“If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time.” – Billy Joel
If you’re a seller on Fiverr®, you might already know that life is too short to spend your days working a job you don’t like. You might have already begun your quest to make a difference in this world by doing something fantastic.
Whether you’re using Fiverr to indulge in your hobby, to make money doing what you love, or to make a living, it’s always a good idea to do whatever you can to become a Top Rated Seller on Fiverr.
Why?
Well, for starters, you can make a good living on Fiverr. Don’t let the $5 price tag throw you off. More than 14% of Fiverr sellers make over $1,000 a month from Fiverr. In fact, some Top Rated Sellers even make a six figure income through Fiverr alone!
The key to making that kind of money is to spend no more than 15 minutes on each Gig® you sell. For example, if each Gig takes 10 minutes to do, you’ll make $30 per hour. If you clock in at 40 hours a week, you’ll make $4,800 a month. Not too shabby, huh?
However, you can’t achieve that right off the bat. You need to work for it. You need to come up with a Gig people will actually need, market the heck out of it, and, if you do everything right, land enough buyers to be able to work on Fiverr full-time.
If you’re serious about making money doing what you love, becoming a Top Rated Seller is the way to go. It’s the key to achieving financial independence on Fiverr, after all!
A Top Rated Seller? What’s that?
A Top Rated Seller is pretty much the highest seller status you can achieve at Fiverr.
There are three levels of sellers: Level One, Level Two, and Top Rated Seller.
Unlike the first two levels, you can’t automatically become a Top Rated Seller. You need to be selected, evaluated, and approved by Fiverr editors in order to join this exclusive group.
Becoming a Top Rated Seller can take a while, sometimes even months, but it’s always worth it, especially when you want to grow your Fiverr business.
The perks of being a Top Rated Seller
Not only will you get to boast the title of being a Top Rated Seller on Fiverr (with a nifty yellow banner over your thumbnail!), but you’ll also enjoy some awesome perks any Fiverr seller would love to have:
- Exclusive access to more extensive sales tools
- Early access to beta features
- VIP support that will have your back in just about any type of dispute
- 4X Gig Extras ($5, $10, $20, $40, $100) that will help ramp up the money you’re bringing in
- Gig Multiples (max. 20)
- Added exposure on the site, in promotions and collections
Most importantly, being a Top Rated Seller will bring tons of attention to your Gig. Your Gig will be featured on the front page sooner or later, and you’ll have a strong base of buyers who, along with Fiverr, will wholeheartedly believe in you.
If you find a highly sought-after Gig and become a pro at selling it, then you’ll become a Top Rated Seller before you know it.
How to become a TRS
We’re not going to lie: we have really high standards when it comes to choosing our Top Rated Sellers. We look at a wide range of criteria and select outstanding sellers who not only meet our high standards, but also catch our eye and show that they’re in for the long haul.
The good news is that you don’t have to play the guessing game. We’re going to lay everything on the table and give you an action plan on how to become qualified as one of our Top Rated Sellers.
The criteria
Gig: Is your Gig unique, well-presented, and highly sought-after?
Volume of sales: The more sales you’ve made, the better.
Rating: The higher your buyers rate you, the better.
Professionalism: How well do you present yourself and your Gig?
Customer service: How have you shown your buyers that you care about them?
Community leadership: How involved are you with the Fiverr community?
Seniority: How long have you been a Fiverr seller?
It may be a difficult and trying process to hit all of the criteria right on the head, but it’s certainly doable!
Without further ado, here are the steps we recommend for you to meet our criteria, as well as get on our radar, wow us, and make us want to bring you on board as a Top Rated Seller:
1. Decide on a winning Gig
The first step to becoming a Top Rated Seller is to, well, sell your Gig. Actually, just selling your Gig won’t do the trick. You need to offer a Gig people will actually find useful, and you need to be good at it. Like, freakishly good.
Before deciding on a Gig, ask yourself those two questions:
- Do people need this service?
- Am I good at it?
Once you decide on a useful Gig you know you will excel at, ask yourself if it’s unique enough. Will it stand out from other similar Gigs? If not, then find a unique selling proposition (something that sets you apart from other Gigs), and make sure it’s actually something your prospective buyers will find useful.
Once you come up with a unique, highly sought-after Gig you know you can pull off like a boss…
2. Do your research
In order to succeed on Fiverr, you need to know how to do it first. You need to lay out a detailed and foolproof plan and set some actionable goals you know you will be able to meet.
You might not know which goals you’re supposed to meet. You might not know what the plan is supposed to be. Heck, you might not even know where to start!
That’s okay. That’s completely normal. It’s part of being a Fiverr seller. You’re your own boss. You get to call all the shots, but first you have to create a winning business formula in order to succeed. Before play comes work, you know.
That’s where doing research will come in handy. No matter how unique your Gig may be, it’s still unnecessary for you to reinvent the wheel.
Fiverr is an established place with many successful sellers. Give yourself a leg up by learning the tried-and-true tips and tricks Fiverr’s best sellers have already put into practice. One of our articles, titled Creating Successful Gigs for the First Time… or the 50th, has excellent tips on conducting research before running your Gig:
1. Check out other Gigs that are similar to yours. Note what other sellers offer in terms of value, delivery time, and feedback, and figure out how you can change or improve their strategies to suit your needs better. Work all that information into your game plan.
2. Visit the Fiverr forum regularly. Find out what other sellers and buyers have to say about their experience on Fiverr. The forum is chock full of useful information, tips, and strategies. Be sure to check back on a regular basis in order to stay on top of the latest information offered by your fellow sellers.
3. Keep an eye on Gig requests from buyers. Not only will you find out what buyers are looking for on Fiverr, but you’ll also get to come up with ideas to either improve your existing Gigs or to create new ones.
