Bill Ricardi's Fiverr Crash Course

I would estimate that these five factors are sought out by over 90% of Fiverr clients. They want to see what you can do, if you'll act professionally and treat them as a professional, if you're actually qualified, and if you can be trusted to follow the rules. And all of those 'optional' gig enhancements are exactly what will attract customers to you in the first place, when presented with dozens of other potential candidates.

I had to learn this the hard way, through years of trial and error. I thought that my resume (CV) would automatically attract clients to me over my competition. It took me weeks to understand that if a fact couldn't be confirmed by the Fiverr system, it was at best a minor detail. Who you were before you made your Fiverr account is just some nice trivia to a potential client. What you can do for them right now is what matters to most of them.

With that in mind, let's cover each of the Fiverr Crash Course basics in detail.

Build and display a portfolio that makes you proud.
Develop professional contacts whenever possible.
Achieve and display certifiable educational goals.
Stay within the established system to avoid scams.
'Optional' gig enhancements are not optional.

The five basic tasks that you always have to keep in mind when establishing your Fiverr freelancer business are:
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This is it. All of my experiences distilled down into a step by step process that will give you an excellent chance on being successful on Fiverr. After you follow this guide, it will come down to execution, the quality of your work, and (sometimes) the fine details that we cover in our other free courses.

This course is completely free. If you want to thank me, use my affiliate links for joining Fiverr, for Fiverr's Learn Courses, for joining Fiverr Business, and for becoming a Fiverr Affiliate.

The Fiverr Crash Course Basics

Building and Displaying a Fiverr Portfolio

This is a step that you can work on even before you create your Fiverr account.

The goal is to produce three examples of your work that represent your work ethic. They don't have to be particularly long, large, or intricate. They do, however, have to reflect the quality that you're capable of delivering.

For example, if you're an SEO writer you might produce a well researched 500 word piece on your topic of expertise. If you're an RPG character artist, you might produce a head and shoulders portrait that would be appropriate in the corner of a character sheet. Remember to proofread any text before converting it into a PDF for your portfolio. Run it through Google Docs if you need a free spelling and grammar checker.

The three examples should span the range of what's being offered in the gig. For example if you're offering to make websites with engaging games for children, your portfolio might include images of the mocked up home page and one of the child-appropriate games, and perhaps the third portfolio piece would be an example of the HTML or CSS.

As you create more gigs, your portfolio will naturally expand. Once you get enough examples, consider creating you own branded website where you can display all of your examples in one place. Then you can use it as a way to generate business via your social networks. You can even add your affiliate tag to make money off of clients that you source yourself.

Many clients will contact you and ask for work examples, despite them being linked in your gigs. You can have a Quick Response created, thanking them for their interest in your work and saying that you'll select a couple of appropriate examples from your portfolio. Then just attach the appropriate examples from your portfolio. If you have written permission from past clients to use their sites or projects as portfolio examples, you can link those instead.

Speaking from personal experience, my portfolio has landed me over half of my new clients. It is the most important tool in your sales toolbox. So make sure that you're prepared with high quality examples that are appropriate to the gig you're trying to launch.

Developing Professional Contacts

You might think that clients want to hire a freelancer in order to keep details of their work-in-progress as secret as possible. But that's rarely the case.

One of the first things that I ask new clients is if they have a website that I can check out. If they don't have a website with the information I need, I ask them about their company's goals, their customer demographics, and how they envision the content that I produce will be used.
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I'm not being nosey when I ask these questions. I'm establishing what stage of the product lifecycle my client is in, and getting details on how I can best tailor my work to meet their needs. This is how you let the client know that you're a professional who can handle long term business relationships if that's something they desire... you take an interest.
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You can also offer a free analysis of their project, website, or source materials as long as it won't take you too long. As an example, for my SEO clients I offer a viability review of their website, noting common SEO mistakes that they might be making based on an analysis of their source code. I'm not just being nice when I make that offer, I'm learning the tone of voice that they use on their site. I'm learning about the customers they're trying to attract. I'm looking at any job openings that they have to see if freelancing might be a temporary (or permanent) solution to some of their role gaps.
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After a few gigs, clients may want to hook up with you on professional social sites such as LinkedIn. Accept these networking opportunities immediately (assuming they aren't doing anything that would reflect negatively on your freelancing business). This is one of the main ways you develop long term professional contacts.

Your goal is to present yourself as both an immediate and a long term solution to their needs. You don't need to offer them discounts or free work. You simply need to deliver professional results, on time, every time. Reliability is a professional aphrodisiac. If they can leave a project with you, and rely on your understanding of their business, marketing, and customer base to produce quality results, they'll fall in love with you (or at least fall in love with your work).

The can even apply to gigs that strictly provide entertainment to individuals. I have a couple of clients that have requested multiple RPG worlds (histories, main characters, cities, history, maps, etc.) using my gigs. Each of them have bought over 75,000 words of content, just to use in their private games. They appreciate my professionalism as much as any commercial entity, and their return business is appreciated in the same vein.

