Hey buddy,
Believe it or not, I had my very first Fiverr experience this week. It may surprise you that I built a successful freelance copywriting business without ever touching that platform, but it’s the truth.
I never signed up for Fiverr in my early days of freelancing because I felt that it had a bad reputation. Fiverr, especially in 2015-2017 when I was just getting started, was a place where clients could go to get cheap services from freelancers. I valued my work (and myself) too much to sign up for such a marketplace.
Fast forward to years later, and I now know someone who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars from Fiverr (Alex Fasulo of course!). So I thought, “Why not try?”
I made my first Fiverr gigs last year. They’re all for music production tasks (which, as you may know, I’ve been trying to break into). I’ve hardly had any impressions but I FINALLY got my first customer this week.
And it. was. terrible.
The gig was editing and tuning vocals. I won’t get too into the weeds about what this service entails, but basically you’re just polishing up vocals so they sound radio-friendly. Think of it as light copyediting or proofreading.
The customer submitted completely awful vocals. Everything was bad: the quality of the voice, the pitch, the recording, the pronunciation. It was a mess. And I gently told the cilent that while I could fix the issues with pitch, that was all I could do. I sent them a quick sample of what the total result would be. They couldn’t understand why I couldn’t create a new voice for them. At my insistence, we cancelled the job.
So why am I telling you this? First of all, I think we need to be careful of desperation energy. Money has been tight lately, and I felt like I had to take this gig even though I knew that this wasn’t my ideal client. If I had just rejected the job at the beginning, I would have avoided spending several hours ruminating on how to handle this situation. Those are several hours I could have spent doing something more productive and aligned.
But also, I genuinely want to know: has anyone reading this had a positive Fiverr experience? Is it worth taking low-paying gigs to build a presence on this platform? Or is it just a dumpster fire?
If you have time, I’d love to hear from you! Please reply back to this email and tell me your stories about Fiverr, good or bad. If I get enough replies, I’ll compile another email with everyone’s stories!
PS: I've brought one-on-one coaching calls back for the time being. If you'd like more one-on-one time and feedback on your work, consider booking a call.
