How to Make Money on Fiverr: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Some of the links on our website are sponsored, and we may earn money when you make a purchase or sign-up after clicking. Learn more about how we make money.

When you’re brand new to freelancing, Fiverr can be the easiest and fastest way to get started.

And while the site has a somewhat fair reputation for low pay rates, oddball projects and difficult customers, it is possible to build a sustainable and profitable freelancing business on the platform.

In this article, we’ll talk about how to make money on Fiverr, explain why it’s a great choice for beginning freelancers, highlight a few tips for success, and run down some of the most common mistakes to avoid.

We’ll also dig into what makes Fiverr different from other popular freelancing sites, including how to leverage a few of its unique features to maximize your profits. 

Quick Summary: Fiverr is a great place for new freelancers to gain experience, learn how to work with clients, and build valuable skills. Getting work is easier than on other platforms, and while pay rates can be relatively low, there are a number of tools you can leverage to make more money.

Succeeding on Fiverr requires a different approach than what many freelancers expect or are accustomed to.

Here’s a brief summary of what you’ll find in this article:

• Why Fiverr is ideal for beginners, including why it’s the best platform for starting your freelance side hustle from scratch.
• The mechanics of how the site works, including how to create offers that will attract clients.
• Ways to make more money on the site by properly leveraging its unique pricing and marketing features.
• Key tips and common mistakes, including how to deal with conflicts and difficult clients.
• Answers to the most common questions about Fiverr.

You can also click the button below to open up the full table of contents and jump directly to the section you’re most interested in.

What Is Fiverr?

Fiverr is an online marketplace that connects freelancers and clients for services in eight top-level categories, including: 

• Business
• Digital Marketing
• Graphics & Design
• Lifestyle
• Music & Audio
• Programming & Tech
• Video & Animation
• Writing & Translation

Within these top-level categories, there are nearly 500 subcategories, opening up a wide swath of freelance territory that allows you to monetize almost any skill or talent — from typical services like freelance writing, editing and graphic design to obscure niches like game coaching, crafting lessons and celebrity impersonations. 

This makes it one of the best options when you’re looking for ways to make money from home.

Founded in 2010, the site’s name is derived from its origins as a microtasking platform where freelancers performed almost all services for five dollars. Today, there is no requirement to offer five-dollar services.

Fiverr vs. Upwork

Fiverr is the second largest of the two primary freelance platforms, bringing in about half the revenue of its main competitor Upwork.

Although there are many other places to offer your services online, these two sites dwarf the alternatives in terms of the sheer number of jobs available. 

While we wrote a more in-depth guide to help you choose between Fiverr and Upwork, here’s a quick rundown of our recommendations:

• Fiverr is a better platform for gaining experience. If you’re starting from scratch — both new to freelancing and not sure what skill you’d like to offer — Fiverr’s emphasis on short-term, low priced projects is great for gaining experience. With Fiverr, you can rapidly test different freelance skills, and a variety of niches within each skillset. Once you find a winning service, it’s then a lot easier to switch to Upwork or go out and get clients on your own.
• Upwork is best suited for people who are new to freelancing but have an existing and in-demand skill. The projects you find on Upwork are longer-term and higher-value — some even with Fortune 500 companies and well-known brands. As long as you can compete for a job with your existing resume, it’s easy to establish yourself on the platform. However, just make sure you can deliver a five-star experience for your client. A negative review at the beginning of your Upwork career makes it an uphill battle from then on.

Fiverr vs Upwork: Which Is Best For New Freelancers?

MAKE MONEY

Both platforms offer tons of earning potential. Here’s a guide to help you choose the right one to start with.

Read More

How Fiverr Works 

Creating a Fiverr account is fast and free. You’ll need to provide some basic profile information including your name and email address, as well as some details about your education, past experience and expertise.

You can see a walkthrough of the account creation process in this video: 

Once you’ve set up your account, you’ll need to create one or more “gigs.” 

Fiverr Gigs and Seller Levels

At the most basic level, a “gig” is a productized version of the specific freelance service you’d like to offer. 

It has a set price and clearly-defined terms, such as: 

• I will edit 200 words for $5.
• I will write a 1,000-word blog post for $50.
• I will design a three-color logo for $100.

