Fiverr Pro Bootcamp - Become a Fiverr Pro & Succeed on Fiverr

1. Introducing FiverrPro Bootcamp: So first of all, I want to say a welcome to the Fiber Pro boot camp. So I've been a qualified pro on fiber for quite some time, and it definitely comes with its advantages. It helps you to connect with a higher level of clientele. It helps you to get more projects, and it also helps you to be really seen as an expert in your particular domain. And this is actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to create this course. I know people who use fiber to connect with clients, friends of mine who are freelancers, and they sometimes struggle to connect with quality clientele, people who really respect them as experts. And I wanted to teach them how to become more credible on fiber, to be seen as more trustworthy and to be respected on the platform. Because as we all know, some clients can be a little bit more challenging than others. So I guess this kind of takes us to the question of who is this course for? Who is this course going to help and benefit? And to be completely honest, this is a course which I personally feel. I wish I had, you know, 56 years ago when I first started on fiber. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to deal with clients. I didn't have a clue how to manage my finances. I didn't know how to manage expectations. I definitely didn't know how to climb up the fiber system and, you know, become a top seller and then eventually a pro. And I feel like if I had a course like this from the very beginning, the journey would have been less painful for sure. And it would also have been a lot faster. I would have been a lot more successful with a lot less pain and a lot less challenges, and a lot less mistakes. By the way, if you're wondering who I am, my name is Scardam Lancaster. I own a branding agency called Clementine House, and I also have an education company, which is why I create courses to help others called the Lancaster Academy of Design and Brand. For the past decade, I've been helping start ups to really get their branding and marketing perfect. And they also personally coach and health freelancers to fine tune their careers and use tons of different platforms and marketing strategies to better themselves and get better quality clients so that they can make more money and enjoy life. So what specifically are you going to learn in this course? Well, we're going to be covering quite a lot, so I want to make sure that I give you a brief overview of everything that we're going to be discussing and learning in the course, so that you can decide if the course is right for you. So firstly, we're going to be discussing the different levels of seller on fiber. We're going to be starting at level one, working all the way up to pro. Well, I'll be discussing the application process and how to become a fiber pro yourself. We'll then discuss some pros and cons of the fiber platform. And then we'll also explore some things that you should never do on fiber because you'll probably get banned. We'll then go through a process that I've developed to attract high quality clients. And we'll also explore how to spot nightmare clients from a mile away. We'll also discuss some of the details like how to promote your gigs on fiber. Taking a break from fiber, the seller plus program, and if it's worth it, understanding the fiber analytics, Getting your first fiber seal and lots, lots more. But some of the most important things that you're going to be learning in this course is how to get your fiber profile professional and perfect so that you can attract high quality clients who trust you. And once we have your fiber profile ready, we're then going to be going through the application process to become a fiber pro. Now I'm going to share some things in this course which I've never shared with anyone. Most importantly, things like emotional well being and mental health as a freelancer, managing your own business and even potentially working another job whilst you're trying to make it as a freelancer, it can become very stressful and your anxiety can be through the roof sometimes. So I want to share some things inside this course which can help you and your mental well being, to keep you balanced and to help you live a long, happy life as a freelancer. I'm also going to be sharing some tips and tricks to create the perfect gig within fiber to attract high quality clients who respect you and want to work with you over the long term. This literally goes through the entire process from making the perfect thumbnail to writing the perfect title. It literally covers everything. One of the most important things that you learned throughout your freelancing journey, but specifically in this course, is how to manage clients and their expectations Perfectly. Managing your clients correctly can be the difference between having a stress free day and having the worst day ever. I can't think of many worse things than getting a really negative message from a client. It's just not something that I want to wake up and see first thing in the morning. So in this course, I've made sure that I've created a full section to help you manage client expectations. Understand how to sell the clients without being too pushy and salesy. And also how to create relationships with clients so that they'll want to work with you over the long term. I've also included some really cool automation methods that you can link up with clients and they can book meetings automatically into your diary without you lifting a finger all through the fiber platform. And I'll show you how to set everything up. It's super easy, so do not worry. Now we all know how important five star reviews are on fiber. And the system that I've created since 2018 roughly has helped me to not only get five star reviews, but also get my clients to write long passages. And you can actually check this on my profile if you really want to on fiber long passages, seeing how great I am to work with. Now on my profile you may see one or two negative reviews and that's completely normal. You're going to get some clients who are just not going to be happy no matter what. And that's why in this course, I've also included a lesson which is going to be helping you to deal with those types of clients. Clients who just want to argue and just want to be negative and are never going to be happy. And there's actually a client from South Korea who I worked with a little while ago who was super negative throughout the process. But I ended up turning him into a five star review and an incredible passage which you wrote for me to see how great I was to work with. And I'm going to show you how you can turn things around like that all in this course. So make sure you stick around for that particular lesson because it's super interesting. Now I'm going to actually sit here for another 30 minutes and tell you all the incredible stuff that is packed inside this course. What I would rather do is just tell you that everything that you're going to learn in this course, I wish I'd learned six years ago when I first started on fiber. It would have saved me so much time, so much energy. And I would have been in a position to make more money. And I wouldn't have had as many painful experiences with clients if I knew what I knew today. So I really hope that all the lessons, methods, approaches, techniques and strategies that I'm going to teach you in this course to help you really reach your potential on the fiber platform as a freelancer. Help you as much as all the students and freelancers that I've coached over the past couple of years. And I really can't wait to get your feedback on this court because I've really put everything that I know about freelancing and succeeding on the fiber platform in this program to help you. So without further delay, I will see you in the next lesson. 2. Fiverr seller levels 101: In this lesson, we're going to be learning all about the different seller levels on fiber. And most importantly, how you can work your way up the level. Sir, you can get more benefits, more traffic on your profile, and then more orders and higher quality clients. So let's dive right in now. This is actually an official page on the fiber website and you can actually go on that if you really want to to dig in a little bit deeper. But ultimately, it tells you what the different seller levels are and also how you can work your way through the different levels to eventually becoming a fiber. Now it says that the seller level is based on your monthly performance, superb service, high buyer satisfaction, and on time delivery. Now within this course, I'm going to be showing you how to hit those three things. So you can eventually get more five star reviews, which will basically help you to climb up the rankings far faster. But right now, let's focus on the different seller levels so we can understand where we're going and then I can teach you how to get there. And as it says here, by basically, you know, providing a great service, you're going to basically get more traffic to your profile which will then result in more orders. So you can essentially earn more money. Now if you're a complete new being, you've just started your five journey, then you're going to be classed as a new seller. Now this is basically where your fiber journey starts. And as soon as you create a gig on fiber, you're going to start to be linked up with different clients who are looking for the service that you're looking to provide. Now, when you just start off on fiber, it's really important for you to get those first few orders right. And I'll share a couple of tips a little bit later on so you can really get off on the right foot. But the reason that this is super important is because if you've only done three orders and your brand new on fiber and they've all kind of been negative, maybe one or two star reviews, then no other clients are going to want to work with you, they're not going to want to waste their time. So it's more likely that you're going to have to basically start over again and start a brand new profile. So starting off on the right foot is really important and we'll cover all that later on on the course. Do not worry. Now, as a new seller, you essentially get to create seven active gigs, okay, So that's seven different services that you can offer your clients. You can also add two extras per gig, which we'll go through a little bit later on on the course. It's not that important right now, don't worry about it just yet. You can also create custom office up to $20,000 each. We'll also cover custom offers later on on the course, so do not worry about that. That's a little bit more advanced and I'll tell you the certain situations when you should be using custom offers a little bit later on. And you can also withdraw your earnings after 14 days. So if you're brand new to fiber, then basically what happens is when a client pays you fiber, keeps hold of that money for 14 days before they release it to you. Now the reason fiber do this is really simple. It's basically to make sure that the seller and the buyer are happy before they release the funds to the seller. I actually had a situation once where this was super useful, where basically someone hacked my account and basically sent themselves, think about 400 or $500 that was in my account at the time. And basically because the money hadn't cleared yet on their side, and it had only been around two days, I managed to contact fiber and tell them what happened, and they actually reimbursed me the money before it got sent out to the person who hacked my account. Now at the time, this was super scary for me. I still remember walking up and down the beach almost crying my eyes out with my friends. Realizing that I've essentially been robbed. But now I do not keep any money on the fiber platform. And I also know that if anything ever goes wrong like that, as long as I check my account every one or two days, I basically know that if anyone tries to steal anything from my fiber account, I know for a fact that I'm going to get it back because this is how fiver works. It's super safe and super secure. So once you've been a new seller, you then move on to being a level one seller. Now to reach the level one status as a seller, you need to meet the following requirements. So you need to be an active seller for 60 days. So as I said before, fiver really wants to kind of figure you out and see if you're a good seller or if you're a bad seller you also need to complete at least ten orders over the full time that you've been on fire. This isn't going to be difficult to do, especially after you get the first one or two under your belt. Once you deliver a great service to two clients and they give you five star reviews, it's going to be really easy for you to get the next date, okay? But just be patient and it will all come, I promise. So you also need to earn over $400 You need to maintain a 4.2 star rating over 60 days. With everything that you're going to learn on this Course, 4.2 is not going to be a problem, Trust me. You're going to have to deliver a 90% response rate score over 60 days. What that basically means is if someone gets in contact with you via message, you basically respond to them as soon as possible. And as long as you respond to everyone, then this is going to be ticked off really easily. You need to score 90% order completion rate over the 60 days. And what this basically means is really simply over the 60 days, if you sell ten orders or work on ten projects, nine of those ten have to be completed and one is allowed to cancel. Now obviously we don't want any to cancel and we are aiming to complete all ten because we want to get paid and we want to make sure that we keep our perfect score. And if you follow all of the things in this course, I promise you you're going to be able to manage your client's expectations and deliver on everything that you promised them. So just stay tuned and we'll follow up with everything a little bit later on. You need to achieve a 90% on time delivery score over 60 days. This is actually a really simple one to get right, but you need to make sure that you dedicate the right amount of time to the project. This is all something that we're going to go through later on the course. So again, please don't worry, we will cover it a little bit later in more detail. And you also need to make sure you receive no warnings for 30 days. Now this is one of the things that always get new sellers in trouble. The reason being is there are some things on fire that you just cannot do. And I've dedicated a full lesson to making sure that I outline everything later on in the course because I've actually been given a few warnings over my time on the platform. Obviously, I've been on the platform for six to seven years now. And some of the things that they do almost bang you for pretty strict. So I want to make sure we cover everything that you could potentially get a one in four to make sure you don't get into trouble with the platform and potentially get your profile band. Now once you become a level one seller, you get some additional benefits. So you can then create up to ten active gigs. You can add four extra services for each gig. You can also create custom offers up to 20,000 which is the exact same as a new seller anyway. You can also create custom offers up to 20,000 much like a new seller. So there's nothing different there. And you can also withdraw your runnings after 14 days. Again, exactly the same as a new seller. So how do you get from being a level one seller on fiber to being a level two seller? Well, let's find out. So to reach level two status, you need to meet the following requirements. You need to be an active seller for 120 days. You need to complete 50 orders of all time. As you can see, they're just finding out how good you are at providing the service that you are providing. On the platform, you need to earn $2,000 or more. Maintain a 4.2 star rating, which again is really low. Actually, we should be aiming for around 4.95 Deliver a 90% response rate, 90% completion rate, 90% on delivery time, and receive no warnings over 30 days. So what are the benefits that we get by becoming a level 25 a seller? Well, we get to add more active gigs, so we get to do 20 now. We also get to add more extras. Create custom offers up a 20 grand, which is pretty much the exact same as before. You get to enjoy priority customer support, which is actually really useful. Around 34 weeks ago, I couldn't upload a video on my profile for some reason, I'm not sure why. And then basically within two days, I managed to fix it and everything was done, and it was just really incredible. So this is actually really, really useful, and you can still only withdraw your earnings after 14 days. Now I do know that level two sellers on five are the last ones that have to wait 14 days to retrieve their money. Once you become a top seller or a pro, then you're essentially trusted by the platform and they basically let you take it out within seven days. Which is great, it's basically half the time. But how do you become a top rated seller on five? Well, let's find out. So basically to become a top rated seller on fiber, it's the highest standard that you can achieve on the platform. Obviously, apart from becoming a pro, which is a little bit different, which will cover a little bit later on. So the fiber team manually reviews your performance for the previous 60 days and awards you with this level if you meet the following requirements. So you have to be an active seller for at least 180 days. So ultimately, if you have a really great run and work super hard within six months, you would literally be a top seller on fiber and be one of the best on the platform at what you offer. You need to earn over $10,000 which