Redd: Hello and welcome to Fiverrcast, the official Fiverr podcast for sellers and by sellers. My name is Redd aka reddhorroc.Adam: And I’m Adam AKA twistedweb123. Today we’re joined by a special guest host Dan. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself Dan?Dan: Sounds good. First of all, thanks for having me guys. I’m excited to be on here. I’m originally from Denver, Colorado, born and raised. Right now I live in Winter Park, Colorado which is about an hour and a half inside the mountains, right next to the Winter Park Resort.I do a lot of snowboarding, mountain biking, spent three years in the navy when I was young, got into bartending, did that for about 10 years. That kind of got me a lot of my personal skills, communication skills, had some college and business and gotten into some sales at a corporate level and was offered to do some management. At that time, I was starting to build my Fiverr career I guess you can say and walked away from that job as they offered me a job out of state. I just walked away, started doing some part-time things and focusing on Fiverr and here I am today fulltime Fiverr-ing.Redd: So Dan, what is your specialty on Fiverr?Dan: I have a few Gigs that I really focus on. My featured Gig is radio podcast advertising which I have my own podcast and I started that just before I was introduced to Fiverr. So what I do is I offer air space, I guess ad time, on my podcast for $5 and if you have your own audio, you can send it to me and if not, then I create the audio for you.So basically people can give me their website, give me a script, whatever they want. I will create the audio, put it up on my podcast and then send them the audio. One of my other popular Gigs right now is social media marketing, so basically using my social media to get your word out there with your website. So between that independent music and podcast advertising, Fiverr definitely keeps me busy.Redd: That’s very cool. Well, our main topic today and one of the main reasons we wanted to ask Dan in is because we want to talk about how do you promote yourself off of Fiverr. I mean everyone knows there are a lot of options for you to promote internally. But Adam, what do you do to try and market yourself outside of Fiverr obviously without breaking any of Fiverr’s terms and conditions?Adam: I think this is probably one of the biggest questions that anyone – whether they’re selling or wanting to sell is always looking to ask and I think the key and the way that you need to look about doing it is to think outside the box because often people think when it – you look to promote yourself, you would go down the more obvious channels.There are so many different availabilities out there on what you can do. I wouldn’t say there’s any one set way of doing it. So what I personally like to do is actually use a tool that Fiverr provides called Fiverr Anywhere.Now Fiverr Anywhere allows you to basically generate URLs that you can share anywhere anytime to have people directly order from you. So what I personally like to do is generate these URLs and look to share them in numerous different ways across the web.Redd: So for example, where would be a good place for that? Do you look on blogs? Do you do the Google AdWords? Do you do Facebook ads?Adam: One thing that I think is fantastic now is Facebook allows you to add a call to action link at the end of your video when you upload a video to Facebook. So what I think is fantastic and anything anyone can do if they’ve already got a video for their Gig is to just upload their video that they’ve already used to Facebook and use this already-generated URL from Fiverr Anywhere and put that as the call to action link.So when people watch the video on Facebook, they are going to watch the whole Gig video, have it presented to them like it is on your Gig and right at the end is going to call you to action to purchase with a direct purchase link straight to your Fiverr page with the order form. I mean you couldn’t have it any clearer than that.Redd: When you’re doing that, are you promoting this to your friends and family? Are you trying to get on to other people’s Facebook pages? How are you getting your target audience for that?Adam: I think when you start out, it’s important to kind of test your market. So I think even writing to your friends and family on maybe a personal Facebook account is a good idea because you never know what people are actually looking for and the way Facebook works now where friends of friends can see friend’s activity and all this kind of other things, you could be writing this post. Maybe a friend might comment on it but maybe friends of that friend may see that post and before you know it, the audience you’re actually posting to are probably a lot larger than you even realize.Redd: So Dan, what do you think about this topic? What do you feel is your best avenue for marketing yourself outside of Fiverr?Dan: In addition to Facebook, I use Twitter a lot and SoundCloud. But Twitter really with using hashtags, a lot of people don’t really understand the power of the hashtag. That you add a hashtag to your Twitter post, it’s just like what Adam was talking about that not only do your friends see it or the people that are following you see it. Way more people see it because there are people that are searching for that hashtag alone.So for example, the hashtag #Fiverr, if you were to look it up on Twitter, there’s going to be a lot of people promoting their Gigs, a lot of topics about Fiverr and you can end up on that page just by using the hashtag #Fiverr and also use hashtags in your categories.Say you got logo design or for me, I’m radio podcast advertising. So I use advertising a lot, podcast advertising and being more of a niche. Sometimes that can help. So I definitely use Twitter a lot. That has helped me tremendously get a lot of extra traffic to my Fiverr Gigs.Adam: I think the great thing about Twitter as