Every gig has a title, a description, a number of allowable revision requests, and a set delivery date. Clients can purchase gigs on demand — they don’t have to contact you first, and there’s no need to negotiate over rates or terms. 

Note: As a freelancer on the platform, you’ll be called a “Fiverr seller.” We use the terms “freelancer” and “Fiverr seller” interchangeably throughout this article. 

The number of gigs you can create depends on your seller level, which is determined by a combination of: 

• How long you’ve been on Fiverr.
• How many successful orders you’ve delivered.
• How much money you’d made on the site.
• A combination of various seller performance metrics.

You can read more about the specific requirements for each seller level here.

In addition to the number of gigs you can create, your seller level controls how many gig “extras” and “multiples” you can offer — both of which are key to making money on Fiverr, as we’ll detail in the next section.

• Extras are upsells that customers can add to the base price of your gig. For example, if your stated delivery window for a project is two days, you can give clients the option to pay extra for one-day delivery.
• Multiples are the number of identical gigs that can be purchased at the same time. For example, if your gig is “I will edit 200 words for $5,” enabling multiples allows a client to pay $20 for 800 words of editing.

When you first start out, you’ll have a “Basic” seller account. 

Here are the different levels, along with a few of the key benefits of each: 

Whether your goal is to scale your freelancing business and make as much money as possible, or just to create a decent stream of extra income on the side, you should try to level up your account quickly. 

That’s in part because having the ability to post more gigs allows you to offer a wider range of services. 

Since every gig is required to have a specific, concrete offer — such as “I will create a three-color logo” rather than “I will do graphic design work” — having more gigs lets you target slightly different clients and projects, ultimately reaching a wider audience. 

But to an even greater extent, leveling up is important because gig extras and gig multiples are where real money can be made on Fiverr. 

Gig Extras and Gig Multiples

In order to understand why gig extras and multiples are so important for making good money on Fiverr, you need to think from both a search engine optimization perspective and a sales perspective. 

In short, Fiverr is more likely to show low-priced gigs in search results because users are more likely to click on and order them. 

Remember, Upwork caters to business clients, who are inclined to prioritize quality over cost. But Fiverr caters to a more diverse and less business-centric clientele, many of whom are explicitly searching for low-cost options. 

In fact, many of Fiverr’s clients are specifically looking for $5 options.

In the past, Fiverr has been criticized for marketing itself to this type of clientele. Some freelancers have argued that this approach creates a “race to the bottom,” in which the only way to keep getting new clients is to continually lower your prices relative to your competition.

That’s exactly where extras and multiples come into play: you can offer a low-cost, bare-bones service and let customers choose what upgrades and additions they want to pay for. 

Many customers will choose your bare-bones option, and that’s OK; it gives you the chance to gain experience and build up your feedback profile. But many others will add extras, raising the value of those projects considerably.

Gig Extras Example

Let’s say you’re a graphic designer and you want to offer logo design services. But you’re new to Fiverr and you have limited experience as a freelancer. Perhaps you’ve designed a couple of logos for friends’ businesses, but you don’t yet have an extensive portfolio.

In a case like this, your basic gig should be something like: 

• I will design a text-based logo for your business: $5 

Here’s an example of the first page of the gig creation process:

And your gig extras should be something like: 

• I will provide you with an editable Adobe Illustrator file of your logo: $20 
• I will incorporate any graphic that you provide: $25
• I will deliver the logo in three days instead of seven: $50 
• I will custom-design a graphic (such as a mascot) based on your specifications: $100

Here’s an example of the process for creating gig extras: 

Offering a bare-bones gig for $5 is the key. By doing so, you’ve kept yourself competitive for the search term “logo design” without committing yourself to working far below your value. 

Had you structured your gig without extras, it would have either been drastically under-priced or significantly less competitive. 

For example, in the case above, a client would end up paying you $175 for a logo with a custom-designed graphic — still a low price, but reasonable.

Advertizing that same combination of services as a single gig for $175 would make the gig less likely to show up in search results, because its base price would be so much higher than the base prices of gigs from other sellers.

And even if you lowered the base price to $100 — well below what the work is worth — it would still be $95 more than the hundreds of $5 offer logo-design offers on the platform.

