Redd: Hello and welcome to Fiverrcast, the official Fiverr podcast for sellers by sellers. My name is Redd and you can find me on Fiverr as Reddhorrocks.Adam: And I’m Adam and you can find me as Twistedweb123. We’re joined today by Stephanie aka Zurichexpat. Welcome to the show Stephanie.Stephanie: Hi guys. Thanks Adam.Adam: So tell us a little bit about yourself.Stephanie: My name is Stephanie, also known as “Zurichexpat”. I am an American expat living in Switzerland. My husband and I moved here almost five years ago with our children and we’ve been here for – we’re here for the long haul. We’ve moved here permanently and in our spare time, we like to go hiking or skiing, weather permitting. On Fiverr, I’m a seller. I used to be a buyer. Well, I still am a buyer but transitioned into selling and I build websites, primarily of using the platform Squarespace.Redd: So Stephanie, one of the things that we wanted to bring you in today to chat about was you’re one of those people who made a really solid transition initially from being a buyer on Fiverr to becoming a seller which is a really awesome – it’s a really awesome thing to do. It’s something that happened with me too though definitely not to the involvement that you did because my first experience on Fiverr was as a buyer. But for you, you’re like a solid, solid Fiverr buyer. So tell us a little bit about being a buyer and then becoming a seller and how that all happened for you.Stephanie: Well, I was introduced by Fiverr or to Fiverr by a friend because I was working on a project for an organization I volunteered for. I was building a website for them and I was stuck with some coding issues. Well, actually with a lot of issues and this friend said – suggested that I look up Fiverr. She was quite familiar with it because she was starting a business herself and I did and one of the first Gigs I came across was “Twistedweb123” and I placed a couple of orders and was so impressed with the customer service, the professionalism.My questions were answered and for five dollars. It was incredible. I was hooked and from that point, it just – I found almost everything to buy. I had Elmo sing Happy Birthday to my niece. I’ve had a cellist play a song by request. So it has been a great experience as a buyer and a seller.Adam: Can I say I didn’t pay her to say any of those nice things?Stephanie: I held back.Adam: So you say that you use Fiverr as a buyer for both professional and also personal kind of items.Stephanie: That’s correct.Adam: Were you kind of leaning towards more in a scenario or is it just a case of whenever you think of something, you first think, “Well, can I use Fiverr for this?”Stephanie: Well, primarily I use it for business purposes. I mean that’s what brought me to Fiverr and – but because of the people I’ve met on Fiverr and because of the depth of services offered, the breadth of services offered, it’s just so easy when I have a gift I need to buy or I want to personalize something to just go to Fiverr. So I do turn to Fiverr to buy for personal things and for business, probably equally.Adam: So you were buying on Fiverr for quite some time until you actually made the transition to seller. You interacted and engaged with a lot of sellers before you became one. Did that interaction kind of shape or mold the kind of seller you thought you had to be when you decided to make that leap?Stephanie: Absolutely. It also helped me make that leap. So I interacted with so many people that I was just impressed by how they handled their business and the fact that they were working for themselves and they were just all very passionate about what they were doing and it was something I wanted to be a part of. I could see that sense of community and I just really enjoyed acting, interacting with these people.Redd: I’m sure too that because you already had so much familiarity with the site from being a buyer for so long, like you kind of – you understand how it works. You understand kind of the way that orders flow, things like that. So I bet you kind of felt a little bit like it wasn’t a complete blind jump. You had a little bit of a transition into it.Stephanie: Absolutely. I also had good examples, how we work and how to get things done and most of the sellers are very quick to deliver, which is something I try to do as a seller, which is also I would say might be one of my challenges because I know I have so much time to do it but I always want to do it right away.Redd: Yeah, I think it’s the same for me. I’m very much a – I’m a list person. I love lists and I love marking things off lists, so for me like I like to deliver orders because I like my list to be shorter, little things like that.Adam: So Redd, you say being on Fiverr beforehand gives you a nice kind of leap into becoming a seller. But I’ve got to say I don’t buy that regularly on Fiverr. But when I do, I find it like a whole new world because I spend so often selling and all the selling pages, like the Manage Sales tab, the Analytics tab, et cetera. I kind of forget about the buying side. So when I come