It took me almost an year and a half of constant work to get established on Fiverr as a drummer. Yea — an year and a half!
Before we even get into how to succeed on the platform you should know this is not going to happen overnight. You will have to spend time money and effort to even get someone to visit your profile.
If you are ready for that, then lets get straight into it!
1. Understand your market
As a musician, 99% of the clients you will get on Fiverr will be musicians — most of whom will be working under budget. You will not have access to large labels or corporates — you will be working with other musicians.
The crucial part to understand is that these musicians most likely WILL NOT BE EARNING from the music they will be making with you. For the most part these will be passion projects.
Why is this important?
Because when you see stories of Fiverr sellers becoming millionaires you don’t realize but all of those sellers are in categories where majority of the customers are businesses. Their pricing is based on what you would charge a business. This is absolutely not the case as a session musician. So understanding the market will help you understand what to charge and how to deal with the customer.
2. Pricing
There are several steps to perfecting your profile and pricing is one of the most important.
When you are starting out — research all your competitors. See how they have structured their gigs and what they are charging. Then undercut them by enough so your new profile become more clickable.
For the more established musicians on Fiverr you will see them charging anywhere from $50 — $120 per song (with some outliers on both sides). At the beginning you WILL have to undercut and sell at a discount to get noticed.
For your final pricing the best way I found is to test different price points for a month each and just see what works best for you.
But remember Fiverr is an EXTREMELY price sensitive market. So start increasing slowly until you see your total revenue per month dropping off.
3. Reviews are everything — and on Fiverr the customer is always right
This is true for every online business and not just Fiverr but yes Reviews really are everything. As a new seller focus on getting all the reviews you can. The best way — route all your current work through Fiverr. Yes you will lose the 20% commission Fiverr takes but that is a very small price to pay for the reviews that can help you get exponentially more business.
Second thing to know — on Fiverr, the customer is ALWAYS right. Its a customer centric marketplace. Customers can demand (and get) a refund even after you deliver the work or leave bad reviews which can cripple a new profile. So DO NOT give in to your ego — if a customer is unsatisfied, just a give a refund and move on. In the long run not having bad reviews is a lot more important than a few lost dollars.
4. Video and Title
The first consideration for a lot of people is the price point — but the very next is absolutely your profile picture or video. DO NOT put just a picture or a video of you playing on a phone camera. Put in the effort to record a proper video with great audio and video quality — preferably in the studio. Have it edited from a professional, and make a thumbnail that sticks out.
If the presentation looks good — you will sell. Otherwise, well..not.
The next is the title. Make is short to the point and preferably including the right keywords. For the right keywords start typing in the Fiverr search bar — see what comes up for your service and you can use those.
5. Analyse the competition
Go through at least 20 of the top sellers in your category and see how they have structured their gigs. Then see what could work best for you.
Some examples of ways sellers structure:
– 15–30 seconds of work for maybe $5, full tracks for $50
– Straight up base pricing of $50 for 3 minute song, then every minute for an additional $10
– Base price includes only mp3 for $30, stems and WAV for $50
These are just examples and you can find many different ways sellers have structured their gigs.
6. Up sell
Up selling is the best way to earn more on the platform. It is a lot easier to upsell a current customer than to find a new one. So again, analyse the hell out of your competitors and see what they are upselling.
This could include different version of the track, midi files, mixed versions of your performance, completely raw versions, edited versions, faster delivery, more revisions, videos, and a lot more.
7. Find a niche — Get specific
Fiverr is now overflowing with sellers. As covid hit, every musician in the world was trying to figure out how to make it online and a ton of them came to online freelancing sites like Fiverr and Sound Better. To stick out you will absolutely need to find your own niche. When making a gig do not opt for generic titles like “I will play bass on your song”. Instead get specific with something like “I will play super groovy bass on your funk rock song”.
8. Under promise, over deliver
Wherever possible try your best to over deliver. THis greatly increases your chances of getting a good review. The most basic way — deliver faster. So if you have a delivery timeline of 5 days — deliver in 3! If they ask for an additional revision with a small change, don’t get stuck on asking the customer to buy a revision addon. Just do it. The extra 15 mins can translate into an outstanding review for your profile.
9. If possible — give a free demo
I have found this last point to be extremely beneficial for me. I have found that I am able to convert almost 80% of the customers who I give a free demo to. So this means it hardly ever happens where work I am doing goes to waste.
Additionally if you are unsure of a track a customer sent, just tell them you will do a demo for free before they order. This is way you get to see if the customer actually likes what you are doing and you get to avoid a bad review or cancellation later on.
Hopefully I was able to help you in some way into becoming a more successful seller on Fiverr.
You can find my Fiverr profile here.
