’re losing a benefit with the upgrade.

A good way to get initial sales is to ask friends and family, classmates, people who know you and like you, to buy gigs from you.

Make use of social media: I suggest you post images to Twitter on a daily basis, with links to your Fiverr profile. The more people who see what you can do, the more clicks and views you will get on Fiverr. For example, Twitter has #MondayMotivation to #SundayFunday. If your work becomes known in those categories, people will begin to seek you out on Fiverr. Fiverr has been moving toward allowing you to link to more of these social media sites in your profile page.

You can post videos to YouTube, with links to your Fiverr profile.

You can talk about your gigs on your blog, with pointers to your Fiverr profile.

You could post a YouTube video, Tweet about it, post it on your blog embedded in a blog post, and have pointers in all these places pointing to your Fiverr profile.

In my humble opinion (IMHO), it makes more sense to point to your Fiverr profile rather than to your individual gigs, because you may delete individual gigs and pause individual gigs. Rather than constantly updating links to individual gigs, let your Fiverr profile do the heavy lifting for you.

Good luck,
Blaise

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT REQUIREMENTS: If you don’t know already, it is considered a gig best practice to include Requirements with every gig description. This forces the Buyer to provide the information you need before you receive their order.

When you enter your Requirements, you need to press the “ADD” button, and then the “SAVE” button. Please, be sure that your Requirements are properly included with your gig descriptions!

Only Buyers who purchase your gigs SEE your Requirements, so if I look at your gigs, I will not give you any feedback about YOUR REQUIREMENTS. Just know that you should have some, and that they should be clear to the Buyer.

DISCLAIMER for any Sellers who might read this post. Please read before contacting me on Fiverr!:

As a matter of common courtesy, please do not contact me on Fiverr with questions or comments that belong on the Fiverr Forum. If I see your question or comment in the Forum, if I have time, and if I think it is appropriate, I will respond in the Forum.

Sincerely,
Blaise

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  • 1 month later...

Dear Fellow Fiverr Forum Participants:

Here is an addendum based on some things that may be useful to you.

  1. Here are my metrics for comparison: it took me 3 months to go from a New Seller to Level 1. That’s 10 sales in 92 days or about 1 sale every 9 days.

  2. According to this post, impressions are a meaningless statistic. Fiverr updates your metrics about once per day.

  3. Dukeacem has a detailed Udemy course about Fiverr in which several Fiverr Sellers talk about their experience on the site in detail. There are lots of books, YouTube videos, and courses on Udemy and the other tutorial sites. Find the one that’s right for you.

  4. Iterate and improve your gigs often. Once you’ve made a video for each of your gigs, take a long, hard look at each video. How can you improve them? Could you add better music? Write a better script? Rehearse your script until you have it down like Tim Roth and his restroom story in “Reservoir Dogs”? How’s the background?

Once you’ve gone through and redone the videos and reposted them, take another hard look. Brainstorm ideas to make the video even better.

Do the same for your gig titles, gig descriptions, gig extras, gig images, and so on.

Each week you should come up with some improvement to your gig.

  1. Brainstorm new gigs based on Buyer Requests. Realize that the Buyer Requests you see are based on the category or categories in which your gigs appear. More gigs in more categories translate to more opportunities to respond to Buyer Requests.

  2. If you want to add your audio demo to your gig, consider making the audio part of the soundtrack to your gig video.

  3. *Here are notes I took when I read through David Ogilvy’s book on advertising, called “Ogilvy on Advertising”:

[NOTES REDACTED: Please check out “David Ogilvy on Advertising”.]

As always, please do not contact me on Fiverr with comments or questions that belong in the Fiverr Forum. Thank you for understanding that there is a difference between Fiverr and the Fiverr Forum. Fiverr is a place for Buyers to contact Sellers to buy stuff. Fiverr is not a place for Sellers to contact other Sellers to ask them for FREE stuff.

Thank you,
Blaise Faint

[Dear Fiverr Forum Moderators: If you think it might be a good idea to cut and append this post to the top of this thread with any appropriate edits, so do I. Great minds think alike!]

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Dear Fonthaunt:

Thank you for the kind words.

I also enjoyed your recent appearance on Fiverrcast.

I simply don’t have the temperament to do what you do, volunteering so generously of your time and energy as a Fiverr Forum moderator.

My participation on the Fiverr Forum has helped me, in that I’ve recast the checklist as a PDF that I offer on Fiverr. No one has bought a copy, but I have the entire text of the book in the promotional video for the gig. No one has to buy the book to be able to see a sample of my writing, and I point people who see the gig to the Fiverr Forum to see more samples of my writing. I believe it helps to establish my reputation and authority.