across the shopping page, each time I’m kind of like, “Oh wow!” So getting kind of like how things worked. So for me when I go to buying, it actually took me quite a while to kind of adapt into the different flow. It was almost like a completely different side to the site when I kind of jumped into that.Redd: It’s just how the systems works. Like you know you place an order. You know that order gets delivered and you have a delivery page and you know that there are reviews and it’s – it’s not like a complete example but it means that at least you have an idea of the way the order of things – it’s not like completely new.Adam: Yeah, that’s true I guess. The fundamentals of the site are the same so you’re still kind of using the same functions and the same like system, et cetera, to send messages or to receive messages, to send custom offers, et cetera and engage with your orders.Redd: And you’re really familiar with all of the green.Adam: But from a seller’s point of view, when you originally made that transition, it must have been really interesting to how you communicated with sellers beforehand and then actually becoming a seller and seeing the tools available to you to kind of have that communication. So things such as sending custom quotes or extras for example inside orders, knowing as a seller or even as a buyer that you can now say to a seller, “Hey, I forgot to add this on. Could you do me a custom quote inside this order to add these details on?”Stephanie: Now I mean buying is really easy on Fiverr. I like the way the system is set up and selling is also really easy. I mean you have all these tools like you said to have custom offers or to add extra Gigs or to accommodate the fact that you may have forgotten to add something. There’s the flexibility and I think that really helps you engage with your buyers. It makes it more personal and it’s not rigid at all and it has been a really good experience.Adam: Because what I love about selling and buying on Fiverr is it gives you the whole picture of everything going on. So when you’re in a buyer’s position, you kind of know what the seller can do in regards to what’s available to them tools-wise, system-wise and everything else. In the same way with the selling side, you know how the buyer goes through the system. So you know how they do it and I find that being a buyer and a seller, they both complement each other.Stephanie: I definitely agree.Adam: So when you first created your Gig, what was the Gig you first created when you decided to become a seller?Stephanie: It was to build websites on Squarespace. Squarespace was something I was very familiar with. My background, I used to work when I was in the States. I worked with content management systems, not Squarespace specifically, but Squarespace was something I enjoyed doing and I was doing it for friends for free and yeah, so that was the first Gig. I actually used someone on Fiverr, “David388,” to write my first Gig.Adam: So when you created that Gig, you say you were on Fiverr for about a year before you started selling. What kind of made you take that jump and what was holding you back beforehand?Stephanie: What was holding me back was just utter fear. I was terrified of making that leap of maybe disappointing buyers, of not being able to sell and I was just I think really afraid of not succeeding. But what made me make the jump was interacting with people like you, with David, and Josh, so many people on Fiverr that are really encouraging. I could tell they were enjoying what they were doing and so I decided to go for it.Adam: To give a bit of a back story here, you are my biggest buyer. In terms of amount of Gigs ordered, you have ordered the most Gigs from me out of any of my buyers and you always order or most of the time you will order the “answer questions” Gig. It’s normally about coding or really anything in general. I remember when you were thinking about taking that leap, either maybe a couple of months beforehand, you were ordering my Gig to kind of ask questions and advice on how you should do it or what sort of way you should set up your Gig or is the service that you could offer really viable as being a service. So really you preplanned quite a lot of taking that jump. You used the resources that are available to you of the previous sellers that you had worked with to kind of use them as a shoulder to gain that advice and that information.Stephanie: No, the Fiverr community is super supportive. I mean there are just some really helpful people out there and they want to help you. I do spend a lot of time thinking about this, planning it, and yeah, I would have to say that I found the support on Fiverr incredible.Adam: I think that’s a really, really interesting way of going about becoming a seller when you’ve been a buyer where you’ve purchased from numerous people before and then you’re going back to those people whether it’s as a standalone order or as a question on another order entirely where you then ask them advice on making that transition and just gaining more knowledge about the system