In my experience, repeat business from professional contacts account for at least two thirds of my workload, and referrals from professional contacts account for a quarter of my new buyers. Developing a network of professional contacts is a long term goal, but you must start immediately if you want a thriving business in the long term, particularly if you have your eyes set on Fiverr Pro status.

Earning and Displaying Your Certifications

Part of the challenge of presenting your experience to clients on Fiverr is that anonymous freelancers and ghostwriters are paid to not take credit for their work. Most people looking at your gigs don't have the time or resources to chase up your references, even if you were to present them with your CV.

A much easier way for the client to assess your skills is by looking at your certifications. Then they at least know that you have enough subject matter expertise to pass certain courses. Fiverr Business clients in particular want to see the right certifications on your profile.

Similarly, the client might want to know what education you've undertaken in the course of perfecting your craft. But once again, they don't have the time or resources to chase up your school records.

Instead, they'll look at your course certificates. These are easily verifiable, particularly if they were taken as part of Fiverr's native system.

This is why it is critical to make use of the free testing resources on Fiverr, as well as free and cheap Fiverr Learn courses.

The results of these can be displayed directly on your profile, meaning clients can see that you're qualified without ever leaving the site.

Go into your profile, and scroll down on the left hand side. You'll see a 'Tests Taken' section. Click on the 'Take a Test' link to start building your certification portfolio.

You should be taking every Fiverr test that applies to one of your gigs. Display the results of any that give you a Top 20% result or better. For example:

Take your tests if you want to make money on Fiverr!

These tests are free, and they can only help you when your client is trying to decide between you and the competition. Everyone should be taking the Customer Service test! At the very minimum, assure your clients that you know the basics of handling customer interactions.

Similarly, there is a free course that you can find in the Learn section of your profile that every freelancer should take. It's called 'Online Freelancing Essentials', and it proves that you understand the platform, the protections that it affords to both buyer and seller, and the basic way business is conducted on Fiverr.

You don't need to take many paid courses, but if you find one or two that apply directly to your most important gigs, consider them. For example, since SEO is one of my main revenue sources, I ended up taking the SEO course to show my clients that I'm a professional that engages in further education as required:

Make sure you take the right courses if you want to make money on Fiverr.

A blank Learn section is poison. At minimum, take the Essentials course. It's free and it doesn't take too long.

Protecting Yourself with Fiverr Escrow

One thing you'll learn during the aforementioned 'Online Freelancing Essentials' course is that you should use the Fiverr platform for all client communications, payments, and content delivery. There's a simple reason for this: Some clients will try to scam you.

The scams going around (some of which will only be made worse by the June 2023 announcement that cancelled orders are eligible for reviews) often involve communication outside of the Fiverr platform. The reason scammers do this is to get around Fiverr's 'all conversations are recorded' policy. They want to draw you away from the Fiverr escrow system so that they can scam you into free work.

There's a reason professionals choose Fiverr: Paying 20% for advertising, escrow, and support is nothing compared to what it costs you as an independent. Outside of Fiverr, my ad budget alone would have been 25% of my income. And unless I only dealt with clients that paid up front, I'd still need to hire a third party escrow service if I didn't want to be ripped off every so often.

So no matter how tempting it is to respond to queries that want to talk to you off the platform (Telegram being one of the most common choices for Fiverr scammers), you immediately lose Fiverr's protection if you do. Every client interaction needs to be recorded by the system if you want to get the support that you need to succeed!

We've already discussed how your gigs need to boil down to a reflection of how much you want to be paid for each hour of your effort. If you go off platform for communication, payments, or anything else, you risk spending hours fighting a losing battle in an attempt to recoup money from a client who was setting you up from the start.

Don't fall for the scams. Keep everything on the platform if you want its protection. When you're a Fiverr Pro, you'll get the option to use outside communication and delivery channels. Only use them if it make sense to do so, and confirm a summary of all deliveries and communications on the platform itself afterwards.

For more tips on this subject, check out our free course on Avoiding Common Fiverr Scams.

Making Use of Every 'Optional' Marketing Type

When setting up your gigs, you're going to see a lot of 'optional' steps. These include attaching documents and images, creating a gig video, and choosing an appropriate thumbnail image for your gig's branding. News flash: None of these steps are optional if you want to succeed.

Fiverr goes so far as to tell you that you're losing 40% of your clients if you don't have a video, and that's my experience as well. It can be quite simple, ranging from 45 seconds of you talking to potential clients in front of a wall, to those scripted line art drawing programs with royalty free music in the background. Or your video can be complex, with greenscreen effects, text overlays, and sound effects. If you can do it yourself cleanly, go for it. Or you can hire someone on Fiverr to help you with a gig video.

In my experience, professional logos increase your gig's click through rate by around 20%. You can have a different design dynamic for each one, or get a group of logos with a common theme and different lettering for each, to maintain your brand appearance. If you don't have the skills to do this yourself, you can hire a Fiverr logo professional to help you.

We've already talked about filling your gig's portfolio section. No need to go on about that: It isn't really optional, just do it.

For more detailed examples of how to use these resources to help create your gig, check out the examples we have for freelance writers, graphic designers, and coders to get some idea of how all this fits together.