The experience for the first gig made it possible for me to assemble the “Manuel Bastioni Lab Special Report”.

I say the above not merely to toot my own horn, but hopefully to demonstrate that I practice what I preach when I talk about putting together a short ebook to sell on Fiverr.

If you look at my profile text, one of my Strengths is “Maximizer”. I like to take things that are good or great and make them even better. I strongly suggest that anyone who hasn’t taken the Strengths Finder 2.0 assessment go ahead and take it.

Thank you again,
Blaise

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Dear Fellow Fiverr Forum Participants:

When you are a Seller on Fiverr, your ratings can be affected by two metrics:

Response Rate: You must reply to every message someone sends you, no matter how inappropriate, within 24 hours, or your Response Rate goes down.

Response Time: The speed with which you respond to the first message someone sends you can affect your Response Time. I try to keep my Response Time to an average of one hour.

So, for example, if someone in a different time zone contacts you in the middle of the night when they have no intention of buying anything, they can not only hurt your Response Time and Response Rate, they can hurt your ratings and ranks for your gigs. Not only would a person like this be taking your time without compensating you, they are also potentially hurting your visibility in search ratings.

I have a featured post in the “Improve My Gig” section of the Fiverr Forum. Here’s how it ends:

As a matter of common courtesy, please do not contact me on Fiverr with questions or comments that belong on the Fiverr Forum. If I see your question or comment in the Forum, if I have time, and if I think it is appropriate, I will respond in the Forum.

The addendum ends:

As always, please do not contact me on Fiverr with comments or questions that belong in the Fiverr Forum. Thank you for understanding that there is a difference between Fiverr and the Fiverr Forum. Fiverr is a place for Buyers to contact Sellers to buy stuff. Fiverr is not a place for Sellers to contact other Sellers to ask them for FREE stuff.

Several people have contacted me on Fiverr asking for free stuff, when I try to give generously of my time on the Fiverr Forum. I believe that on at least 2 occasions, my Response Rate has taken a hit because I didn’t respond to every note these people sent me while asking me for free stuff on Fiverr.

So, as a matter of personal protection, in the future I will send a short note to anyone who contacts me on Fiverr asking for free stuff. Then I will press the Report Button in the hope that this will minimize the potential risk to my standing on Fiverr.

Please consider the consequences of your actions and how you may affect other people. Perhaps you might consider contacting Fiverr Support with your Fiverr support needs.

Thank you,
Blaise

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I got the app on my phone to help my response wait, so I can reply to everything as soon as possible instead of waiting until I get to a computer.

I am not sure I want my whole face on my icon, but I’ve seen it work out well for others. There are alot of good advice in this, thank you! I will be following your posts! 🙂

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the advice Blaise.

If you have the time, I would also greatly appreciate it if you can take a personal look at my profile. I am new to the forum and would love to get your honest (and highly treasured) personal opinion on its appearance (and possibly some tips?).

Thanks again.

Dear Rainny:

Sorry for the delay in responding. I just saw your post.

Here’s a quick and dirty look at your profile:

“Suites” should probably be “suits”.

500 word SEO optimized article gig:

I suggest you add a video. If you send your Buyers an image of the first page of the article, they might be able to add this image to your live portfolio (I’m not sure about this).

Description: “world news etc.” should probably be “world news, etc.”

“Thanks

Rainny.”

should probably be

"Thanks,

Rainny"

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Dear Rainny:

Sorry for the delay in responding. I just saw your post.

Here’s a quick and dirty look at your profile:

“Suites” should probably be “suits”.

500 word SEO optimized article gig:

I suggest you add a video. If you send your Buyers an image of the first page of the article, they might be able to add this image to your live portfolio (I’m not sure about this).

Description: “world news etc.” should probably be “world news, etc.”

“Thanks

Rainny.”

should probably be

"Thanks,

Rainny"

Thanks for taking out your time to do this Blaise. I’m honored.

It has certainly improved from when I made the request till now though, but it was great noting those silent points that could help me lose potential clients.

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.From: blaisefaintSent: Sunday, 25 December 2016 15:26To: rainnyfidelis@yahoo.comReply To: Fiverr ForumSubject: [Fiverr Forum] [Your Fiverr Experience/Improve My Gig] Improve My Gig Checklist

2504_1.pngblaisefaint

December 25

Dear Rainny:

Sorry for the delay in responding. I just saw your post.

Here's a quick and dirty look at your profile:

"Suites" should probably be "suits".

