Fiverr is a very popular freelance website where you can sell services as “gigs.” Fiverr is a spot to sell services like website design, animated videos, or article writing. But you must realize you can teach English and other languages on Fiverr.
What’s also great about Fiverr is that they take a 20% commission instead of a 30% commission like Outschool, and you only teach adults.
How to get started teaching on Fiverr
Teaching on Fiverr is similar to Outschool. You’ll first need to create your course material and know what you will teach and how. Then, when you get an order, you need to schedule a time with your student for the class.
It would be best if you were flexible using different technologies like Skype, Facetime, or Zoom to accommodate each student’s preferences. As you create “gigs” on Fiverr, develop a tier of offerings, with tier 1 being a simple 1-hour lesson. Then tiers 2 and 3 could be lessons for a few weeks or an entire month.
Lastly, do some research on Fiverr to see what gigs are selling. If, say, you want to teach French or Spanish, take a look to see if gigs are selling that service. If there are no gigs, or the gigs have no ratings and reviews, no one buys them.
Languages are a famous gig to sell on Fiverr. Still, more niche-specific topics may be a better fit for Outschool.
With that out of the way, here is what we will cover in this how-to-teach on Fiverr guide:
- Develop your course material.
- Get permission to Skype, Facetime, and Zoom.
- Title your gig something keyword specific.
- Create a video for your gig.
- Write your gig description.
- Maintain good customer service.
- Leverage the affiliate program.
Sidenote, if you’re looking for an affordable course on how to get started on Fiverr, check out Gig for the Win.
Develop your course material
Unlike the ease of teaching online with a platform like VIPKID, with Fiverr, you’ll have to do all the heavy lifting upfront. That means creating the course material, the slides, interactive material, digital downloads, homework, scheduling, and following up with your students.
The upside is that you get paid a lot more per hour, teach adults, can work better hours than early mornings, and can set your rates.
One thing to note is you should practice your lessons with mock students. Practice with a friend or language learner for free. Understand how different technologies work, what material is valuable, and what downloadable PDF documents you should create.
Then, once you start getting students to pay attention to what works and adapt.
Get Permission to Skype, Facetime, or Zoom to teach on Fiverr
Generally, it’s against Fiverr’s terms of service to give buyers a way to contact you outside of Fiverr. Fiverr wants to keep buyers on its platform for obvious reasons. Your account could get a strike or even a ban if you start messaging buyers about contacting you outside of Fiverr.
The solution is to contact Fiverr support and let them know what you intend to do. There are teachers on Fiverr teaching. Fiverr wants you to be successful. But you need to get Fiverr’s permission to give contact details like your Skype ID.
Title your gig something keyword specific
Fiverr is a search engine. As such, you need to pay attention to using phrases that people type into Fiverr when looking for a specific service.
Each of these gigs leverages essential keywords people use. Things like “teach with an American accent,” “teach online,” or “professional tutoring” with “Skype,” etc., are all done intentionally.
Create a video for your Gig
Creating a video introduction is essential to selling your Gig on Fiverr. With Fiverr, what needs to go into your video is simple:
- Your video needs to be less than 75 seconds long.
- Have good video quality with good audio. No background noise, and the 1080P video quality is fine. Please take a look at our webcam guide or consider buying a camera.
- Use your voice when describing your Gig.
- As a teacher, it’s best to show your face on camera instead of using an image slideshow.
- Only include information on how to contact you within Fiverr.
- You must say “exclusively on Fiverr” in the video.
Video is one of those skills you need to learn. With technology today, you can make a decent video with a modern iPhone or a 1080P webcam.
In the long term, consider buying a camera with interchangeable lenses.
Write your gig description
So along with the sales video, you also need to write a gig description. These two elements form your sales page for your Gig, and both are equally important.
An adequate gig description should align with your experience, education, and why anyone should pay attention to you. The goal of the first few sentences is to establish trust and authority.
Next, you want to understand your Gig, why it’s helpful to prospective buyers, and how you deliver it (mention that you do one-on classes via whatever platform you want to use).
Last you want to create bullet points and finish with a final call to action. Make sure to use the bold and highlight feature when writing your Gig and the effective use of white space. That is, make sure to create dense paragraphs of text.
Maintain good customer service
As part of your rating from buyers, they can give you 1-5 stars on your communication. Fiverr also keeps track of how many messages you replied to via your profile.
You must reply to over 90% of messages to maintain your current standing. Fiverr can warn you or demote your level if you fall below this.
Fiverr has a few different levels—new seller, level 1, level 2, and top rated. You, as a new seller, want to get to level 1. There is no significant difference between the other levels. But you don’t want to get demoted from level 1 as it helps establish trust with buyers.
To maintain good customer service, Fiverr supports an APP that you can download to your phone, enabling you to reply to messages quickly and easily without logging into your account on your laptop or desktop.
Leverage the Fiverr affiliate program
You can join Fiverr’s internal affiliate program (sign up here). The affiliate program allows you to promote relevant gigs to your audience, where you get a commission on what new buyers purchase.
Suppose you’re an online teacher and are part of a Facebook group or have a YouTube channel. In that case, the affiliate program allows you to make passive income by promoting Fiverr.
This is helpful because once you’re an established and successful teacher on Fiverr, it makes promoting Fiverr as an affiliate easier.
Once you sign up for Fiverr Affiliates, you’ll be given access to your dashboard. You can begin creating affiliate links to the Fiverr homepage or individual gigs.
Please note you cannot promote your Gig through the Fiverr affiliate program.
Teach on Fiverr Conclusion
So that is how to start teaching English (or any in-demand language or subject) on Fiverr (check out Fiverr here).
Fiverr, Outschool, and an online teaching platform allow for numerous lucrative ways to make money teaching English online. If you’ve been looking for a unique way to expand your online teaching, consider looking at Fiverr.
Like Outschool, it’s a lot of work to get set up. But the advantages of Fiverr are that it is a search engine. Once your Gig ranks for phrases people are looking for, getting new students becomes easy and automatic.
We suggest checking out Gig for the Win to get started with Fiverr. A complete breakdown of how to sell successfully on Fiverr.
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