Recently I wrote an article about my experience with Fiverr.com but it became a much longer read than I had anticipated. I only got about halfway through my experience. So let’s continue. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here.

Test 3 – $79.50

I found a creative on Fiverr.com who could provide a myriad of professional writing services. One service she advertised was coming up with a list of 10 blog titles and then writing 300 words for one of those titles (my choice).

What I like about her is that she had a video to introduce herself. She is under 30-ish and seemed very authentic on her video. I signed up.

The lead time for her service was three weeks. Being an instant gratification kind of person, I had to force myself to be patient. I waited and almost forgot about it.

A little less than three weeks later, she delivered the list of blog titles . They were great and not what I would have thought of. The biggest benefit of using an outside service like Fiverr.com, is that you get other objective perspectives that you may not have even considered. This alone can be very valuable.

Monica and I debated which of the articles we wanted her to write and we let her know our choice. A couple of days later she submitted her article to us.

Here is where my learning experience really began. The article was not what I expected. It was a list of 5 things related to the article with brief text describing those things. The style read like something out of a women’s magazine on “5 Ways to Improve Communication With Your Husband” or something along that line.

I sat on it for a while to digest my response. A couple of days later, the author and I had a long conversation via the website’s online messaging service. My contention was that it was light and shallow and not really related to our business.

Her contention is that she did exactly what she advertised and this is the style of writing that all of the companies that she works with ask for. She said that it is the direction that business are going. It was a long and frustrating conversation but it was well worth having because I learned a lot.

First, she represents what Millennials (a big target audience for us) are used to reading. They want the information they need quickly so they can move on. They are not typically interested in long, wordy, and deep articles and posts. They are the Instagram and Snapchat generation. I think, based on that, they probably don’t read “The Vendor Life”. Bummer.

While I did not get an article that I would post on our business site from this, I still consider this a huge success. It only cost me $79 (yes, I cringed when I typed that) to get some insight into the younger consumer generation. I don’t know what I will do with that insight, but at least I have a better understanding now.

Tips For Working With Fiverr.com

So how should you approach working with an outsourcing service like Fiverr.com? Here are some of the tips that I have.

1. Know what you want to accomplish

Have a good understanding of what your end result should look like. You may not know, for example, the text that will go into a blog post or you would have written it already. You should know what you want to do with the result; blog post, magazine article, product description, logo, etc.

2. Be aware of your individual style

Let the creative person on the other end know what style you want. If you want a snarky and sarcastic article, find someone who can do that. If you don’t, you might end of with a dry article on the history of biological urges related to your topic.

3. Read the bios carefully

Read the bios of the creative people who want to write for you. Immediately eliminate those with spelling errors and grammar issues. Yes, there are quite a few.

4. Look for character and personality

When looking for a creative to write or design for you, get a better understanding of their character and personality by what they write about themselves. It will be easy to  tell the authentic person from a boilerplate submission. If they have a reference article, or work, look at it. It will give you insight into them.

5. Don’t go cheap if you don’t have to

You get what you pay for. The article that I got for $50 is so good that it can be leveraged in a lot of different ways. There are some great one-liners in there that can be Instagram posts all by themselves. In all, I have several weeks of material that I can use or design marketing around.

6. Be careful

This wasn’t necessary with the service that I was looking for, but some of the services available might require giving someone access to your social media account information. Services that will post for you on Instagram or Facebook are examples. Be careful what information you give and to whom you give it. Instead of giving them your username and password, grant them permissions using their own account. Permissions can be much easier to revoke when access is no longer needed.

7. Have fun with it

You very well may not get what you expected. You may get something much better that can be used in ways you didn’t expect. Be open to that possibility.

Lastly, if you want to work with the guy in Canada that I like so much, look for “zshoom” on Fiverr.com.  He is not paying me for this endorsement, but maybe he’ll write something for me and give me a discount later.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you at market!