Redd: Hello and welcome to Fiverrcast, the official Fiverr podcast for sellers, by sellers. My name is Redd also known as Reddhorrocks.Adam: And I’m Adam AKA Twistedweb123. Today we’re joined by special guest host Lonna. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself today, Lonna?Lonna: Hi guys. Thanks for having me. My name is Lonna Marie and I am a singer/songwriter based in Los Angeles. I’ve been on Fiverr for a little over three years now. I recently changed my artist name to Lola Rose but you can still find me on Fiverr as Lonna Marie.Redd: Lonna, one of the really interesting things about your story is you were the winner of The Big Hook Contest. Why don’t you tell us about The Big Hook Contest, what it was and what it meant to you to be the winner?Lonna: Oh my gosh! The Big Hook Contest, I saw that Fiverr was holding this contest and it was – basically you just submitted 30 seconds of a hook and you could write a new hook or I happen to have a hook that I really enjoyed. So I submitted that real quick.It was such an easy process and I didn’t think much of it. I mean I love Fiverr. I’ve been on it again for three years now and all of a sudden a few – it wasn’t even that long of a process but a few weeks later, I got the email and I got flown out to Nashville for four days to – and I met with industry professionals and I got to co-write and I actually got to – I was supposed to record one song there but I had the opportunity to record three which was just – the whole experience. It definitely surpassed my expectations. I was so excited to be the winner but I had no idea what Fiverr was capable of as far as just this whole experience.Redd: So do you know how many people entered this contest?Lonna: I believe it was out of 900 entries, a little over 900.Redd: Wow! That is amazing. That is absolutely incredible. Congratulations!Lonna: Thank you so much. It’s insane.Redd: So one of the things that we want to talk about today is about making money from your art and the reason why we’ve asked Lonna to come on is because she is obviously an extremely talented singer/songwriter and that’s definitely in the category more of an art than a standard producible service.So we figured it would be really cool to talk about some of the challenges, how you balance your art with your work, maintaining your artistic integrity, staying true to your heart and then also offering a commercial service for money out of it. What are your thoughts on maintaining your artistic integrity while you’re also selling a product?Lonna: So it has been an interesting journey on Fiverr. I initially started because I wanted – I spent a lot of time in New York. I did the musical theater thing and that’s when I – toward the end of that stint, I got into writing my own content for myself as an artist. So then I came over to LA and I got intrigued by jingle writing. I had never written a jingle before.So my boyfriend actually introduced me to Fiverr.com. I have no idea how he found it. He’s a tech guy though. But he said, “Give this site a try.” So I said, you know, if anything, this – I could build a portfolio here and it’s super easy to use and everything.But that’s initially how I started and it’s funny. In the beginning of my time on Fiverr when I was only allowed to make $5 is when I had interesting companies reach out to me like Tesla, which I didn’t even know who Tesla was at that time because I know nothing – again, I spent most of my life in New York. I’m from Florida but I never drove. So I didn’t have any idea what a car it was.I mean for me it was an easy transition. I wanted to try something new. I wanted to learn something new and I’m – I don’t have money to go back to any kind of school or take any kind of class and this – you know, Fiverr gave me the opportunity to start low scale, start from the bottom and just kind of feel it out and learn as I go. I feel like I learn better that way anyway.But that was the whole point was to make a little bit of income and just to try something new. Initially I was just writing jingles. I wasn’t writing songs like I write for myself or anything. But that’s where I started.Adam: So that’s quite interesting then where obviously things like songwriting can be quite a personal thing, quite a personal artistic kind of entry. So it’s quite interesting that rather than take that literal thing that you highly regard as your own art, rather than take that literal service of writing these personal songs for other people, instead you took the skill set that you had from that and kind of transitioned it into something that maybe wasn’t as closely related to being so personal to you.So you could take the skills that you had from being a singer/songwriter and kind of transition them into a more business-orientated but focused product.Lonna: Exactly. Yeah, and I mean as far as – I wasn’t even sure how to make that transition into creating actual musical content that’s for personal or commercial use that was song-based.Adam: I can see a lot of benefits to that though because I mean it also allows you to step back a little bit. So for example, if you offered songwriting from the get-go and let’s say you received a criticism or ways on how to improve it, because you’re so close to the service that you’re offering, you may kind of think, “Oh, someone doesn’t like my song. I put so much effort and soul and feeling into producing that for them,” whereas instead you’re saying, “I’m offering a