is actually super easy. If you think about it, it's only $100 per order, which is, you know, literally nothing. You need to maintain a 4.2 star rating over 60 days, which to be honest, again, is really, really low considering deliver a 90% response rate over 60 days score a 90% completion rate, achieve 90% on time delivery, and have no warnings over 30 days. Now what you get when you become a top rated seller is basically you get to create 30 active gigs, you get six extras, custom offers up to 20,000 which is the same for everyone. To be honest, you get top priority support and also get to withdraw your earnings after seven days. So just at the bottom they see a disclaimer. Pro freelancers who go through a rigorous application process. Now the application process to become a five app is not really rigorous. But you just have to have things in place in a certain way to maximize your chances of success. And I'm going to go through everything with you in this course, so do not worry, we'll cover everything. And it's super simple if you follow the step by step process and I'm going to share with you. So as you can see, there are different levels to the fiber platform. And you know, no matter what level you are, you are going to get gigs and clients who want to work with you. Now one thing that I've learned from essentially being a new seller and working my way up to a top seller since April 2017 and then eventually a five app is the higher your level, the more respected you're going to be as an expert on the platform by clients. And that's just the name of the game. You could be the most knowledgeable person in the world about building websites, for example. But it's going to take you more effort to be trusted by a potential client if you're brand new to the platform and you don't have any reviews. And the reason I'm sharing that with you is because when you first start out on fiber, it can be a little bit difficult. You can feel like you're not being respected, like people don't trust you. And it can feel a little bit challenging to actually get clients on board. But once you actually start to build a reputation on the platform, they can say the reviews, they can say that you take care of your clients. You can really make things easy for yourself just by getting those first few Fire Star reviews on the board. Now I know I keep saying this, but later on in the course, I'm going to be giving you all the tools that you need to help you succeed on fiber and manage your client's expectations. So you can get those five star reviews and climb up the hierarchy of fiber sellers on the platform to be respected and trusted as an expert in your field. So on that note, let's continue the course and I will see you in the next lesson. 3. The truthful pros & cons of Fiverr: Okay, so what are the pros and what are the cons of using the fiber platform? Now listen, I would love to sit here and tell you that using the fiber platform is all champagne and roses, but the reality is that it just isn't. And there are some things that you need to be very careful of if you're thinking about using fiber as a platform to build your career as a freelancer. Now obviously there are a couple of other platforms out there that you can use to actually further your freelance career and connect with new clients to sell your services. But fiber is by far, I think, the most popular. And if you use the platform correctly, you can really get ahead from all the other freelancers out there offering the same type of service as you. So let's go through a few of the pros about using the fiber platform. And then we'll go through some cons and some negative things about using the platform. But then we'll also explain how to overcome them later on on the call so that you can essentially create the best possible experience for yourself as a freelancer on fiber. So the first pro of being a freelancer on fiber is fiber, ultimately pays for your marketing for now what do I mean by this? I mean that basically as a freelancer, you need to find clients somewhere somehow. And if you've used fiber before, you'll know that they take 20% of all the money that you make through the platform. Now, this can seem like quite a lot. And I actually felt pretty bad when I first started out on fiber because I felt like they were taking 20% of everything that I earned and had worked for. But it isn't quite like that. If you think about it logically, if you think about most businesses, they spend anywhere between 30% to 40% to actually acquire a new customer. And if you didn't have fiber or another platform to actually get clients, then you'd ultimately have to spend a ton of time marketing yourself on social media. Or maybe making Youtube videos or reaching out to your new clients to offer them services. And creating all of that content to market yourself on social media can take an incredible amount of effort and energy. And once I understood that, I began to realize that the 20% that fiber takes from you is simply just to spend on marketing to get you more clients in future. So once you start thinking about it that way, it actually makes it far more bearable to give that 20% of fiber so they can bring you more clients in future. So you could see that as a pro, but you could also see it as a con. But hopefully that puts in the context that the 20% that you're giving is actually for your own benefit. Now another pro, which I actually mentioned in the previous point is that you can connect with clients that will want to work with you directly later on. Now one of the most important things that we're going to be covering later on on the course is how to build your digital presence and brand outside of the fiber platform. Now some clients that find me on five end up finding my Youtube channel, my courses, and then eventually my website. And some of them get in contact with me directly. Now obviously I don't know which ones have seen me on five first or maybe find me through Youtube. But I do know that fiber does bring a lot of attention to you for your particular expertise in the services that you provide. So it certainly can't hurt to have a website for them to check out after they've found you on fiber just to build that credibility and trust. So another pro about fiber is the fact that it simply allows you to get more exposure for the services that you want to provide and position to you as an expert in your field. And that leads me onto another pro about the fiber platform that I absolutely love. Now as a freelancer, you can sometimes be in a position where clients maybe don't want to pay everything up front. And maybe they want to pay 70% at the end of the process, which is obviously a little bit daunting for most freelancers. And I'm want to teach you a couple of methods later on in the course as to how to get peered up front every single time for every single project, so that you never have to deliver a project hoping that the client is going to pay you after delivery. And one of the great things about the fiber platform is that you have to get peered up front for them to start the project. Now obviously fiber holds that money, but as far as the client's concerned, they have already paid for the service. They don't know that that money is going to be held for 14 days before it is released to you. Or seven days before a top seller or a pro seller. So that's actually a really great pro in regards to using the fiber platform. The client is paying upfront for the services and as far as they're concerned, they have already paid you upfront. So they're fully committed to the project. So now we've covered some pros, let's move on to some cons and some negative things about using the fiber platform so that we can then counter them and find solutions for them later on in the course. So the first thing that is a little bit of a con about using the fiber platform is that clients can sometimes be very budget sensitive. Now as I mentioned a little bit earlier on in this course, it tends to get a little bit easier as you become a top seller. And then eventually a pro on fiber. And even if you are a level two people tend to not really try to knock you down in mags to price once you've got a little bit of credibility and trust in you're really good at what you do on the platform. But especially when you're a new seller, you will get some cheeky clients who try to basically put you down and try to get you at a really cheap rate. Because ultimately they know that you're new to the platform and you're just trying to get as many clients as possible. And to be honest, when I first started out as a new seller on fiber, I was just doing gigs for whatever people would pay me. All I cared about was getting the five star of views and really building my credibility on the platform, which is exactly what I would recommend you do too. Now another con about the fiber platform is there is tons of competition. However, the solution for this is to simply be great at what you do. There's a great saying and a great quote that I love, which is the cream always rises to the top. And eventually this is the case. If you are great at what you do and you provided a great service and you really care about your clients, ultimately, you can't feel you have to succeed over the long term because you're going to be getting the five star reviews, you're going to be getting the great write ups. Clients are going to be coming back to you again and again. Fivver recognizes that Fiva notices when you are really driving great service and great value to your clients, they will put you in front of more clients if you really take care of the people who are working with you. Trust me, I know I've experienced this firsthand. Now obviously one of the more instant cons is that five does hold your payment for 14 days. But this is only really a problem if you need the money there and then if you don't need the money and you can just hold on for 14 days, then it's actually much better to get paid in full as opposed to worrying that you're going to actually get the money in the end. It's more of a pro and con for me, but obviously it's specific to each person's situation. Now, some of my friends who are freelancers say that the fiber platform can sometimes be a little bit negative and toxic. So what do I mean by that? Well, a con of fiber is that clients sometimes, especially when you first start out as a new seller, they tend to think that they can boss you around and get you to do lots of free things. I think that this is definitely the case, especially when you first start out, but as long as you are polite, professional, and you are very clear about what is included in your package when you first start the process, don't think clients actively go out to try and trip you up and try to get free stuff. I think most of the time it's actually just down to the fact that the seller, that's me and you, we basically don't state things as clearly as we maybe should. So for example, when I used to sell logo design on fiber, you know, many years ago I put in my gig that you would receive two concepts. Now, two concepts, to me personally, means two different ideas for your logo. Now the client thought that that meant that they could get two logos for two different businesses. So once they secured the gig in their mind, they thought they were going to get two different concepts for two different businesses instead of just one business. And that is obviously a little bit of a problem because that's double the work. And I have to create two logos for two businesses as opposed to doing two different ideas for the single business that the gig should be for. Now, there are two ways that you could approach this particular problem. The first is you could cancel the order. Or the second approach is basically the one that I took, which is take it on the chin, complete the order and apologize to the client and say, okay, lesson learned, I will change and be a little bit more clear in regards to what my package includes and get a great review. You know, just be honest with the client and say, listen, and this is what it actually includes. But I understand that this is my fault. Accountability is a really important thing when it comes to fiber and just being a freelancer in general. So being accountable and just say, listen, I understand the mistake. I'm going to complete this gig, obviously with you, because I know it's not your fault. But in future, this is basically what would be included in future, is that okay? They're going to say yes and then you just continue as normal. So just take the hit on the chain, learn from your mistake, and deliver the extra elements that the client thought they were going to be getting. And ultimately, you're going to end up with a Fire Star review, and you're going to be getting more clients after that anyway, as a result of that five star review. So it's a win win. Now, as you go through this course, there are going to be solutions to each of these cons so that you never have to worry about them, especially managing expectations and setting up your gig so that they're super clear and that there's no confusion on your client's end. There's nothing worse than a client securing your gig and basically expecting to get X, Y, and Z when the gig that they've secured actually only delivers X, which can be a little bit of a problem as I'm sure you can imagine. So we're going to cover everything. Do not worry, but those are the pros and cons of using fiber. And I will see you in the next lesson. 4. How to never get warnings or banned from Fiverr: Okay, so this is a lesson which you should not skip. So if you're here, congratulations, you're not going to get banned on fiber, but you have to follow these very strict rules. Fiber has these policies that basically want to make sure that you stay within the fiber platform. And it kind of makes sense because if five is spending all this money on bringing clients onto the platform to work with you, and then you're just working with them directly straight away. It doesn't make a lot of sense for them to keep you on the platform because they're not going to get a return on their marketing investment. So I'm going to go through every single thing that you should not do under any circumstances on the fiber platform or you're going to end up getting banned. And the first thing is never give your e mail address to a client. Now, this may seem a little bit silly, but it's actually really important that you keep all correspondence for all clients that you're working with within fiber, within the fiber platform and then explain why. So a little story is I was having a little bit of a challenge with your client a few years ago. And he was basically saying that I hadn't delivered all of the elements, that I was missing tons of things. And then I had to ask fiber to look into the situation because I had delivered everything that I'd promised to the client weeks ago. Now this particular client just wanted to try and get a couple of free elements from me. And this was very apparent because I had already delivered all of the elements that I had promised him and that were included in the package that he had secured. And because I had corresponded with him through five of the entire time, they knew that and they could see that I delivered everything that was promised within the gig. And they basically closed the order and I was paid my money without any issues. And this is why it's really important to follow the rules within fiber. Do not under any circumstances give your e mail address to them. Because if you give an e mail address to a client and they start asking you for things outside of the platform, you are going to get into trouble, I promise you. So keep everything inside of fiber and if they try to give you their e mail address, or if they maybe try to take the correspondence outside of fiber and try to speak to you outside of fiber, you should instantly tell them. We have to keep all correspondence within the fiber platform. We have to speak inside fiber. We cannot go outside the platform. It's the rules of fiber. This goes on to the next thing that you should always do, if you do not want to be banned from fiber, it's to not be rude and always be professional. So this is something that you really need to focus on if you're going to succeed on fiber. There are times where you are going to disagree with the client. For example, the client that I mentioned in my previous story who was trying to get free things out of me. I was very professional and I was extremely courteous and tried to be helpful, but I wasn't going to let him bully me and get lots of free work out of me because I value my time. And this is the same thing that you have to do as well. You cannot be rude, but you can be professional and say, okay, I understand that you thought that you were going to get this, this, and this, and this is after I've been on the platform for about two or three years. By the way, you can state to the client, I understand that this is what you're concerned about. In the package that you secured, it says that you're going to receive this, this, and this, and I've delivered this, this, and this. Now, I'm more than happy to give you this additional element, but it's going to cost you X Y. And so, you know, you can obviously figure out the numbers and see what makes sense to you, and you can maybe give them a little discounted rate just to obviously say, listen, I'm trying to help you, I'm trying to support you. I can give you this element, but obviously it takes a little bit of time. So if you're willing to pay for the time, I'm willing to give it to you. This is something that you always have to focus on within five. Stay professional. Never be rude, Even if the client is being a little bit challenging, just take a step back, even go away. Make yourself a coffee