by going back to them. I think that’s a really good way to kind of further your relationships with those sellers but also further your knowledge on the subject as well.Stephanie: And even now as a seller, I may not place as many orders but I definitely refer. So I have this team of people that I like working with on Fiverr that I trust, that I have this rapport with and so when clients need certain things that I can’t do for them whether it’s graphics, content, coding, then I send them – or logos. I send them to the people that I trust and I’ve worked with on Fiverr.Redd: It’s really awesome because I love how like – you do the thing where you’re kind of almost paying forward. It’s like you’re taking the fact that you have these wonderful experiences with other sellers and you’re translating them into other people having wonderful experiences with other sellers. That’s really awesome. That’s a lot of good stuff putting out into the universe.Adam: So your web development Gig at the moment, it’s on Squarespace. Now I imagine that can be quite time-consuming because it could be as simple as a one-page website or full-blown website with multiple pages and different features going on. Is this a Gig that you do kind of fulltime or is it something you do on the side at the moment?Stephanie: I do it on the side at the moment. I mean I started doing it – one of the other reasons I became a seller was because living here in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and not speaking German, when we first moved here, it was really hard to get a job. I am a fulltime mom. I take care of my kids and so they’re my priority. So I needed to find something or was happy to find something that was flexible. So it is a side Gig. I do it when I can. I do work seven days a week because I enjoy it but it’s always in spurts.Redd: So with you being on the site all the time and with you also kind of being a stay-at-home mom, I’m sure it’s – it’s kind of nice to have the adult interaction that comes from Fiverr. Do you spend much time on the community? Have you ever checked out the forums or the blog or anything like that?Stephanie: When I have issues or I’m not sure how to handle something, yeah, I will go to the forum and I will look for answers. I have found the answers and then of course I lose like an hour reading through different responses. So I have checked out the forums. I haven’t been too active in replying. I think I tend to like to be on the sidelines looking more than being out there. But I have used them and I find them very helpful.Adam: So I know from firsthand experience as well because we have a work relationship which I think actually goes beyond work as well. We often talk about our personal lives together, which had been going on for a few years now. I think it’s also testament that not only is the forum available but again coming back to those sellers you’ve worked with previously, you can kind of use them as a resource and ask questions because those relationships have been established over that period of time.Stephanie: That’s true. I like to encourage my friends here that – you know, have these skills. There are a lot of expats here that can’t work because of the language barrier or permit reasons that they check out Fiverr because there’s a lot of great people here with amazing skills, artists, graphic illustration, writing and no, I think it’s a way like Redd mentioned to also interact. There’s a network. You can network and it’s nice to talk to other adults. It’s like I’m your kid.Adam: One thing that I think is really cool as well is Fiverr gives you the opportunity to hone your skills. So I know that you’ve been doing Squarespace websites for a while. But I know that when you come across a problem, you will often reach out to sellers who offer the solution or fix for it and not only do you receive the fix but often you will receive an explanation or some kind of information about that. So that’s an information skill. You can then take from them and move that into your own business.Stephanie: That’s true. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve acquired my coding. You would be proud Adam.Adam: Well, I remember when we first started working together, a lot of the kind of jobs between us were a case of understanding kind of simple HTML coding and stuff along those lines. But over the years we’ve progressed where you now kind of come to me and say, “Right, I’ve done this. I’ve done this. I’ve done that already. But I need help with this bit.” So we can actively see the knowledge progressed from that all from doing the work more frequently and on Fiverr as well.Stephanie: I think that has come from being a seller. I mean wanting to improve your skills or hone your skills and I think the more orders you take, there are different orders, big orders, small orders, some more complex than others. I’m constantly learning and that’s another thing – that’s another aspect of selling that I think is really exciting and fun is growing as a seller or as a business owner. I mean it is your own business and