I published my gig two weeks ago
and I haven't gotten my first sale…

I published my gig two months ago and I
haven't gotten my first sale…

I published my gig last year and I haven't gotten my first sale...


These are examples of messages I get almost every week from different freelancers, and after giving it a thought for a while, I decided to share three simple hacks/secrets that if implemented correctly, can help you make sales almost every day, to the extent that you will start turning down jobs stylishly by increasing your prices/rates in order for you to have more free time to enjoy your hard earned money.


Okay let's get started...

There are some simple things that you might not be doing that are preventing you from making sales frequently on fiverr as a seller.


Gone are the days when we just create an account, fill out our profile, publish a gig and wait for someone to come along and buy that gig. Yes, it used to work when Fiverr was a new platform and the competition was very low. Not anymore.

But today, there are thousands and thousands of freelancers on Fiverr all competing for that same job. So as a brand new seller, how are you supposed to gain any traction?

If you're a brand new seller on fiverr and you're
trying to make your very first sale, there are three main goals you need to focus on.

Firstly, you need to get your gig seen by a potential buyer.

Secondly, you need that potential buyer to click and open your gig page. And…

Thirdly, you need to close the sale by having that buyer order from your gig.


As stated, the first step in order to make your first sale on fiverr is obviously to have a buyer see your gig. But today, unfortunately, buyers on Fiverr are not clicking on a category and then scrolling through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gigs. A lot of them come to the platform and simply type what they're looking for in the search bar eg: YouTube account manager, Instagram content marketer etc.

And let's face it, fiverr is basically a search engine trying to surface the most relevant gigs for a specific buyer. So your first priority is to optimise your gigs to surface in a search result because if that doesn't happen, a buyer will never even know about your gig and you'll never make a sale.

But as a new seller, the trick is not just surfacing in a generic search result. Because let's be honest, as a new seller, it's really difficult to compete with thousands and thousands of offerings in a search result.

Coz just by doing the maths, if a search produced one thousand results and you're one of the 1,000, the odds are pretty much stacked against you that a potential buyer will even see your gig.

So when we're talking about trying to surface our gig for a search result, we're really trying to narrow our focus to do some research in our categories to find out what potential buyers are looking for and then optimise our gigs to surface under those specific keyword phrases that potentially produce far fewer results. In a simple sentence, make your gig super specific to a very long tail keyword. Though there might be very few searches but there will definitely be super low competition thus increasing your chances of showing up on the first page


For example, let's do research to find low low competition services under the Digital Marketing niche.

Doing the research now, there about 3 categories under digital marketing, so I selected Social Marketing (Competition is 7,683) then under social marketing, I selected another subcategory - "social media management" (competition reduced to 1,797) then I selected another subcategory under social media management - "YouTube" (Competition reduced to 120). So that means if you tailored your gig to just "YouTube management", your chances of showing up on the first page is higher compared to tailoring your gig to general "social media management" service.

Hope you understand my point now?

Okay, another example is this…
Digital marketing niche ➜➜ Content marketing (competition is 19,303) ➜➜ Guest posting (competition reduced to 500) ➜➜ Instagram (competition reduced to just 7 gigs)

Which means that if you setup your gig targeting this long tail keyword - "Instagram", your chances of showing up on the first page is extremely high, compared to targeting "Content marketing".


Okay, so now you've optimised your gig to appear in a specific low competition search result of about few tens or hundreds (depends on niche)...

Step two is to get potential buyers to click and open your gig page. So how do you achieve that?

You can achieve that by having attractive thumbnails, compelling gig videos, and smartly written gig titles. What you just need to do is to conduct your own search in your category in order to see what your competitor's gigs look like with regards to their thumbnails and their gig videos. Because your sole objective here is to get a potential buyer to click and watch your video or see your thumbnail and open your gig.

So assuming that you did everything correctly and your gig has surfaced in the search result. And again, you've gotten a buyer to click on your gig and open your gig page, how do you
close that sale?

Well, you do that by having a fully completed gig page and attractive pricing structure in place. Things like uploading gig images to your portfolio, having a completely filled out gig description and filling out the frequently asked questions. Plus having a pricing structure that really appeals to a buyer.

All these give the potential buyers the confidence to go with the new seller. And as a new seller, you want to make the process as easy and smooth for that potential buyer as possible. So don't include words like contact me before you buy because that's just one barrier that you've put up between you and the sale. That alone could send a bad signal to the potential buyer that you're not confident enough that you can deliver an excellent job on your services.



These 3 steps might sound so simple but trust me, it works.

By applying these simple tricks could greatly increase your odds and converting your first sale. But you can take it one step further by creating six additional gigs using the same structure to increase your chances of converting a sale.

I don't mean that you should just replicate what you did six more times. No that's my point. Think about another specific long tail search that you could surface under and create a brand new gig tailored to that specific keyword search.

To be honest, one of the early goals for you as a new seller is to find your hero gig. And that's just a fancy way of saying having a primary gig that will comprise most of your sales.

So as a new seller you want to cast that net as wide as possible by creating multiple gigs in order to find your superhero gig and when you start to gain traction and the sales start pouring in and you're having great 5 star reviews, you can then change that gig from being super specific to much more encompassing and ultimately that will help you grow your fiverr business.



So I hope this write-up has helped you reframe your thinking about making your first sale on fiverr as a freelancer. I wish you all the best!

Wow! Amazing write-up Chief. Very detailed and practical steps.

Do you have a blog please? I'll like to follow and keep up with articles like this

OP u too much.

Nice write-up. Am a level one seller on fiverr. Well thks to nairaland for introducing me to Fiverr. But I would like to chip in something concerning what you said about sellers not saying "Contact me before you buy" .

With my experiences on Fiverr, there are some buyers that will just place an order without contacting you first and at the end of it all the job description won't be part of your area of specialization. And when you cancel such order it will affect your ratings.

And before you recover your ratings it might take some time. And even when you contact fiverr customer support you might be lucky they might help you rectify it and atimes they won't.

Stephen0mozzy:
Wow! Amazing write-up Chief. Very detailed and practical steps.

Do you have a blog please? I'll like to follow and keep up with articles like this

You're welcome bro.

Stephen0mozzy:
Wow! Amazing write-up Chief. Very detailed and practical steps.

Do you have a blog please? I'll like to follow and keep up with articles like this

No I don't have a blog. Though it's part of my goals for this 2022, by God's grace

LikeAking:
OP u too much.

You're welcome bro