That’s why, although you’re not required to offer a $5 option, doing so is a smart idea — and all but essential when you’re new to the platform.  

Once you get established, you will be able to sell gigs without offering a $5 option; Fiverr’s search algorithm takes into account things like your number of completed orders, your feedback profile and your seller metrics.

But many of the biggest sellers on the site still offer an ultra-low-cost option for the simple reason that it generates leads. They then upsell those leads through the use of gig extras and “gig packages” — another unique Fiverr feature that we discuss below.

Key Takeaway: A gig extra can be almost anything a client is willing to pay for, and the key to making money on Fiverr is figuring out the right balance of bare-bones services and upsells. 

Gig Packages

When you create a new gig, you’ll have the option to choose to offer “gig packages.” These are variations of the service you’re providing (such as logo design) that come pre-bundled with gig extras (like custom graphics) at different price points.

Understanding how gig packages work, as well as the psychology behind why they work, can significantly increase your Fiverr earnings.

Here’s an example of a logo design gig with packages:

Note that customers can still pay extra money for add-ons and multiples to their selected package. 

Most successful Fiverr sellers use gig packages because they can nudge buyers to a higher price point (which is an important aspect of maximizing your profits on the site). 

For example, in the table above, most customers will correctly identify that the “Premium” package offers a substantially better value than the “Standard” package, and opt for it even if they don’t necessarily need everything it has to offer. 

Think about it this way: 

• The “Basic” option is cheap, but it will only satisfy the needs of a small portion of potential customers. After all, it’s only a two-color design and it doesn’t include any illustration. Since not many people need a black and white text-based logo, most customers are instantly nudged to the next option.
• The “Standard” option offers good value. Most customers don’t need more than three colors in their logo, and the turnaround is fairly quick. But it doesn’t include a custom illustration, and it only comes with one round of revisions.
• The “Premium” option obviously offers the best value. It includes a custom illustration — which is arguably the most valuable part of the gig — for a small additional expense. Plus it comes with three times the revisions and significantly faster delivery.

Pro Tip: You can often charge a premium to buyers looking for expedited delivery. Buyers often turn to Fiverr as a last resort, after not being able to accomplish something on their own. What they therefore need is someone to remove a bottleneck in a project — a solution they’re more than willing to pay good money for. 

In this setup, customers are nudged to buy the most expensive option. Why spend $30 for a logo that does not have a custom illustration when you can spend just a little bit more and get something much better? 

This is the marketing power offered by a gig package: it gives you a way to show customers what they’ll miss out on by opting for a lower-cost option. When deployed properly, a gig package strategy can dramatically improve your bottom line.

Keys for Beginners + Mistakes to Avoid 

Here are a few key tips for success on Fiverr, as well as some of the most common mistakes new freelancers make on the platform.

Four Keys For Beginners

Key #1: Create $5 versions of your gigs.

As we discussed in the previous section, creating $5 versions of your gigs helps increase your presence in search results and drives potential clients to your offers, where you have the opportunity to upsell them through gig extras. 

But aside from that, offering a low-cost basic gig is the best way to build feedback on the site.

The single biggest driver of success on Fiverr (or any other freelancing platform) is reputation. The amount and quality of your client feedback plays a direct role in both how your gigs perform in search results and whether or not clients choose to hire you.

As such, a lack of quality feedback is the single biggest impediment to making money on the site. 

Offering bare-bones, $5 gigs does three things: 

1. It makes it more likely that clients will hire you, because there’s not much at stake with a $5 project.
2. It gives you easy projects to work on while you get the hang of using the platform, communicating with clients, getting your work done on time and generally adjusting to life as a freelancer.
3. It splits your work among multiple feedback ratings.

Of those three, the last one is the most important. 

Think of it this way: if you start with no feedback and complete one $25 project, you will then have one positive feedback.

But if you spend the same amount of time completing five smaller $5 projects, you’ll end up with five positive feedbacks — which looks much better to potential clients. 

