Startup experiments on Fiverr
…or how I became a 5 dollar mentor
ATTENTION: This is the time for my second mentoring experiment : ) If you would like to join and test yourself or your idea, then try it, share it here! https://www.fiverr.com/share/gE3jyW
About a year ago, I registered on Fiverr, where you are able to sell your skills starting 5 dollars. I decided to offer my job for startups and people who had ideas, so I sent some bullet points upon their requests as a hint to proceed. Exceptional money making was not the target of course, because if I spend only one hour for one single question, it takes six-seven hours to make the average Hungarian salary (around 1000 dollars before tax). Least to say, I would have to invest four-five times more on marketing, to promote my service and have proper number of clients come and go.
So this was only an experiment.
However, I used to work with tons of Hungarian and other start-ups, entrepreneurs and think tanks from the CEE region.
But I was interested in other continent’s ideas and problems. It was also a question for me, that with my CEE knowledge, if I was able to help in global cases or not, and if the answer was yes, would there be positive outcome measure?
Hereby I report, that the answer is YES. After one year I feel, that I was successful and I gave proper advices. Working via Fiverr was not only profitable to my wallet, it was also a very good lesson for me. I gained invaluable experience and knowledge that helped me to develop my skills and approach. So it became a win-win situation both for clients and to myself.
Numbers
I had 30 requests, out of them 3 had been denied before start. I also had 54 inquires. In these cases I helped for free, because I liked the topic or I liked the personality and approach of the person.
Out of the 27 finished project, I had 14 positive feedbacks and 1 one negative. The one negative I had because of delay, but let me add, that compensating the delay, I gave my advice for free. So the feedback rate is 48.1% and considering the feedback-giving willingness in my other projects, I consider it good.
I am really pleased to have almost 100% positive feedback.
Geography and topics
“You only have to contact me and you will get the hint”. I had recurrent customers from Asia, Australia, Africa and Americas.
I had the opportunity to advise on topics I would never have in Hungary.
A medical marijuana web-shop from Texas, a mobile car mechanic service from Canada and a Snapchat based online exercise program and competition from Australia were probably the best topics to answer.
It was very interesting to see, that in absolutely different regions, with different markets, ethnics and religion, start-uppers are facing the same problems as few years ago in the CEE region.
So sometimes I could easily sold advices using prospering local solution’s motors or licenses. I just had to connect the proper entrepreneurs from here and there. For example there was a price-comparison site in Bangladesh and a social handyman recommending site in Nigeria, which I connected to relevant Hungarian sites.
I was really surprised to learn, that such a small country as Romania can be so active and not only with ideas but with “ideas making ideas”.
They came up with a useful startup idea generating e-book, which is an effective tool for future start-uppers to boost their ideas. This book combined meditation, kinesiology and other exercise therapies.
There were ideas, which could be done by anybody.
These were interesting, because these were average tools, with very effective combinations and implementations. There was a special meditation gift package for “time of the month” with essential oils, pillow, herb extracts and meditation methods.
And There were ideas, which could NOT be done by anybody.
The best of all was a virtual marine boot camp, where they would train 1800 solders for 3 million dollars (pls. note that the regular cost would be 227 million dollars). I had the opportunity to advise them on certain questions related to civil use.
Service and client side
So as I was already on Fiverr and I had some money. It was time to try out the site as a customer.
I had very nice experience in graphic design, but I only worked with those, who were top rated and also had good written references.
Let me add, that I had to check every rating, because the service in Asia is far away from the one that I am used to in Europe. Also, I had the feeling that the ratings are “generated”, because sometime I felt that they were incoherent.
The experience with the marketing and social media services were more colourful but not too successful.
I found a fantastic Facebook and Twitter community for moms being on maternity leave or a fashion blog for American teenagers. Unfortunately, after a while it turned out, that they don’t even know their target group and know nothing about the 10.000 followers they had on Twitter. For such sites I always started from 5 dollar. The results were mostly disappointing. I never had a strict agenda or a schedule on how, when and whom will they reach. The only thing I got is a confirmation that they did it and of course, when I checked my promotion tracking system, nothing has changed. Afterwards, I was always asking for a report or a screen shot about the publication or at least the text that they sent out — nobody replied.
My conclusion is that in these cases the only way you get proper service is when you are extremely prepared. Ask and describe precisely your needs, the things that you would like to see online, so it will not only generate content for them, it will be used for community building as well.
The best thing on Fiverr is the finance system. Beside of a regular credit card, I can use PayPal and Bitcoin as well. The money transfer is on hold for a certain time, so the client has the security time frame to decide, whether the service meets the expectations or not.
After all, I decided to continue the experimental activity and have more and more international challenges from all over the world. In my upcoming article I will write about the marketing and growth hacking techniques which are useful for Fiverr Gigs.
Till that, if you need quick or long term help contact me on https://www.fiverr.com/mullert
