Question about raising price of services

[ellaisreading]

I am a level 2 with a good rating and just raised my prices since I was overloaded with orders. Don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful for the work, but was getting to a point where I didn’t have any extra “down” time. Literally. So my husband suggested raising my price. I contacted all current, returning, and past customers to let them know (since that’s only fair) and so far have had positive verbal feedback. However, since then I have had no new orders. While overall my intention was to be able to cut back on the amount of work I am currently doing, now I’m worried that I raised them too high. Granted, it’s a little tough when there is no consistent $5 or $10 intervals to use, because it skips the $30 amount, I had no choice on one of my gig extras, and that’s the one I’m worried about.



Has anyone else had a positive/negative experience once you’ve gone up on pricing? If so, would you mind sharing. I just don’t want to lose all my customers, or any potential new ones. So am a little bit at a loss of what to do. I’m going to give it at least another week or two and see what happens, but am kind of leaning towards dropping them back to what they were.



I just don’t know what to do and would appreciate any feedback 🙂



Thanks!



~Ella

[sincere18]

What are you talking about? It says you have 15 orders in your que for your gig on book chapter editing.

[ellaisreading]

@sincere18, those are all previous orders from my “old” pricing. I am referring to the fact that I haven’t had anyone contact me since my price went up. What I’m wanting to do is, after these initial gigs are finished, not having so many on my to do list. I know it’s a little confusing right now, but eventually would like to have no more than 5 or 6 at a time that I’m working on. Does that make sense?



Anyway, I was just wondering if any other sellers have raised their prices and what the feedback has been for them.

[sincere18]

Reply to @ellaisreading: yes, but the reason you may not be getting orders is it says there are 15 orders lined up. If I was a buyer I would see that you have 15 orders to do and then go find another seller.



I totally understand you want good work flow, 5 to 6 at a time, that makes sense. However it’s possible you were only getting that many orders because of your low price to begin with. There are two pricing methods, many orders at a low price or few orders at a very high price. You have to be willing to wait it out for the higher prices.



So for that you have to make a decision. It’s nice that your buyers all said verbally that they think it’s a good think, but if they aren’t showing up, then they were probably just being polite about it. They may or may not really value the price jump and you will just have to reply on a new set of future clients.



I do not also understand what you mean the minimum is now $30? You can create $5 and $10 extras.



Another thing to do, is if you have your 5 or 6 orders pending, then just pause of vacation the gig. YOu can control your ebb and flow in that way. If you are in vacation mode, I know there is a button that us buyers can say, let me know when you are back. I have done that before with a seller I wanted to purchase from.

[ellaisreading]

@sincere18, thanks for the feedback! I agree that it might have been because it was at a lower price, so that’s why I haven’t had as many “bites” if you will. I’m going to give it another week or two and see how it goes. If I find that I’m getting no new orders (other than the basic $5 proofreading) then I’ll lower them to how they were.



I hope I don’t sound like I think I’m too good to have a lot of orders. I promise I don’t mean for it to come across that way. I’m very thankful for the work, but it’s gotten to where I don’t have any time for my family, or downtime for myself. As for vacation mode, I’ve thought about using that, but would hate to lose a potential customer…I guess everything is a gamble 🙂

[sincere18]

Reply to @ellaisreading: No, you don’t sound ‘too good’ at all. Some people use Fiverr for extra work on the side, but sometimes you only want so much work as you have other obligations. You can be as picky as you want and only go after doing higher priced work.



I would give it a few weeks. But how much was the jump from what to $30? For buyers that may not work. They probably already put a value on what you do with their budget. But then you can wait it out a bit. In all honesty, from a business standpoint, I would wait to evaluate whether new prices are working after your queu is down to 1 or 2. Then give it a few weeks from that point. As of now, you are going to have an influence of those 15 orders so any buyer is going to think it will take too long to get a job done so that could effect their purchase. But once you have a cleared up queu, then see what happens after that if you get any “bites” or not.

[orcatek]

You base gig needs to be something that is competitive and you can do in a reasonable time for $5. Extra’s and multiples along with custom offers is where you earn income on Fiverr. Ideally the ratio of basic gigs to other gigs needs to be such that Fiverr is a good value to both clients and to you (your time and talent are valuable).