well is when you use the hashtag, there’s absolutely no bias. So when you may look to purchase advertising somewhere or depict your Gigs somewhere, you can often find that the more money or the more time you invest, the better your results show.However on Twitter, because they have the filter for the hashtag, you show by newest posted, you could literally show up on that massive hashtag that is a very popular hashtag and for that moment in time, you would be the top results.Dan: Oh, that’s right. Then with your – basically as it gains more popularity, you get more interaction, retweets and favorites through that. It will stay up there or it can make its way. It can rise up there by getting that too. The more popularity, the more it can rise at the top. So you get it out there and you’ve got a good service that people like. You never know where it can go.Adam: So it’s definitely a platform with a kind of easy entry point to it. The fact that the filters allow anyone’s tweet to show so high for that unspecified amount of time means the amount of effort you need to put in to do that is actually very quite minimal.Dan: Correct and I have tweets that I have sent out a year or two ago that still get interaction to this day. So the staying power is also there.Redd: So Dan, I know one of the other things that has had more popularity recently is Periscope. If you guys haven’t seen it yet, Periscope is a really interesting Twitter – it’s associated with Twitter I believe and it is where you can live stream what you are doing on video. And I know Dan you’ve taken to using that a little bit for marketing purposes, correct?Dan: Yeah, that’s right. It’s pretty powerful too. It’s amazing how quickly – especially if you use the location feature on there, how quickly people will all of a sudden be in your room, your video room I guess.Redd: So basically with Periscope, you will set up a broadcast and you will be basically live streaming what you’re doing and I’ve done a couple of ones where I’ve been in the studio and I’ve actualy put up – scoped what I’m doing and I have had a couple of people be interested in what I’m doing and then go ahead and looked me up on Fiverr later in placing orders.So I think with Periscope too, it’s one of those new and emerging tools that might be something worth keeping an eye on. It’s like you never really know when the next big thing is going to hit and I kind of feel like Periscope is heading that way.Dan: I completely agree and it’s taking a lot of momentum and especially recently where you’re taking about live streams. People like to watch live videos. See what you’re doing now and when you’re streaming, you will be amazed on how many people will get involved and start talking to you. Conversations, you bring up some topics. You could be creative with your marketing on there too. One thing that it does is also gets you comfortable with video and gets you comfortable being in front of people because I mean really if you’re proud of your service and you’re proud of what you’re offering, you got to be proud to get it out there as much as you can, the best way you can and the best way right now is video marketing.Adam: So I’m a little bit of a Periscope pessimist, a term I would like to coin right now. When I look at the platform, I think to myself this is a fantastic idea. I can see so much potential behind it. But why would anyone want to watch what I’m doing? Because I pretty much sit at a desk and I don’t really know what I would put out there but I can see the potential behind the platform. Is there any simple recommendation you might have that people could put out there to maybe start that train rolling?Redd: Well, the thing about Periscope is what Periscope does is it gives other people a window into your lives. You might not necessarily be wanting to show people you sitting at a desk working but if you have other things around you that are interesting, like – or – and again you have to remember that different people find different things interesting. I know there are a lot of people who do things like routinely show people their dogs and their dogs are running around and playing and all that good stuff.So maybe you’ve got a dog and maybe you’re showing your dog running around playing and then you can try and segue that into, “Well, I’m done playing with my dog and I’m going to sit down and do some work now. This is what I do for a living,” and do like a little brief spiel. It’s possible that you might be able to get audience that way or trying to work it in if you don’t have a job where you are visibly doing something interesting.It’s kind of like just mentioning it here and there. It’s kind of like any networking. You go to a networking event and you’re going to talk about things other than what you do for a living. But you’re going to try and get that in there somewhere.Dan: Yeah, it seems like it. When I use Periscope for basically today, I had a couple of hundred viewers today and all I did was one of the voiceover orders that I’ve got through Fiverr is just kind of walk the audience through how I put together a voiceover and what the process is, editing it. You know, real simple to kind of give people an idea of what I do but also you can give people that do voiceovers or want to get into the voiceover industry an idea of how to just start off and Redd, you would be much more professional at that. You’re much more – well, that’s your niche that – I use it to help promote my podcast and also promote some of the independent music artists. So I tie it all in like you said. I tie it all in to my Fiverr Gigs as well.Redd: That’s a good idea too, yeah, like video tutorials. I can see that as being a good thing on Periscope that people who are more design-oriented or like to build logos or web designers could probably do some kind of like this is how you do this and you never know. You can also – you can save your broadcasts for people to view later. So