This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
In this week's failure Friday segment, we're going to hear from a freelance graphic designer who found success on Upwork and decided to expand to Fiverr to grow her client base. And we're going to see what happened. Well, basically the move to Fiverr led to a decline in client quality, which caused some issues with project expectations and delivery. That is in fact what happened, but you're going to hear a more detailed version from this side hustler. And I think there's some lessons that we can pick up on.
That's the whole point of failure Friday, not just to dwell on the failure, but to use it one to look forward, try to avoid that mistake in the future. But also to help everybody else out there avoid this mistake on the front end. What if you could just not have the problem that this particular person did, um, you know, whatever the case may be, that may not always be possible. Perhaps we hear stories that are completely unavoidable, like things are going one direction, but then a disaster occurs or something entirely outside of the control of the side hustler or business owner. But nevertheless, there are still some lessons we can take.
So that's the whole point. What can we learn from things that don't go as expected that don't go amazingly well? They in fact go quite poorly. Uh, today's short story. Let's pass the microphone to her and I'll be back at the end with a few words of wrap up.
Hi, I'm Gabby, a freelance graphic designer and UX expert. For a while, my business was doing great. I had established myself on one of the major freelance platforms and was steadily landing clients, receiving good reviews and growing my income with things going so well. I thought, why not expand? I figured if I could replicate my success on one platform, I could do the same on others and take my business to the next level.
So I created profiles on several other platforms. The idea was to cast a wider net. More platforms, more clients, more money, right? What could go wrong? Well, it turns out that managing multiple profiles and catering to different types of clients, wasn't as easy as I thought.
At first, everything seemed to be working fine. I got a few new clients from one of the platforms and I was excited to see my business expanding, but it didn't take long for the problems to start. Each platform came with its own set of expectations, different types of clients and unique workflows. Instead of focusing on the design work I loved, I found myself spending more and more time just managing these platforms. Answering inquiries, updating profiles, bidding on projects, juggling deadlines.
Worse, the constant switching between platforms became overwhelming. I started losing track of which client needed what and when. Some were looking for fast budget designs, while others wanted detailed premium work. Balancing these expectations was stressful and I realized I had overextended myself. As the workload increased, I was rushing through projects just to meet deadlines.
And in some cases, I didn't meet them at all. One of my main clients from the original platform, where I had built a solid reputation, noticed that my work wasn't up to its usual standard. They didn't leave me a bad review or anything, but they started giving me a lot less work. I was stuck in a cycle. I couldn't turn down the new clients because I wanted to expand, but I also couldn't keep up with all the switching back and forth.
My income began to dip as I struggled to maintain the quality that had originally earned me repeat clients and referrals. The stress was mounting and it felt like I was constantly falling behind. My freelance work had gone from something I enjoyed to something that felt chaotic and unmanageable. I realized that I made a crucial mistake by expanding to multiple platforms without considering how it would affect my workflow. I thought more platforms meant more clients, which would automatically lead to more income.
But in reality, I stretched myself too thin. One of the biggest lessons I learned is that it's better to focus on maintaining the quality of your work than to chase more clients across multiple platforms. Quality is what keeps clients coming back, and it's what helps build a good reputation. In my rush to expand, I lost sight of that and ended up damaging the business I had worked so hard to build. Fortunately, I'm now much more strategic about how I manage my time and where I offer my services.
Instead of trying to be everywhere at once, I've scaled back and refocused on the platforms and clients that are the best fit for my work. The decision has made me a better freelancer and also just a better person since I'm not stretched so thin all the time. Awesome, thank you so much for sharing the story. Yes, indeed Upwork and Fiverr are different. And the same holds true across lots of different situations.
If you are doing well on social media, on one platform. You may not be able to do as well or your reaction, your response, the growth and followers, the engagement you get on another platform may be quite different. In some ways it may carry over, but in other ways it will be different. The same is true with similar business ideas. Sometimes things work in one place and they just don't somewhere else.
So it's just good to experiment and not expect that you're going to have the same outcome in different situations from platform to platform or client to client. Nevertheless, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is the motto, the theme of Failure Friday. For several years now we've been running these stories. Always very popular.
Listeners, if you have a question and an update, if you want to see some free resources, it's all free, of course. The whole show, everything to do with it, sidehustleschool.com, this is episode 2,918. Thank you for being out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.