new service based on this,” and you’re kind of learning the way to go and you’re kind of molding with how the buyer requests it. If there are any changes or amendments or anything that you’re not so used to, it’s not so close to home when you’re looking at turning that into a service.Lonna: Yes, that’s an interesting point and when I couldn’t write for myself, I kind of had – I went through writer’s block when I first kind of signed up for Fiverr, which is why I started with the jingles and what not. But when I couldn’t write for myself, it totally took the pressure off of me when I started offering – writing songs for people. It took the pressure off myself and I could just be creative and luckily, in the beginning – well, and even until this day, I mean I get nothing but great feedback from my clients.I didn’t realize what I was writing at the time. Somebody approached me and they wanted a song, a full song, two, three-minute song for their cat that passed away. Lucus, and they sent me pictures of the cat and I was like, “Oh gosh, this is a thing. This is what I’m doing right now.”It turned out to be a beautiful song and even – and I – it wasn’t even something like oh, I will just throw this away. This is just for – this client, they need this. But I really loved this song and yes, it was about a dead cat. But just pulling myself out of my head, I’ve – I’ve been able to just open up my mind not only for Fiverr but even for myself. So once I started offering full songs, it was the best decision I ever made.Redd: So do you ever find like when you’ve written a song, like that particular song or any others, where you write it, you send it to the client and then you’re kind of like, “Oh man, I wish I kept that one”?Lonna: All the time. It’s really funny and if there’s one – because usually, I will get a really nice melody and I will be so mad. I’m like, “How did this happen just now when I’m trying to write someone else’s song?” If I really just fall in love with it and I cannot let it go, I will start over and I will keep that for myself. Not so much the content obviously but the melody I will stash away and I will save that for a rainy day.But there have been a few things but sometimes if it works, if I feel really strongly and it just really works for this client, the thing with me is that you can kind of – you can – I can adapt something similar to that feeling if I really wanted it. But yeah, I mean it – that has been coming up recently, being attached to these melodies or the content. So that has been interesting.Adam: So talking about the kind of melodies and the content and producing something that you kind of end up loving, at the moment then, do you offer the copyrights and the – like the commercial aspect split from your basic service? So if someone orders your Gig and you produce a song you absolutely love, do you retain those copyrights to kind of give you those options as well?Lonna: I offer copyrights for everything. So if the clients – usually that all happens before – it’s usually not added on at the end. I try to make a point to – to have them purchase that right away. Again if I know that they have purchased the copyrights, then I will start from scratch.Again, this doesn’t happen often that I am so attached, that I can’t let go. But when it does, if they’ve ordered the copyrights, then yeah, I’m either going to give it to them or I’m just going to scratch and I’m going to create something even better for them.Adam: Because one thing I’ve seen from a few artists especially when it comes to things like music is they will offer the copyrights as an extra and if the extra isn’t purchased and the person really loves the song and they think they produced a great song, the music creator themselves, the seller themselves, will actually take that song and put it somewhere like YouTube to potentially monetize it or even just to release it on to YouTube in that way just to utilize the song in kind of that scenario.So you’re both utilizing for the person but also as a commercial entity inside your portfolio or however – which way you want to use it. But you get the best of both worlds and then in the future where if the buyer does come back and purchase the copyrights – because they’re set at a price you’ve predetermined. The video is usually then brought down until that sort of time.Lonna: If for some reason I needed that melody or I needed that content, I would reach out whether they – I mean if they didn’t buy the copyrights, I would reach out to them and you can just feel out that situation. But as of the three years being active on Fiverr, I haven’t had a need to touch any of the deliverables.Adam: I asked because there was a recent – I think it was not this year but the year before. There was a very famous Christmas advert in the UK which was a John Lewis advert which may have made it over to the States and it was about a bear going into hibernation. But an artist called Lily Allen covered a song specifically for the advert and the advert went on to be massively viral with millions of hits.But she also took that song and uploaded it to her own musical channels even though the song was commissioned for the specific advert. It wasn’t one from her collection or anything in that way. So it was commissioned for the advert but then she used it as a separate entity as well.Lonna: Yeah, that’s tricky. I mean that all goes into the – that has to do with the contract and what they figured out if