If you extend that math out a little bit further, you can see the multiplier effect of this approach: 

• 10 $25 projects = $250 in gross revenue, with 10 positive feedback ratings
• 50 $5 projects = $250 in gross revenue, with 50 positive feedback ratings

Remember, your seller level depends on the total number of orders you’ve delivered. And 50 is the number required to get to Level 2, which opens up significantly more gigs and gig extras. 

Thus, it’s in your interest to hit Level 2 as quickly as possible.

Key #2: Research the top gigs in your niche (then offer a better value).

The best way to determine what gigs to offer, and how much to charge, is by researching what’s already selling in your niche.

The most successful sellers on the platform have already figured out what clients are looking for, the best way to present those services, and even how to structure their gig extras to maximize sales and profits. 

It’s important to take cues from their examples.

Before you create a new gig, take the time to research the best-performing gigs in your niche at a variety of price points, paying close attention to things like: 

• What keywords and phrases consistently appear in the gig title of the top-performing offers? These are the same keywords you’ll want to include in the gig title of your offers.
• How are other freelancers describing and selling their services? A freelancer with a gig that has 1,000 positive feedback ratings has most likely revised their gig description multiple times, optimizing it based on client questions and requests.
• How much are other freelancers charging for different levels of service? Focus on figuring out how much value you need to provide at the $5 or $10 price point in order to be competitive. How many words are other freelancers willing to proofread for $5? What kinds of graphics will they create or edit for $10? 

When you’re first starting out, you have no reputation. And that means you’re competing for clients based almost solely on a cost proposition — i.e., giving them more for their money than other freelancers. 

But many new freelancers make the mistake of pricing their gigs based on perceived value; they calculate what they believe their services are worth, and then set their prices accordingly.

Unfortunately, that approach usually results in limited sales. There’s just no reason for clients to hire a new freelancer at the same price point as someone with more experience.

So, the key is identifying: 

1. What services successful sellers offer at low price points ($5 and $10).
2. How you can offer similar gigs with better value at those price points.

Keep in mind that these may not be the most profitable services, nor ones you want to continue offering in the future. But targeting them will help you get established and move on to better projects.

Key #3: Get everything you need from the client upfront.

When you create a gig, you have the option to add requirements that that client must complete before the gig officially begins. 

Some examples of gig requirements include: 

• Any assets you need for the project, such as documents, files or login credentials.
• Answers to questions about the project. For example, if your gig is article writing, you might want to ask the client a series of questions that describe the purpose of the article, where it will be published, the target audience, and the desired tone.

It’s important to use this feature to collect all of the information you need to complete the gig. 

That’s because: 

• The delivery clock starts ticking as soon as an order officially begins. If you don’t collect everything you need to get started, you’ll have less time to actually do the work. 
• Clients don’t want to be asked questions after the fact. Remember, Fiverr gigs are productized versions of your freelance services. As such, clients expect to simply purchase a gig and then wait for delivery. Often, they don’t monitor their Fiverr messages and thus don’t respond to clarification requests, leaving you unable to complete the work. 
• Clients don’t always understand the service you’re offering, and setting up requirements can stop them from proceeding with a gig that’s outside the scope of your skillset (or that requires more work than they paid for).

Key #4: Use a quality gig image, and include a video.

Every gig has a primary image, and that’s the main thing clients will see in search results. So it’s important to either design something that looks great, or invest the small amount of money it takes to hire a designer to create a gig image that will catch people’s attention and promote clicks to your gig.

Additionally, Fiverr allows you to add a video to your gig. This can be anything from an introduction of yourself to a highlight reel of your work to a whiteboard animation that explains the gig. 

Gigs with videos perform better than those without, and including a video may be a positive Fiverr SEO factor. You can read more about the requirements and best practices for gig videos here. 

Side Note: Whiteboard animation is a hot category on Fiverr!

Three Common Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake #1: Being afraid to say “no.”

I cannot stress this point enough: positive feedback is the Holy Grail of online freelancing. 

You cannot be successful without it, and negative feedback can severely hamper, or even permanently derail, your freelancing career. 

There are many reasons clients leave negative feedback, and not all of them are fair. But one of the biggest is easy to avoid: a mismatch of client and freelancer expectations. 

In other words, if a client thinks you’re offering X Fiverr Service, and you instead deliver Y Fiverr Service, you’re going to get a negative feedback.

