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Freelancing on fiverr
Earning money online is not easy but it is doable. The nice thing about it is that you don’t have to be working in some high-rise building in the middle of a major city. You can work from anywhere. For a lot of people their dream is to earn a fulltime income freelancing.
Hi, my name is Wembley and I am a fulltime freelancer, writer and voice over artist from Nigeria. I spend most of my day freelancing on fiverr as a writer and editor.
Here is a list of some of the gigs I offer on fiverr:
- blog posts
- press releases
- product descriptions
- eBooks for Amazon
- product descriptions for Amazon
- website content ( like this post )
- financing campaign
- Newsletters.
Working for Royalty
Most days I work for more than 10 clients. I worked with people from all over the world in the past. The highlight for me has been my work writing for the ( redacted ) Royal family. I have also done work for people in the US government.
Poverty is a real problem in Nigeria with 33% living at or below the poverty line. Most people here accept this as normal and do not expect more from life. That is why after finishing university, I hunted for a job for two years to futility. That was around the time when I first started to look into the possibility of making money through the internet in order to make ends meet.
As one could expect, electricity, internet connection and computers are not an easy to come by here. That is when I decided to borrow money and follow my dream of making money online. The banks rejected my numerous requests for a loan. I tried to apply for a loan for eight months straight and visited them every single week during that time span.
Can I earn a fulltime income freelancing
This was a hard time for me and I was confused about what to do next. I finally found an insurance marketing job which was a commission based job. I had to find clients in order to get paid. However, it was better then to just sit at home. Most of my mates were already getting married because of pressure and a lack of financial independence.
My pastor suggested that I review “fiverr”. The platform has been around for a while when I first looked into it in 2015. In my part of the world however, this type of platform was a new thing. I started with gigs in the voice-over, and online marketing category. I was still working the marketing insurance job during the day while I took care of my gigs at night but nothing came up. This cycle continued for a whole year and nothing happened.
Eventually I got fed-up and left the platform all together. I had immense interest and desire to make money online, so I kept looking for ways to get that done but with little luck.
The turning point came when I met up with one of my university mates who stated categorically that he feeds his family through the freelancing jobs he does on fiverr. Getting home that night after almost three years that I had left the platform, I opened and checked my gigs.
Lo and behold my account was deactivated, asking me to contact the customer care. Two days later I was told that I operated two accounts and that was why they deactivated this account. Since I was certain that I did not operate two accounts or break any other rule I emailed them back, explaining my situation and asking for another review.
A new beginning
It was a shout of joy for me after the account was released back to me after 48 hours. Truth be told, I was happy that the account was released but deep in me I was praying and hoping that I would get my gigs up and running. After all I have already spent one year of efforts online without a single order.
I edited my gigs and started a new gig all together. I added editing of books to the gigs I offered and I waited and prayed for luck to shine. Again, after a week of waiting there was nothing. I started to think that this is not meant for me anyway.
Reading the forums on fiverr, I saw a lot of frustrations, happiness, mixed feelings all around. I would had given up to tell the truth but I had no option but to hang in there as I was now married and without a job, just like my friends.
Great things starts small they say, on the 27th of June 2018, Arsenal football club was to play, I had to go to a nearby rest house to watch the game. As usual, my house had no electricity and internet connection but when I got to the guest house they had wifi. I connected just to check my emails and not really thinking about fiverr when I got the notification for my first order.
Your guess is as good as mine, I rushed to open the app and I got a $5 order. I have to admit that this was one of the happiest day of my life.
I edited the $5 dollars gig and for the whole month from June to July I got nothing else then the gig I delivered. But you know what, my morale was up in the sky that if I was able to make 4$ (fiverr had to be paid as well, looks like I rented the platform). I had to pay a whopping sum of 20% to fiverr for using their platform.
It depends on the angle of argument though, I used the word whopping because when I make ten thousand dollars, fiverr makes two thousand dollars off of me. But then, they bring the buyers while I concentrate full time on delivering value to the customers. It looks like a win/win although I would have proposed a fifteen percent cut.
Slow but steady
After the first month I started getting more orders after the buyer I delivered to rated me with a 5 star. My earning was now between $30,- and $50,- dollars a month. And I thought it was amazing to earn some extra money from my computer and in my spare time (the few orders I received made it ‘spare’ otherwise it would have been ‘full’ time).