or something. Reply, always in a professional and polite manner. And another thing that you should always do if you want to steer on fiber for the long term and you never want to get banned, is to make sure that when you actually deliver an order, make sure you only deliver the order when all of the elements are ready. So what do I mean by that? For example, I once got a warning, I think in my first six months on fiber where I was offering a branding package. So this included a logo, business cards, color palette, brand guidelines, letterhead, E mail signature, everything that you could possibly need to start your brand. And I delivered the logo designs and I was going to deliver the business cards, the color palette and everything else separate and a separate message. However, this is not how fiver wants you to work when you want delivering a package, it needs to include everything in the package. And this is something which I had to learn the hardware. I got a warning from fiver about this, and ultimately I ended up learning from that. And obviously, I can share this information with you now to help you, but this is something which is super important. So make sure that when you deliver the order, everything is included in the order. Because if the client says that the order does not include certain elements, fiber is going to come down super hard on you. So just make sure that everything is included when you actually deliver the order. Now another thing that you should never do on fiber is ask for a five star review. This is something which can be seen as basically corrupting the system within fiber and trying to manipulate the system. And it's not nice. You will get a warning instantly if you ask for a five star review. Now, there are some ways that you can basically get five star reviews without directly asking for them. And we're going to be covering them later on in the course. So do not worry, we have a solution for that particular circumstance, but never ask for a five star review directly. Because it's always going to end up in getting a warning from the fiber policy team. Now, this should be pretty obvious by now. But the last thing that you should never do on fiber if you don't want to be banned, is to ask for payments outside of fiber. Now if a client works with you through fiber and then maybe find your website from searching you online, then ends up working with you directly. That's a little bit different, but what you should never do on fiber is basically say, oh, can we work outside of fiber or can you pay me outside of fiber that isn't suitable for the fiber platform? They will give you a warning, they will be watching you for the next few weeks to see if you do anything like that again. So please do not ask for any sort of payment or to link up or to do anything outside the fiber platform. Especially when you're a new seller or a level one seller. You need to be on your best behavior, especially since you're just starting out on the platform and they're not even sure if they trust you yet. So I know the things in this lesson may seem really basic, but if you do any of these things, it could really harm your fiber profile. And we want to make sure that you're here for the long term. So make sure you follow those rules. And I'll see you in the next lesson. 5. How to attract more high-quality clients on Fiverr: So how do you get higher quality clients on the fiber platform to notice you? Well, if you're new to fiber and you're maybe a new seller or maybe even a level one seller. You will have been contacted by some clients who just seem to either want things super fast or super cheap. And they're not really the highest quality clients that you want to work with. Now, I believe that all clients can be good clients, but some clients are just better quality than others. It's just a fact. So how do you get the highest quality clients to want to work with you? First, let's define what an actual high quality client is. So a high quality client is someone who wants the best possible result for their business. It's someone who isn't focused on how much something costs, but more so how much value you can provide. So they don't mind spending a little bit more if it's going to get them, you know, a better result in the long term. And it's also someone who's respectful and who actually believes in you and trust you and respect your expertise. Now if you're going to attract clients who are respectful and who trust you and who really want the best value for money, those are the clients that are going to stick with you for the long term and they're going to pay you very well for your time and efforts. And they're also going to be a joy to work with. So how do you attract these high quality clients that I'm talking about? And how do you do it in a way where you can stand out above everyone else on the platform that's offering the exact same type of service that you are. Well, the first thing that you need to do is to make sure that your profile is professional and perfectly created. Now I actually cover how to create the perfect fiber profile, and I go through it with you step by step a little bit later on in the course. But it's really important that you make sure that your profile looks as good, if not better, than every single other freelancer on the fiber platform that's offering the same type of service as you. So that you can stand out and give clients a reason to choose you above everyone else on the fiber platform. Now the next tip to attracting high quality clients is to know your target audience. So what do I mean by that? Well, for me for example, my target audience are businesses that are either just starting new start ups or businesses that have tried to brand themselves, but they have done it unsuccessfully. The reality is that I know after doing this for a decade, if a client has tried to brand their business before and their field, they are more likely to appear more on the second try because they know that they need to invest in their branding and they know how difficult it is to get things right. So what does this mean for you? Well, that means that over time, you're going to learn who your target audience is. And also, most importantly, who is going to pay you the most for your time and expertise. For example, you could be offering two different types of services. One could be designing logos, and one could be designing menus or something else to do with graphic design. Now, one of those services could be the most profitable by far. And if it is, then you should lean into that particular service and the type of target audience that is buying that service more than the other service. And the reason being is if you're dedicating 50% of your time between those two services and one is extremely profitable and the other one isn't anywhere near as profitable, then if you put 100% of your effort into this service, you're going to make double the money. And Anderson, we'll be going into the financials and numbers later on in the course in a little bit more detail. But it's really important that you have the data and the self awareness to realize which services and which types of clients are bringing in the most revenue. So that you can focus more in that area and you can get more money for your time invested. And that leads me onto my next tip for attracting high quality clients, which is to showcase your work properly. So what do I mean by showcasing your work properly? Well, I'm going to cover this in a little bit more detail later on in the course as always. But basically what we need to do is we need to understand how the best agencies and expert in the world showcase the type of work that you're doing, whether it be logo design or brand identities or video editing, or you know, copyrighting, whatever it is. You need to find out who the best in the industry is, see how they present their work, and then copy them. So this is really simplified just to basically get the message across. If you want to figure out how to present yourself in the best possible way, then who better to learn from than the best in the industry who are getting paid the most in the industry? We'll cover this some more detail later on in the course. But I just wanted to give that piece of information because it's really valuable and it can help you start thinking in a way where you can instantly start presenting yourself as more professional. Now, another great tip to helping you attract higher quality clients is to be solution oriented and not just offer a service. So what do I mean by this? I mean that instead of just offering logo design as a service, offer something which can solve a problem for the client. So for example, you're not just selling a logo design, you're selling an identity which can help the client with that business, build trust with their potential customers. And when you're communicating with the client and when you're doing other things like writing the title for your gig or the description or, you know, creating the video for your gig, which will all cover later on in the course anyway, in more detail. You need to make sure that you are providing a solution which is a pinpoint for the actual client, instead of just saying, oh, you know, I do logos and I do color palettes and I do this. What is the benefit that the client is going to get from working with you as opposed to everybody else? Because the reality is that there are thousands of freelancers who can offer a logo design, but who can really offer a brand identity package that can help build trust and credibility for the brand that it's created for. It's the exact same deliverables, but it's a completely different way to look at things. It's connecting with the pinpoint that the client is currently facing. They want to have a brand which is seen as credible and trustworthy and you're going to offer them the solution for that particular problem. It's a really subtle shift, but once you start thinking in that way and stop thinking about what you can offer and basically think about what problems you can solve, everything changes, and you start to have far more in depth and far more meaningful conversations with your clients. Which actually ties into my next tip of adding more value through your thinking. So for example, I have a really great friend who is a freelancer called Olympia. She's a fantastic designer and she had an issue with one of her clients where he basically asked her to come up with three different variations for a logo which she designed for him. And I told her, I said, listen, this is the moment where you need to showcase your expertise and provide value for your thinking. So what I mean by that is she needed to give him a suggestion as to which logo she thinks is going to be best, not because it's her opinion speaking from an objective standpoint, because one of the logos from a design standpoint was more scalable. And what that means is it basically looked better when it was super small. Such as being a favicon or, you know, being on, you know, a pencil for example. If it was going to be on a pencil. And the way to angle that is to say to the client, listen, you're the captain of the ship, you can make whichever decision you want. But from a design standpoint, this logo here is the logo which is going to serve you best as a brand mark. Now at that point, you've given all the power to the client, but what you've done is you've provided more value at no cost to yourself. It's literally, you know, costs you maybe 5 seconds to write this down in a message to them on fiber. But you've provided more value. You've showcased that you care. And you've also position yourself as an expert. So they're going to come back to you and they may ask your opinion on something else when they want to work with you again. So by providing more value and not being scared to, you know, give your opinion and say, listen, obviously you can make whichever decision you thinks best. You're the captain of the ship. I always use that term when I'm speaking to clients just to make sure that they know that they're in control and it's their decision. Ultimately, this is going to be the best decision from a design standpoint, but ultimately, each decision that you make, there's no wrong decision. I'm just saying that from a design standpoint, this is going to be the best option for you, but you can make whichever decision you like. That's really empowering for a client because it shows that you can and it shows that you really want them to get the best result for their money. And that leads me onto my next method, which I've used for pretty much my entire career, which is to be the helpful Dr. Now I was actually conducting some sales training with a student of mine who I was coaching. And he was really struggling to not sound really salesy on his calls with his clients. And I said to him, when you go to a Dr. does the Dr. try to sell you anything And he said, no doctor's always really helpful, really supportive and, you know, just trying to do the best for me. And I said, well, why don't you do that with a client? And what I mean by that is when you're trying to sell something to a client, they're never going to really buy it unless it's in their best interest. And sometimes it comes down to, for example, if your particular service or solution isn't the best for that particular client, you need to point them in a different direction and say, listen, I don't think we're the right fit for each other at this moment in time. I actually think that you'll be better served and you'll get a better result for what you're particularly looking for from either this person or by doing this type of service. And what that does is it basically develops instant level of trust that you are not acting in your best self interest, but you're actually looking after the client. You're thinking about them before you're thinking about yourself. And if you're speaking to a client and you're telling them how great you are, They're going to be a little bit dubious about what you're saying. But if you say to a client, listen, I've made some mistakes in the past. I've did this, this, and this, and I've learned a lot from that. They're going to be far more open to believing you. We take negative comments as far more believable and we trust them far more than we do positive ones, especially when we're talking about ourself, right? So the trick here is to think long term and to think about the long term relationship that you want to build with that client. Now that client may never come back, they may never speak to you ever again. And that's fine. It's better to think like that because it's going to create a relationship that is going to be far more profitable over the long term. Not with every client, but with most clients. And that might sound a little bit, you know, risky. But trust me, it's worked for me and it's worked for me for a decade now. So I've got a lot of confidence in that approach, to say the least. Now a very obvious approach, which I've pretty much already covered, is to build your credibility on the fiber platform. Now obviously, we're going to be going into this into more depth by getting more reviews and managing your client's expectations. And we'll go through the tactics of how to do that on an actionable basis a little bit later on. But one thing that I think is really important is that you really focus on just building your credibility interest on the fiber platform before you start thinking about making as much money as possible. Now, when I first started out on fiber in 2017, I really didn't know what was going to sell on the platform. I tried to do logo design, but you know, I couldn't sell anything for more than five or $10 at the time. But over time, because I gradually got better and I also built trust and credibility on the platform, I've started to be able to charge a lot more and now, you know, my packages are, you know, around $2,000 for, you know, a branding package, you know, a standard one. And you know, to get on a zoom call with me for 1 hour to go through your brand and your marketing or, you know, get some, you know, expertise in those two particular areas. It's $500 you know, 495, which is simply because I've built a certain level of trust and credibility on the platform where people know that, yeah, I may be the most expensive branding expert on the platform, 100% but I can guarantee results and that's the difference. And a lot of new sellers try to price themselves super high and they don't have the credibility. So they're never going to sell their products or services at that high rate if they do not build the credibility first, that's a super great tip that I would recommend to you is sell your services at a discount at the very beginning, but then gradually increase your prices as you build credibility and understand that from the client's standpoint, they don't know you yet, and nobody's really reviewed you yet. So it's kind of a little bit more of a leap for them to actually hire you if you don't have credibility and trust on the platform first. Now the last tip, which is a little bit controversial because some people believe in it and some people don't, but I swear by it I think it's one of the most beneficial things for both making sure that you're the right fit with the client and also making sure that, you know, there are going to be a quality client to work with anyway, is to have a consultation call with them. Fiber has a feature on the message board where you can basically click for a zoom call to start. It's recorded and then it's uploaded to your chat so that everyone can refer back to it later on if anything said within the conversation which you need to refer back to you. And having this call just for a 15 minute discovery call can really help you to understand the client's issue, the client's challenges. And can ultimately help you be a lot more helpful within the realms of trying to solve their problems. And also just, you know, from a selfish point of view as freelancers like we're trying to obviously build a business here. We need to also understand that we need to make sure that we're the right fit for the client and they're the right fit for us. So, for example, if a client wants, you know, to rush everything and they just want, you know, they don't really care about quality that much, but they still want greedy, great quality. But they need it yesterday. And, you know, I don't really want to work with clients that want to rush everything, right? It's just not my thing. There are people out there who can provide those types of services where they simply just, you know, rush everything and they just get things done and the quality is not quite there. I want to really take the time, you know, maybe a day or two just to kind of really refine things and get things in a really solid place. So having that little 15 minute call with them really help to put things in the perspective and really make sure there's chemistry between you guys to make sure you're the right fit for each other. Which is going to be super beneficial. And it's going to save you a lot of time, challenges, and agony later on down the line when you find someone that isn't quite the right fit, but you're already engaged in a project. Anyway, I hope these tips were valuable. There's still so much value left to come in this course. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. 6. How to spot nightmare clients instantly: So nightmare clients, listen, if you've been on fire for any stretch of time, you've probably came across a couple of clients that have been a little bit challenging, to say the least. Now, nightmare clients come in all sorts of shapes and forms. And ultimately, I think nightmare clients are a great test of your patients. But they're actually really good to help you to understand how to deal with challenging situations. Because it is never easy to deal with a nightmare client. That is why they're called nightmare clients. And if we can help it, we should avoid them at all costs. So what I want to share with you in this video is what I found over the past decade of working with clients. How to highlight the ones that you shouldn't work with and who you should steer away from at all costs. Now, the first type of nightmare client is the one that wants it fast. And you can tell these types of clients from a mile off. Because the first thing they ask you, how soon can you get things done? Can you get it done in two days? When your gig says it takes six days, can you, you know, get things done today or tomorrow? I'm in a rush. I have a deadline to hit with these types of clients. What I found personally, and obviously, you know, you can do whatever you feel is best for your personal situation. But when I first started out as a freelancer, I really tried to get as many clients as possible. And if a client said to me that they really wanted to, you know, get stuff done in like two days, I would accept that. And then I would take that deadline as my deadline. And what I mean by that is I would kind of absorb the pressure that there were feeling and I would take on that responsibility. Now, just speaking from the heart here, you know, between two freelancers, this is not good for your mental health. It's not good for your stress levels, it's not good for your mind. It's definitely not good, you know, if, you know, I obviously live with my wife and I'm expecting my first baby boy in the next couple of months. Imagine if I took on a client like that who added that pressure into my life and my energy and then I took it out on, you know, my wife by maybe being not as loving and supportive as I could be now, you know, if you're single and you just live by yourself, then it's different, but it's still very important. Your well being and your mental health is more important than any amount of money. And I would rather not work with a client and let the project pass than take on this unnecessary pressure of someone who is in a rush. It's their problem, it's not mine, you know. It's only my problem if I take on the project. So usually, in my experience, and obviously, I just want to pass on, you know, what I would do in my situation if I was you. And obviously I just want to give you the best advice possible so you can handle any situation in the best possible way. Always think about these particular instances as you bringing on the pressure into your own life because that's ultimately what it is. So you know, you can make whichever decision you feel is best for you, but that's just my opinion on the matter. Now, the next type of client that I generally like to stay away from is clients that like things cheap. So how do you spot these clients? Now, I can say that sometimes I have had clients that have initially wanted to really negotiate hard with me and then they ended up actually paying me quite a lot afterwards once they actually gain my trust. So it could just be a trust thing at the very beginning where they don't really know what they're going to get. So they're just trying to get the best deal possible in the beginning. But if a client is trying to to haggle you and try to get the best possible price, maybe they're just like negotiating. But in my experience, if someone isn't willing to pay what you're worth, then one of two things is happening. Either. Number one, you're not actually worth the amount that you're charging, which could be the case. It certainly was for me in my early career when I tried to charge as much as I am now before I was ready or the second thing is that person just doesn't value you for the amount that you think you're worth. So it's kind of a fine balance, right? You really need to kind of find the middle ground of what makes sense. And ultimately, the market is going to tell you how much you're worth. That's the most important thing with freelancing. The market is always going to tell you how much you can actually charge. And the only way that you find out how much you're actually worth is by charging the amount and having someone actually pay. Until someone pays you, you're not worth that. So keep that in mind. But if someone comes up to you initially and starts saying, oh, can I get a discount on this? Or, you know, for example, we do brand naming services and you know, our cheapest package is like $1,195 At the moment, I think something like that. If someone comes up and says, oh, I only have a budget of $600 say oh, you know, that's fantastic. There's going to be plenty of other services out there for you that charge $600 or even $200 for brand naming. And they said no, but I really wanted to work with you. Can you not just give me a discount and I just politely say, listen, you know, we get 30 people getting in touch with us every single day asking, you know, us to name their brand. And the reality is that we say no to, you know, 90% of those people. We only actually accept maybe two clients per per day. You know, sometimes we don't even accept any if we're not interested in the projects. So it would be unfair to every other client who's paid the full amount if we start handing other clients or new clients discounts when some clients have been working with us for, you know. 12 months, 24 months to build their brand and you know, market their brand and, you know, really manage their brand properly. If we should be giving anyone a discount, we should be giving them a discount, which we do. We do actually give loyalty discounts to clients who have worked with us, you know, over two or three projects. So that's my opinion on clients who want it cheap, handle them with care. And that is actually a really great way to handle the situation. Just put it back on them and say, listen, you know, I would love to do that, but it wouldn't be found on our other clients who have peered us fully. And usually they'll either go away or they'll actually peer the full because they understand that obviously it isn't really fair. So, yeah, if I'm a nice person, they'll just peer in full. Now, another type of nightmare client, which you may come across is the client that knows everything already. Now these types of clients come around in the early days of your time on fiber. Or when you don't really have as much confidence in your expertise within a particular subject. So for example, when we first started brand naming around eight years ago, nine years ago now, probably we weren't as understanding of the science behind brand naming and the neurological factors that go on when you're developing a brand name. So when a client comes back to us, you know, eight years ago for example, and says, all these brand names are terrible, you know? I hate them all. You know, they're no good. I can't believe I paid you, you know, I don't know. Probably like $200 at the time or something way back when I can't believe I paid you $200 for this crap back then, we didn't really understand how to deal with that. It was a learning process. But now if, you know, I mean, this never happens because we fine tuned our process and, you know, we actually say to clients now with the first set of names that we send you were not. Because obviously we've learned the process and how things work with the brand naming process. We don't want to put the pressure on the client to find the perfect brand name in the first initial presentation. What we say is it's a journey we're wanting to learn as much as possible with the initial presentation so that we can move forward effectively. So this is the whole process, right? And you learn how to manage clients in a way where it takes the pressure off them and it allows them to trust your expertise. Because now if a client says, oh, that name is complete nonsense, I don't understand it. It's completely off brief. I know that every single name that we develop has a strategic approach. It has multiple scientific and neurological factors that make that name relevant to the objective, the strategic objective that that brand is trying to achieve. And once I explain that in a little bit more detail, they're a little bit more receptive. I'm not just backing away anymore and just kind of, you know, just kind of taking, you know, they're punch in the face if that makes sense. I'm taking the impact but then I'm saying listen. So what I can say is these are the reasons that we're doing it subjectively. You're more than welcome to say that you don't like the name. That's your opinion. Okay, that's fine. But from an objective standpoint, strategically that name makes sense because X, Y, and that level of expertise, which if you don't have it already, it will come eventually, can really help you to handle these clients with a lot of finesse, which is going to come in super handy, you know, throughout your entire career. Now, another type of client, which is always a little bit concerning to me, and I'm always a little bit dubious when I'm thinking about perhaps working with them, is a client who doesn't want to jump on a call with me. Now you may like talking to people on zoom. I actually really enjoyed talking to people on zoom and, you know, discussing that project in depth and really, you know, understanding what they're trying to achieve. But if a client isn't willing to jump on a 15 minute call with you to discuss the project, maybe they just have not so great English, which is sometimes the case. I worked with a company in South Korea before, and the guy who I was working with wasn't the best in speaking English. So he preferred writing because obviously he could translate and use, you know, different software to understand exactly what I was saying. So that's understandable, but if someone just doesn't want to communicate and they're not willing to actually put in the time to get the results that they need, and they're just expect you to pull a rabbit out of a hat without any information. That can be a little bit concerning. And I like to work with clients who are 100% committed to the project and 100% committed to the process, our process. And then I can get them the results that they need. What I don't do is I do not accept clients who do not follow our process and then expect us to get the results that they want when they haven't invested in the process and they have just expected results without putting in any effort whatsoever. Yeah, there's a very fine line. It's a very fine balance. But that is something which I've learned over time and I would, you know, really suggest that you take that approach as well. Now lastly, one of the things which always kind of highlights a little bit of a concern for me when it comes to working with new clients, is them asking how many provisions are included? Now this could just be, you know, kind of a basic question that they just ask everybody, but the reality is that there's two reasons why that concerns me. Number one on five, there are packages where it literally says how many revisions are included so they can check that out. If they still don't know, then they probably haven't checked your package out. And they're probably just hunting for prices, which is just a waste of their time in yours, right? You should select someone who you like their work and you want to get the value that they can provide instead of just price hunting and just trying to get the cheapest possible price. That just makes zero sense, at least in my opinion. And the second thing is if they're asking how many revisions are included, what they want to know is how many times can I get you to do this job over and over again without pain anymore? And that's always a little bit concerning because if there's one thing that really annoys me and it will annoy you as well, I'm sure is someone wasting my time? You know, if someone wastes your time, you know you've got 1 million things that you want to be doing as opposed to doing jobs over and over again with every project. You want to be really focused on getting as close to the finish line as possible and then just pushing it over the edge with a revision. What you certainly shouldn't be able to do is to do the job three times over or twice over. That doesn't really work. It happens sometimes. On the very, very rare occasion, maybe one in 300 projects results in redoing everything over and over again. If you really missed the mark on maybe a piece of information wasn't understood correctly or something like that. But ultimately, if someone's asking how many revisions can I get you to do? It obviously depends on how they word it. You need to really understand why they're asking and make sure you actually follow a process where you create milestones. So what do I mean by milestones? Well, within our naming process, when we're finding brand names for companies, we have one milestone at the very beginning where we confirm the directions of the brand name. So for example, what do we want the brand names to communicate? What do we want to try and achieve with the brand name once they confirm those directions? There's no going back from that, if that makes sense. So once we confirm the directions, then we have the next milestone throughout the process, which is the actual initial presentation with the initial names. So within that milestone, we are discussing, okay, what are we learning from these names? What do we like? What do we not like? Once we understand the confirm what they like and what they don't like, we put another flag in the process. That's another milestone that we've passed. So when they get to the next stage, they can't then say, oh, I don't like this because of this, and I don't like this because of that because they've already confirmed that they liked it in the second stage of the process. So adding milestones throughout the process is really, really important if you want to manage the process effectively. And also make sure that you don't have clients just using revisions for the sake of it over and over again and just wasting your time because that's just going to add stress. You've got other projects to worry about and it just isn't an efficient way and an effective way to run your business. So hopefully those tips help you to spot some nightmare clients that pop up in your messages or try to hire you. But ultimately it's a learning process and you're going to get better at spotting these types of clients from a mile away. So let's continue with the course and dive into the next lesson, and look forward to seeing you there. 7. Improving your response time tips: So how do you keep your average response time law on fiber whilst also kind of managing some sort of work life balance? Well, there are a few approaches that you can take to achieve this. Now, me personally, when I first started on fiber, I would have the app downloaded on my phone so that whenever a new client got in touch with me, I instantly got a notification and I could jump on the app and get back to them as soon as possible. Now, this is good if you want to be extremely proactive in getting back to clients, but it is not good for your mental health. And what I mean by that is you are constantly at the beckoning call of new clients trying to get in touch with you, which is a good thing because you can be super responsive and your average response time is very low. But it also puts this overwhelming pressure on you that you need to be receptive all the time. Every day I would sometimes be in bed, you know, with my wife and she would see my phone lined up and it would be a client and I would ultimately have to reply to them. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get to sleep that isn't healthy. So one of the things which I learned is to understand that, you know, if a client really wants to work with me, and this is a little bit different at the start of your freelance career as opposed to later on when you have a little bit more freedom and you develop the ability to see naught of projects, even though they are going to pay you quite handsomely, simply because you just don't need the money. The thing that I realized is that if a client really wants to work with me and they truly see me as the person who can solve that problem, one of two things will be very apparent. Number one, they won't just see high seller or high user name. This is my problem. They'll actually take the time to write to me and say hello Scott, so they actually know my name and they've checked out my profile. Then they'll basically give me a little breakdown of what their situation is and they'll ask if I can help them. So I think the main takeaway from this particular lesson is that yes, it's important to have your average response time low. But do not have it so low that it is starting to affect your mental health and your overall happiness and the flow of your day. Okay, make sure that you dedicate certain times during the day to check your messages. So maybe, I don't know, first thing in the morning and then maybe in the evening just before you close your laptop for the day or your computer. That may be a better strategy because then that gives you a long day of focus where you can really channel your energy to getting the best possible results for your current clients. And you're not having to chase after clients who are not even paying you yet. I think that's a better approach. Obviously, everyone has different ideas and different approaches to this particular situation. But in my humble opinion, I think that if a client really wants to work with me and they value me as an expert, they're going to wait a few hours for me to get back to them at the very least. So I hope that gives you a little bit of an insight in regards to how to approach not only getting your average response time low, which is super important on fiber, but also making sure that you get a really great work life balance where it's sustainable and you're not just going 100 miles an hour, which is sometimes needed in the very beginning, to be honest, to get those first ten to 20 reviews. But once you get those, it generally becomes a lot easier. So I hope this lesson was helpful and I will see you in the next one. 8. Is it worth promoting your Fiverr gigs?: So how do you promote your gigs on Fiber Five actually has a promotion feature built into the platform which allows you to get your gig in front of the right people at the right time fairly easily. Now this is peered promotion a little bit like Google ads and social media advertising. But it's specifically for the fiber platform. And this is super targeted because it allows you to get your service that you're trying to sell in front of the exact person that's trying to purchase that exact service at the right time. So what we're going to cover in this lesson is exactly how I approach using the promotion feature in fiber to get high quality clients and to ultimately land more projects. So as you can see here, this is the promoted gigs section. And if we go down to this section here, we can see that there are a couple of things that we should be keeping an eye on. So as you can see here, there are two sections that we can run through. The first is the Ad Overview. So this is all of the ads that I've done on the fiber platform altogether, which basically gives me an idea of how effective my advertising has been. So for example, within 2023, I've had 43,000 impressions, About 1,400 clicks, 21 orders. Using the promotion feature, I've had to spend around $1,540 to get around $12,757 in sales. Now if you go down to add performance, this is going to give you a little bit more of a breakdown in regards to which services have created most of that revenue. And as you can see here, it's actually the name development service that we offer on fiber, which has been bringing in most of that revenue. Now the reason for that is the naming package that we offer on the platform is one of the most popular. And this actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it, because this is a particular gig which has the most reviews. It is the gig which we basically do the most orders of and it's just the most popular service on fiber for us personally. So this makes a lot of sense that we have spent $1,200 on promoting that specific gig. And then this has resulted in around $11,400 in sales in 2023 alone. Now we'll actually be going through my full finances on fiber a little bit later on in the course, but this is just to give you an idea of the specific results of promoting gigs using the fiber promotion feature. Now please keep in mind that these numbers do not include clients that have just got in touch with us directly. Which is actually more significant than these numbers, which I'll show you a little bit later when we break down my full finances and income on fiber. And this also does not include the clients that have got in touch with us directly through our website and just, you know, via e mail, ultimately from finding me online. Overall, I would probably say that 11,400 is roughly around three to 4% of the overall revenue that this particular service has brought in June 2023 alone. So this is actually a really good insight in regards to how popular the services and also how beneficial the promotion feature can be on fiber. If you really want to push your gig and get a great return on your investment, one thing that I will say is if you're selling services for maybe 40 to $50 or maybe even $100 it may not be worthwhile. You're actually investing in promoting the gigs just yet. What I would do is I would wait until you're at a point where you can actually sell it for much higher, maybe $500 or $1,000 And then then you should be looking at promoting your gigs, because sometimes it takes us $30 for example, to get a seal. And therefore, it wouldn't make a lot of sense if you were selling your services for $60 to simply make $130 profit. Now we do offer other services on the fiber platform, but let's just keep it to our promotable gigs at this moment in time. And let me show you how I approach promoting the gigs using this particular feature. So that if you wanted to do the M, then you could copy my approach. So if I wanted to promote this naming gig here, I would simply go to this little toggle and press Promote, which is pretty simple. And then I would click this button here, which will simply take me to two options. The first option is promote with no cap, which basically means they're going to be promoting your gig in the most aggressive way possible. Now, the fiber promoted gigs feature works the exact same way as Google ads. And what I mean by that is the person who is willing to appear the most is going to be seeing the most often. And they're also going to be higher in the ranking, therefore being more likely for the customer to click on the. And that's what it means by promoting with no cap, which is actually recommended by fiber because that's how they make the most money. Now if we go to promote with customized cap, we can then set a ceiling for how much we're willing to pay per click. Now, I've tried so many different approaches when it comes to using a customized cap on my promoted gigs. But to be completely brutally honest, I've always found that promoting with no cap as being better simply because it tells fiber that you're ready to take on projects and it gets you in front of the right people the most often. So once I select that, I would simply just select save and then that is pretty much it. Fiber is now pushing that particular gig out to the community to get clients to notice me so that they can get in touch and I can set up meetings to sell my service. Now, just to be completely clear, I do believe that the promoted gigs feature is only available to top sellers and maybe even level two sellers and obviously pro sellers as well. Please keep that in mind because it doesn't actually make sense for you to be taking advantage of this particular feature when you're a level one or new seller. Simply because you don't have the trust and the credibility yet and you're still figuring things out. So please be patient. Now, obviously feel free to take any advice in this particular lesson to use yourself. But obviously, try to use your own approach as well. And learn what works for your specific service and your profile. Anyway, that covers everything in regards to promoting gigs on fiber. So I will see you in the next lesson. 9. Fiverr Dashboard 101: Hey, so in this lesson we're going to be covering the fiber dashboard. And we're going to be exploring every nook and cranny of the fiber dashboard and the platform itself to show you how to use it as efficiently and effectively as possible. So on that note, let's dive right in. This page itself is the fiber dashboard. And you actually have some really important and useful information here. So first and foremost, it gives you a quick snapshot of your delivery time, your order completion, your order response rate, your inbox response time, and your inbox response rate as well. It also gives you a little bit of an insight in regards to how much you've earned within a certain month. Now if you look here, it says I've earned a grand total of $0 in November, which is completely true. I haven't been taking on any new clients within the fiber platform in November and also in October simply because I've been extremely busy making courses like this. You know, planning for my little boy coming who's going to be here in a few months, and also moving house. So I haven't really needed to work the past couple of months because I've had previous projects which are still paying me from clients working directly with me. Which is simply just a result of me being in the industry for the past decade and having clients reach out to me pretty much every single day via e mail. So this is basically why my current earnings in November is a grand total of zero. But if you come to this section here, you can actually showcase your completed and canceled orders. So in regards to completed orders, this just goes down to, you know, this is going to go on for quite a while because obviously, I've been on the platform since 2017. But you can see here, you know, $595 595. $795 Um, you know, I sometimes did like like discovery calls where I would actually have a 15 minute conversation with someone and I would charge someone $5 just to jump on a call to make sure that they were serious about their brand. You know, $595 $15 for, you know, a quick little consultation call just to basically have a discussion with them like for five, 10 minutes. Now, just to be completely transparent, I do want to show you my canceled orders as well. So basically out of 1050 orders, I've had 50 which have canceled. Now these are a mixture of clients who have maybe ordered the service and then they've realized, oh, maybe I've made a mistake and this isn't quite for me, this isn't what I was looking for. So therefore, we've had to cancel. There are also some clients in here which were just so challenging to deal with and just a waste of time to be completely brutally honest. One in particular where she basically began to be very rude to me on our Zoom call when I was trying to help her. And I was extremely patient and I was extremely professional and extremely polite. And I just said to her, I said, listen, I can see we're not the right fit for each other and I'm going to cancel the gig. Please, don't use any of the assets that I've sent you already because they are obviously part of the gig and you haven't paid for it. And then at that point, she kind of turned around and started saying, oh, you know, I do actually want the gig, I'm really sorry for being so, you know, impolite. But at that point, it had already gone and I knew for a fact that if we closed the gig, she was going to give me a super sarcastic and negative review. So I just basically canceled the gig and just let us go our separate ways. Now, again, just to be super honest and transparent, there are a couple of clients inside my canceled gigs where basically they've just not been happy with the service. And, you know, this is ultimately the times where I've had to take accountability and said, okay, maybe we've made a mistake in this particular circumstance, let's cancel the gig, let's go out, set the ways, and I'm going to take that as a lesson learned on my end. You know, this has happened maybe, you know, maybe ten times over the past six years where, you know, I've really been in the wrong and it hasn't been anything to do with the client. These are the lessons that you're going to learn on your journey as a freelancer. You learn how to manage things more eloquently, You learn how to be it a service provider and to provide value. And also, there's been some cases where, like I mentioned before, where I was trying to charge for more than my product was actually worth. And ultimately, this resulted in the client not being extremely satisfied with the end result and ultimately, I had to cancel the order. Otherwise they were going to, you know, leave a super negative review and it wasn't really their fault. So if we go to the My business tab and we have orders, gigs, profile earnings, and fiber workspace. Now, in regards to orders, that is obviously the orders that you have in play right now. So you can actually manage everything in regards to gigs that is going to help you manage the gigs that you have on offer within the fiber platform at this moment in time. The profile tab is ultimately your fiber profile so you can make any changes and present yourself nice and professionally. And then earnings is obviously, you know, everything that you've made on the platform so you can track your money and manage it wisely. I'll be completely honest, I've never personally used fiber workspace, but I think it's simply where they can help you arrange some of your projects and some of your invoices and ND's and little things like that, which can be super helpful. But I've personally never used it. Now if we go to the growth and marketing tab, we have promoted gigs which we've already went through. We have the Fiber Pro section, which is simply just a sales page for how great it is to be a Fiber Pro whi, I'll go through with you in a little while later on in the course scale your business, which is essentially just a badge that you can put on your website or blog. To be honest, I've never done this and I never intend to. Simply because if someone's coming through my website, I want to deal with them directly through my website and not through fiber because it doesn't really make sense to peer 20% when they found me directly through my website. It just wouldn't be logical in regards to contacts. That is simply just all of the clients that you've worked with in the past who you can get in contact with them. And then in regards to fiber learn, this is simply an assortment of courses that fiber is basically trying to sell you to further yourself as a fiber professional in your particular domain. Now if we go to analytics, the overview tab is essentially your analytics based on your fiber profile as a whole. So this is going to include pieces of information such as, you know, where you are in regards to getting promoted to the next level within fiber. For your seller level, it's also going to tell you things like where your clients are mostly located. For example, a lot of my clients are based in Canada, the USA, and also Australia as well. For some reason I'm not sure why. And we'll actually be going far more in depth with the analytics later on in the course. So stick around for that because it's going to be super useful for you. Now, there's also a repeat business tab. Now one thing to think about when we are talking about repeat business is sometimes you have a product or a service which is really great as a repetitive service to offer somebody. For example, social media marketing, because you have to do it every single month. Accounting, for example, because you have to do it every single month. Some things you have to do every single month, or every week, or every year, some things you don't. For example, we offer a very different model where we start with brand naming for a service, and then we move on to logo design. Then we move onto website development. Then we move on to brand strategy and marketing strategy, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a full portfolio of services which benefit the person who is ultimately going through a journey of building their brand. And they want to do it in a very certain way to get the best end result. So we have a very different model to most agencies where we don't really want to get repeat business. So we have quite a different model to most agencies or freelancers on fiber, where we essentially just want to use the fiber platform to engage with new clients and build trust with them. And then you work with them on the other elements of their branding if they want to continue their journey with us. So once we finish these tabs here, we then have your notifications, which is pretty self explanatory. This is just where you can manage all of your engagements with all of your clients and also all of the services that you're buying on fiber as well. Then we also have your inbox, which is put yourself explanatory too. You can go here and press this tab to actually buy services, which is obviously super useful because maybe you're working with freelancers on the platform. I certainly hire a lot of people on fiber to help me with projects, which is really great. And then there's some other things here such as settings where you can change your password and your profile and all that other good stuff. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea as to how to navigate through the fiber dashboard and how to use the platform in the right way. Now we're going to be going into certain pages of the fiber platform in more detail later on in the course. Like for example, how to create the perfect profile, how to build the perfect gigs, how to manage your finances, which we're going to explore everything a little bit later on in the course. But I just wanted to give you an overview of how to use the fiber platform and the dashboard which they present you with. So hopefully this has been helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. 10. The right way to take a break from Fiverr: Now, if you've been a freelancer for any length of time, you know that sometimes you just need a break. Mental health and making sure you take care of yourself, and obviously your family is more important than any amount of projects that you can get on the fiber platform or anywhere else for that matter. In this lesson, I want to share a little bit of an insight in regards to my personal experiences with taking a break from fiber and how you can do the same to make sure you are always taking care of yourself mentally and physically. Now when you're on your fiber dashboard and you go to this little button here, you'll see a little tab called Profile. And when you click Profile, it will take you to this page where you can ultimately set your availability here in this section. Now for me personally, as I've said before earlier in the course, I am currently not taking on any new projects because I simply just don't want to spread myself too thin. I'm making a lot of courses over the next two months. And I'm also obviously getting ready for my little boy to arrive who is going to be here, you know, in a couple of months. And we're also moving house and there's tons of other things going on. And when I am servicing a client, whether it be through fiber or whether it would be directly through my website, I want to make sure that I can one, 100% commit to and support that client to help them get the best results possible. So make sure you don't feel bad about taking a break from fiber. It is not a bad thing. Now, the only thing that I would say is taking a break for more than a month on fiber without doing anything on the platform that may harm your profile a little bit. So what I would probably do is I would maybe take three weeks. And then I would maybe come back for a week just to do, you know, maybe one project or two projects. And then I would go back on holiday or, you know, to be marked as unavailable so that I can focus on the other areas of my life which require my attention. Now, if you need some further clarification, if you click Edit here, you can simply choose the dates, which is the first date of your holiday and then the last date of your holiday, where you can basically make sure that nobody contacts you within that time period. The fact of the matter is people can still contact you and people have been still contacting me whilst I've been unavailable. But you can basically click this button here to say that no clients can contact you within that time period. I like to keep that open because maybe I want to book a project for later on in the year, which is going to be when I'm more available and more open to take it on projects. And you can also add a little optional message here where you can basically just say, listen, this is why I'm away from, you know, fiber for this moment in time. But please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions or if you need any support. I'm more than happy to help on a direct basis to try and give you a little bit of guidance and support that you need at this time. And once you finish that, simply click Save Changes, and there you go. You are set as unavailable and everything is ready to go. Now if, for example, you want to come back a little bit early and you don't want to take your full holiday, then you can simply just click Set to Available. And that will allow you to come back and be active on the platform and start getting new projects. No matter how long you freelance, you always need to make sure that you dedicate some time away from working directly on projects to get other areas of your life in place. And the fact of the matter is, although it can feel extremely productive to just continue working and just battle on through it. And sometimes you have to do that, but sometimes you need to put the more important things first, such as family, moving house, and taking care of some other things like your health and your mental health. So keep this in mind. Do not feel bad about taking a break on fiber. And I will see you in the next lesson. 11. Is Fiverr Seller Plus Pro Program really worth it?: So in this lesson, we're going to be discussing if the seller program on fiber is worth the investment for freelancer. Now if you look here, you can see the sales page for the seller program. So what does the seller program even include? Well, it says here that you can get some key insights, immigrants to specific keywords and different things to essentially help you refine, to connect with more potential customers. It also gives you some more flexible solutions in regards to taking more control of your business and customizing your gig settings and payment withdrawal methods. So basically what that means is you can set more milestones, you can create a project which has multiple phases so that you can manage the project more effectively. And it also says that it has some valuable marketing tools where you can essentially give discounts and create packages where you can work with clients over the long term. It also says here that we can enjoy extra help in perks like priority customer support and some exclusive events and content. Now in regards to exclusive events and content, I'm not sure how helpful that person would be for me, I'm not really kind of an events person but priority customer support, I'm pretty sure that you get that anyway with being a top seller or a level two seller. So maybe this particular program is more beneficial for either new sellers or level one sellers on fiber. I'm not 100% sure. Now I have checked and it does say that you can cancel at any time. So, you know, maybe it's worth, you know, trying it for 12, maybe three months just to see how it goes and then see if you like it. It's only going to be $19 a month, which isn't a great deal of money to be honest, especially if it can help you bring in more clients. Now for me personally, I'm not sure if it's going to be worth the $9,000,000 for me, but I do think that there's definitely some value in It for maybe freelancers who are just dine out on the platform and really kind of trying to get things in place and refining things. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely worth looking at. So please do your own research and I will see you in the next lesson. 12. Fiverr analytics 101: So in this lesson, we're going to be covering everything that you need to know in regards to analytics on the fiber platform. And how you get there is really simple. So if you just go to your dashboard, go to Analytics, and then Overview, and you'll be taken to this page where it gives you some really useful data. Now again, please keep in mind that this is based on me earning absolutely nothing in November because I haven't been working on the fiber platform for quite a few months. But you can see here that I've completed 1050 orders over the lifetime of me actually being on fiber. You can also see here that there is an average selling price of $229 roughly. Now please keep in mind that this is a collection of gigs which have been sold for both $2,000 $100 and even $5 you know. So for example, if I have a 15 minute consultation call with a client, then I will ultimately charge $5 to have that consultation call. Because I want to make sure that the client has actually been serious about the project that we are looking to develop together. So that $229 is simply just everything thrown into a book in a mixed together. So earnings to date on the fiber platform, over the past six years since I started, I've earned $186,704.42 and that is only from clients through the fiber platform. This does not include clients that have, you know, worked with me once and then, you know, got in touch with me later on through my website and, you know, clients who have been working with me for years now. So this is a pretty good idea of how much you can potentially earn on the fiber platform if you just focus on fiber alone. Now, I do believe that in migrants to gig performance order breakdown, top keywords, et cetera, et cetera, you do need the seller program to access those. I have never been inside any of these particular tabs, so I can't comment. But if you scroll down, you can get an idea in regards to your seller level and you can learn more. And you were simply given an evaluation period which is usually around the 15th of each month. Where they basically say, okay, you're at this level now, or you're at this level, or you're getting demoted, or you're getting promoted, et cetera, et cetera. But it gives you the key criteria that you can focus on to actually become a better, higher seller on the fiber platform. Now, all of these are super self explanatory, so I won't waste your time and go through them, but if you scroll down even more, you can see that your actual ratings are really well showcased down here in this tab here. And this really cool little section here which basically gives you an idea of where most of your sales come from. So for example, I have quite a lot of clients in the USA, quite a few in Canada, obviously more in the USA as well, not as many in Mexico. I've worked with two people in Brazil, tons of other places like Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa. I've never actually been in those places. But I'd love to visit Australia again, You know, getting a lot of customers from Australia for some reason. Maybe it's just a really entrepreneurial country, but also as well obviously the United Kingdom, what you'll find is the place that you're from. You'll generally get more clients from that particular location just because people feel more comfortable dealing with people who are closer to them, even though you'll never actually meet them in real life. So you had just a really interesting little fact for you there. So overall, that pretty much covers everything in regards to five analytics so that you can have a better idea in regards to how you personally can review your analytics and learn more going forward. And on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. 13. Get your first Fiverr client - make it happen: So how long does it take to get your first fiber sale? Well, getting your first fiber sale can be super exciting and it can be super nerve racking as well. Because if you've never worked with a client before, it can be a little bit of a new experience. You are given this expectation from the client to provide a certain service and depending on if you've done it before or not, it can be an interesting ordeal and journey. So to answer the question of how long it takes to get your first client, it all depends on how great your profile looks and what type of service you're actually offering. There are some people, as I've mentioned earlier on in the course, that price themselves super high on the platform and their profile doesn't look very great. And it's going to take them a very, very long time for someone to actually trust them, if anybody, to actually give them money to see if they're any good at what they can actually offer. So what I mean by that is for me personally, I was offering logo development and, you know, logo designs for $5.10 dollar and then $15 And then I slowly worked my way up to a stage where I can now, you know, charge 1,500 to $2,000 for a logo design. Now, this can obviously take a little bit of time, and this is the reason why I always suggest that people should offer really basic services for five to $10 in the very beginning. Because it's going to help you to get that first client far faster. Probably one to three weeks of actually being active on the platform and just having your profile out there. People will start to get in touch with you and eventually someone will actually trust you. Because listen, it's only $10 And what you actually want from that isn't to make the most amount of money possible that comes later. What you want to do is to build up your credibility for a very specific service and create a really great system behind that service and a really great experience. And then really drive that value home so that later run down the line, you can switch your pricing. And the clients that have been making five star reviews have been extremely happy with their service. But then everyone going forward will think that everyone beforehand has also paid, you know, $1,000 for their service. When as a matter of fact, some of your truly early clients, like maybe the first ten or 20, have only been paying, you know, maybe five to $50 for that particular service. It's all about building credibility and trust on the platform at the very beginning. It's not about getting as much profit as possible. Even if you're a professional in what you do, you should be looking to all but deliver as much as possible and to essentially get as many reviews as possible on your gig. This is going to allow you to build your credibility on the platform. It's going to allow you to really get as far ahead as possible, as soon as possible, and get that first seal as fast as possible too. Now in regards to how to treat your first client on fiber, it is extremely important that you get that five star review. And what I would suggest is once you get that first client and you confirm the order, I would set my availability to unavailable. And I would just focus on getting that client the best possible results by any means necessary. Now 99 times out of 100 you're going to get a great client and everything's going to go smoothly. But if you get a negative client on your first client, that's just extremely unlucky and it's very unlikely. So please do not worry if they are going to leave you a negative review and you just feel like they're not really enjoying the process or maybe you're just not delivering as well as you could. Then I would think about canceling the order and just basically, you know, letting them go and not having them leave a really negative review on your profile. Because ultimately that's going to leave you really struggling to find your next client. And it's just going to be an uphill battle from there. Just be wary, make sure you get your five star review on the first client and then just continue that momentum with your next ten clients. And then you should be in a really strong position. So how do you actually get your first five star review on five? Well, I'm going to be sharing my methods and techniques that I use personally to manage clients expectations. To make sure every single time I work with a client, they feel like I've exceeded their expectations. Therefore, they are more likely to give me a five story view. And not only a five story view, but they also give me a nice paragraph of feedback to showcase how great it was to work with me. Now, we will be covering that in more depth later on in the course, but until then, I will see you in the next lesson. 14. What makes a perfect profile picture: As you can see, we're going to start actually building your profile to make you look super professional, super credible, and trustworthy. Now there are a lot of things that you can do to really showcase yourself as the professional service provider that you are on the fiber platform. But it all starts with creating the perfect profile picture. In this lesson, we're going to call that everything that you need to know in regards to getting the perfect profile picture for your fiber profile. We're also going to look at some examples right now of good profile pictures and bad profile pictures to really give you an idea of how you're going to approach it for your personal profile. So if we dive into my profile, you can see that my profile picture is quite bright. It has me personally smiling, so you know that it's a real person behind the profile. I also added some little graphics to the profile as well and a little shadow icon behind my personal picture just to give the profile picture a little bit more depth and to make it a little bit more interesting. But let's put my profile to the side for the moment and look at some other examples of profile pictures which are super strong and some which are not quite as strong. So if we go to this profile here, you can see how this guy actually takes a very similar approach to me. He has himself in the picture, He has some really cool graphics around the actual background of the profile picture. And you can also see, and it's actually a really nice touch, which I like, which he's done, is he's holding a pencil and he's thinking. And it actually gives a really great impression because it makes you feel like he's thinking about the next great idea that he's going to help you with so really great immigrants to this profile picture, I will give this one a ten out of ten. Now, for this particular profile picture, there are some things that I like and there are some things that I don't quite like and then I think could be done a little bit better. So for example, if we compare this profile picture with the last one, you'll see how this profile picture seems a little bit more happy. He seems like someone who would be super approachable and really helpful. However, if you go to this profile, it actually looks like he's a little bit darker and a little bit more mysterious and just none as approachable. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because he isn't smiling. He sort of face is very heavily shadowed. It doesn't give me that approachable feeling. So that's maybe something that he can potentially work on going forward if he wanted to redo his profile picture in future. Personally, I think it's great that he has his face in the actual profile picture, but I would give this one a five hour attenders because it doesn't seem very approachable. And that's obviously something that's super important when clients are looking to get in touch with you. Now this profile is better. I like the fact that she's being quite creative, where she's actually showcased herself in black and white. And then she's got a really great contrast with the bright yellow in the background, kind of yellowy green color. But I do think that she could potentially be smiling a little bit more and you know, maybe look a little bit more inviting. Maybe she's a little bit shy in the camera and you know, that's obviously something which I actually struggle with. So I really think that she's done a great job. I would give this profile picture. And eight out of ten, now this is a profile picture which I personally cannot give any credit to. Now I actually think that just having a plain blue background for your profile picture is a huge opportunity missed. And I'll explain what I mean. So when someone comes to your profile, the first thing they're going to see is your profile picture. It's in the top left hand corner of the screen. So this is the first impression they're going to have of you. And if it's blank, they can't see it was approachable. They can't see it as being friendly. They can't see it as being an actual person which we connect with as humans. But it's just a blank blue color. So it's not really negative, but it's not really positive either. So it's kind of like a five out of ten, right? Like it's not taking advantage of what a profile picture can do. And it's also not really negative in a way. So it's a weird one. But personally I wouldn't advise doing this. I would advise having yourself as the profile picture. So make sure you do that if you have the opportunity to do that. Now if you don't want to take a picture of yourself or your profile picture, there is another way to approach it, and that is simply to have your logo or a logo as your profile picture. Now I've actually tried both approaches for my fiber profile. I first and foremost had my logo for Clementine House, my Brandon agency, And then I also had a picture of myself and different variations of pictures of myself over the years, obviously as I've became less handsome over time. And what I found is, and this is no surprise, humans like to connect with humans. They like to know that there's a human that actually cares about them on the other end of the message that they are sending, so where you can have a logo and it does look very professional. I think that being a little bit more personal on fiber is actually a bigger benefit and it actually makes you come across as more approachable, more friendly. And ultimately, it's going to be more likely that you land clients because they actually feel out. They're dealing with a person that cares about them and that's going to deliver on their promises. Now we've covered most of the things that you should do when it comes to creating your profile picture. Let's look at some things that you should definitely not do when it comes to developing your profile picture. And we'll start with this profile here now. Rupa, I know you're trying your best. I just want to give a little bit of constructive criticism, if that's okay. Now, in regards to this particular logo, you can see here that it has a little bit of writing here which is Ruper's name. I believe You can't actually read it because it's hidden by the badge. You'll also see that in the first example, this logo really stands out even though there's a badge in the bottom right hand corner. But you can see here in Ruber's example that some of the logo is actually covered and it actually takes away from the logo itself. Now this particular logo is not anywhere near as well designed as this particular logo. And obviously, this is subjective, so you can disagree with me if you really want to, but it just doesn't give you that feeling of the logo being well designed and it being trustworthy. And one more thing that I would probably do if I was roper is I would change this red to white. And I would change the white background to red. The reason being is when you look at your profile, it just stands out a lot more and it just gives you a lot more presence on the page. So that's another example and a reason why you'll see that a lot of these profiles, apart from this guy, uses very bright colors. Because it essentially captures people's attention. Now, moving on from ruber, we'll move to this profile. Now this guy is actually online, so I'm actually tempted to message him and just, you know, give him a little bit of feedback. You can see here that this shows him working, which is fantastic. It shows that he is a graphic designer and he's obviously extremely passionate about what he does. One thing that it does also show is that he's maybe a little bit shy and not great at communicating simply because he's facing away from the camera. If you take a profile picture, you want to be looking directly into the camera or just off the camera to make it feel like you're approachable and easy to communicate with. This makes me feel like this particular gentleman is a little bit of an introvert. And I'm an introvert as well. But I at least try to communicate effectively. And I have learned to communicate effectively over the years of being a freelancer and dealing with lots of different types of clients. In your profile picture, you really want to be showing yourself as being as approachable as possible because it's really going to help you stand out. This particular picture is quite flat, it doesn't really have a whole lot of character. And I would even go as far to say that this particular profile picture, whilst it isn't as inviting and as friendly as some of the others that we've explored in this particular lesson, it's still better than this profile picture simply because it just doesn't scream friendliness and approachability and you don't have a clear picture of the person's face. So yeah, that's just my humble opinion, but hopefully that is helpful to you. Now, the last profile we're going to be looking at, this profile here for Sophia. Listen, one of the things that you are going to learn extremely early on in business is that when someone hires you, they are not hiring you for any other reason apart from providing the service that you're promising them. So for example, and listen, this is coming from a guy who has a little boy on the way. And I am going to be extremely proud of that little boy and I am going to love him more than anything in the world. But the reality is that when you post things like your kids or, you know, your family and stuff on fiber as a platform, which is supposed to be a business related platform, it isn't going to help you get more business. It's actually going to take away from your opportunities of getting business. The reason being is fiber clients don't care about what goes on behind the scenes. That's your personal life. That's stuff that you keep separate from business, right? Putting things like this where, you know, it's a lovely picture of, you know, obviously Sophia's little boy or girl. I think that it is just extremely important to keep business and private life separate, especially in five's case, because obviously, you don't know who's actually, you know, seeing your pictures. And it can be a little bit messy. So that's ultimately all of the advice that I have in gras to getting your perfect profile picture. You don't need a really expensive camera to create a great profile picture. As you can see from some of the examples you could go for a logo if you really wanted to just make sure it's super well designed and stands out. Or you can even just take a picture on your smartphone and then just upload it and just cut out the background and put a nice bright color in there. And you can also put yourself in black and white so the quality of the image doesn't matter as much. And it'll also help your profile stand out even more. I really hope you find this lesson helpful and I will see you in the next one. 15. Why experts get paid more than service providers: So the service provider versus the healthful Dr. what do I mean by that? Well, I'm going to tell you when I was early in my freelance career, I was just trying to sell services like everybody else. And over time, I began to realize that in the world that make the most money generally act like they don't need it. So how does that translate to being a freelancer? I want to tell you if you look at some profiles on fiber, you'll see that people are selling services for ten, $20 Just trying to make as much money as possible and trying to get as many orders as possible. Now when you get to a certain level where you have a certain level of credibility and you have a certain level of expertise in regards to the service that you provide. Whether that be brand naming, logo design, or website development or anything that comes with a certain level of self esteem and ego and not in a bad way. And what I mean by that is you can be super helpful and supportive to someone just by the knowledge in your brain alone. So think about when you go to a doctor's surgery or if you go to the Dr. for a check up. Okay? Whatever the Dr. tells you, it's pretty much in your best self interest, right? He wants to get you healthy or she wants to get you healthy. And you are ultimately in a position where you have to trust them because they know better than you. Okay? Otherwise you would just treat yourself at home. Right now, it's exactly the same situation with a client looking for a logo, or looking for copyrighting, or looking for a website or anything else. They are looking for a solution to that problem and they need that solution to take the pain away that they are currently facing. Now, there are tons of different doctors and tons of different people that can offer that particular service. So how do you stand out? Well, you stand out by putting the client first and being the healthful Dr. and not just another service provider. So for example, if a client comes to me and says, Scott, I'm looking for a website. How much is it for a website from you? What I would say is, okay, I understand you're looking for a website. There's a process to go through to actually understand what type of website works perfectly for you specifically, we need to go through that process first so I can help you as best I can. And what that does is that starts to have them think, okay? This person, this service provider that they initially think in the very beginning, they don't want to just give me a price and try and get my business. They actually want to understand my situation to get me the best result. Because everybody else who's just giving them prices and just, you know, trying to give the cheapest price. Most of the time clients won't take the cheapest option. They'll find the best option for them personally. That's going to provide the most value in that they're trust and that's going to give them peace of mind. Then they'll select that one. So for example, our naming services for brand naming on fiber is four times the amount of our closest competitor. But people still come to us because they know that we're going to deliver and that we have a system in place to help them get the result that they need. Now, not everyone comes to us, but people still come to us. So why would they still come and pay four times the amount when there are options out there that are four times cheaper? It's a simple case of clients making a decision based on value as opposed to just how much something costs. And the reality is that you can charge whatever you want for a service, you know, within a realistic threshold to anybody. As long as you can provide value and as long as you can position yourself as an expert and a supportive guide within that particular area. Because it's always the case that when service providers and freelancers just start out, they just want to try and sell their service, it's the complete wrong approach. What you should be doing is you should be positioning yourself as a supportive and helpful guide within that particular area. So, you know, maybe send a really simple loom video, a two minute loom video, just saying, okay, I understand your situation. These are certain areas which I would focus on and this is ultimately the solution I think is going to help you get the best possible result in your particular situation. If you want to help work with me, then you can obviously secure one of my gates. This is how you do it. And the amount of clients that I've got from just simply sending a really quick loom video is crazy. It's crazy how much of a difference that makes just by being personal, being helpful, and supportive. Because you're no longer just someone who wants to sell a service or provide a service. You're somebody who wants to help and support somebody. And that's a completely different kettler fish. It's also really important to know that after we finished an engagement with a client. So for example, if a client has did a naming project with us, we actually tell them, listen, once you go away and if you don't want to design your logo with us, that's absolutely fine. Once you go away and start designing your logo with someone else, feel free to send me the logo and I'll give you a five minute video to give you feedback on that logo to get the best possible result. And what that basically does is it showcases to the client that you do actually care about them and the results that they get. So what they generally end up doing is they end up coming back to you, which has happened to me so many times over the past decade, where a client has went away, got a logo done by someone who didn't really know what they're doing. And then they are essentially like, okay, I need to appear to get this done properly. Scott, can you help me? Because you helped me in the past, it comes around and ends up benefiting the person that is the most helpful and the most guiding, and the most, you know, wholesome every single time. So please take this advice on board because it's going to help you massively over your freelancing career. And I will see you in the next lesson. 16. The art of persuasive profile descriptions writing: So how to write the perfect profile description. In this video, we're going to be covering some examples of good profile descriptions and bad ones so that you can create the best profile description for your fiber profile. Now the first step to creating the perfect fiber profile is to understand your audience. Now this is basic 11 copywriting, okay? Before you write anything to anybody to communicate any sort of message, you need to understand who that person is and what they want. If you write your mom a birthday card or a Christmas card, or anybody a birthday or Christmas card, you are going to say to m or two dad or two grandma or whoever. The reason that you're writing that is because it's to them directly. Now, why is that important? It's because if you send someone a birthday card and it didn't have their name in it and it just said to anyone, then they probably wouldn't respond very well to that birthday card and you may not get one in return. So it's important that you first and foremost understand who you're trying to connect with. Now I'm going to show you some examples a little bit later on which basically highlights how you can do that effectively. But that's the first thing that you need to understand who you're actually trying to communicate to with your profile description. And well, if we look at some examples of profile descriptions here, you'll see that they actually make a very big error in the first line of their description. Now, what is that error that I'm talking about? Well, it's simply the fact that they are talking about themselves before they actually talk about the person who they're trying to connect with. Again, going back to the card analogy, you would not send a card to someone saying, from Scott, have a great birthday to mom, Right? It just wouldn't make any sense. It's the exact same when you're writing a description for your profile, it isn't about you, it's about them, okay? And what I mean by that is you need to focus on their pinpoint and what matters to them first before you start talking about how you can help them. So here's an example from my profile, which again, you can take whichever approach you want. But hopefully this gets the message across how important it is to focus on the person you're trying to sell to as opposed to trying to sell yourself. Because they're two very different things. Okay, so the first line of my description focuses on the pinpoint that they're trying to achieve and that they're trying to get rid of. Okay, so you know that feeling you get when a brand just feels right. That feeling is something that everyone has experienced. So that's why it's so powerful because H can connect with that particular line and it hooks them for the rest of the description. So they want to learn more. So if we compare this to, say for example, what Daniel has written and pretty much everybody else on fiber writes the exact same thing, Hi, my name is I do. It's the complete wrong way to think about it. Copywriters do not write like that because they know it isn't persuasive. The customer does not care about what you can do or even what your name is or where you're from. What they care