If you have not yet experienced the joy that is Fiverr.com, you are in for a real treat. Fiverr is the world’s largest online marketplace for $5 services, with weird services such as “I will write any message on my lips and take a photo” or “I will make fun of someone in my stand-up comedy routine”. But don’t dismiss Fiverr as a joke site. Used properly, you can glean some amazing values from the site for your law firm marketing efforts.
My first search for an e-book cover provides a good illustration of how you can use Fiverr successfully and save some serious money.
In the real world, the going price to create an e-book cover (yes, even an e-book needs a cover) is about $250 (although it can go all the way up to $1,200). One service called 99Designs turns the creation process into a contest. You specify what you want, pay a $199 fee, and multiple designers compete for the work.
I have tried the higher end services, but fiverr has remained my go-to service for logos, e-book covers, and podcast cover art. The reason is that the strategy I employ gives me far more options at a much lower cost.
Back to my e-book cover. On Fiverr, there are dozens of graphic artists offering the service for just $5. There are lots of up-sells offered – an extra $5 if you want it in less than 48 hours, another $5 if you want it in multiple formats, etc. – but the basic service is $5. (Fiverr used to be strict about always offering some level of service for $5, but it appears they have loosened that restriction.)
I had used Fiverr for some other things, but for my e-book cover I decided to give six different sellers the assignment. With three of them, I gave an idea of how I wanted the e-book to look. With the remaining three, I gave far less guidance in the hope that they might come up with an idea that was superior to my own.
Of the three who were trying to implement my idea, two created unacceptable covers, and one never delivered anything (I wasn’t charged). I don’t blame the bad covers on the sellers who were trying to implement my idea. I think it was my crazy idea that was just too difficult to implement in the space available. As to the three that were left to their own devices, all three covers were fairly decent, but one was far superior. Even that cover had some things I didn’t like, but with a couple of follow-up emails, the e-book cover came out just like I wanted.
Incidentally, some sellers will offer one or two revisions, and then sell you additional revisions for $5. I don’t like that arrangement, because it incentivizes additional revisions. Instead, I look for sellers who offer unlimited revisions for the same base price. You might think that would be crazy for a seller to offer such a thing, but in reality they all want to maintain a five star rating, and if they don’t keep working until you are happy, that rating is in jeopardy. I don’t abuse the unlimited revisions. The most I’ve ever used is three.
Of course if you were willing to take the time, you could hire each of the six people in turn, and see what each produced before moving on to the next. I don’t have that kind of time or patience, so I much prefer to invest the $30 to have six different artists provide their proposed covers.
When I recently needed cover art for my latest podcast project, I went through the same process. You might expect that I would have simply used the one artist who had successfully completed the first job, but I like the idea of having different artists come up with their own ideas. Sure enough, this time around, the winning art was not produced by the same artist who succeeded the first time.
As you go through your days marketing your firm, assign a few of your brain cells the task of asking, “is this something I could delegate to Fiverr?” I’m the guy who suggests that you should create a website and blog at least once so you know how it’s done, but once you have that skill, you can certainly assign work on the sites to someone on Fiverr. For example, you have a blog that you want to use to capture the email addresses of visitors so you can follow up. You’ve seen other blogs that pop up a request when someone visits the site, but you have no idea how to make it do that. Sounds like a perfect job for Fiverr.
Incidentally, giving someone access to your blog or website is a scary experience. What if instead of installing the email plug-in, they decide it would be quite the lark to trash your site? Here is how you protect yourself.
First, backup your blog. If you are using ManageWP to administer all your WordPress blogs, that is a simple process. Then, even if the person goes insane and crashes the site, you can restore it all with a few clicks. Next, to give limited access to the person who is going to be working on your blog, create a new user. WordPress, for example, makes it very easy to add a user with administrative privileges. Give the user name and password information to whomever will be working on your blog. As soon as the assignment is completed, simply delete the user. It’s still a little like turning your baby over to a babysitter you’ve never met, but so far I’ve never had a problem (with my blogs that is; I’ve never actually turned one of my children over to a stranger).
Thus far I’ve never seen a posting on Fiverr for “will draft your Motion for Summary Judgment for $5”, and I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. But for your marketing – logos, intros for your podcast, formatting freemiums, creating a graphic intro for your videos, adding functionality to your blogs, creating a fan page on Facebook, etc. – Fiverr can be an amazing resource.
Click here for 20% off your first order on Fiverr.com.