There are many on here who can do just that. Now I looked at one of your gigs, proof reading 5000-6000 words. I don’t know how fast you are, but if you can’t do several of those per hour, you need to re-think your gig.



Yes that means raising prices, but that can be done by changing what a base gig is. Maybe it is $5 per 1000 words. Now I don’t know your market, so that may not be feasible, but the concept holds.



For example my base gig is up to 75 words on video for $5, with each extra 50 words $5 more. Sure I get a fair amount of the basic gigs, and they are loss leaders. In other words, don’t really make a good income between the time needed for filming, audio and edits. But a large number of gigs upgrade in either word count or extras. My base gig is a very good quality product, so those clients are happy. And even my basic gig I can do multiples per hour.



It is a balancing act to find price level vs sales. Good luck, with some work I know Fiverr can be a great platform to earn income.

[ellaisreading]

Reply to @sincere18: The price went from $20 to $40, there was no option for $30, which would have been ideal. But it just wasn’t there 😕



I like your idea about waiting to evaluate. I’ll definitely do that. I guess I’m just nervous about it and am so used getting at least a few messages, and at least a new order every day or two, so that’s why I’m anxious.

[julipalmer7]

Hello,

Yes I had that problem when I sent out those messages to my old buyers that I was raising, what I did though was make a bargain, I would say seeing that the pricing is relatively new for you I will still do the 100 for $5 less if you get what I mean but after awhile the price will take effect, and that’s what I had to do. New buyers are always the best and old buyers just a few still want the same service and more for the $5, its really up to you if you can lower the price to please the old buyers or wait awhile until new buyers or old join the price range. Best Wishes.

[sincere18]

Reply to @ellaisreading: Why can’t you do $30? can you just have people contact you first and then just have them buy 6 quanitities of the base gig from the drop down menu?



I think $20 to $40 is probably too high a jump for current buyers and not sure how new buyers would feel about plunking down $40. They would probably want to do a small $5 test first.

[landongrace]

In my niche, I saw the market paying a particular level on Fiverr when I started. I undercut that to enter the market and the gradually moved the pricing to where the market is. Some of the clients moved with the changes. I gained some new clients after the changes. Like people said before, don’t move the total price, move the amount of words for $5.00. It does’t have to be proportionally equal. For me a 1000 word whiteboard video is more time consuming per word than a 100 word video. I offer 2 things on my gig. 20 words or 100 words. I let them request a quote for anything else. Here is my whiteboard gig. It is paused now because I have enough custom quotes. You can see how it is structured. https://www.fiverr.com/landongrace/create-amazing-white-board-videos-voice-and-music



Only change price 10-20% at a time.



You also could narrow the types of work you do. You maybe able to do the jobs you like to do and turn off what you don’t like. Or even alternate which gigs are live just to give you some variety, while still taking custom orders from regulars.

[Guest customrapsongs]

Raising prices will offset the amount of work you have to do. You will eventually get to a point where you do a decent amount of work and get an abundant amount of money! Keep it up! Raise up! Also you have to find ways to manipulate people in to ordering the gig extras. That’s a good way to get people to pay more without knowing it!

[lunabea]

I lowered the amount of work I wanted to do on each order so I wasn’t under-selling myself. I cut my word count down by half (to 1,500) with offers to old buyers at the old price.



After 8 days I didn’t get any messages or orders so I upped the word count to 2,000 and changed my delivery to 1 day. That’s worked for me, as I now earn the same, if not more, than I did before, and I’m also not overworking. The lower price for the work I did was a great boost to getting sales but now I’m Level 2 and have a fair few good reviews under my belt I found it best to change my gig to something that is both fair to me and the buyer.



Sometimes though, the lack of messages/sales is down to Fiverr switching gigs about etc. I’d wait a while longer and if you’re getting absolute squat after a month, consider meeting your buyers halfway or, like you say, going back to your original offer.

[ellaisreading]

Reply to @customrapsongs: Thanks so much! But my problem now is that I had to go back down to my original pricing since I wasn’t getting any new bites. I have a lot of competition here on Fiverr, so I guess I just need to keep in mind that to be in the loop of potential editors, I need to keep my prices comparable.