“How do you find success on Fiverr? How to make money on Fiverr?”

I get these questions several times a week, from fellow Fiverr sellers who are just getting started on the platform. Of course, the answer is too complicated to distill into a quick response, hastily sent off.

Luckily for the next person who asks, I can send a link to this guide: a comprehensive look at my best tips for how to make money on Fiverr.

But why are people asking me for advice?

 BONUS: How to make money on Fiverr in a nutshell

1. Sign up as a Fiverr Seller.
2. Brainstorm the Gigs you want to set up.
3. Create a compelling Fiverr profile.
4. Research how the competition is setting up their Gigs.
5. Take a first attempt at setting up a Gig, then ask someone in your industry to review it and point out anything that isn’t clear or compelling.
6. Refine your initial attempt at setting up a Gig with representative imagery, a clear title, a keyword-rich description, relevant search tags, and a helpful FAQ.
7. Set Gig requirements that aim to get all relevant information from the buyer to limit the need for revisions.
8. Acknowledge every incoming order, if only to keep your metrics high.
9. Set aside a specific time each day to address client communications and to work on Fiverr orders.
10. Use client feedback to refine Gig messaging (including FAQs), Gig extras, and to launch new Gigs.
11. Underpromise and overdeliver whenever possible.

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How I make $2,000-$3,000 on Fiverr each month

I’ve been on Fiverr since June 2015.

I honestly wouldn’t have even considered it if not for the guidance of my mentor and first big client when I started freelancing full-time. He’d been using it to sell social media management packages that he eventually converted to long-term client relationships.

With 4.5 years on the platform, I’ve seen Fiverr grow from having a bad reputation that stemmed from making every order start at $5, to a diverse marketplace of talented individuals who have learned how to make money on Fiverr by charging according to their skills and experience.

Between June 2015 and the date of this article’s publication, there’s been some variance in terms of how much work I’ve actually done through the platform. But I never left completely or went on an extended break, always maintaining a consistent presence.

It’s this consistency that’s helped me move up from one seller level to another.

I’m both a “Top Rated Seller” and a member of the Pro marketplace, which effectively puts me on the top of the totem pole for getting my Gigs surfaced in relevant searches on Fiverr — while also providing justification for my pricing.

It’s worth noting that you don’t become a Top Rated Seller or a member of the Pro marketplace without first being vetted by the Fiverr team. Unlike other Fiverr seller levels, neither happens automatically by achieving certain milestones.

It wasn’t until 2019 that I became a Top Rated Seller. Now more than ever, I get a consistently high quantity of new orders across all of my Gigs with minimal effort.

Perhaps because of how long I’ve been on the platform, and the nature of what I do (primarily content writing), Fiverr staff regularly reaches out to buy my Gigs.

I’ve written for And.co, Veed.me, some ghostwriting for Fiverr’s website, and have also been featured on Fiverr’s blog when I became a Pro seller.

Along with the launch of the Pro marketplace, I was featured in advertisements alongside the likes of Jerry Media (of @f***jerry Instagram fame):

All of this is to say that I’ve definitely caught some lucky breaks on the platform but that I probably wouldn’t have been approached for them without having good consistency and tenure as a Fiverr seller.

Starting in 2019, I’ve made $2,000-$3,000 a month on Fiverr alone (which doesn’t represent the majority of my freelance income) — and I’m going to walk you through everything you need to do to learn how to make money on Fiverr.Go to top

How Fiverr works for freelancers

The major difference between popular freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr is the process of working with clients.

Working with clients on Upwork means constantly pitching for new jobs. So new work doesn’t happen in the background without your input — you have to be proactively on the hunt for new work when you want it.

Fiverr is a completely different story.

With Fiverr, you essentially productize your service via Gigs.

Each Gig describes a specific deliverable you will provide in exchange for a set price, starting with the words, “I will…”

You can offer different packages that involve bare-bones offerings, up to “the works”. You can also offer Gig extras that allow people to customize your offering with related services they’ll benefit from.

But the best part about Fiverr is that because of the way Gigs are set up, clients are empowered to make purchases without even talking to you.

This means that if your Gig is the right fit for their needs, at the right time, you can be making sales while you sleep.