she were allowed to do that too. Did she get into any trouble or was that just something that happened?Adam: No, it was just something that happened. I think she also released it on like iTunes and stuff and it ended up going into the charts from that. So I imagine in that scenario, the copyright in whatever way was kind of retained in the scenario where if a buyer purchases a song from you and doesn’t use the copyright, if you wanted to, you also have the ability to come and take that avenue with your art as well.Lonna: Absolutely. Yeah, that would be an option.Adam: So talking about – you mentioned you have your – you’ve changed your name to kind of differentiate yourself from you yourself as an artist than you yourself offering a service on Fiverr. When you were under the same name, was there anything that you kind of had rules about, that you wouldn’t do or you restricted yourself because you were worried it would compromise your artistic integrity or maybe affect you down the line? So if we’re talking about maybe if you were doing funny parody songs that weren’t in line with the sort of songwriter you wanted to be, were you kind of cautious that would affect you in the future if you released a lovely kind of ballad hit and then someone dug up a funny parody you did 10 years prior?Lonna: Yes. I have done very silly things that clients have posted on YouTube and it’s not even so much the parodies. Like all of those are a good fun and again you have the ability to screen all your projects. So you don’t have to accept certain things. But I do always ask. What are you going to do with this? Is this being released on iTunes? Are you uploading it on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera?But the most problems I’ve run into and of course I’ve learned the hard way, when I was offering to record hooks and like EDM and hip-hop hooks. Well, one day, I was Googling my name and just – because with Fiverr, there’s a lot – you never know sometimes. You forget about …Adam: We’ve all done it. We’ve all Googled our name. Don’t worry about saying that. We’ve all done it.Redd: I have a Google Alert. I understand. It’s OK.Lonna: Oh my gosh! See, I…. But it’s always interesting to – you forget some things that you do and what not. But I found when I – actually I went on iTunes and I looked up my name and there was this hook that I did maybe a year ago at the time I looked it up and it wasn’t – I didn’t realize what the content was at the time. This was me – I was very new to doing hooks with other artists because that’s an artist coming to an artist now.So you know that this is going to be released material at some point. You understand what’s happening but I guess I didn’t really look through the content of the song as much as I should have. So my name was attached to the song and it was – I was singing about morning wood and I didn’t think anything of it at the time.So I found this song with my name attached to it and it’s me singing this morning wood song or hook, whatever, and that’s when I went, “OK. I have a problem,” because it is super hard to get things off of iTunes. It’s not an easy process. So I’ve had to do that twice of reaching out to clients and saying, “Oh, not going to happen. You cannot and you didn’t tell me that you were going to do that.”But that’s me just having to – to just look ahead and just know what’s coming. But yeah, so I have a better screening process now.Adam: So if you could kind of go back to that time, your advice for others in that situation would be to kind of keep a handle on – make sure you know what your content is being used for if you want to – if you’re very wary of your personal brand or your own aspirations based on that.Lonna: Absolutely, yeah.Redd: I think we all kind of go through that too sometimes. I mean I know there have been times when I’ve done voiceovers and they seem like really, really innocuous and then I will think of them in broader terms and be like, “Hmm, this could go one of two ways and I’m OK if it goes this way, but not if it goes this way.”I think it’s really good to have kind of a set of like rules and guidelines for yourself and especially if you can intimate those to your clients. Like, I have a few rules. Like, I don’t do adult content. I don’t do anything with racial slurs, all of that kind of stuff, because my basic rule is like if I – if I would be uncomfortable with someone knowing that that was me, I don’t record it.I think a lot of it is kind of like taking the time to sort of set yourself a guideline and then sticking to it and knowing that nine times out of ten, if you go back to a client and say that you’re not comfortable with a content, they’re going to completely understand.Adam: I don’t think that it always comes down to necessarily having uncomfortable content in that regards. I think it also comes down to how you see or wish to brand yourself in the future where say for example if you wanted to be a country musician and everyone always asks you to do country songs, every single song that you’re recording could in fact impede on the songs that you yourself wish to record and release under your own artistry from that.So I think the negative side of trying to avoid your name being associated with something but there’s also the case of if you’re an illustrator and you want to sell custom handmade Star Wars drawings as a really random example, but everyone was asking you to do Star Wars drawings, you’re diluting your