First 30 Days on Fiverr - 178 Orders - $3800 - 99% Approval (How it Happened)

[levinewman]

Hi there,



My name is Levi Newman and I just completed my first 30 days on Fiverr as an active seller using nothing but a single gig under copywriting.



You can find my gig here: https://www.fiverr.com/levinewman/provide-you-with-unique-compelling-copywriting?context=collections&context_type=pre_defined_recent.ownership_true&funnel=2015012421360438210924820



I don’t know other peoples’ success rate here on Fiverr, so I don’t know what my over/under is for success, but I thought I’d share my experience and get feedback from my fellow Fiverrs. I suppose I’ll do this in a bit of a sequential order to make it easier to follow.

1. I created my gig on December 24, 2014 (yeah, Christmas Eve), just to see if I could pick up any extra work freelancing. I normally used Elance and some other sources to find work, but I wanted to try something new. I started with a single gig because I wasn’t quite sure how it all would work.
   
   
2. My first few days I started collecting $5 and $10 orders here and there, which seemed fun and exciting. Each time, I took a moment to connect with them and ensure I was following their suggestions as closely as possible. Writing for people worldwide can be tricky, given language and cultural barriers, so it was/is important to me to open up a line of dialogue.
   
   
   
3. As January kicked off, I noticed I was getting more and more jobs, and within eight days (total) I had moved from base seller to a Level 2 seller. This gave me the ability to open up more features and made me more money.
   
   
   
4. I continued to pull in orders at a rapid pace as the month progressed, working frantically (and I do mean around the clock) to fill orders, talk to people, keep dialogue fresh, and keep clients aware of things I could offer them.
   
   
   
5. Sometime around two weeks in I made the conscious decision to try and cultivate just $100 per day in Fiverr gigs. I thought it would be a good goal to shoot for, and made me more aware of the customer and what work I was doing.
   
   
   
6. Today is January 24, 2015, and I have, in fact, surpassed $3,800 and (as of writing this—it changed since I wrote the title five minutes ago) 180 orders.
   
   
   
   Now that the timeline is in somewhat of an order, let’s talk about the positives and negatives of my experience.
   
   
   
   Positives:
   
7. Interacting with customers quickly, passionately, and with excitement always helped me land jobs as opposed to when I just “mailed it in.” I tested this several times, and each time I provided stronger personal service, I was rewarded for the effort.
   
   
   
8. Speed is everything. I have under an hour response time, yet I let one job reach 48 minutes before I responded and the client chose to go with someone else because “you didn’t respond quickly enough.”
   
   
   
9. Most clients are amazing. The large majority of people I did/do work for, are really great and their jobs are fun.
   
   
   
10. I believe this to be a very sustainable form of income. So much so, that I believe I can do this full time for as long as I can keep up the pace.
    
    
    
11. Fiverr is a really amazing community and I had some great interactions with fellow sellers.
    
    
    
    Negatives:
    
12. As a seller, Fiverr is not your friend. They don’t care about you, they don’t protect you, and they do not have your best interests in mind. And I’m not talking about the negligible 20 percent they take with each sale. I’m talking about how buyer’s are significantly more important to them, even though sellers are the one’s making them money. It’s baffling.
    
    
    
13. It takes forever…FOREVER…to get paid in a day and age when you should be paid instantly for your work. This is the most confusing feature about Fiverr, and really limits the success of the site.
    
    
    
14. Bad buyers are out there, and they can hurt your reputation. (See #1) I had five people cancel, hurting my reputation, because they ordered graphics on a copywriting gig…even though I don’t say anything about doing graphics. I had one person cancel because, after I’d done their work, they decided to throw in more work on top of it (on the same order) and suggest I do it or get a bad rating. I had one order threaten me with a bad rating because I didn’t fix their excel sheet (numbers…not words), and one take work that was clearly superior and tell me they weren’t going to use it and decided not to pay me. All of which negatively impacted me and was embraced by Fiverr. Oh yeah, there was the one guy that gave me a bad rating because I attended a rival college.
    
    
    
15. I don’t understand the placement system at all. I can do well, get jobs, get high rating, make Fiverr tons of money, and I’m all over the place on the first page. I get spreading the love around, but the only people that are consistently safe are the Featured Fiverr group.
    
    
    
16. There’s this weird bug/system/something that when you deliver a product, and then the client doesn’t respond for three days, only to turn it back for changes, that the system now says you’re three days late in delivery. I don’t get this in the slightest. It then makes me have to drop everything to make sure I finish it (AGAIN) and not get a payment drop.
    
    
    
    Ok, there it is, my first 30 days on Fiverr. I don’t know how I match up, but I want to be a $100,000 seller one day, and I’m going to keep working until I get there. If you need copywriting work, I can pretty much do anything if you give me enough information—sometimes when I have none at all, apparently.
    
    
    
    I hope you’re all doing great and kicking butt out there. Don’t hesitate to stop by and say Hi.
    
    
    
    Warm regards,
    
    
    
    Levi
    

[Guest mctimon]

Ha! Fast forward to three years later and you’re a top rated seller in the news. …I just noticed this post went unnoticed