Undoubtedly, from time to time, people will still get in touch with questions or to ask for custom deliverables. Using Fiverr doesn’t mean that you can do away with business development completely, though it will certainly help you streamline the process.

At the end of the day, if you want to make more money as a freelancer, reducing the time you spend actively pitching for jobs means that you have more time available to do the work.

With that said, let’s now answer the first question people have when starting their careers on Fiverr:Go to top

What to sell on Fiverr

I’ve previously written on how to grow your business with Fiverr for WPMU DEV, including several ideas for what Gigs to set up.

Personally, I have Gigs to help people with user testing, SEO audits, and creating blog content. But that’s just me, and most readers will probably want to explore other options.

When deciding what to sell on Fiverr, the best place to get inspiration from are Fiverr’s own category pages. You’ll find tens of different categories and subcategories there, and all of them feature multiple Gigs.

Browse through those categories and visit the ones that play to your strengths. Then browse through the individual Gigs and take note of everything that looks like something that you could offer as well.

Note down what you like about each existing Gig and its description, what you don’t like, and what you would do to make your offer stand out. Mimicking your competition at least to an extent is the easiest way to get started and find the exact types of Gigs that people actually want to buy.

“What if I want to offer something that’s not on the platform yet?” Well, at first, offering a completely original Gig may seem like tapping into a hidden niche, but it’s usually not like that at all. If you can’t find your Gig on the platform then it probably means that customers are not really that interested in it.

In business – and even in web design business – competition is good. The sole presence of competition validates the market. No competition, no market.

For example, the Programming & Tech category covers a wide range of deliverables that may speak to your skills. For a web developer, Fiverr Gig offerings might include setting up a basic website, offering WordPress maintenance services, fixing bugs, implementing security tools, customizing plugins, or building landing pages. If you want to join the platform as a new developer, doing something from this range is likely your best bet.

Only later on you can experiment with other Gigs or more tailor-made offers. For example, something I started doing recently is connect the dots between my UX and SEO audit Gigs for buyers.

People may not realize that I can offer both services when initially coming across one Gig or the other. I now offer the ability for someone to buy the other Gig (the basic package) on the one they’re currently looking at. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well these upsells are performing — I hope this same strategy can help you!

On a related note, for complementary services that customers request but you either can’t or don’t want to do, consider setting up a Fiverr Studios Gig where you can work with another seller and both share in the profits.

Something like this would be a great fit for my SEO or UX audit Gig, which both involve diagnosing website issues, then partnering with another seller to make website edits that will help buyers pass a future audit.

Now that you’ve had a chance to see what’s possible with Fiverr, let’s dig into the single most important facet of finding success — how to set up a stellar Fiverr Gig.Go to top

How to set up a successful Fiverr Gig

One of the most important things you can do when learning how to make money on Fiverr is to be very purposeful in constructing your Gigs.

Here are the Gigs I’m currently offering and some associated statistics regarding performance in search and conversions over the last six months:

Initially, you’ll be limited by how many Gigs you can set up, as well as how many Gig extras (upsells), and Gig multiples (multiple quantities of your Gig’s deliverables) you can offer. As you move up each seller level, you’ll have increasingly fewer restrictions in each of these areas.

These initial limitations might be frustrating if you have a lot of ideas for what to sell on the platform — but try to think of them as a good thing when you’re just starting out. The fewer services you sell, the easier it will be to create a great process around producing deliverables and providing a great buyer experience.

Here’s what I love most about Fiverr:

Setting up a Fiverr Gig will force you to “productize” your services.

Specifically, this means clearly outlining the deliverable that a buyer will receive for a certain price. These deliverables can be further personalized to the buyer’s needs in terms of various packages, Gig extra upsells, and Gig multiples.

The beauty of productizing your services for Fiverr is that they will be easier to quote on the fly, like when a client gets in touch for a custom order. By having some standardization around your offerings, it will also be easier to create processes around executing similar orders — saving you time and increasing your potential outputs.

By having forced limitations at the beginning of your time on Fiverr, you’ll be forced to focus on productizing the services you’re most confident about. With this narrow focus, you’ll figure out how to create efficiencies.

