Charging $5 for almost a year

Hello and welcome to another edition of the MabsArts blog. Today I will be sharing my experience with you on how I became a seller on Fiverr, made a killing (for a while) and then almost got killed (not really) by a Hurricane. Let’s dive right in…

This blogpost is part of a series.

Part1: From Game Development to Art

Part2: Making my First Bucks Online

Part3: The Behemoth Forum…

Part4: Charging $5 for a year

Part5: Making $1,000 on Fiverr

Part6: The First Fall

Part7: The Girl that took the money

Part8:

Part:9

Part10:

Part11:

Part12:

 

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Fiverr.com as you may know is a freelancing and gig services platform that allows you to charge anywhere from $5 to $1,000’s of dollars for your professional or amateur services. Set up a gig and if someone likes it and wants to buy, ca-ching. You got your first sale.

Now, back then Fiverr wasn’t the amazing marketplace platform that it is now. Don’t take me wrong, it was very advance by the year’s standards, but it was still a $5 only platform. You would find all sorts of people offering anything from an illustrated cartoon, to a full on website design for just $5 (most of these people were from third-world countries), there were ways to get around the $5 only rule, like charging an extra $5 for coloring, or suggesting people leave a tip, but in general $5 was all you could make from any order.

At around 14years old, with no expenses, living with my parents and literally no responsibilities, other than get good grades and clean my room. $5 was a lot of money for someone in my position. I clicked join, set-up my gig and within the first couple of days I had my first order

It was something crazy, something like draw a Pinball Wizard, and I did just that. I drew my guy, contacted the buyer, showed them the sketch, colored it and sent it off for their approval. They loved it!

The neat thing about the Fiverr platform is that it’s based mostly on merits. Meaning, if you got good scores, good reviews and good pageviews you’ll be higher up on the search results, meaning more people will be able to see your gig, which translate into more sales.

That first review, turned into a second review, and that second review turned into a third and fourth review, at the beginning of the first year, I think I had made around $60 in 2 months, just from Fiverr Orders. Meaning that in 2 months I had gotten 12 unique orders for my art. These ranged from full color character illustrations to illustration with backgrounds and everything in between. The second year it exploded, i think I cleared around $300 in a year, doing over 5 orders a month. Steadily building my customer reviews and gaining even more traction on the platform as I continued.

By the third year, I was making a substantial amount of income. Enough for a very happy 16 year old to start spending on things. I bought my first computer, got my first tattoo (yes, at the age of 16) and even purchased a swimming pool (one of those big rubber ones with the self-cleaning motor) for my mom to practice her Aqua-Aerobics in.

I was feeling happy and proud with my work thus far, but this was just the beginning of what would be some very wonderful years on Fiverr.