own brand by doing what you want to do for other people.Redd: Is that diluting your brand or is that just creating more content for – like creating a stronger portfolio that way? I mean if that’s what you want to do …Adam: You could say if Monet went around and drew lots of lily pictures or paintings before he went ahead and did his own piece. While he has the practice and the portfolio to go ahead and build up to his own piece, he’s massively taken away from his own painting and his own art by doing that prior for other people under a different circumstance.Lonna: Yeah, that’s tricky. I mean I feel like even just – it even just depends on what world we live in now. It’s hard for me – when I think of – it’s funny. When I talk to a potential – like a publishing company or a – when I tell them that I’m on Fiverr and this is what I do, they look at me like I am crazy because if I ever wanted a publishing deal, technically in that contract, if Sony wanted to give me a publishing contract, I wouldn’t be allowed to write any content outside of this contract.So everything that I do on Fiverr would belong to Sony, i.e. I cannot deliver on Fiverr.Adam: That even breaks down to things like American Idol where when you apply for shows like American Idol, they ask you what kind of presence you have at the moment because if you’ve got a large internet presence or a large following, they actually ask you to suspend or pull down those videos to try and keep a level playing field.So you have to kind of – I know it’s a different scenario if we’re going into that route. But you have to kind of be wary of what you’re bringing to the table beforehand to make sure that you don’t impede your own career path.Lonna: Absolutely.Adam: That’s why I love the fact that you started the jingles because it isn’t necessarily something that you saw as being your own dream goal overall. But it was something that you had the experience and the skill set to do coming from the skill – you know, the singing and the songwriting that you love.Lonna: Right.Adam: So you don’t – overall, you don’t want to be potentially a professional jingle writer as your main dream. You may want to be a professional singer/songwriter but you have the ability to kind of split the two and do them both as individual items without affecting each other.Lonna: Right. If anything, it benefits the other because I just feel like – so with the jingle writing and with the songwriting for other clients, it has been so much easier to be creative and to take – to even take myself out of my own music and my own head to write for me and to write for whoever else.Yeah, I mean you have to be wary of where this content is going and who it is for and what it is for. But as long as you can have some kind of grasp on that, I mean if anything, I think it’s a benefit.Adam: Yeah, I think in the same way they deviated enough to not impede each other but they complement each other well enough as well where success in one can help reflect that in the other. So you kind of – you’ve got the perfect kind of skill set there where it transcends across different services and then it allows you to go further.So I mean being on Fiverr is an example. I’m sure you’ve seen the ability to expand your skill set as well away from just the singing/songwriting traditional aspect. So you may think about things like the editing side of it.Lonna: Right. And every year, I try to add on something new to my profile and actually just the other day, I added on vocal coaching and even just – I’ve never taught voice. But I could – but I have somewhat coached. So – and even just getting – just gaining that experience on Fiverr low scale with – I’m obviously not going to work with someone very advanced. I would probably shoot for more of a beginner client. But yeah, I mean just expanding what – your skill set really.Adam: Yeah, it also gives you either a secondary revenue stream or something to fall back on as well. So where for example let’s say you’re a singer/songwriter and you started on Fiverr. You then deviated to other services like vocal coaching and then you got signed to somewhere like Sony. You had to give up offering the singing/songwriting on Fiverr. Well, there’s nothing to say that when, you know, the – Sony career is over, when you’ve done that career, you then go back to something like the vocal coaching that you’ve been able to pick up along the road.Lonna: That’s so true and I didn’t even think about that. Yeah. That’s completely true.Redd: So one of my other questions for you is when you’re looking at – so you have an opportunity basically as a songwriter to eventually – or even now have quite a lucrative career. I mean a lot of times with songs, you could definitely be making a significant more amount of money than five dollars.So when clients come to you and if they have something that you know they are going to use for a more commercial product, even – although of course we always have the commercial use extra. Do you ever factor that into your pricing when you give them quotes?Lonna: To be honest, I don’t. I have a pretty fair playing field and again if it’s an artist coming to me – recently I’ve been having artists who – I guess they don’t song write. So they want me to write them a song. So I will kind of feel them out. I will look up their links. I will see who they are, what their projection is and just what their overall message is.But I don’t base my prices off of that. I kind