Unfortunately, no matter how clearly you describe your service as X Fiverr Service, some people are still going to read that description and come to the conclusion that you actually offer Y Fiverr Service.

This is a problem on all freelance platforms, but it’s especially prevalent on Fiverr, where many clients have never hired a freelancer before, don’t really understand the process, and may have wildly unrealistic expectations.

And this problem is exacerbated by the fact that when you’re just starting out, there’s a strong temptation to take any work you can get. 

Fight that temptation. 

If someone orders a gig and asks for a service you don’t provide, make that clear to the client up-front and then request a mutual cancelation of the order. If that doesn’t work, you can then contact Fiverr’s customer support team and ask them to cancel the order.

Similarly, if someone contacts you and asks for service that you’re not sure is fully within your skillset, don’t take the job. 

There’s just no margin for error. If your first feedback is negative, you’re more or less done on the platform. If one of your first five feedbacks is negative, your rating will be 80% — and you won’t be getting many clients. 

Therefore, it’s crucial to only accept a Fiverr job that you know you can deliver perfectly. Don’t be afraid to say “no” to work in order to avoid situations that have the potential to lead to a negative outcome. 

Once you’re established, you’ll have the ability to stretch a little bit if you want to. But right now, the game is all about building momentum and a positive feedback profile. 

Mistake #2: Forgetting to reply to incoming messages.

While buyers have the ability to purchase your gig without contacting you, many will still reach out with questions via Fiverr’s messaging system prior to placing an order. 

And when a potential client contacts you on Fiverr, you are required to respond. 

In fact, your “Response Rate” is a key aspect of your seller metrics, which affects both your gigs’ placement in search results and your seller level. 

When you view your seller metrics dashboard, this is what it says about “Response Rate:” 

“Respond to 90% of the inquiries you received in the last 60 days.”

However, the actual requirement is that you respond to 90% of the inquiries you receive within 24 hours. 

Failing to meet this requirement is one of the most common reasons that sellers get demoted to a lower level. 

That’s in part because Fiverr does not clearly communicate the 24-hour requirement, but also because it’s just easy to overlook incoming messages. After all, if you sleep for eight hours per day, you only have a 16-hour window in which to respond.

Downloading the Fiverr app can help counteract this, as you’ll get instant pings about incoming messages. However, if you’re someone who gets a lot of notifications throughout the day, they can still be easy to miss — and the notification system doesn’t always work perfectly.

So it’s still best to set aside a specific time every day to check your inbox. 

Pro Tip: Often, having a super-fast response time can win you jobs. Many buyers on Fiverr send messages to multiple freelancers at the same time, going with which one gets back to them the fastest. 

Mistake #3: Delivering orders late.

Delivering orders late hurts your seller metrics and makes clients angry. 

And angry clients leave negative feedback.

But for some reason, many new freelancers take deadlines as suggestions rather than contracts. This is a clear path to failure on Fiverr or any other platform. 

As you progress through your freelancing journey, you will find that there are many valid reasons why a project might take longer than expected. 

For example: 

• You get sick.
• You have an unexpected family emergency.
• The client doesn’t give you everything you need to finish the work.
• The client won’t respond to your requests for clarification.
• Your computer explodes.

All valid reasons. But none of them matter. 

Most clients don’t care why you’re late; they just want their delivery. And Fiverr certainly doesn’t care; their priority is keeping clients happy.

You can’t explain yourself out of late delivery. 

It’s not fair, but it’s the way it is. 

So do whatever you can to get the project done on time. 

And if, for whatever reason, you can’t deliver it exactly as expected, document specifically why and deliver the project anyway, offering to circle back to it once the client responds with the necessary feedback, guidance or clarifications. 

How to Resolve Conflicts and Disputes 

As a freelancer, most of your clients will be professional, respectful and grateful for your services. But you will also come across your fair share of challenging personalities. 

Throughout this article, we’ve explained that to make money on Fiverr, you need to get established and build a reputation. To a large extent, that means navigating around obstacles that could result in negative feedback. 

First and foremost, it’s important to internalize the old adage that “the customer is always right.” 

Of course, that adage is far from true. Customers are often wrong, sometimes unreasonable and occasionally downright abusive. 

