This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, hello, what's up? Welcome listeners, welcome friends and community. I'm so excited to be able to make this podcast for you every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Today we've got a listener question about doing voiceover work on Fiverr.
Fiverr, the gig marketplace where anybody can post skills or services for hire and anybody can then go and hire those skills or services. In one of the early stories for the podcast, I think the first week of the podcast in 2017, which was, I don't know, 25 years ago, it seems like, we also included this story in the side hustle book. A guy earned $10,000 in a pretty short amount of time by doing voiceover work commissioned through Fiverr. So today we've got a caller who's like, is that still possible? Is that possible today in this day and age, given a more crowded marketplace and lower price points for buyers?
I'm gonna answer that question. In fact, I'll just tell you right now, the short version is yes, it is still possible. And I'll also include a few tips with my answer. So all that's coming up in this very short, brief, but also action-packed and helpful episode in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hi, this is John calling from Michigan.
I listen every day on my commute and really appreciate what you do. Here's my question. In the side hustle book, you told the story of a guy who earned $10,000 doing voiceover work on Fiverr. Is that still a thing? How would I get started?
And what do I need to know to be good at it? I took a quick look and it seems like there are a lot of people providing this service, which I know from your book is good in some ways, but it also worries me with having so much competition. I look forward to hearing your opinion. - Hey, John, what's up, man? Thanks for the question.
And good news, as you may have already realized from my introduction, yes, you absolutely can still do this. It is definitely still viable. You're probably not gonna make $10,000 in a week or probably not even a month, but there are thousands of gigs being filled seemingly all the time for voiceover work on Fiverr. There are also lots of sellers, to be fair. And John pointed this out.
So on Fiverr, service providers are called sellers on Fiverr. So basically your competition. So yes, there are a bunch of those folks. And now probably after this podcast, there's gonna be more. So I don't wanna say that that's not a factor.
Obviously the more competition, the more saturation there is, the harder it will be. But again, the reality is that there's also a lot of demand. So if you're interested in getting into voiceover, probably not as a get rich quick plan, but as some extra income or to try something out, just to kind of experiment, which I always think is good, especially when you're just getting going with things, it's pretty easy to do that. It's pretty easy to do that. It's very low cost to get started.
You can get a few commissions probably within a week of making your first listing. And then of course you can see if it's for you or not. So as for those tips, what do you wanna do? Well, after you make your listing on Fiverr, you wanna make sure you have some samples. Now, of course you need voiceover samples because people who are hiring for voiceover, they want to know what you're gonna sound like.
And so how do you make samples if you haven't had commissions? Well, you make them up. I don't just mean you like lie or something. I just mean you record some samples and you can record your samples in the form of commercials for known brands. That's what people usually do.
That is very normal and accepted in the industry because again, people want to know what you sound like. So gonna do a few different things like that. Secondly, you wanna do a few gigs for very low cost to get some good reviews. Like you wanna actually price the bottom of the market, not for very long, but just to kind of get your foot in the door, have a couple of reviews up and then you can raise your prices. And then I would also encourage you last but not least to choose a lane and stay in it.
And this is if you wanna kind of do it for a while, not just experiment. But if you wanna actually make the $10,000 or more, over time, some voiceover actors specialize in commercials, others in anime or game character voices, others in, I guess, shall we say, not safe for work productions. And of course, many other areas. So I think over time you do wanna choose a lane, but to just kind of see how it works and jump in, you don't need to worry about that as much. So can you still make $10,000 or a good amount of money with voiceover work on Fiverr?
Given a reasonable period of time, the answer is definitely yes. So good luck, let us know what happens. I know we've got a lot of people out there listening who are doing Fiverr gigs or trying things like this. So feel free to send us your updates as well. You can always write me at sidehustleschool.com/questions or just go to my blog as well, chrisguillebeau.com.
We'll continue to feature questions and answers every single week. Thanks so much for tuning in today. My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