I think that yeah, there’s a lot of growing and skills that you can learn from it.Redd: You can definitely get to a point where you’re learning new things, you’re expanding your skill set and then it enables you to even expand the variety of things that you offer. Like you can start doing different things within the same genre. It’s like there’s a whole world of Gigs out there that you get to learn how to do.Stephanie: Well, I added another Gig creating video tutorials for Squarespace. So I had a lot of clients that obviously wanted to be self-sufficient with their websites that needed a little extra help and so that was born out of that necessity. So I created a Gig where I create video tutorials showing them how to do something at Squarespace but that was also something Adam showed me how to do because that’s something Adam offers with his.Redd: So basically you came all the way full circle.Stephanie: Exactly.Adam: So you mentioned at the moment Fiverr is your side Gig and you’re slowly expanded by offering your new service which I’m quite happy that you got the kind of idea from me for that. That’s great to see. Are there any plans in the future to kind of expand that into more of a fulltime occupation or to make that your fulltime job maybe when the kids are older or you’ve got more time available?Stephanie: Yeah, I think once I – I mean the more time I have to spend on Fiverr, I do. So if I had more time, I would spend more time working. So yeah, I could definitely see this moving into a fulltime Gig eventually when the kids get older, when they go off to school and now I’m excited about having that and being able to use that.Adam: We actually did a show recently where we talked about stay-at-home parents and working on Fiverr and one of the really great positive elements that came out of it was the ability that you can pick up Fiverr now and put in the time that you have available and kind of keep it ticking over and then when it comes to that point where you’ve got more time, you’re looking to do something fulltime as a job more and more, you’ve been working on Fiverr – you know, keeping it ticking over for that time. So when it comes to that point in time where you’ve got more available time for you, you can pick that up and escalate it rather than starting from scratch.Stephanie: Yeah, I think that’s nice – I mean the flexibility is what I really appreciate about Fiverr too. It’s exactly that, that you can posit or you can come back to it. You can be as busy as you want to be or as quiet as you want to be.Redd: So do you find that – when you initially started considering moving as a – from a buyer to a seller and starting to sell on Fiverr, do you feel like you’ve ended up putting in kind of the amount of time and energy that you sought or has this been bigger than you thought or smaller than you thought?Stephanie: It has been way bigger than I thought it would be.Redd: Awesome.Stephanie: In a good way but it’s – that’s definitely a challenge that I face is managing my time and also learning how to write my Gigs in such a way that it’s – they’re more succinct and clear. So I can manage client expectations but it has been a lot bigger.Redd: That’s awesome. Congratulations.Stephanie: Thank you.Adam: So if you were to give any advice for buyers at the moment who have thought about dabbling as a seller, wondering what they could offer or even curious if they can offer something, what would that advice be?Stephanie: Just do it. I mean think about what they want to offer. Maybe reach out to you or to me or ask questions to Redd, anything to just get started. But I can promise that it will be a good experience.This really has been a life-changer in many ways because moving – living abroad especially living somewhere where you don’t speak the language, you don’t know the culture very well and – I was a trailing spouse. I mean I worked before in the States but I wasn’t working here. We came here for my husband’s job and it’s very isolating. So Fiverr has been kind of this door into not being so isolated anymore and doing something that I’m proud of and doing something that keeps me busy and it just makes me really happy.So I think if people are considering selling, they should just go for it. I just don’t think there can be too many disappointments if you just try it and there are always people on Fiverr to help. Like I said, I had “David388” write my Gig. So if they’re nervous about writing or they don’t think they can write a Gig that will sell, there are professionals out there, professional writers who can do it for you or people who can create your avatar. There are people that can help you build a portfolio. So there really is no reason to not at least try.Redd: So that’s about all we have time for this week. Thank you so much to Stephanie for joining us. You can find her on Fiverr as “Zurichexpat”. Our jingle was made by Ryan AKA Customdrumloops and we were edited today by Dansha. Thanks so much and we will see you next week.Transcription by: Transexpert
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