But just like it doesn’t matter if you have a valid reason for delivering a project late, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the right side of a dispute. When a project turns sour, your sole focus should turn to rectifying the situation and avoiding negative feedback. 

Instead of arguing with the client, just do the following: 

1. Identify the problem.
2. Apologize for the problem (even if it wasn’t your fault). 
3. Ask the client what needs to be done to fix the problem. 
4. Offer a specific solution, explaining the steps you will take and the new timeline.
5. Deliver that solution ahead of the agreed-upon timeline.
6. Ask them if they’re fully satisfied with the solution you provided.
7. Thank them for allowing you to fix the problem. 

Taking those seven steps can be a tough pill to swallow. It might mean doing more work than the customer paid you for, and it can make you feel like you’re being taken advantage of. 

But the fact of the matter is that negative feedback is more detrimental than the cost of time it takes to make the customer happy.

New freelancers have a tendency to underestimate just how big of an impact even a couple of negative feedback ratings can have. To put it plainly, it can prevent your gigs from showing up in search, or it can even get you suspended from the platform. 

So it’s essential to do whatever it takes to turn a negative situation into a positive one.

Fiverr Costs + Getting Paid

One of the major downsides to Fiverr is that it takes a relatively big chunk of your earnings. You’ll pay a 20% commission on every sale. And although customers have the ability to leave you a tip if they’re satisfied with the project, you’ll pay a 20% fee on that as well. 

In contrast, Upwork only charges 20% on your first $500 of earnings with a client. After that, the commission declines to as low as 5%.

Payments take 14 days to clear for Basic, Level 1 and Level 2 sellers, while Top Rated sellers only have to wait seven days. This period starts after the buyer marks the project as successfully delivered.

Once the funds have cleared, you have three options for getting paid: 

• PayPal: $0 minimum withdrawal.
• Direct Deposit: $10 minimum withdrawal.
• Fiverr Revenue Card: $30 minimum withdrawal.

Note that the Fiverr Revenue Card is a debit card that can be used to get cash at ATMs or to make in-store/online purchases with your Fiverr earnings.

Fiverr Pro

Fiverr Pro is a special seller level assigned to a select group of freelancers that have been hand-vetted by Fiverr’s editorial team. Pro sellers get premium placement in search results and command higher rates.

Freelancers must apply to the program, and getting accepted is notoriously difficult. The company claims that only 1% of applicants pass the vetting process, and it does not provide a specific list of qualification criteria. 

That said, Fiverr implies that to become a Pro Seller you need: 

• A significant portfolio completed for clients outside of Fiverr.
• Experience working with “top-tier” clients.
• A dedicated website that serves as a hub for your freelancing work.
• A bachelor’s degree or higher in your area of expertise.

These requirements make it difficult for a new freelancer to become a Pro seller. 

However, that’s not necessarily a big loss. Pro sellers are required to charge at least $100 for their gigs, which significantly reduces the pool of clients they have access to. 

When the program first launched, rank-and-file Fiverr sellers were concerned that Pros would dominate the marketplace. That has turned out not to be the case, as many customers still turn to the platform for low-cost services. 

Today, the program is widely viewed as a way for Fiverr to entice experts in certain niches to join the platform, thereby increasing the overall legitimacy of the marketplace.

You can learn more about applying for the program on the Pro section of the Fiverr website.

Fiverr FAQ

How to Make Money on Fiverr: Final Thoughts

Armed with all of the information provided in this guide, you’re ready to set up an account, create some gigs and get started making money on Fiverr.

Here are the three key points I hope you take away from this blog post:

1. Fiverr is a great place to learn how to be a professional freelancer.
2. The key to making good money on the site is optimizing your gig pricing, packages and extras.
3. You should do whatever it takes to avoid negative feedback.

R.J. Weiss

R.J. Weiss, founder of The Ways To Wealth, has been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ since 2010. Holding a B.A. in finance and having completed the CFP® certification curriculum at The American College, R.J. combines formal education with a deep commitment to providing unbiased financial insights. Recognized as a trusted authority in the financial realm, his expertise is highlighted in major publications like Business Insider, New York Times, and Forbes.