What exactly is Fiverr?
If haven’t heard of it yet (where have you been?) basically Fiverr is website where people do things for $5.
You know, a “fiver”.
Now, some of these gigs are useful, creative and practical things that will be of value to your readers and customers. Others are just bizarre. Here’s a small sample of that stuff…
A word of warning about Fiverr gigs
As with any website where you find workers or get content produced, you have to be very careful about who you work with and what they give you.
For example, if you buy backlinks on Fiverr you can be certain that 90% of the time you’re going to do more harm than good. And if someone is giving you an image that looks too good to be true, there is a high likelihood that it’s “borrowed” from someone’s copyrighted material.
Be careful. Make sure you do some research.
Oh, and don’t get sucked into Fiverr as another time waster. It’s easy to get lost inside these gigs – searching for the strangest thing you can find for hours on end.
The Fiverr Upsell System
When Fiverr was first introduced, it was a simple platform where people could sell their services for $5.
Over time, as Fiverr matured, freelancers and buyers started demanding more work and better pay.
To meet these demands while still maintaining the “$5 for anything” concept, Fiverr introduced an upsell system.
It works this way:
Freelancers offer a simple service for $5 (example: logo design)
Freelancers then offer additional services for higher prices. For example, a logo designer might offer faster delivery for an extra $5, or sell a bundle of social media covers + logos for another $20.
Buyers can buy just the simple $5 gig, or they can buy the $5 gig + gig extras.
It’s a great system for freelancers to make more money, and for buyers to get better work from trusted providers.
That’s also one of the best examples of tripwire deployment out there. You can hire anyone for just $5 but there are immediate up sales that drastically increase the transaction value.
The best Fiverr gigs
Obviously I’ve put an emphasis on gigs that will grow your blog but most of these apply to any business that does work on the internet.
1. Logo creation
Anyone who knows anything about branding and logo design will kind of cringe a little bit at this. Getting a logo done for $5 is really not a good idea if you are trying to grow a professional and distinctive business.
But, if you are just launching a new website or blog to try a new tactic or experiment in a new niche then getting logos done on the cheap is really helpful.
A word of warning with this and any graphical production on Fiverr: a lot of them are a bit iffy when it comes to copyright. Make sure you look around for someone who isn’t just going to give you a logo that belongs to someone else.
2. Video introductions
I didn’t get my fancy Blog Tyrant video introduction done on Fiverr (you can check it out on my YouTube Channel if you haven’t seen it) but you can get some similar things done quite easily.
With this type of thing, you want something short and made in a way that will be remembered. You want people to see it and immediately know that it is one of your videos coming up.
A lot of them will be taken from stock templates but for a few extra gigs you’ll find something nice.
3. Whiteboard drawing videos
These videos are really quite cool. Basically it is someone writing text or drawing a little figure on a white background. It can be used to explain a concept to someone or to just animate your logo and give it some life.
Personally I think this is a great way to communicate something that might be tricky on your website or blog. For example, you could get a short one done to explain how your email opt-in form process works, or even to explain a sales checkout.
Again, keep it short and lookout for people who just re-use images owned by other people.
4. Cartoons
Cartoons are everywhere on Fiverr and some of them are really quite amazing. The thing about these is that they help you make a really boring topic a lot of visually exciting.
One of the ways you can use these is get cartoons drawn for articles that you write – you can make them the big opening image or use them to illustrate points along the way. This also opens up the opportunity of getting more social love on Pinterest.
5. Infographics
While a lot of you might be completely and totally fed up with infographics it seems like they still work and get shared around. Again, think about using Fiverr to get some infographics made to sit at the beginning or end of a really big post that you do – sort of as a summary. This will give people something else to Tweet about.
Remember, the back links on Pinterest are do-follow so it can be really handy to have people pinning your stuff on that weird site.
6. Voice overs
If you’re thinking about starting a podcast or perhaps you already have one but want to make it more professional, it’s a good idea to look into getting a nice little intro made.
This might involve a little bit of music but it also could have someone with a really cool, big booming voice doing a little intro for you. Of course, Fiverr has plenty of people doing these!
Look around for someone with good previews and see if they have the voice that matches your branding and style.
7. Merchandise-type stuff and things
Something that a lot of bloggers and website owners don’t ever really seem to do is make offline marketing material and merchandise. It might seem a little odd but it can be put to good use.
For example, there are Fiverr gigs that will have your logo made into a stamp or an embossed pattern that looks really cool. This can be a nice thing to do if you ever plan on sending out Christmas cards or thank you notes to people in your industry who have helped you out.