Fellow $2000+/month Fiverr Seller, Shahzad Saaed, talks about a landing page design Gig that he scaled nicely by repurposing templates so that the deliverable was a no-brainer.

I feel a similar way about my UX audit Gig. They’re quick for me to do and I can knock out a bunch of orders in no time.

So what could you offer?

Stew on that for a bit while we go through some important considerations related to setting up your Gigs:

Fiverr Gig visuals: images and video

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” shouldn’t be your guiding mantra while setting up a Fiverr Gig.

In truth, the way you merchandise your Fiverr Gigs will have a big impact on whether people ever actually click through from a related search and make a purchase.

Fiverr PR Manager Holly Steffy shares these best practices:

• We recommend including an eye-catching main Gig image (608 x 410px or higher and similar size ratio). The main image should reinforce the service and be professional and premium looking. It should look professional regardless of the category, and the images should be copyright-free.
• We also recommend having minimal text within the image (20% or less of the image).
• For visual categories, the best practice is to show a single work sample per image.
• For non-visual categories, the image should represent the service being delivered and should instill confidence that the seller is professional and capable of delivering a high-quality experience. However, every Gig image for visual and non-visual categories should have its own unique image.

I’m not sure that my images follow all these guidelines perfectly but they haven’t gotten in the way of me learning how to make money on Fiverr.

I’ve redesigned my Fiverr Gig images recently to reflect my own branding aesthetics:

It’s worth noting that if you’re on the Pro marketplace, it may be useful to include a picture of yourself in your main Gig image — especially if you’re well known in your field.

Besides the main visuals you use to help distinguish your Gigs, you should also consider adding videos to introduce yourself (and your expertise) while also explaining what people get when they make an order, as well as Gig extras they can purchase and why they’re worth the extra cost.

Gig videos don’t have to be a high-production ordeal — just film yourself on a non-busy background, dressed professionally, and clearly articulating the value of working with you specifically.

The Gig description: sell your offer with great copy

Like a sales page elsewhere online, the Gig description is likely what will make the difference between someone buying your Gig — or another seller’s.

So make sure to flesh out the details of the deliverables offered at each level (and Gig extras) to the best of your ability, to set expectations. Doing this also increases your efficiency with producing the deliverable — reducing the chance that someone will want modifications because they didn’t really understand what they were buying.

Try searching for the type of service you plan to offer on the Fiverr marketplace to see how other people are talking about it, including what specific words they use to describe it.

Please note: The section “How does the Fiverr search algorithm work?” offers more details for Fiverr SEO and incorporating relevant keywords on your Gigs. 👈

When writing your Gig description, anticipate questions that people will have. Convince buyers that you’re the best person for the job by also making sure to detail your relevant experience.

If you offer other related Gigs, mention them in the description with a call to action for the buyer to check them out.

Don’t forget to format your copy for easy readability so that important things stand out.

Here are some quick tips for great copy formatting:

• Use text decorations (bold, italic, underline) to add emphasis
• Use bullet points to make lists easy to read
• Keep sentences and paragraphs short so prospects aren’t overwhelmed with a wall of text

With all of these considerations in mind, here’s the Gig description for my UX audit Gig:

Upsell with packages and Gig extras

In thinking about how to sell your services on Fiverr, you’ll want to think in terms of basic, standard, and premium packages.

In other words:

• What’s the most bare-bones version of your service?
• What can you do to provide more value in a standard package compared to your basic offering?
• What deliverables would be associated with a package that includes all the bells and whistles?

Here’s how I set up my Gig packages for my UX audit gig:

There are buyers that represent diverse budgets on Fiverr, so you might as well offer options to appeal to them all, by creating packages that make sense for different use cases.

Besides packages, you’ll want to create upsell opportunities by setting up some Gig extras.

Gig extras provide buyers with the opportunity to order more of the same deliverable (like more pages audited on my UX audit Gig), get your order delivered quicker (like a fee for one day turnaround), or complementary services (I sell a gig extra for a UX audit on my SEO audit Gig and vice-versa).

I highly recommend offering options for one day turnaround if you can stay on top of these orders — this is an easy moneymaker.

