David Ancell / Tuesday September 27, 2022
I’ve now been a seller doing voice over on Fiverr for a couple of months now. Business has been rather slow, but I have gotten a little business and great ratings for the jobs I’ve done. There are people saying good things about the platform and others who positively hate it. For the most part, I like it, but there are some things I wish it had. Oh, and if you want to hire me, click here. I even have a gig on there with reduced prices for Catholic projects.
The site is set up well for the most part, with a place to put the relevant information as to just what it is you are selling. It took me some time to find where to enter the FAQ, though. Otherwise, I think I got everything filled out right away. However, getting back to my gigs to do an edit is a pain.
I got my first two orders within a couple of weeks of starting my profile. At first, I was a bit nervous. One was an accomplished voice over artist needing me to play the part of a caller to a radio station. The second was someone who had been buying on Fiverr for years and ordered the voice over for the 988 public service announcement. Both turned out to be great people to work with. My third order was from a student needing a voice over for a video for her portfolio. That was fun, too, and the young lady was nice enough to send me a video clip of what she made using my voice. I loved it!
There have been some, well, rather interesting characters that I’ve dealt with also. One of them was offering $10 for a 1700 word script with the possibility of ongoing work. Another wanted to pay $1 per script for scripts ranging from 3 – 10 minutes long. I realize that I’m going to be working for lower rates until I establish myself, but me working for those rates is just not going to happen.
From what I understood getting into Fiverr, they seem to have an expectation that both buyer and seller will conform to the terms that were communicated in the gig description (A “gig” is basically their term for each service you list for sale.). When I started, I wondered how well they would really uphold that and whether they would be fair. I will say that their support has been good and responsive when I’ve needed them.
Someone who obviously didn’t read my offering placed an order on my phone menu gig for a narration of his YouTube video. Although my gig description says that I don’t do profanity, but the very first sentence of the script contained the s*** word. I reached out to cancel right away, and later I reached out to support asking that they not count the cancellation against my stats. The support person agreed and took it off my stats because the person “did not read my description and ordered a service that I do not offer.” Oh, and if people give you problems, you can block them.
Now, there are a couple of features I really wish the site had. The biggest feature I want is the ability to accept or reject an order placed directly from my order page. I am simply not going to voice anything in violation of my Catholic faith. I’m not voicing scripts for questionable “make $1 million working 15 minutes a day” schemes. Being a health care professional, I don’t want my voice used to promote questionable health care products. I also need to avoid anything that would constitute a conflict of interest with my full time employer. Having to list this in my gig description means that I have to use a sizable block of space talking about what I won’t do, and I’d prefer not to have to do this.
The other feature I’d like to have is a kind of variable delivery commitment time. I’ve made the decision not to do voice over on Sunday. Because of this, I’ve had to put my delivery commitment as three days even though every project that I’ve done had been delivered sooner than that. The site counts an exact 72 hours once the clock starts. I’d like to be able to configure it to show a two day time not counting Sunday or something like that. Maybe it could also include some kind of “office hours” feature that shows I’m not available on Sunday. Some of us our just not going to be into the hustle culture, especially since I have a family.
Fiverr is giving me a great opportunity to do something I’ve thought about for years but never was able to start before. Time will tell if the platform will have respect for the fact that I won’t do anything in violation of my Catholic faith. As of now, I’m enjoying being on the platform and hope to gain some great experience in voice over and earn a bit of extra money as well. And, really, I want to get a good Catholic project that will allow me to do more to evangelize through media.
Category: News on My Life
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