53 Work At Home Online Opportunities...And other Fiverr Gigs

I'll get to the 53 Work At Home Online Opportunities element in a second.

But the thing about 'living' online is that there is so much out there that you didn't realize existed (or even realized that you ever needed!). That in itself is a charm and a curse. Is it useful? Is it relevant? Am I killing brain cells and time or am I genuinely adding value to myself?

That's the world I'm still learning to navigate as I look at earning more online income. There are a lot of good strategies out there which may have value for me in the future; there are plenty that make absolutely no sense to me at all. In the meantime, I'm having fun learning and falling at every turn.

And in my endeavors to build more in the way of income streams online, I've spent quite a bit of time on Fiverr, pitching my wares there and learning how other people are making money there. There are people pitching all kinds of services there. You need a logo? It's yours for $5 (well, $5 plus a bit of Fiverr commission). You need an article written for you? This is the place to go for the cheap and cheerful.

Make money online by being smart

The problem with the approach in many cases, though, is the extent to which you are trading time for money. If it's a gig that takes five minutes to create, then brilliant -- you've earned your $5 (minus commissions) in five minutes flat. But if you've got a gig that doesn't allow you to upsell any other service, and it's not taking just a few minutes to do, then you could be working an hour or two for $5. And that doesn't work out well in my head -- I realized that after a bit of trial and error.

It's true that different parts of the world have different costs of living and some people are actually able to make a decent living by being ultra efficient. But for someone like me with a lower work ethic than a lot of people I've got to work out whether I'm really making the most of my time online.

And then there are gigs like this 53 Work At Home Online one that fits perfectly into the model. It's created once and can be sold multiple times. You are, in reality treating Fiverr as your retail outlet. Your Amazon, if you will. Ok, you don't get the traffic in the same way, and you will have to promote and manually send out your work by yourself, but it's a great way of using the Fiverr system without spending hours upon hours in creating a service. It's an approach that I'm adopting.

At the end of the day, making money online is very much about having the right systems in place that will allow you to leverage other people's time, money, energy and platforms. It's about working smarter as well as harder. Time for me to practice what I preach.

Fiverr Review: Buy and Sell Marketplace

I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Fiverr. That's why I wanted to provide a review. 

For those that aren’t familiar with the site, Fiverr is a marketplace that links buyers looking for specific services with those willing to provide those same services. Graphics and design, online marketing, video and animation, business services and so on are all part of the mix. And all of these services are provided for $5.

Strictly speaking, you are charged a bit more than $5 (something like $5.50, I think), but the very essence of it is that if you are a buyer you can get something very cheap.

From a money-making perspective, anyone can look to sell their services on the site. If you have a talent of some sort you might have found your marketplace. You could offer to write blog comments, create a logo, do a voice over and so on.

So what do I love?

Well, as someone that has their own business interests there are a lot of things I either don’t want to do or simply can’t do. So if I want to outsource something really basic (like the design of my business cards) it’s actually pretty cheap to use someone like Fiverr.

From an income-generating perspective, you can stick some “gigs” on the site and earn money when a client wants your services. It’s that simple. You can also offer supplementary services and increase your revenue. For example, you could offer to review someone’s resume and your supplementary service could be to review their cover letter as well. You get a rating from the buyer based on the quality of your offering and speed of response. A good rating can enhance your reputation and allow you to sell more products.  

So what do I not like so much?

As you can imagine, if you’ve got a great service to offer, you may end up really underpricing yourself. Some of the services on there really don’t make sense to me. Offering to write 500-word articles for $5, for example, really does seem cheap – and particularly as you actually get closer to $4 once Fiverr takes its cut.

Admittedly, some sellers use it as a way to attract clients to other higher-price services. A "bait and switch" approach, if you will. But a lot of people on there don’t. Some are willing to work really hard for not a lot of money.

You’ve got to remember that you’re only earning (less than) $5. So if you’re putting a lot of time and energy in to complete a job, you've got to justify it to yourself somehow. If you are in a low-cost economy maybe it makes sense. For a lot of people it doesn't. In many ways the pricing structure is a race to the bottom. 

Those that do best on this site either manage to get buyers to buy plenty of supplementary gigs or have gigs that don’t require much additional work at all (e.g. I have a “white paper” on there which I simply sell to people for five bucks without doing any extra work).

Another problem as a buyer of the services is that the quality isn’t always the best. The business cards that I mentioned earlier weren’t great. The seller took ages to respond and kept on delaying. I guess he was doing dozens of others at that low price so probably wasn’t that bothered.

How have I done?

It took me a few months to see any traction at all on my two gigs. One service is related to career guidance, the other to do with personal finance coaching. To date I've made about $30. It's not a great sum but this income generator sits in the background as far as I'm concerned, particularly if I can sell more of my white paper for no extra effort. 

Admittedly, I haven’t been as active as I should in marketing the services on social media either. Still, in recent months I have seen some take up on the offerings and I look forward to this idea being a sleeper for me.