Today we’re going to be diving deep into how you can build your UGC business on Fiverr. We’re sharing an incredible conversation between Brands Meets Creators founder Mike Rama and UGC creator Mariely.
Mariely is a UGC expert who creates eye-catching engaging content for brands. Unlike many of the top content creators, Mariely gets her UGC work on Fiverr. She’s cultivated a base of raving clients, a consistent order queue and now makes a full-time living from the platform. In less than a year, she’s gone from 0-100 glowing reviews on the platform.
But how does she do it? If you’ve been trying to get your first UGC client on Fiverr you’ll know that getting UGC work on the platform can seem like an uphill battle. It’s not impossible. In fact, Marielle is the perfect example that you shouldn’t be sleeping on the freelancer marketplace.
💥 It’s a long interview. So here’s the quick summary. This is Mariely’s nuggets of wisdom when it comes to getting work as a UGC creator on Fiverr:
- Work harder than everyone else. Fiverr can be great, but it’s saturated. You’re going to need to put in a bit of extra leg work at the start to reap rewards. If you do, it can be a great platform.
- Fiverr will take 20%. They take a cut, but they also provide you with buyers, a payment platform, protection and no need to invoice. Weigh up the parts of the business you don’t like and it might just make sense.
- Over deliver. Under promise and over deliver. If you’re starting out, don’t stress charging for raw footage or an extra trend video or two. Give the client what you can to secure that glowing five-star review. It’ll pay off in the long run.
- Study the competition. Before you upload your first gig, spend a week or so studying the current top performers gigs and profiles. Make sure that you are offering something better, cheaper, or both, if you want to compete.
- SEO. If you want to be found, learn SEO and learn it quick.
And without further ado, here’s the interview in it’s entirety.
Why did you really choose Fiverr as your kind of go-to platform for landing UGC deals?
My dad would always ‘don’t ever follow the crowd’ and I have a tendency to do that with everything. So, when it came to doing UGC everyone kept saying go on Twitter, go on Twitter, get on Twitter and very few people saying get on Upwork, get on Fiverr. Twitter’s great, but someone would make a post and then you’d get like 75 people flocking to that post and I was just like this isn’t gonna work for me.
At the time, no one was paying attention to Fiverr or Upwork, so I got on there and it just hit off for me.
I funnel clients straight to Fiverr through my social bio’s. Rather than back and forth over email, I keep it on the platform. I tell people this all the time – Fiverr protects me. I’ve never had a story where I’ve never gotten paid, or a client doesn’t want to pay me after I’ve sent the deliverables because on Fiverr they can’t get the content until they pay. You’ll send your content and Fiverr will automatically send it with a watermark. As soon as they pay, they complete the order so they won’t get an unwatermarked video until then.
So I’m assuming Fiverr takes you know some percentage of what what you do?
They take 20%, so it is a lot.
But they’re giving you the clients, they’re doing everything for you, they have the system. Fiverr is the Amazon of freelancing because it has everything you need there. So that 20% is worth it to you because you don’t have to deal with the hassle; the payments, you know you’re getting paid and they’re also sending you clients.
Do you have an idea of what percentage of people that book you found you on Fiverr versus other platforms?
I don’t know that much nitty-gritty, but the impressions are off. I look at it about every other day, interested to see whether it’s coming from the platform, Pinterest or Twitter, but the analytics are just not there yet. They’re getting better, now more people are going remote and are using their platform they’re having to upgrade a lot of things. As much as I love UGC on Fiverr I also get irritated because of the lack of technology.
For instance, I tried hiring a VA to take care of my message inbox because it was just getting out of control, but they don’t have a feature that allows you to add a member of the team. I had to give her all access because they don’t have an admin feature.
For someone who’s like just getting started and they’re looking into UGC on Fiverr, what would you recommend for that person – what’s the process?
This is what worked for me.
I followed the OG Fiverr people on YouTube and looked to reverse engineer their process. What I did was look for what the top writers, for example, were saying to do on Fiverr. And then I did it.
One of the girls I found on YouTube said if you had a new account the best way to rank is to literally be online 24/7. I know that for some people, that isn’t right, but I made sure that my laptop had my Fiverr open, my iPad had Fiverr open and my phone had the app open at all times. The algorithm views this as you being online all of the time. I also wasn’t sleeping. I don’t recommend this, but I was answering messages at like 3/4am in the morning. This is what I needed to do to do this full time. I needed to do what everyone else didn’t want to do. At the time, this was stay up to the early hours of the morning. I was like I’m gonna outwork everyone and that’s what I did.
I made sure that I delivered the best service possible to every client, to get them to come back. And it worked. I got really great reviews and I think it just boosted me even more because reviews are a super big thing on Fiverr. They’re huge. Sometimes it’s really intimidating to ask someone if you did a good job, but I was never scared as I knew I had over delivered and they would give me a five-star review. I was doing things that no-one else was doing, things that other people weren’t talking about in the UGC community.
At first I will openly admit I was giving them raw footage because I was like hey you can have this just in case you want to use it because I wanted to get my reviews up.
