I’m pumped and ready to give Fiverr a good ole college try.
For the uninitiated, Fiverr.com is site for people like me to get top-notch services for $5. These services are affectionately referred to as gigs.
I’ve been using the site for years and always wondered if one could really make a decent side hustle income from hanging out the virtual shingle. The result of this experiment will be super valuable to those looking for schedule-friendly ways to increase income in order to accelerate the process of dumping debt. There’s a lot of potential here.
Well…it’s time to put my hustle where my mouth is.
Challenge Overview
Over the next 60 days, I’ll compete on one of two teams (Personal Finance vs Lifestyle bloggers) of 10 and attempt to build a side hustle business using Fiverr.com. The goal, as a team, is to earn more money then the Lifestyle bloggers working our actual Fiverr gigs.
This should be fun. Interesting, if nothing else.
We can create any business and actually have great coupons to offer readers – just in case you want to try out a gig on me to test the service. There’s just one catch, you must be a first time user and you can only use the coupon once.
That’s actually two catches.
Challenge Participants
You can definitely help us out (please, and thank you) but supporting any of the Fiverr businesses from my fellow teammates. The coupons should work on either of their gigs. There blogs are:
Side Hustle Idea
Now for the fun stuff.
Setting up a gig is entirely free. The process is fairly straight forward and the site walks you through a step-by-step process. Here’s a tip, don’t use punctuation in the gig title. It took me a minute to realize that the illegal character was actually a period.
I’ve been giving this side hustle some thought. If you can provide the service, someone probably needs it. However, there are a few considerations that immediately come to mind.
Abilities: What can I do, do well, and do quickly? To maximize my time and effort, I need to come up with a service that’s in demand and that I can do effectively. I think volume is the name of the game since the price is fairly set.
Now the cool thing about Fiverr which I’ve noticed as a consistent user is that service providers can offer upgrades. The basic gig service must be $5, but add-ons are a way to increase revenue.
When coming up with a gig, I started by thinking about my current (and recent past) skill set. I personally use Fiverr for graphic and creative work. If you have a knack for producing visual content (or are willing to learn,) then Fiverr may be a great place to start building a client list.
If you can do great work, the referrals will be favorable and users – like myself – who pay attention to ratings will give you try.
Fiverr gigs run the gamut. I’ve seen offers to do voice over work, create YouTube commercials, provide Spanish lessons, or share a product/service with a social media following.
In selecting a gig to promote for a side hustle business, I went with a known quantity: writing and editing. I do a better job editing the work of others rather than my own.
I started my first gig. You can see it here. Feel free to order one and test me out. Use the coupon code: DEBTFREEDIVAS2015.
I did receive my first “hit” on this gig within an hour of posting it. So, someone’s using the site. That was pretty cool.
I’m considering a few other gigs, but I want to let this one run for a week or so to understand how much work is involved.
Bandwidth: Speaking of work involved – the amount of time required to edit 1000 words should not be overwhelming. However, I tried to be liberal about setting a delivery time frame to ensure I could meet that requirement.
When setting up the gig (which took me about 30 minutes – including research), you can specify the turnaround time. Initially, this is just an estimated guess. Over the next two months, I’ll be tracking the amount of time spent fulfilling Fiverr requests and letting you all know.
With this consideration, I wanted to make sure I chose something that could be done in a reasonable amount of time to make the effort worthwhile and cost effective. Time will tell.
Repeatability. I may have just made this word up, but hear me out. I considered services that I could repeat with minimal effort. Editing doesn’t necessarily fit that profile. I think, however, designing a gig that can be replicated with minimal effort would be the best solution from a gig-providing perspective.
I’m still working on something in this area that I can do well. However, I’ve purchased Facebook quote images several times through Fiverr gigs. The designers packaged 20 or so quote posters in a zip file and emailed them when that gig was ordered. While the work on the front end may have been time intensive. It surely paid off over time.
For now, I’m working my editing and proofreading gig. After looking at other gigs in this area, I designed the gig to include up to 1000 words with a 2-day turnaround. Don’t judge me if you find typos in this post. I’m aware that would be awfully ironic.
The other gigs I’m considering include podcast editing and hiring WonderMan out to do voice overs (I love his voice).
So if you require the services of a capable editor and can break your project into 1000 word increments, then I’m your girl. Order the gig here and use the coupon code: DEBTFREEDIVAS2015 for one FREE trial. You’ll also be contributing to a great experiment in side hustle business building and helping my team with the ultimate in bragging rights if we win this competition.
Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Fiverr.com in cooperation with Kasai Media. While I have been compensated for participating in this challenge, all opinions expressed are my own.
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