After a few months of selling my services I wanted to share my latest numbers on where I’m currently at as well as some lessons learned.
Let me start with the good news. After a few short months, my total earnings after all the fees have been paid out is $1397. One change I made was raising my base prices on various of my gigs. That raised my average selling price up to $33.28. The $5 price point is good to get visibility on your gigs but when you get 3 or 4 of those in a row it can be a lot of work for only $20 bucks.
In this time, I have had a total of 55 orders which has been a solid workload for a solid side hustle. However, there was a lesson learned and a reminder when using another companies’ platform.
I had a customer purchase a $5 gig for a design but gave no input into the look that they were going for. I went ahead and gave them a couple of rough designs letting them know I was trying to figure out the direction for what they were looking for. They came back with a “go back to the drawing board” response but again no guidance. Gave them a couple other ideas and on one they said yes this is the direction. I thought great now we can start to narrow this down. Gave them another revision awaiting feedback, but they accepted the order and closed the sale. I was surprised but from time to time that does happen, so I did not think much of it. Well within the hour I realized I had received a 1-star review. Not only that they reported me to Fiverr and canceled the order receiving a full refund. The worst part was what they said in the review stating something to the effect that I was stealing images or clip art which is false. So, to recap this one $5 order had now done the following:
· 1 Star Review
· Fiverr flagged my account with a strike due to the canceled order
· Accused me of not designing my own designs for all future potential clients to see
· They got the design for free
I reached out to Fiverr to discuss the review. I felt leaving a 1-star for not liking the work is fine everyone has a right to their opinion but to accuse me or try to hurt my reputation by making false allegations should not be allowed. Each person I spoke with on the Fiverr support ladder agreed with me but said there was nothing they could do, and their hands were tied. Well, this buyer got what he wanted because I began noticing my requests and order trickle down. Even though every single order I have has always been a 5-star review this 1-Star hurt but I feel it was more the comments of the review that hurt my reputation.
This reminded me once again that anytime we are using a platform like Fiverr, eBay, or Amazon we are playing in their sandbox. They could make a policy change that greatly affects your business and, in most cases, will always rule in favor of the buyer whether they are right or wrong. It is important to think of ways to start our own platform as soon as we can understanding that these platforms do gives us great opportunities due to the traffic, they bring in. As a mentor once told me back when I was first starting out in eBay, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. That is why I encourage you to have multiple side hustles going just in case one runs dry it will not be the end of your business.