Just make sure to be realistic with delivery dates in general.

Give yourself enough time to fit in a surprise one day turnaround order on top of your regular workload. Or forecast your likely Fiverr workload and set aside time for it on your calendar.

To give you an idea about how this works in reality, here are the Gig extras on my UX audit Gig:

You’ll notice that some options are pre-populated suggestions based on the Gig category, like testing additional pages or offering additional screen recording minutes. Additionally, some of the Gig extras options I’ve added in are based on what customers have asked for in the past.

Using Fiverr means standardizing your offerings for each Gig. But by employing the strategic use of Gig packages and Gig extras, you’ll make people feel like you’re trying to cater to them specifically — and they’ll appreciate that.

Set expectations with Gig requirements and the FAQ section

The best part of using Fiverr is that it facilitates sales without you needing to do any business development work personally.

You can further cut down your work on back and forth communication with a thorough FAQ section and Gig requirements questions.

It’s important to put forth the effort necessary to properly set up these sections, because to me, the whole point of using Fiverr is to help cut down on time spent on business development — allowing more time to focus on the work, itself.

Use the FAQ section to proactively answer people’s questions. Specifically, the FAQ should anticipate common questions about your process and deliverables.

Here’s the FAQ for my UX audit Gig:

If you’re stumped right now, you’ll find that your Fiverr inbox will offer plenty of ideas for FAQs after you launch a new Gig.

Once you get the same sort of question more than once, that’s a good sign that you’re not sharing everything people really need to know before buying your Gig. You won’t realize how annoying it can be to answer these messages over and over again until they become a frequent daily occurrence.

That said, some buyers won’t take the time to read through your Gig description (and supportive details) before getting in touch with their questions. Try not to be annoyed — we are all guilty of skipping ahead to get in touch with customer support directly over trying to browse FAQs.

Another best practice for your FAQ: share the specific questions that you ask on your Gig requirements after a person places an order. This will help buyers visualize working with you.

One major limitation in terms of what you can share in your FAQ (or elsewhere, publically on Fiverr) is clickable links, like those that would lead to similar projects shared on your portfolio.

That said, you can upload examples of your work directly to Fiverr to serve as your portfolio.

Gig requirements for programming and tech Fiverr Gigs

Setting up Gig requirements is useful in terms of minimizing back and forth with a project while ensuring that you’re creating a final product that your buyer will be happy with.

Wondering what to ask your customers in the Gig requirements section?

Fiverr PR Manager Holly Steffy shares that common basic requirements in the Programming and Tech category include:

• Website URL and log-ins
• Hosting log-ins
• Photo or text that should be included
• Examples of inspiration from other websites (if the seller is creating a new website for the buyer)
• Ask the buyer about their business and their goals for the website

Here’s another perspective — what I ask buyers on my UX audit Gig:

How to price your Fiverr Gigs

According to Holly Steffy, PR Manager for Fiverr, when sellers are considering how they should price their Gig, they are asked to consider the following:

1. If they work offline, how much do they charge offline?
2. How much do they want to make per hour (and how many hours would this job take)?
3. How much does their competition charge on Fiverr, especially those who are at the same level and with the same amount of experience and skills?
4. How much does their competition offline charge for this service?

If you want to learn how to make money on Fiverr, you’ll have to be competitive with similar Gigs in your category — at least to an extent. Being on the Pro marketplace changes the rules to allow for more variations in pricing while still delivering on quality.

Hee’s the most important question you’ll probably want to answer before getting started on Fiverr:

“Do I really have to start by pricing my Gigs at $5?”

Here’s what I’ve found to be true:

If you’re starting off by jumping straight into the Pro marketplace, the answer is: definitely not. In fact, pricing your Gigs too low on Fiverr Pro may signal that you’re out of your league compared to other sellers at this level.

On the other hand, if you have no tenure on the platform and are starting completely fresh, having at least one low priced Gig can work in your favor in terms of building up your metrics, orders, and ratings — all necessary for levelling up.

The key to delivering quality without burning out lies in offering a service that you can complete quickly.