it’s possible that you could do it that way.Adam: So I imagine as well then, if you could save your broadcasts, you could use one of the hundreds of available online video download tools to extract that video and then share that in other places again like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and basically use that live video to multiple purposes.Redd: Yeah, definitely. I mean it seems like Periscope is one of those things that’s really coming along. So I think a lot of people should check that out and see how they can use that. So I briefly touched on networking at events. Do either of you two do any like in-person networking?Adam: Personally, I’ve done a couple of events orientated around Fiverr and the great thing I like to see about those types of events is mingling with people who just are so excited about the platforms. So a lot of the time I actually forget to mention what I do in the platform because I’m just so excited to hear what they’re doing on the platform.But I think especially when you look into freelancing and you look into kind of working from home. There’s a possibility that you begin to kind of seclude yourself. You may forget to go out for one day or two days and I think it’s important to go to things like events whether it’s Fiverr-based or whether it’s freelance-based or whether it’s working from home base and get out there and speak to other people to have that community around you. As you say, briefly mention the fact that you’re on Fiverr and to pitch your actual services to them as well.Redd: What about you Dan?Dan: I actually do a lot of small networking around here with some of the business owners but my town is pretty small. It’s Winter Park, Colorado. So when I go to Denver which is not too far away, when I get there, what I do mostly is a lot of flyer promotion and things like that. I’m actually looking forward to possibly hosting a Fiverr event here in Denver. We’re just trying to get some interest and if one doesn’t occur within the next year, I’m going to host one next summer for sure. So I want to do more networking events like that as everything grows and gets bigger. But as far as personal one-to-one, I do not attend a lot of events. I just kind of go around and talk to some of the business owners around town to get them introduced into what I do.Redd: I think that the Fiverr community events are definitely becoming more prevalent. I know that Fiverr hosting some – they’re putting some together themselves but they’re also asking community members to host local events. So I think that’s something – I went to an event in San Francisco that I really enjoyed. So I think that’s something to keep an eye on especially with the forums. It would probably be the best place to find out about those kinds of community events.But it’s always good to meet other people who understand the platform you work on and kind of do what you do. So I think networking events are great. You know, take a stack of business cards, interact with some different people that you might not normally meet. Things like that are great.Adam: Yeah, I think it’s important when you work online that as you said, you’ve got to remember that marketing doesn’t only have to be online. Just because your service is only online doesn’t mean that the way you want to market or channel that has to be exclusively online as well. So I think things as you say like networking, business cards, even flyers, anything along these sorts of lines, there are always people out there who are going to be interested in your service both on and offline.Dan: You might not meet them or interact with them in any other way because you would meet them online and for you to hand something to them or for them to see your face, that might be the only chance of interaction you ever have with them. So you got to take advantage of those situations as well.Adam: Well, exactly. I mean one of the services I offer is to review websites and to critique how websites work and whilst most of my traffic is generated online, I do go into local businesses and I do speak to even a couple of local design agencies to – first of all, with the local businesses. I pitch my idea to them. I pitch the service to them and I provide the business card with Fiverr.But to the local agencies, I talk to them about maybe if a kind of relationship could be formed where they outsource certain work to me possibly via Fiverr. They receive a reduced rate from what they’re going to be paying or they may not even realize it’s a service they need and I receive a steady flow of income to Fiverr that will up my feedback, up my ratings from that obviously and probably bring me even more traffic from online users then, seeing the posted ratings from that.I mean I think there’s so many things that Fiverr provides to you that if you use in the right way can really be beneficial. So another kind of example is when you are a buyer and you finished a Gig, the buyer is prompted to share their work, to say, “Hey, look what I bought.” Well, why doesn’t the seller when they finish their Gig and it’s in their live portfolio and the buyer has shared it on the platform, why not take the kind of initiative there, take what you created and share it somewhere like a social media page or on Twitter as we discussed, maybe hashtag it or market it in that way so you as well are sharing your work and you don’t just rely on the buyer to do that for you.Redd: Definitely a lot of good points. Let’s move on to our question and answers. What do we have today Adam?Adam: We have quite a few questions. I think we will start with – this one is a good one. So I will throw this to you Redd and the question is, “What is the best way to keep track of the pending deliveries and unread mails when someone has a really packed schedule with tons of orders?”Redd: Ah, yes! The wonderful, “What do I do when there’s a bunch of stuff in my queue?” question. I’ve heard of a couple