fiverr

My First Fiverr Gig

“The health benefits of eating Brussels sprouts shouldn’t be underestimated”
– Me, in my first Fiverr Gig

Got my first order for a Fiverr gig – a 500 word SEO article on Brussels sprouts. As always, actually trying something for the first time taught me more about it than all the reading I’d done so far. Without further ado, what I learned from my first Fiverr gig (and my first time writing an SEO article).

Writing SEO Content Is Easy

Though it was my first time and I didn’t really know anything about the topic, I had a pretty convincing article banged out in about half an hour. It didn’t take too much mental energy and by following Matt Forney’s advice I was pretty confident in the result. For better or worse,  I ended up sounding exactly like all the other SEO-oriented BS content-farm articles filling the internet. I’ll have to go faster than half an hour if I’m going to actually do this for money, but even for the first go it went by quickly.

Writing SEO Content Sucks

It was boring, it was mechanical, and it didn’t make me a better writer (it might have made me a tiny bit worse). It felt almost exactly like most of my college homework – busy work, trying to put out a result that’s good enough with a minimum of effort while giving less than zero shits about the process or the topic. It was fine – it wasn’t that much worse than my day job – but it’s not something I’d ever want to do 40 hours a week. If this gig becomes popular, I might cancel it unless I’m able to make it very efficient.

Time Pressure is Interesting

Unlike all the other writing I do, someone was waiting on the result of this gig. In fact, Fiverr shows a nice big countdown clock (right down to the second) indicating when your gig is due. Like my day job, having someone to keep me accountable made working hard and quickly much easier. Though it was just one gig and just four bucks, I got a taste of what doing this for a living might be like.

File Formats Are Important

Gigs are delivered via file upload, and since mine are all writing, I decided it’d be best to upload in Word format. My gigs don’t currently specify what format they’ll be delivered in, and the buyer didn’t ask – I can see this being a problem in the future, so I’m going to modify my gigs to explicitly state what format they’ll be delivered in if I don’t hear otherwise.

The gigs I have now – this one in particular – aren’t going to lead me to career freedom through Fiverr. I get that. Still, delivering this gig was a huge learning experience for me and I think Fiverr will continue to be useful and instructive.

Starting on Fiverr

Graphics, marketing, fun, and more online services for $5
– Fiverr

My Fiverr project is officially off the ground, and here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Matt Forney’s ebook Writing for Peanuts is a good introduction to the whole “Fiverr thing” – well worth the $2.99. It’s a short read but it gave me what I needed to get started.

Gigs on Fiverr require an image, and I didn’t want to use my own face and didn’t have anything on hand. I ended up using http://www.sxc.hu/ for free stock photos – nothing really exciting, but they get the job done.

You can also check out:

(Shoutout to my girl who works in this area and helped me with this. She also pointed me towards content marketing institute.)

I’d actually recommend shelling out a buck or two if you find an image you like – the paid options are sometimes a LOT better, and you might as well get set up with accounts if you’ll be using stock photography regularly.

Images in hand, I posted the following five gigs:

I searched Fiverr for similar gigs and found a shit ton of them – to be honest, I’m not sure how these are going to get views, let alone buys – but as always, one step forward.