Very few Indie Authors can do it all — write their book, maintain their author platform, market, proofread, the list of necessary activities is long and daunting. It’s a rare author who has the skill and the time to execute each well. Fiverr can help.
Fiverr Defined
What’s Fiverr you ask? In her article Fiverr: Every Author’s Secret Staff, Anne Hagan (@AuthorAnneHagan) provides the following succinct explanation:
Fiverr is a marketplace where freelance sellers can advertise the jobs they’ll do starting at just $5.00 U.S. They can also bid on jobs visitors to the site post and, when they’ve proven their mettle and leveled up, they can offer extended services for more money in addition to their basic $5.00 gigs.
Depending upon where you are in the world, prices will differ from $5US. For example, in Canada, the $5US price comes out to roughly $6.59CDN. Still damn cheap though.
Fiverr is for both sellers and buyers of “gigs”.
A “gig” is a discrete piece of work — creating a logo, doing a voice-over, designing a banner, creating a video. The number of products and services available through fiver is breathtaking. Sellers are ranked by customers so you can see who has a good reputation for providing quality work and who is more … questionable.
What’s Available in Fiverr?
Gigs are divided into major categories each with sub-categories.
If you don’t immediately see what you’re looking for, you can always search. Anne provides an extensive list of services which might be of interest to authors:
Here’s an extract. Head on over to her article for the full listing.
- Book covers – Starting at just $5, you can’t beat Fiverr for a professional design to your specifications. For under $50.00 total, you can often have the cover of your dreams.
- Full wrap covers – Add a spine and back cover to your existing 2D cover to make it ready for print on demand (softcover) with CreateSpace and other POD providers.
- Boxed set art – Have a series? Have a bunch of different books you want to offer as one set for more revenue or to take wide to sites other than Amazon? For $5-30.00, depending on the number of books in the set and the art you provide, there are a number of talented providers that can give you something that looks great.
- Banner and header graphics – Art for your website, blog, Facebook fan page, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more.
Promotional graphics and copy – for use in all of your advertising campaigns. - Promotional support – Posting to multiple Facebook groups, posting to multiple Listopia lists on Goodreads, Posting to free eBook promotion sites, etc.
Two things Anne doesn’t mention are map creation and book trailers. If you’re writing fantasy and want to map your world, you can find a gig to do that on Fiverr. If you’re thinking of a book trailer for your promotional efforts and don’t have a lot of money, Fiverr has a lot of low-cost options to consider.
Signing Up
To buy or sell gigs you must join Fiverr. You can join with either your email or sign in with your Facebook, Google+, or Linkedin credentials.
You’ll need to supply a password. That’s the minimum. You can also supply a security question, upload a profile picture and round out your profile with a few other options if you want to.
Buying Gigs
Buying a gig is simple:
- Search the gig type you want to buy
- Select the buyer with which you wish to do business
- Select the package (the combination of features you want)
- Supply payment information (Major credit cards or Paypal)
- Supply any requested information related to the gig that the seller requires or that you wish to supply
- Confirm the order
A couple of things to note:
- While most sellers provide a $5US package, some do not. Almost all sellers usually have two or three more expensive packages that add features, provide a faster turn-around time, or both.
- It’s easy to spend money on Fiverr. Because most the gigs are priced very, very reasonably, it’s easy to exceed your limited budget. Each individual feature or gig is inexpensive, but over time things add up.
Note also that Fiverr adds a small processing fee to each order.
My Experience
I wanted to try building a short, single-mage book trailer. To do that I made use of seller who could take a 2D image and add some movement to it.
This is the original image:
Here is the finished product delivered:
As you can see, the quality is pretty amazing. The seller took the still image, added motion to it and provided background music. In fact the seller did much more than that. He provided:
- Three versions of the animation without music
- Three versions of the background music
He then took the music I choose and applied it to the animation version I chose. All within three days. I am very happy with the result. What did I pay for this? Not too much:
By the way, if you are interested in this seller’s services, you can find him here.
Ultimately, though, I chose to build out the trailer using the animation provided as the core. Here’s what I did:
- Stripped out the soundtrack provided and used my own
- Added some text
- Added a second image
Here is the final result:
Now it’s true the final mini book trailer cost more than the price pictured above because I used my own software to add the text and purchased royalty free music. Most importantly, the image I had the seller animate was one I commissioned in the past.
However, Fiverr has plenty of people who can supply artistic services and create an entire book trailer from end to end for a reasonable cost.
Final Thoughts
Fiverr offers many low cost services of tremendous value. If there is stuff you need done and can’t do yourself, they can help. Just be careful — because the services are so reasonably priced, it’s easy to get carried away shopping!
So what about it, fellow author-bloggers? Have you used Fiverr? Would you consider using it? If so, for what purpose?
Thanks for reading, and I will see you again next time.
