I am a buyer; some of my experiences on Fiverr

[corriethailand]

I am a buyer; a financially a poor one - for now too.

First of all, I came here looking for help in a few aspects from Ghost-writing to proof reading my original manuscripts - English grammar, punctuations, sentence structure, etc. I am not native English, by the time I needed to learn English language my brain was already full developed and stuffed with lots of other information, thus English is a learned ability at best.

I found Fiverr, posted a request and got 27 replies a day later. None less than 16 of those made me feels very good and very confident but seriously disappointed. I asked for proof reading – I got replies that looks like an eight-year-old Japanese-speaking kid writing English after one-year education.

People, please if you hope to get business, do the effort to make your resume, gig, presentation – and communications to prospective buyer look good, correct and professional. I know when talking of 5,000 words at $5 is cheap for a lot of work – but all of us have to start somewhere, not?

I can’t expect to get a best seller from the word go, even I think my ideas for books are out-of-the-box but good material. However, that does not mean I have to publish junk either.

Is it not a better concept in marketing to build a happy customer base rather than get bigger profits from a few and have to remain battering the fortress of marketing and competition every day for the next buck? Well, I prefer the good quality and the happy customer base myself.

In this topic I would like to share some of my experiences as BUYER; maybe some sellers can get insight from that and improve their own sales pitches?

[cyaxrex]

As a seller, I agree that Fiverr can seem schizophrenic to a lot of people. There are simply too many people offering services which they likely can’t possibly provide. That said, these people are easy to root out and there are a phenomenal amount of extremely talented people here on Fiverr.

Coincidentally, I am an author myself and with this being the case would strongly advise you to look for a top rated seller if you are looking for rock solid proofreading. I don’t use Fiverr for this myself as I have a very competent magazine editor friend who proofs my work, but even for a short story, I still need to pay her £50 for up to 20,000 words.

This is just my advice of course, but if you are serious about making your book a success you sometimes need to be prepared to pay top dollar.

Other tips:

1. If you have just finished your book, close it and don’t look at it for 6 months. You will be amazed at how many obvious errors and plot/structure mistakes you have made and will probably find yourself re-writing whole chapters.

2. Use something like Grammarly to proof your book yourself a couple of times.

3. Be prepared to not sell a single copy of your book until you put a ton of marketing into it. I have 5 books but 3 of these hardly ever sell and these are the same 3 which I haven’t actually ever been able to take time out to market properly.

4. Good luck!

[emmaki]

I’ve told plenty of people with atrocious English on this forum that they need to go back to English school. If you’re working on an international website and providing English language services, you need good English. If it’s graphic design or something that doesn’t require a good level of English, it’s still important: you look more competent and professional. I mean, your English is a lot better than a lot of sellers here 🙂

Some good advice from @cyarex!

[misscrystal]

“Is it not a better concept in marketing to build a happy customer base rather than get bigger profits from a few”

You are saying that a happy customer base is happy because they only pay $5 for $100 worth of work. It doesn’t work like that. I have a happy customer base that pays a lot more than $5, and are very happy to do it. And I could charge five times more and still have a happy customer base.

[writer99025]

Nice to have a buyer’s perspective.