Are you a new seller wondering how to kickstart your freelancing career? Learn how to promote your Fiverr gigs effectively with these free and paid marketing strategies.
You’ve set up your Fiverr profile, created your first few gigs, and now you’re ready to start accepting buyers who have been banging your door down. If your Fiverr experience is more deathly silence and tumbleweeds than Black Friday madness, then you need to start attracting buyers to your gig. You have two choices:
- Slow way: sit and wait for the buyers to come
- Fast way: get out there and promote your Fiverr gig
Since you’re here, I’ll assume that you’re ready to get your marketing game on. In this article, I’ll show you some free and paid promotional methods you can start using today to get the ball rolling.
- [PAID] Fiverr’s Promoted Gigs feature
- [FREEMIUM] Build out a business website
- [FREE] Reach out with social media
- [FREE] Send cold emails out to businesses
- [PAID] Pay for targeted online ads
As you can see, there are quite a few things you can do and you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot. What you save in money you will pay for in time though, so if you’re already busy and can afford it, it may be worth driving paid traffic to your Fiverr gig.
Do You Need to Promote Fiverr Gigs to Succeed?
No, you don’t. Fiverr has a very robust internal search engine and an algorithm that gives new sellers a “newbie boost” that gives you marketplace visibility that would make many established sellers sell their less-preferred kidney. The rest is up to your abilities to create an attractive gig that people want to buy.
Promoting your Fiverr gigs speeds up the process of getting orders simply because you drive more awareness (and traffic) to your gig. It’s just a numbers game. Hopefully your first few orders will yield great reviews. Once you start to get buyers on Fiverr, the system takes care of you, moving you up the rankings and giving you more visibility.
Once you’ve established yourself on the platform, you won’t really need to promote yourself anymore – although dry spells may prompt you to turn on the tap again.
Where I differ from most other people who tell you how to promote your Fiverr gigs is that I also recommend building a presence away from Fiverr.
Why?
Because having your own business away from Fiverr gives you more options and more stability. If anything ever goes wrong with Fiverr, you’ll thank yourself for the extra effort you put in to grow off-Fiverr.
So, rather than ask if you need to promote your Fiverr gigs, ask if you want to grow a stable and long-lasting business with Fiverr as a part of your income. I think we both know the answer to that one!
Free Ways to Promote Your Fiverr Gigs
If you don’t have much money – or simply don’t want to spend money! – then you have plenty of options. Just remember that what you save in money will end up costing you in time.
Promote Gigs Through Social Media
If you already have a brand and a following, then this is a no-brainer. Just promote your gig on social media, whether that’s Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or any other channel.
If your social media is more “friends and family” then you’ll need to start everything from scratch. I recommend picking two social media networks that align best with your niche and growing them. You don’t need to cover every social media site – just the ones where your buyers are most likely to hang out.
What you do want to do is post useful content that swings the algorithms in your favor so you get plenty of eyeballs on your gig offers. It’s not difficult to promote Fiverr gigs on social media, but it can be consuming. The most important thing is using high quality content.
Just make sure that you follow the Terms and Conditions of each site, as any hint of spam can get you into trouble – and see all your hard work disappear.
Cold Email Businesses
If you have a service that is useful to businesses, then you can try cold emailing. This is when you write a prospecting letter to businesses who you have not contacted before. This can be tricky to do, since it walks a fine line between spam and legitimate business inquiry.
Needless to say, you’re going to get a lot of rejections. That’s just how this works. It will also take a lot of time to find businesses and email them, since you’re also going to need to identify a problem they have and provide the solution.
If you’re in SEO or web design, one way to do this is to build a website without contacting the business and track performance – sneakily, you can send leads through to the business. Email them a while later and present yourself as the mysterious benefactor and you may just get paid.
Or you may not. Either way, this is one way that freelancers do cold outreach today. If you can find an efficient system for this kind of Fiverr gig promotion, you’ll get plenty of paying clients to funnel to your Fiverr gig.
Use Your Network Instead: Warm Emails
This is similar to cold emails, only you already know the people you’re contacting. Usually, these will be people you worked with before, or someone who you know through a friend.
This can be more effective, simply because you’re not an unknown entity. It’s easier to connect. In fact, many cold email masters make use of scant connections (“hey, I see we both went to X college! Small world!“) to thaw out frozen leads. However, don’t think a connection seals the deal with warm leads: it simply gives you a better opening.
Make Your Own Website
This can be free if you use something like blogger, but let’s be real: if you want to be taken seriously as a business, you should get your own domain and a “proper” website.
It’s easier than ever to build a website these days. WordPress is flexible, while domain names and hosting are dirt cheap. Ideally, you already use a brand name on Fiverr, as you can use this for your website address. So, if you’re beebooper on Fiverr, you could snap up the domain beebooper.com.