For me in the past — before levelling up — these have included five-minute screen recordings for my UX audit Gig and SEO audit reports that are generated automatically by one of my favorite SEO tools, with some commentary about what issues to fix immediately and why.

All that said, once you’ve acquired some social proof from being a reputable seller (higher levels and/or great reviews), there’s absolutely no reason to offer any Gig starting at $5.

How does the Fiverr search algorithm work?

There are many factors that determine how a Gig ranks in relevant search.

Like Google, the specific details regarding Fiverr’s search algorithm are a trade secret. But it seems fair to assume that components might include:

• How many five star reviews you have total and your average star rating
• Total orders completed
• Seller level
• A weighted average of your metrics, judged on a scale from “good” to “bad” (anything under 90% seems to fall in the realm of “bad”, at least according to the requirements for maintaining Seller levels)
• Strategic use of keywords in your Gig title, description, and uploaded image/video file names

Though dated, a 2015 Inet Solutions article suggests Gig views and orders in queue as additional potential ranking factors, which makes a lot of sense to me. Just Entrepreneurship shares some additional thoughts on ranking signals and relevant tips to adjust your gigs.

If you know the basics of on page SEO in general, you’ll be well prepared for setting up a Gig optimized for Fiverr search.

The main difference between these two types of search?

On Fiverr, your interactions with customers are going to have just as much of an impact on your placement in relevant search as the way you optimize various settings on a Gig.

Here’s another possible Fiverr search ranking factor:

If you’re late to deliver a Gig, Fiverr deploys a banner that chastises you for being late, with a notice that doing so can reduce orders by 10%.

It’s unclear whether this is because of a search algorithm factor or because of buyers’ reactions to your average delivery time metric on the Gig page (or both).

Fiverrcast Episode 13 shares some additional tips for Fiverr SEO, endorsed by Fiverr by nature of being published on their blog:

• Create a Gig for each specific service so that you’re not underoptimizing for related keywords.
• Make sure you’re categorizing Gigs correctly.
• Don’t stuff keywords (overusing them to the point of coming across unnaturally).
• Flesh out your Gig description with copy that uses relevant keywords.
• Understand that image file names affect Google indexation. Fiverr’s First Ever Super Seller and Official Ambassador, twistedweb123 (Adam) mentions that it’s important to name your Gig’s image files according to what you’re delivering.

During this Fiverrcast podcast episode, Adam also says: “Fiverr tells [Google] to try and use the first kind of sentence or two of your description to show in the search engine results”.

A Google search for my username and the word “Fiverr” returned templated responses that didn’t pull directly from my Gig descriptions:

So with that said, I didn’t agree with every characterization of SEO they generalized about on the aforementioned Fiverrcast episode about Fiverr SEO, but there were good tips shared all the same.

Furthermore, this podcast episode shares tips that help with a mix of internal search and indexation on Google — but not either topic independent of the other.

But here’s something that we can say definitively:

According to Holly Steffy, PR Manager at Fiverr, the top searches in the Programming & Tech category include the terms: WordPress, E-Commerce, Website development, Shopify, and Website Design.

Here’s one last thing we have some Fiverr guidance for regarding how search works: how to use search tags to get more impressions on Gigs.

Some Fiverr search tag best practices include:

• Using tags to describe the specific services and industries you serve.
• Max out your ability to add five relevant tags.
• Don’t try to use special characters and duplicated terms — they will be ignored.

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Fiverr vs other popular freelance marketplaces

CodeinWP shares a list of seven popular WordPress freelance marketplaces and job boards but that number is really just the tip of the iceberg. For every specialized niche, there’s a marketplace where you can find people to help with related tasks.

When it comes to freelancing, two big names tend to dominate the conversation in terms of where to maintain an active presence: Upwork and Fiverr.

Upwork and Fiverr: mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs

Both Upwork and Fiverr have been making bold moves to grow their spheres of influence.

Specifically, Upwork merged with two companies of a similar nature: oDesk and Elance.

Fiverr has also made moves to merge with similar freelance marketplaces, such as Veed.me (video production marketplace) and ClearVoice (content writing platform). What’s even more interesting is Fiverr’s interest in acquiring tools that help freelancers manage their business, like And.co.