Sweet Water and Bitter

(Image by Gualberto107, courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

If you’ve ever read my Dreams, Schemes, and Income Streams page, you know that I have a goal of leaving my full-time job and working from home. So I’m always trying one thing and another as a way to earn money. Before I forget to mention it, I want to share that I was recently inspired and interested by a great post over at Equipping Godly Women, entitled “How I Make Real Money from Home Writing for Textbroker.” You should check it out. Thanks to this post, I’ve already sent my writing sample to Textbroker and I’m waiting for their reply, but Fiverr is a different thing altogether.

Basically, Fiverr is a website where people can go and list all sorts of things they would be willing to do for five dollars. Their main categories of service are graphics and design, online marketing, writing and translation, video and animation, programming and tech, advertising, and business. There’s also a “more” category, where people often offer to do silly things such as dress up as a character and sing happy birthday to you, or dance in the street while holding a sign to promote your business, or maybe draw a cartoon that resembles you. I have to wonder if some of these people are making decent money doing something so simple and silly! I kinda hope so.

My husband has a friend who set up a profile offering to do voiceover work, and he began to get requests. Since he already had the equipment, it was quite simple for him to record himself reading a script and then send the recording to the buyer. Naturally he hopes this will lead to a relationship with one of these clients and increased money at some point, but for now he’s having a little fun. I thought about that and realized how many documents I proofread at my job, so I thought I would put up a profile offering to edit or proofread. While I was at it, I put one up offering to write 500 words on any topic. (500 words is one typed page, single-spaced.) I got my first order right away, and it was just what I was hoping for–something extremely simple. A man was launching a website dedicated to matching people with appropriate pets for them and their families, and he needed to fill it up with content about people who had had certain types of pets. So he asked me to choose two pets I’d had in my life and just write a little bit about the positives and negatives of owning that particular animal. Easy as pie, so I was excited!

Then, strangely, for about two weeks I had NOTHING. No order, no message, no inquiry. I told my husband I was just going to delete Fiverr from my bookmarks and forget about it as I was just tired of looking at it. But before that day was over, for some unknown reason, my email started BLOWING UP. Every day since, I have received multiple Fiverr orders or messages. Many I decline to do, just because the subject matter is not something I’m comfortable with (I don’t mean it’s inappropriate, I just mean it’s usually some technical or business area that I’m sure somebody else could do a better job with). Also, many times I’ve been asked about something that would not be a good use of my time. For example, a man asked me if I would take his 2000 word document full of meeting notes and organize it into something understandable. I said no thanks, because I would have to first READ his 2000 words of notes before I could even make a decision about writing them up, and five dollars just doesn’t buy that much of my time.

But some of my assignments (Fiverr refers to them as “gigs”) have been easy and fun, and the buyers were very pleased. I wrote one article about female empowerment (Seeking Empowerment? Try Modesty)  that I was so happy with, I wish I could use it here! I can’t, I sold it and it no longer belongs to me, but once the buyer gets her blog up and running I might be able to link to it. I wrote one about toxic materials in toys. I wrote a sort of a social media advertisement about a credit repair company, and then a “testimonial” which one of their customers had authorized them to write on his behalf. So there is a lot of variety in the assignments, and plenty of demand allows me to choose what sounds interesting and decline the rest. Payment is via Paypal. For now, the money I’ve made is just sitting there…they keep track of every completed order and you can see your sales and revenues every time you log in. Whenever I feel like it, I can transfer the balance to my bank account. (You can also use your earnings to buy things from other Fiverr sellers, if you want to.)

You may be saying to yourself, HA! I wouldn’t write a grocery list for five bucks, much less a 500 word article. Well, that’s a good point, but here is the good news. After only 30 days of being a seller in good standing, Fiverr advised me that I’m now a Level One seller, so I can offer “Gig multiples” or “Gig Extras.” This means that I have the option of telling a seller that I would not care to do their assignment for $5, but if they would like to add a Gig Extra and make it, say, $25 or whatever I think it’s worth, then we have a deal.

I’m just a beginner at this myself, so if you have questions you’d probably do better exploring the Fiverr site than asking me. But I am excited about the results so far and wanted to share them with you. If you have any gifts or abilities in the categories Fiverr offers, I encourage you to check them out and see if you too can boost your income doing something you enjoy.