500 word SEO optimized article gig:

I suggest you add a video. If you send your Buyers an image of the first page of the article, they might be able to add this image to your live portfolio (I'm not sure about this).

Description: "world news etc." should probably be "world news, etc."

"Thanks

Rainny."

should probably be

"Thanks,

Rainny"


Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.


In Reply To

1020_1.pngrainny_writer

November 20Thanks for the advice Blaise.

If you have the time, I would also greatly appreciate it if you can take a personal look at my profile. I am new to the forum and would love to get your honest (and highly treasured) personal opinion on its appearance (and possibly some tips?).

Thanks again.


Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.

To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.

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@blaisefaint Hi, just wanted to tell you this is lovely! Extremely useful and very precise, thanks.
I’m in the middle of updating my gigs and profile for the new year. Can you take a look at my picture and tell me whether I should change it or is it good as it is? Additionally, do animated explainer videos sell better or videos that people make themselves?

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@blaisefaint Hi, just wanted to tell you this is lovely! Extremely useful and very precise, thanks.

I’m in the middle of updating my gigs and profile for the new year. Can you take a look at my picture and tell me whether I should change it or is it good as it is? Additionally, do animated explainer videos sell better or videos that people make themselves?

Dear SSJ:

What name do you want to be called? Please share that on your profile page, so your Buyers feel more comfortable approaching you.

About your profile image, you come across as a Bad Boy Alpha Male with a young Bob Dylan vibe, so unless you’re willing to take my standard advice of using a photo of you smiling, you’d be better off asking your apparent target audience, which is women who are in to Bad Boys, about the best choice of image for you.

You do have some capitalization issues in your profile text, but for all I know, this is a deliberate decision of poetic license.

I’d make it:

I’m an experienced search engine optimization (SEO) writer, web content writer, article writer, and basically any other kind of writer you will ever need. I hope to run a respectable and awesome gig on Fiverr. I truly hope you will treat me kindly.

  • [WhateverYouWantBuyersToCallYou]

As far as your question about videos, I don’t have the data to answer your question.

I use animated videos that I make myself, only because I have the looks for radio, but not the voice. You can see my picture, so you understand why I don’t videotape myself. If you’ve heard me croak out, “Exclusively on Fiverr,” then you understand why I keep my talking to a minimum. If I looked and sounded more like Benedict Cumberbatch, my sales on Fiverr would be much better.

My uninformed opinion is that the optimal video is one in which you greet the customer, make small talk, then show them what you do via a screencast or whatever best gets your point across.

Hopefully someone else can give you a better answer.

This question would probably make for a good thread of its own in the Improve My Gig section of the Fiverr Forum, so I suggest you start one and see what responses you get.

Good luck,

Blaise

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Dear SSJ:

What name do you want to be called? Please share that on your profile page, so your Buyers feel more comfortable approaching you.

About your profile image, you come across as a Bad Boy Alpha Male with a young Bob Dylan vibe, so unless you’re willing to take my standard advice of using a photo of you smiling, you’d be better off asking your apparent target audience, which is women who are in to Bad Boys, about the best choice of image for you.

You do have some capitalization issues in your profile text, but for all I know, this is a deliberate decision of poetic license.

I’d make it:

I’m an experienced search engine optimization (SEO) writer, web content writer, article writer, and basically any other kind of writer you will ever need. I hope to run a respectable and awesome gig on Fiverr. I truly hope you will treat me kindly.

  • [WhateverYouWantBuyersToCallYou]

As far as your question about videos, I don’t have the data to answer your question.

I use animated videos that I make myself, only because I have the looks for radio, but not the voice. You can see my picture, so you understand why I don’t videotape myself. If you’ve heard me croak out, “Exclusively on Fiverr,” then you understand why I keep my talking to a minimum. If I looked and sounded more like Benedict Cumberbatch, my sales on Fiverr would be much better.

My uninformed opinion is that the optimal video is one in which you greet the customer, make small talk, then show them what you do via a screencast or whatever best gets your point across.

Hopefully someone else can give you a better answer.

This question would probably make for a good thread of its own in the Improve My Gig section of the Fiverr Forum, so I suggest you start one and see what responses you get.

Good luck,

Blaise

Mate is there any blog/social media I can follow you on cause you are worth following.

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Dear Charles:

Please elaborate.

I just logged out and took a look at one of my gigs as a Buyer, but did not see my requirements.

Thank you,

Blaise

For a few days, buyer requirements were shown on the gig page, under the gig description. One of the Fiverr experiments, I guess, but it didn’t stay that way.

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