You could also search for special items that you might get produced to give away to loyal readers – mugs, t-shirts, pens, etc. – all of that is a little bit different and memorable.
8. Content creation
If you want to be more prolific with your blogging and online marketing one of the most important things is to learn how to get content produced for you.
Now, there are some amazing websites out there already like Freelance.com and Elance but there are also a lot of people on Fiverr who are looking to make a name for themselves in this space and will perform the same services a lot cheaper.
This process involves a lot of shopping around as well as creating “test” jobs so that you can figure out if someone is good at delivery before you give them a big important project.
9. Editing and other writing stuff
Once you start to get your content creation happening it can be a really good idea to get someone to help you edit it and compile it in to useful posts.
For example, you might have two or three people writing articles and then one person to read over it all, upload it to WordPress, change the image names and so on. Again, the idea to to take the load of the simple tasks off of you to free up more time for important things.
Make sure the person has a lot of good feedback and NEVER give anyone your passwords to WordPress. Even when you know them well – make sure they only have a limited Author account.
Tips for finding the best Fiverr gigs
Here are a few little things you should know about finding the best gigs on Fiverr.
They aren’t all just $5 – Some of the more high quality items on Fiverr will charge you more by saying an item is worth multiple gigs. So if you find an amazing painter that takes 10 days to do some art it might cost you 10 gigs or $50.
Watch the ETA – When you order a gig you’ll see that they have estimated times of delivery. Make sure you check that before you buy as you might get stuck without an image for a post or some other deadline.
Contact them first – There is a contact button under the gig description for every item. Always contact the seller before you pay the money to make sure they are a good fit for your project.
Shop around – Don’t just go with the first person that you find. Add a bunch of “maybes” to your favorite list and then work through and study the testimonials and work examples to come up with the best.
Leave feedback and answer messages – Fiverr seems to reward responsiveness. If you plan on using it regularly make sure you reply to messages and leave feedback as quickly as possible. Puts you in good standing.
Don’t get fake things done – One of the most popular categories on Fiverr at the moment is fake testimonials. This is where someone pretends to be your customer and reads out a raving review. Please don’t do this. It’s unethical and, in fact, quite illegal in some countries.
Be careful – Don’t ever send money to anyone or give out personal contact details. It should go without saying but there is a reason sites like Fiverr ask you to do everything in a transparent and on-site way.
After a while you will get a sixth sense for spotting the better services. The best thing about it all is that if you buy a bad one you’ve only wasted $5.
What NOT to Buy on Fiverr?
You’re probably itching to start buying gigs on Fiverr and save tons of time. But before you can do that, there’s something you need to know: not all kinds of gigs are worth buying on Fiverr. Generally speaking, anything that represents your business’ primary value is not worth outsourcing to Fiverr. This includes your site’s main content and marketing.
We recommend staying away from the following gigs on Fiverr: Marketing Services
It’s an open secret in the marketing community that Fiverr’s marketing services aren’t just worthless, but can even harm your site.
Here’s what you should stay away from (and why):
Backlinks: Buying backlinks breaks Google TOS – not a very good idea. Plus, for $5, you’ll get backlinks from low quality PBNs which are worthless. Not good for your site’s long-term health.
Guest Posts: These will be just low-quality articles put up on slightly better PBNs.
Press Releases: For $5, your press releases are just going to end up on spammy news blogs. Plus, as Matt Cutts says, links from press release sites don’t exactly help your SEO.
Social Signals: Buying fake followers/fans doesn’t help your SEO. Twitter and Facebook are also getting more serious about combating spam and will likely remove your followers within weeks. In the case of Facebook actually, fake fans will hurt your reach because of the way edge rank works. If your fans don’t react to your updates (which fake fans don’t), Facebook will stop distributing your updates and your reach will be inferior.
Traffic: You aren’t going to get any decent traffic for $5. It’ll either be bot traffic, or very low quality, untargeted visitors that aren’t going to convert at all.
Content, Design & Programming: If the content is going to go up on your main site, Fiverr is not the best place to source it. For $5, you aren’t going to get content that will blow readers away. It will be low quality, short, and have poor grammar and formatting. As for design, while it’s okay to get logos or social media covers, you should stay away from anything complex or time-intensive (such as a custom blog design). The same goes for coding gigs. If you want to fix your CSS, Fiverr is a great platform. But if you want a custom web app, $5 isn’t going to get you much.
In the end, be smart and pick gigs where $5 actually represents a meaningful return for the provider. No writer worth his time is going to invest 2 hours into writing a $5 article, nor will a good designer or coder spend a whole day just to make $5.
You get what you pay for.