I did certain things, like making trending videos for the products and I gave it to them for free. I’d be like hey put this on your TikTok page, I want to help you grow, and they would love it. They would eat it up, and it would help me too. If you make a business feel like you really care – and I do, I work with a lot of small media businesses and I want to see them grow – they’re gonna come back, and you’re gonna get great reviews.
A lot of creators are super nervous in the beginning about providing too much. Like ‘oh should I be charging extra for this? and I think that limits a lot of people starting out. Early on, you’re like take it – I’m giving you everything: over deliver over deliver over deliver and then it’ll create a snowball effect. Is that how you feel about it?
In the beginning you just have to get yourself out there. I’m at a point where I don’t do that right now because I’m just too busy. I can’t just give all these things for free now, but in the beginning you just have to think I am competing with the top notch creators. What can I give that they can’t? When I first started on Fiverr there were two creators I remember. A girl named Emily Digital, and then there’s another guy, I can’t remember his name off the top of my head. Every time I looked at them they had 10 orders in the queue. At one point, that guy had 30 orders in queue and I was like I don’t even know what kind of team you have going on doing all these videos, but I’m competing with you.
I literally went over all of their gigs and I just studied. What words are they using? What are they offering? What are they giving clients? And what’s one thing I can offer that they’re giving in their second tier that I can offer in my first tier? I really paid attention to all of those little details that I think that a lot of people overlook. Creators think, I’m just gonna put this gig up and see what happens. It reminds me of the small business owners when they open up a brick and mortar store and just expect people to come. You have to make it appealing. Don’t just get started and go throw a profile up there. You want to really take some time and study. Go through Fiverr, do some searches, see what the top creators are doing and see okay how can I take it one step better?
And the intro video, is that key on Fiverr?
The intro video is super important. I see a lot of people put examples of UGC content they’ve done, but you also have to put yourself in the buyer’s position. If I am the client and I’m looking for a creator and I see your example video and it’s a video of you demonstrating a ruler. You’re not talking, I can’t hear your voice and it is words on the screen. But the idea I have in mind for my content needs you to talk and interact. How would you expect me to want to work with you when I don’t have anything to work with? On Fiverr, you can’t link your TikTok, so you can’t prove engagement. In that intro video, it’s literally an interview so you have to make sure that you put a lot of time into it.
Also using keywords. Just the same thing as SEO works on TikTok, SEO is a big thing on all platforms including Fiverr. You want to use keywords in your description and you’re about me so that when a client is typing in UGC video editor or UGC video concept – any of those long-term keywords – they’ll find you. When they are searching the algorithm starts pushing you up because like if you’re not using those words and you’re just like I’m a UGC Creator and I like making content for brands. You’re not going to rank for what they are actually searching for. It took me a while, probably a week, before I even put my first gig up on Fiverr because I was studying so much.
So I’m actually noticing – I’m on your Fiverr – all of your gigs right now and it looks like you have multiple gigs up there. Is that correct?
So a few of my listings had been up for a while and I realized I wasn’t getting that many impressions, so I was like okay I need to revamp everything. Each listing is now different, each one is a keyword that people have searched when they’re searching for UGC.
When you go on Fiverr and you type in UGC there’s going to be keywords underneath it. It’ll say unboxing, demonstration, it’ll say all these like little bitty keywords that relate to UGC and that’s what you would want to create a gig for. That is what people are searching for.
Plug those keywords into your gigs in order for you to rank for them. If someone types in that long form keyword you pop up.
So, let’s talk contracts. I guess with UGC on Fiverr it’s kind of like they make that payment and they own their rights to that video. There’s really negotiating usage rights for a certain amount of months?
You’ll agree on that when you’re about to give them the offer. In your offer there will be a host of yes/no questions and I’ll include contract things in there. For me, I’ll say that the video is for 12 month usage rights, this cannot be used for anything but digital advertising etc. I think I’ve only had two clients saying they want full usage rights, and I just decline.
Is there anything that you would have done differently throughout this whole process?
I think one of my biggest things is to nail down the contract. I didn’t do this because I didn’t know any better. I just was kind of just giving my content – my face, my presence – to these companies without caring. I was on certain apps and using them and I didn’t realize that I had no ownership over it and it started making me feel uneasy when I realized how much ownership I was giving to people.
I don’t think that people really understand or fathom the greatness of giving someone that much ownership over content that you create. I have a video that’s pinned on my TikTok that talks about it because my roommate used to be a model in New York City and a girl that she worked with gave someone full unlimited usage rights. She didn’t know any better and 10 years laters her image is still being used on the side of a building here in L.A.
That’s such a great point. Get those contracts in place and make sure you have your usage rights defined. You don’t want to be giving away the usage rights indefinitely for free.
Exactly. You also have to think about it this way: let’s just say a year from now you don’t want to do this anymore. You’re over it, something happened where you’re like I’m done, I want to be a dentist at a dentist office. Buy, you gave someone full usage rights on the content that you’ve produced for them and five years from now this company blows up and they’re using a video that you created for them. You don’t want to be that person that goes, damn it, I wish I would have had a contract.