of just – whatever the song would be worth and again, even year by year, my prices adjust depending on who’s bent – depending on the clientele who are coming to me and it’s – I’m constantly adjusting to my surroundings really. But I do not – unless it’s – if Tesla ever comes back to me and says, “Hey, can we get that $5 jingle again?” I will probably make it a little more than $5.Redd: Like a car. They could give you a …Lonna: Could I just drive one of your cars? But no, I don’t base it off of how big, how small, how – who, what, where. No.Adam: I think from the external out view, people would have seen that the bigger the company, the more they would be charged for something. But in terms of the reality, it often doesn’t go down that way. So I mean if you look at – there’s a famous story about Nike when they had their – the logo they still use to this day. When they had the first logo design, they weren’t a very big company but they had a lot of aspirations. They ended up paying the designer $35 for that logo, which was even cheap then for a logo design.They’re not a multimillion if not billion dollar company and when that story came out, a lot of people kind of said, “Well, why didn’t the logo designer charge more having seen that or why hasn’t Nike gone ahead and paid more for their logo? They’re such a big company.”I mean the resolution to that story was Nike actually went back and gave the original designer more money because it picked up so much publicity. But in general – I mean I’m the same – I don’t really do art-based services but I’m the same where for me it doesn’t really matter who the client is. I have my own set pricing structure and I’m happy with my rates. So it doesn’t matter who you are. It’s still the same kind of rates.In the same way, I wouldn’t charge someone cheaper if they had a different scenario to someone who was cheaper than my standard payment plan.Redd: Exactly.Adam: So if my standard Gig for businesses is $100, if I – a person said to me, “Hey, can you do a personal one for $10?” I wouldn’t do reduce in that scenario. So I wouldn’t increase in the flip of that.Redd: Exactly. I do the same thing and there are a lot of times where someone will come to me and they will give me kind of their story as to why they would really like me to reduce their price. The thing that I say is like to be fair to all of my clients, I have to set standard pricing.I think it’s one of the best things about Fiverr. It’s not just about sellers having an even playing field. It’s about the buyers having an even playing field too.Adam: Well, could you imagine if for example Tesla in that regard, you had Elon Musk there and you had one of his friends and one of his friends said, “Oh, I just went on Fiverr and bought a logo. I spent $100 on it,” and Tesla would go, “We could do a new logo.” They go to the same designer who’s recommended and they turn around and say, “That would be $2000 please.”Redd: It’s just not good business practice.Adam: No. I mean you don’t know where referrals are coming from. You don’t know how things are interlinking and by not having a set rate, I mean Tesla may come back in the future to say, “Can I have this logo please?” and you say, “That’s $3000 this time,” and then in the future may think, “I need another logo.” They think, “Well, how much is it going to be? I have no idea.” It’s not as clear in that way if you’re deviating pricing based on not the requirements but the clients.Lonna: Right. I also feel like – I mean especially when I was first starting out. I feel like even just creating these relationships and I know that maybe sounds naïve and optimistic. But even just creating these relationships with these big, small, medium brands, they’re going to come back and in my experience, they do come back.Adam: Yeah, that was the main reason for me signing up to Fiverr because when I first signed up, most – it was only a $5 site. There were no extras. There were no levels. There were no top-rated sellers, nothing like this at all. The main reason I signed up because a lot of people kind of said to me, “Well, $75 of time. You’re a web designer by trade. Is that really worth your time?” I said, “Well, the true value in that $5 isn’t the literal $5. It’s the network and opportunities that I have.”As the platform has expanded and you can accept more money on site and clients themselves have grown into their business, I still have people that I worked with five years ago who come back to me and we’re not doing $5 Gigs anymore. I built up that pattern in the same way where you may work with someone on a $5 Gig and they may be in a boardroom somewhere and they’re brainstorming a new product somewhere and your name comes up and because they’ve had a good kind of service with you previously, you’ve got that network or that relationship to work on that.So I think there’s a lot of power and also a lot of potential in not just the literal money that you’re receiving but the ability to have as an artist to build up your portfolio, create these relationships with other people and expand your self as an artist by learning from what you’re doing.Lonna: Yeah, I completely agree.Redd: Definitely. Well, that’s about all we have time for today. So thank you so much to Lonna for joining us. You can find her on Fiverr as LonnaMarie. Our jingle was made by Customdrumloops and we were edited by Dansha. Thanks so much and we will see you next week.Transcription by Prexie, aka Trans-Expert.