This is great for SEO, since whenever someone looks up your Fiverr name on Google, your website should appear near (if not at) the top, especially if you take the time to optimize your website around your Fiverr service offerings (or the other way around). This helps you to look like a more legitimate business and can help buyers to find you away from Fiverr without breaking the TOS.
See what I mean about having options? Just don’t mention your website on Fiverr, as that will break the TOS and remember that buyers you find on Fiverr should stay on Fiverr. Don’t try to game this, because Fiverr will find out.
If building a website sounds like a lot of work, then let me introduce you to the magic of AI website generation. These tools build out entire websites for you! They do cost a little more, but it’s all very affordable and the results are pretty impressive. Here are two of the most popular:
Finally, your website is a useful hub for all your online activity, enabling you to control the flow of traffic between social media and Fiverr. You’ll get more control of how you run your business. This will also open up paid ad routes from Facebook and Google Ads because you are directing traffic to your property and not Fiverr.
One example of how this strategy could work is send traffic to Fiverr in lean times to build up your success score, but keep traffic on your website when Fiverr is going well.
Jump Into the World of Paid Aids
First things first: never use ads to push people directly to your Fiverr gig. It’s not allowed on Google (it’s also a violation of Fiverr’s Terms of Service), and most of the social media networks don’t love it. In other words, you need a website. Push people to a landing page on your website then introduce them to your Fiverr gig.
This will make you look more professional and give you a whole page where you can sell yourself without being restricted by anyone else. That’s a major win! The biggest issue with this paid strategy for promoting Fiverr gigs is that you will lose leads with each click. But remember: it’s your website. You don’t necessarily need to send people to Fiverr!
The big benefit of paid ads – whether you use Google, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or anyone else – is that you are paying for highly targeted traffic. You’re paying for access to people who are already interested in what you have to offer.
This is a quick and easy way to find leads without having to do a lot of the donkey work involved with the free methods. If you have the budget for it and want to get your Fiverr career started quickly, it’s a good option.
Use Fiverr’s Promoted Gigs Feature
Fiverr also has its own ads, a feature called Promoted Gigs. This feature is not as sophisticated as external ad networks, but it does help you get high visibility exactly where your buyers are looking. Promoted Gigs are featured on various parts of the Fiverr website, including:
- Search results
- Gig listings
- Category pages
- Fiverr inbox
Fiverr uses its internal data and algorithms to make sure you’re only seen by relevant buyers, optimizing the bid that will give you the best performance. The only downside is that it is a PPC (Pay Per Click) model, which means you’ll pay for every click, even ones that don’t convert.
Sellers generally have mixed feelings about this feature: some rave about it, others found it disappointing. You should make sure that your gigs are optimized for sales before paying, as this will make a huge difference!
One thing to note is that this feature is more about driving impressions which lead to clicks and sales. If your gig description, title, image, and other features suck, your ROI on Promoted Gigs will, too.
One piece of bad news: this feature isn’t available to everyone: you need to be a leveled seller to use Fiverr’s Promoted Gigs. Also, gigs in some categories are excluded entirely:
- Legal Consulting
- Tax Consulting
- Accounting & Bookkeeping
- Legal Writing
Just like your friendly local drug dealer, Fiverr does give you $10 in free credit to get started, so once you’re eligible, it’s worth taking this out for a spin. Just remember that Promoted Gigs is a paid feature on Fiverr: it’s not worth using it on cheaper gigs. Always make sure that after Fiverr’s 20% fee and the cost of promotion that you’re getting the money you need to make it worthwhile.
Start to Promote Your Fiverr Gigs Today
This article covers all the basics you need to know about promoting your Fiverr gigs if you’re new to Fiverr, along with some tips and tricks to help you get started the right way. Most beginners don’t bother with this, so you’re already ahead of the curve here.
It’s also easy to see why most beginners on Fiverr don’t promote their gigs. It’s a lot of work – or money – and you’re still paying Fiverr’s 20% commission at the end. However, if you want to get the ball rolling so Fiverr starts bringing you traffic and orders, promoting your gigs is the best way to start on Fiverr. After you have reviews and credibility, you’ll get more visibility – which means buyers will find you on the platform.
This is the real magic of Fiverr. When it works for you, you don’t need to do any marketing, because Fiverr send you a steady stream of traffic. Just don’t expect it to last forever. Freelancing is a “feast or famine” job, which means you will have periods of no work. The only way to combat quiet times is to consistently market your gig, just as you would have to do if you were not on Fiverr.
Choose the strategies that work for you best and stick to them. There is no one best Fiverr gig promotion strategy, only the one that works for you. Pick strategies that you can commit to and stay with them, especially if you decide to use social media.
