Cancellations – why would you or your buyer need to cancel an order? Well
reasons can be long, varied and most often truly bizarre! Welcome to the World
of Five Dollar Gigs!
Effect of cancellations on your status
Well fiverr say that mutual cancellations will not affect your level status or your
general status within fiverr. However they also say that too many cancellations
can affect your levels and status. So how many is too many?
Well 100 might sound a lot but is it out of 2,000 orders? Not really, so you need
to understand that it is all relative.
So avoid them if you can and ideally always get the buyer to request a mutual
cancellation as whilst I don’t know for sure, logic would dictate that will be held
less against you than if it’s you cancelling all of the time.
The one thing I would say is that if you end up with several mutual cancellations
in a short period of time then your orders seem to slow up dramatically. So
whilst publically they state it has no impact, in reality it does seem to have an
effect on your search visibility and hence the number of orders that you get. So
do what you can to minimise them, re-‐word your gigs if people keep miss-‐
interpreting what you are offering.
You want or need to cancel the order
Typical reasons include: -‐
You could be sick/unable to physically complete the order.
The buyer has misinterpreted your gig and placed an order for something you
don’t supply. If this happens a lot consider re-‐wording your gig. I had one that
people kept ordering thinking it was a wordpress site when it wasn’t. Re-‐
wording too cancellations down to zero.
The buyer has given you incorrect info and you can’t complete the order.
The buyer is un-‐cooperative.
The buyer can’t supply what you need to process the gig in time e.g. buyer buys a
service that needs a website for you to carry out the work, yet has no website!
(Yes that’s happened to me…)
I could list endless examples some of which are so ridiculous that they are barely
believable.
The buyers wants to cancel the order
Typical reasons include: -‐
Buyer orders twice by accident
Buyer orders a service that they’ve misinterpreted
Buyer is not happy with what you’ve delivered
Buyer simply changes their mind – most often this will happen within minutes of
the order being placed.
The Problematic “Killer Cancellation”
The one thing that can effect your status is the ‘Killer cancellation’ – this is where
you can cancel the order at any time, and not mutually. In principle this sounds a
great idea and basically if things have got so bad you have no other choice you
can kill any order, but be aware it may affect your rating, including loss of levels.
Avoid them unless you absolutely have no other choice.
Brainstorming – Finding Ideas To Sell
Okay now here is the part where you will either have ideas to sell or you will
need to give your brain a nudge. I highly recommend doing this with pen and
paper.
The key thing is to remember that on fiverr, within reason, you can sell
ANYTHING.
The one thing I would say is keep an open mind, if you think of something totally
crazy to sell on fiverr then you probably have a winning gig on your hands. Mad
and crazy can sell very well. But also what sells best of all is fulfilling a need.
Avoid putting up a gig that sells something that’s just “Nice to have”. This is
because people come to buy on fiverr in general, to buy specific things.
You can look at fiverr for inspiration but the best results will be in carving out
your own niche. Why compete if you don’t have to? Unique gigs make money!
Brainstorming
First of all write down a list of things that you like doing that are task based that
you currently do, and do very well, either just for yourself or for others, be it at
home or work. The bigger the list and the more diverse the list the better for
generating those initial gig ideas.
Now I mentioned that for the long term you will sell better if you offer a family of
related products and you will get to be seen as an industry expert as well e.g. a
series of gigs all related to wordpress will generate more sales compared to lots
of totally different unrelated gigs. However, if you do not have a set expertise in
mind then you will need a diverse list of ideas to get you started, as some will fly
and do well (And be able to be developed) and some won’t.
Next put a tick or cross next to them depending on whether you like doing them
or not. You can be good at something and not like doing it. Ideally we want to
shortlist ones that you are both good at doing and like doing. An example could
be proofreading, you might be good at it but not like doing it. Or you may like
designing logos and be good at it.
Begin to eliminate the services with a cross against them.
Now to move on to the second stage. Out of the tasks that you written down, that
you are both good at carrying out and like doing, select the ones which you can
do in 10-‐15 mins. Eliminate anything that is longer than this timeframe. If you
are going to do a $5 gig then you want to do it in less than 15 mins for a good
pro-‐rata hourly rate. Doing them in the time frame suggested makes your hourly
rate $20-‐30 an hour.
Now personally I only have two gigs that take longer than 5 mins! Now that’s a
pro-‐rata rate of $60 an hour or more. Over 6 of my gigs take me under a minute
to do – and people love them.
The thing that sells best of all is knowledge – You don’t necessarily need to know
how to make anything or design anything to make a good living on fiverr. Many
people come to fiverr wanting a solution to a problem and so think about not just
what you can sell that’s task based, but also what can you sell that’s knowledge
based? E.g. You might work in a supermarket and think you have no skills. But
couldn’t you write a book on how to save money on food shopping? Keep
shopping bills lower? Coupon tricks and best times/things to buy?
This is why I said at the start that everyone has a fiverr gig in them.
The chances are you will have one or two gig ideas in mind when you first sit
down to brainstorm, ideally focus on ones that you can build in to a group of
similar products. E.g. Gig No.1 -‐ I will write your press releases for you. Gig No.2
– I will distribute your press releases for you. Gig No.3 – I will proof read your
press releases for you. You can see how one idea leads to another gig.
Just one small idea can end up turning in to a full time fiverr business, or a
serious part time income.
One very good thing to sell and that sells well on fiverr are your own eBooks – I
can probably hear some groans from existing fiverr sellers, but note I said “Your
own”. I don’t mean get hold of a load of books other people have written such as
“How to make money on e-‐bay” and try and sell the same book on fiverr as ten
thousand other people are doing.
If you’ve got a good idea then write an eBook yourself. Don’t worry if it’s short as
long as it provides the user with the solution they are after. I didn’t aim to make
this book big. Indeed I made it to do the job it was intended for and start making
you money quickly. Anyone can write and it’s said we all have an idea for a book
in us. Writing costs you nothing but time.
EBooks you’ve written yourself sell well, other ones don’t tend to. Some of the
wealthiest individuals online have made their fortune writing and selling eBooks.