In November 2018 I moved to Abuja to work as a Sales rep in an agency. But then after only one month I knew this wasn’t my thing, so I quit. I didn’t have a plan B, in fact, I had no idea what I would do next.
The day I quit I went home at night, after visiting some museums and having had a large-scale panic attack, and found three new jobs from fiverr. I had nothing to lose! After a few weeks, my profile had taken off and I was earning almost $100,- a day. Already feeling addicted to the hustle and bustle, I continued to open more and more jobs and little by little I was raising my costs. In April 2019, when fiverr launched its fiverr PRO version, everything changed in terms of money, and I jumped to gain 5 figures.
I have to give it to the platform for a job well done so that sellers can get customers. I receive 100% of my clients through fiverr. Thanks to my position on the platform, I am almost guaranteed my daily workflow.
People can see what I do, read my reviews and hear from me without even having to write to me. They can book my services immediately, or send me a private message to tell me about their project. On average I receive between 7 and 15 applications a day.
A new day
Today, I mainly take referred clients. It took me several years to build a good reputation, and although I could have grown my work with advertising, It is also a plus to stay and make do with people that I had worked with before or are referring new clients to me.
I would say that the biggest challenge of working from home on my laptop is loneliness. I miss having co-workers and being able to share my frustrations and problems with other people who think like me. When something goes wrong, I have no one to discuss it with … nobody to share it with. I am also a classic extrovert, so the simple fact of being able to speak loudly with people is important to me, that’s why I try to have social activities at night, so as to not go crazy.
There is a wide range of what a person can earn working from home. If they are willing to invest about 10 or 12 hours at the beginning, without any days off, in three or five weeks they can start earning $100,- dollars a day. It will take time for sure. It took me three years of trial and error and then I put in the hard work to earn anything at all. I think that times are changing though and newcomer who want to sell and put in the hard work to level up no fiverr can achieve financial freedom. I now earn around $30.000,- a year on fiverr … and I still can’t believe it!
Motivation is key
Getting myself motivated daily to do this job is not an easy feat since the main downside is that you work from home and there will be no real co worker. I am definitely excited to work for myself and to do it on my own schedule. The fact of having the freedom to go wherever I want or when I want to wake up really excites me. But to keep myself motivated, I read success stories, browse freelancers’ magazines, blogs and more. Listening to what other people are doing motivates me to keep moving forward.
I also make sure to go to the gym and work out every day. It is very important to invest into my physical health especially because I spend many hours sitting. There are times when, after finishing in the gym, I feel much more energized than before.
I would be falling short if I left out the support from my family. My husband, my mom, and my sister. I text them every day about our goals and aspirations. We rely on each other unconditionally and knowing that I have that team behind me is enough for me to stay motivated.
Learning to be disciplined
I am a very disciplined person when it comes to the work, so I stick to a fairly strict schedule.
- I wake up at 7:00am in the morning and the first thing I do is check my email and answer all questions.
- By 8:00am I am already opening fiverr on my laptop and I spend an hour answering questions and doubts from my current clients.
- Around 9:00am I start writing and usually follow me until 12:30 or so.
- At about 12:30pm I go to the gym to give my body and my brain a rest.
- Between 1:30pm and 2:00pm I am already back at work and follow me until about 6:00pm.
Usually, that covers all my pending writing. Sometimes I continue working until 8:00pm or 9:00pm, depending on the workload. I also work on Saturdays, and one or two hours on Sundays. Taking the weekends off is an option if I wanted to, but I feel like I would be missing the action.
I have my medical insurance through Surgicare that helps me and my family stay healthy in case of a sickness (by the way typhoid and malaria is a major and regular illness here). It has been quite easy to wear in these years. Other than that, I’m looking to hire a finance adviser to start some type of retirement savings. I also want to learn about other investment options.
Here is one important point for anyone starting out. When I started and I had no sales, I was looking at the successful gigs and I mirrored my offers based on that. Fast forward to now, I know now that any starter should make sure they are grounded in the skill they are offering and because of lack of review. They should also offer more than what they will charge for.
This will help buyers take the risk of hiring them. Because of the huge promise to deliver something big and the pay will be almost a penny. That is always important. You cannot start out new without any reviews and charge at a premium price. That may be too much to ask and may eventually frustrate you just as it happened to me.
In the end, fiverr is the king of freelancing and I am the queen of the editing and article and books writing.
Writen by Wembleyplace
