In late 2019 I decided to make an account with Fiverr and set up a "gig" on the platform advertising my skills there for video game game composing. For those who don't know, Fiverr is essentially a freelance site where anyone can offer their services from $5. If my memory serves me right it took around 2 to 3 months before anyone ordered from me and I had all but forgotton about the site. But what happened then was quite amazing, the clients started snow balling in! I attribute some of this to the Covid19 lock down starting in March of 2020, but I think having a few five star reviews and setting my price to the bare minimum played a big part too.
Over the first few months I started to raise my fee until my main '90 seconds of music' gig reached $30 for a non-exclusive license and around $80 for an exclusive piece. This seemed to be the wall I could charge for music at the time, as Fiverr is definitely more geared towards smaller businesses and individuals looking for budget services. The non-exclusive license option was very popular and got many clients to come back for multiple tracks and the advantage for me was that I could then put those pieces on royalty free music sites so they can carry on generating money in the future.
Can I make a living from fiverr?
I can only speak from my experience and would say it's unlikely. The sort of work you can generate a living from on the platform is something that's high volume and at a low price, so the sort of task you can charge $5 to $15 for and batch 10 jobs in an hour. I have seen people do this with video intro templates where they just change the text, or creating basic YouTube thumbnails, again using templates. With composing a whole track though , it's simply not possible to write fast enough that you can make enough volume and although there have been some people willing to pay over $100 per track, in my experience, this is rare.
So why would I make a fiverr account then?
I am so glad I made the Fiverr gig when I did because I had very little experience dealing with clients before then. It was an ideal platform to learn what people wanted, to gain experience writing tracks I'd never even thought about writing before and getting hundreds of five star reviews, which was both good for my confidence and means I have all these testimonies I can use for future promotion.
I think, if you are just starting out, approaching Fiverr from the perspective of a learning platform is going to do wonders for your progress. If you have never dealt with clients before in regards to your music, then I would say it is an easy thing to set up and worth trying, if nothing else than to gain some experience. The worst that can happen is you spend an hour setting up an account and gig and no one ever clicks on it, so there's basically nothing to lose.
Ok, so what do I need to make a good Fiverr Gig?
All I would say on this is look at a few similar gigs that are doing well and copy their structure. It would definitely be best if you make a video too (apparently talking head videos do best) and having a couple of example tracks is really a requirement for anyone to want to book you. Set the price as low as you can until you get a few reviews and then gradually raise them as time goes.
My gig here still has the same video I spliced together 3 years back and it's worked well for me:
I get very little work from it nowadays as I have priced it out of the typical Fiverr market but that means there's now space for new comers to start on their journey to writing music professionally.
Thanks for reading and get in contact if you want me to write any more on this or any other subjects.