The article made a good point: The more information you have, the more agile you will be in anticipating customer demands, improving what you offer, and how you distinguish yourself from your competitors.
This is exactly why doing oodles of research is one of the keys to becoming a Top Rated Seller.
3. Design your Gig as if you were already a Top Rated Seller
Have you ever heard of the saying, “don’t dress for the job you have; dress for the job you want”? Well, it certainly applies in this situation. “Dress up” your Gig profile for the type of seller status you want.
Market yourself with confidence. Sell your Gig with a high-quality video. Have an authentic profile image. Describe your skills in your bio. Use a short and clear Gig title. Write out a detailed Gig description. Feature relevant images. Offer extras. Ask for feedback. Offer a guarantee.
The more you beef up your profile, the more presentable you will appear to potential buyers. They’ll feel more confident about handing over their hard-earned money to you if you lay everything out for them and show them that you have what it takes to do the job well.
To pull this off, just be honest, confident, and thorough. That’s all it takes. Really.
4. Get the ball rolling
Once you have your Gig profile all ready and beefed up, you might find it difficult to land your first buyer. A lot of buyers scope out Gigs by reading feedback from other buyers. When you have a Gig that’s brand new without any feedback, you’ve got a problem. However, it’s pretty easy to solve.
The solution? Enlist the help of your family and friends! Have them purchase your Gigs and leave honest reviews (after using your services, of course). This will help establish your Gig, and soon enough, you’ll land more buyers (who will leave more feedback!)
It also wouldn’t hurt to ask for feedback. Many sellers learn the hard way that most buyers won’t leave feedback unless they’re prompted to. You can add a postscript to your delivery templates asking them to leave a “thumbs up” if they find your service satisfactory.
You can also promote your Gig by:
- Using social media. (Actually, we’ve found that it’s the best way to bring in outside traffic!)
- Submitting the link to your Gig profile to major search engines.
- Going on relevant forums and letting the users know about your Gig. (Read more on this here.)
It’s worth mentioning that you should never, ever spam anyone. No one likes to be bombarded with blatantly promotional stuff. Always make sure your post is relevant to what’s being discussed on social media or on a forum, and only offer the link to your Gig in an attempt to help someone, not to promote yourself.
5. For every order you get, give your all and deliver on time
Like we said before, we have ridiculously high standards when it comes to selecting our Top Rated Sellers. We would very much rather select a seller who’s always prompt with his deliveries than a seller who’s chronically late.
Be realistic about setting deadlines. While you should always value your buyers’ time, you should value your own time, too. Pick a deadline that’s early enough to satisfy the buyer, and late enough to allow you enough time to deliver top-notch work.
Don’t rush through your work. Allow yourself enough time to double check your work, improve it, and polish it before delivering it to the buyer. Pay special attention to the quality of your work, and make sure the buyer will be satisfied with it before delivering it.
On Fiverr, you’re selling a product, and that product is your talent. Simply telling people how great you are at your Gig is not enough; you have to show it, too.
If you take great care of every single order and send it out promptly with much TLC and consideration, then you’ll end up attracting more and more buyers. Your profile will be filled to the brim with glowing feedback, your customers will tell others about your exemplary service, and soon enough we folks at Fiverr will notice you and start itching to make you one of our Top Rated Sellers.
However, keep in mind that having a lot of talent and excellent time management skills is still not enough. You also need to know how to take care of your buyers.
6. Good Customer Service
Customer service is an important criteria to us. We care about everyone who visits Fiverr, and we love it when any seller goes above and beyond for a buyer.
Always be polite to your buyers, do the Gig well, and deliver it on time. If you want to go above and beyond, here are a few things you can do:
- Be attentive: Really listen to your buyers’ needs and try your best to meet their visions.
- Keep them updated: If your Gig takes a while, it would be nice to send them brief updates in intervals. Most buyers would be more than happy to be kept in the loop, especially since they’re paying you.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate: You know what they say: communication is key. Don’t leave your buyers in the dark.
- Always let them know what’s going on. Listen to them, and do whatever you can within reason to make sure your buyers end up satisfied.
- Be positive: This should go without saying, but you would be surprised at how many sellers pick fights with their customers online. Always be positive, cheerful, and helpful, even if your buyer is difficult to work with. You might feel the burning desire to strike back at a difficult buyer, but always remember that your reputation as a seller is on the line, while the buyer doesn’t really have anything to lose.
- Be respectful
- Be true
- Be professional
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, once said, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job to make the customer experience a little bit better.”
7. Become an active member of the Fiverr community.
Once you get the hang of being a Fiverr seller, it’s time to share your wisdom with others!
Fiverr is an amazing community full of smart, helpful sellers and buyers, and quite honestly, you’d be crazy not to become a part of it!
Sign up for the Fiverr forum and become an active member. Create threads on a regular basis, participate in other threads, reply to all the comments directed towards you, get to know other members, offer tips, help troubleshoot problems, share your Fiverr stories, and welcome other sellers and buyers with open arms.
We frequent the Fiverr forum on a regular basis, and sooner or later we will get to know you well, and vice versa. That means when we’re ready to select our next round of Top Rated Sellers, you’ll be one of the first sellers to pop to mind.
8. Last, but not least, always be respectful, true, and professional
We value good character. In fact, we value it so much that we’ve created a set of golden rules of Gig success. Yes, you guessed it. There are only three rules, and it’s to:
We choose our Top Rated Sellers based on their ability to reflect our principles, which are creativity, independence, honesty, respect, and professionalism. Be awesome and you’ll make it to Top Rated Seller!
The post Becoming a Top Rated Seller (TRS) on Fiverr appeared first on Official Fiverr Blog.