of different ways that people manage it. So there are two schools of thought with this. There are the people who like to use their to-do lists and then there’s the people who like to use their Manage Sales.For me personally, I feel like the to-do list is better because what you’ve got is you will log in and you will have all of your inbox messages. So you will say have five new messages and then you will have your ratings that you need to do and then you might have your orders. So what I will always start with is I will start with my inbox messages because those have a delivery time associated with them, respond to client questions and then I will do any of my ratings and then I will work through my to-do list with my orders.If you keep on top of that, it doesn’t seem too overwhelming. The one kicker though that I’ve always had trouble with is when a client updates an order and that’s what I really focus on using my email for. So I will go into my email account and I will scroll through all of the emails I received from Fiverr, paying very, very special attention to anyone that says your client has updated your order. Those are the ones that I will take and deal with kind of separately.So it can be overwhelming and it could be hard but keeping on top of your to-do list can make your life so much easier and having a system for it. So like I said, my system is inbox messages. Deal with any ratings just to get them out of my queue and then client updates on orders and then work on orders. So putting the system together, that can really help.So our next question is from izrahyel and this is definitely a good question for Adam. I’ve designed a logo for a client and they said it was exactly what they envisioned. Now the Gig is complete. The client has changed their mind and demanded that I send them the previous design. I told them that it would cost an extra $5 which is another basic Gig but they’ve disagreed. Am I wrong for trying to protect my work? What do you think Adam?Adam: So I think there are many aspects to this scenario and how you would decide to proceed. I think the biggest factor in this question would be in what way was the order marked as complete. If the order went inactive from the buyer’s point of view and it went for over three days, and it automatically is completed and then the person came back, I would potentially be a little lenient even if they expressed that they liked the previous order just because it would probably save time and energy.However if they came back and they had already marked the Gig as complete with a feedback, under that scenario, I would definitely kind of be quite hard on the fact that it would require a new Gig because at the end of the day, the rules are quite simple. It’s one Gig based on your description of what you’re offering. So by coming back and essentially asking for a second Gig is very much the seller’s discretion of how they would look to handle that.If the buyer went inactive, I would say it’s completely down to how you want to assess the situation there and then. I would still err on wanting to charge a new Gig for it simply because I’m in charge of my own sort of timeframe and if the buyer has their timeframe, it’s their important kind of aspect to keep on top of that themselves. However, if it kind of leans toward a certain side and you look at it and think, OK, the buyer said they like it but they didn’t reply for three or four days, I would maybe look for a little bit of in-between ground there just to make it as easy as possible because you never know. That buyer may come back and place another order with you in the future for much higher than $5 but by being very stern with them in their kind of inactive situation, they may not order from you again.Redd: Definitely a good idea to try and protect your relationship with the customer.Adam: So we have one last question and this is from southwood and I think I will throw this one to Dan. The question is, “How do I send larger clips that are too big to attach such as bigger than 30 megabytes?”Dan: Excellent question of course because I have to deal with this one a lot. I got a lot of music artists that prefer to send their files in WAV other than MP3. A lot of WAV files can be a lot bigger. So the 30 megabytes wouldn’t be enough for them to send. What they do is – and what I recommend to them if they don’t already have it – you know, signed up for it is use Dropbox, if people aren’t familiar with Dropbox or MediaFire. MediaFire is another good one.But what they do is it’s free to sign up to Dropbox. You basically upload the file into Dropbox and then the file through Fiverr and they can download it as well without having to worry about going back and forth or piecing up the file or anything like that. So I definitely recommend getting involved in that especially if you have picture files, voice files, audio files, video files because sometimes that’s not enough but it’s also a little bit easier than downloading all the way from a Fiverr downloader. It’s easier to do it on Dropbox in my opinion.Adam: I think as well Dropbox has a few benefits for one – the fact like you say, you can share that URL whereas other platforms may request that you share the file with an email address which it obviously would be against Fiverr’s terms of service. So the fact that you can use that URL stays a bit inside those rules. But I think the other great thing about Dropbox as well is that it has got the integration into the Fiverr app. So you can directly draw in files from Dropbox directly from the Fiverr mobile app, easily hooked up to your account without any kind of issues with them.Redd: Well, fantastic. Well, I think that’s all we have time for today. So thanks very much listening. Thanks to Dan for joining us. You can find him on Fiverr as dtongsports. Our jingle was created by customdrumloops AKA Ryan. We were edited today by Dansha. See you next week.Transcription by transexpert