about is how can you help me? And that is where your writing should begin. So for example, Daniel here says, hi, I'm Daniel, a graphic designer driving Cryo Tank, which is my creative studio based in Romania. Nobody really cares, Daniel. That's the brutal, honest, truth. I obviously think that your profile is really great and you obviously do some incredible work. I really like your pictures and thumbnails for your actual profile, but your profile description could do with a little bit of work from a persuasive standpoint, okay? There's nothing wrong with what you're doing, but you're just not doing it to the level that you could be. And pretty much every single other fiber seller does the exact same thing, which isn't great. It isn't the most effective way to write your profile and it's definitely not the most persuasive either. So once you get the hook in, then you can just build on a little bit more. So I say you warm to the brand for some reason and you don't even know why. So it's kind of saying you know the feeling that you get when you see a brand, right? That really feels trustworthy, incredible. And you don't even know why you find it trustworthy, incredible. But you just feel it, right? You just feel it. What I'm saying is there's something that the client doesn't know the problem that they have. The pinpoint that they have and that they're trying to achieve can be resolved, but they don't know how to resolve it. So I'm just pressing on that pinpoint. Then it's time for me to say, listen, for the past ten years I've been doing exactly that with businesses big and small all around the world. So you have this problem, I can specifically help to take that problem away and give you a solution. Okay? All you have to do is hire me, which is obviously why I'm writing the description right to get them to hire me. So this is a far more effective way to ultimately get people to hire you. To focus on the pain point that they're currently experiencing, then offering them a solution to that pain point. Now, some things to make sure you do when you're writing your profile description is to ultimately make sure you're really precise. So what I would do is I would write your profile description, then I would revisit it after maybe a day or two and basically rewrite it and edit it to make it a little bit more precise and concise. Editing your writing is super important. Even if you're not a writer by trade and you do not plan to offer copywriting, you need to make sure that you can actually provide the persuasive language that is going to get you new clients. And that is ultimately going to help you be as busy as you ever could wish to be as a freelancer. If you can persuade people through your language and through talking, and through writing, then you will never be short of clients ever. So hopefully this lesson has been helpful. Hopefully it has helped you to think about writing your description in a more creative and persuasive way. But yeah, thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the next lesson. 17. Strategically selecting your skills on Fiverr: Okay, so as you're building your profile, you're going to be asked what skills you want to showcase as being your areas of expertise. Now, many freelancers on the fiber platform can be tempted to just add as many skills as possible and say, okay, I can do animation, I can do logo design, I can do naming, I can do websites, I can do lots of different stuff. The reality is, this is the complete wrong way to think about it, At least from my humble opinion. Okay. And I'm going to explain why. If you hurt your leg and you needed to go to a Dr. and you had two doctors to choose from, One Dr. cost $500 And they just did a little bit of everything they did, arms, legs, head, you know, everything but another Dr. cost double or even triple that. So maybe $1,500 and you can afford both. So just, you know, take that out of the equation for the moment. But that Dr. only focused on legs. So they only focused on legs and they gave you the best possible chance of being able to walk again. Which of those doctors would you choose If you had to choose and money wasn't an option, so you could afford both. I'm pretty certain that you would select the Dr. that specialized in legs every single time. And the reason for that is they are giving you a higher likelihood of success within that particular area because they specialize in legs, which is your specific problem. So why is this relevant to your fiber profile? Well, let me show you. So if we go to my profile on fiber and we go down to the skills tab, you'll see that every single skill that I have in there is focused around branding or marketing, okay? I'm not telling people that I can build websites, I'm not telling people that I even do logo design. Okay? I focus on brand. I focus on everything being focused around branding specifically. And if you even go up to the title, which is underneath my profile picture, you'll see brand name development expert at Clementine House Branding Agency. So I'm saying I'm a brand naming expert. Okay. Now why am I saying that? Because brand naming is the first step of the brand building process. You first need to develop your brand name before you start doing your logo. And then after your logo, you can do your brand strategy, your website development. So it's the first step of the journey of building your actual brand. Now this is super important because by focusing your energy in one specific way, you can actually position yourself as an expert with very minimal effort. Now I want to show you an example of someone who does this, not quite as well. Now this is Jahid, I believe I'm pronouncing your name correctly, Apologies if I'm not. But basically, Jahid is a logo designer, five certified UI, UX and Wordpress experts. And listen, Jahid's doing extremely well. He's got five stars and he's got 810 reviews, which is incredible. But I think he could actually do a lot better if he focused on being the very best in one specific area. And you can see that Jahad actually offers, you know, logo design, banner design, you know, business card design, Facebook cover design. There's just lots of different things. They're all design orientated. But he hasn't really positioning himself as an expert in a particular field. If he positioned himself as an expert in maybe a illustrator or you know, a logo design or maybe Wordpress website development or anything, he could make so much more money because he's then going to be the leg Dr. who people have to go to for a very specific problem. So this is something which is super, super beneficial to pretty much every freelancer out there. Choose one specific nation, one specific service that you can be the best in the world at. And I mean the best in the world actually try to be the best in the world at it. Figure out who the best in the world are at the moment and learn from them. And then build that into your skill set. Okay? How you present your work, which will go through a little bit later on in the course. How you communicate, how your website looks, if you even have a website, how they present themselves as their employees within the actual website. We'll cover all this later on in the course, but I just want to set the context of what we're aiming for within this course. We're aiming for you to be one of the best freelancers on fiber. In order to be the best you need to niche down and be known for one specific type of thing. So keep this in mind as we work through the course. I hope this lesson was helpful and I will see you later in the next lesson. 18. Linking out to other accounts on Fiverr: Now when building your fiber profile, it asks you to link your other external accounts onto fiber to basically give you more credibility and trust. Now this includes Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Medium hands, Dribble, just to name a few. And the reality is that even though you link these accounts to your fiber profile, people can't click off onto them and actually visit your profile. It's not how it works. Fiber wants to keep people on your profile so that they can essentially encourage them to buy more of your services. So why would you actually want to connect and share your profiles on the fiber platform in the first place if people can't actually go to check them out personally? Well, it's actually a little hidden benefit which I think is personally worth doing. So by adding your Facebook and Pinterest, and Instagram and Dribble for example. It does kind of encourage people, especially if you're design orientated, for example, with Hanson Dribble. It encourages the client to check out your profile on those other platforms and try and search for you to say more of your work. So although fiber is not going to actively link out to those profiles, it does let clients know that you do have a presence on those profiles. So you are a real person and you're trustworthy and they can check you out if they really want to. So as you can see here on my profile, they have your social presence, which is my linked in Facebook, Instagram, interest in Twitter. But then they also have my professional presence, which is my Youtube hands, dribble, Vimeo, and also my medium. It's really a way to build credibility with your clients. To say, listen, I'm a real person, I actually provide a lot of value through my medium, through my Youtube, et cetera, et cetera, so clients can get a really great idea of your level of expertise and just the type of person that you are through checking out your presence on other digital platforms. Basically, this is just to show that you are a real person and that you are someone that the client can trust. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. So just add any profiles that you will be happy to share with your potential clients. Now obviously, if you're on Twitter and you're saying super controversial things, which might be your cup of tea, I'm not 100% sure. I don't really use Twitter that much so I can link it. It's not a problem. This is something that you should probably watch and be a little bit careful of. But as long as you are happy for a client to see you on that platform, link it up to your fiber profile. It's only going to help you come across as more real and authentic. Hopefully, that lesson was helpful and give you a little bit of guidance. But I will see you in the next one. 19. Showing the right education on Fiverr: Now on fiber, when you're building your profile, it also asks you to share your education. Now this is a great opportunity for you to share if you have some education or experience based in the specific type of service that you're looking to offer to clients. Now, in regards to education, as you can see on my profile here, I've shared that I did a course with the Charter Institute of Marketing in 2017, literally just before I started actually getting on the fiber platform. And I also have other diplomas, a couple of other things in regards to marketing and branding that I've did over the years. Now, one thing that I probably wouldn't add is, for example, if you did your Masters in Psychology or something like that, and it's not really relevant to the service that you are looking to provide. You can add it if you really want to, and there's nothing wrong with that. But here you really want to be showcasing the type of experience and the type of education that you have specifically focused around the services that you're looking to provide. Now obviously, it's great to show that you're university educated. That's fantastic. But please make sure that it is relevant to the type of service that you're looking to offer to clients. Because if it isn't, then they're probably not going to care as much. Okay. So it's definitely not a bad thing to put your university degree on there if you have one, but just keep on minus not going to be as effective at getting the client to actually hire you as something which is more relevant to the service that you're looking to provide. Now there's actually a really great example of this exact circumstance with Jahid, who we saw a little bit earlier on in the course. Who is doing absolutely fantastically. By the way, he has three different educational inputs in his profile, which he can show off to clients to get them to hire him. Now first and foremost, he has a Bachelor of Art, which is fantastic because he's offering design related services which is perfect, it's super relevant. But then he also has basic computer application and graphic design. Now graphic designer is obviously extremely relevant, but basic computer application maybe isn't as relevant if he was only focusing on being a designer or a logo designer. If you were hiring someone for logo design, you don't really care if he has basic computer application skills. All you care about is can you design me a logo? Can you do it really well? If you can, great, I'm going to hire you. I think the reason that Jahad has added this to his profile is because he actually does things with computers as well. He does websites, he does UI, UX design. So that is why it is super relevant. So in this particular case, Jahad has actually done a great job. But if he wanted to really niche himself down to being a logo designer, or a brand identity designer, or just focusing on design in general. I don't think having the basic computer application in his certifications is going to help him very much. It's definitely not going to be a negative impact, but it probably isn't going to be a positive one either. So hopefully that puts it into context. I hope this lessons be helpful and I will see you in the next one. 20. How to earn more by niching down to be a trusted expert: So how do you find your niche as a freelancer on fiber? Well, there are a couple of ways that you can do it. But what I wanted to do in this particular lesson is give my approach in regards to how I've personally niched down in the different services that I offer my clients. And then also show you some examples in super saturated industries, how other freelancers, just like you, have niched down to specifically attract a very particular type of clientele. So first and foremost, my approach for ning down as a freelancer. So in regards to ning down, there are some things that you really need to be honest with yourself about if you are going to succeed in the world of freelancing. And the first thing is to ask yourself, what's the one thing that you can be the best in the world at? And that is a question which you have to be extremely self aware about because you ultimately have to ask yourself, what am I so passionate about that I am willing to learn everything there is to know about this particular thing. So for example, for me it is branding. So I want to be the best branding consultant on the planet and I'm working my way towards that goal every single day. For you, it could be something completely different and that's fine. The most important thing to remember is that you don't have to be the best right now. You have to be able to be passionate and interested and excited enough to want to be the best in the future. This is the difference. So the goal for this approach isn't to say, okay, what am I the best at? What am I the most interested in? And what could I be the best in the world at? And if you can answer this question, then you're going to know exactly where you lie in the market where you're going to be strongest, not only in the short term but also in the long term as well. Because you're naturally going to be curious and interested enough to learn that particular topic or that particular skill far more deeply than 99% of other people. And the fact of the matter is if you're really interested and curious about a particular topic, it's never going to feel like work to you. You're always going to be enjoying the process. So this actually works in your favor because you are constantly playing when other people think you're working and you just can't compete with someone that's constantly playing and actually enjoying the process. You just cannot be them. Because when you think you're working, they think that they're just having fun. So it's not sustainable. They are always going to outpiace you and they are always going to beat you over the long term. Now I want to give you a couple of examples from not just me, but other freelancers that are on the fiber platform that have niched down to offer a very particular type of service and to be experts in a very specific field of their expertise. So what I did is I searched on fiber for logo design services just to see what came up. Now what I want to show you is the difference between just someone offering logo design and someone offering a specific type or a specific niche of logo to give the client a reason to choose them. And as we scroll through these services, you're going to see that some gigs just jump out more than others. Now this is kind of a combination of both the thumbnail, which is super important, which will cover a little bit later on on the course, the title, but also how it's positioned together, how they showcase the work. We'll cover all of that in more detail later on in the course. But I just wanted to showcase why certain gigs pop out more than others and why that's super important because if someone's scrawling through tons of different options that offer the exact same service as you, you need to make sure you stand out. So as we're going through here, I think this one stands out really well. I will design a minimalist and modern logo. So basically, if you want a minimalist and modern logo design, then this is the guy for you and he actually showcases, you know, a really great logo which looks really cool. And I'm sure he has plenty of other work on the inside of his gig. He's definitely got a great number of reviews at 4.9 as well, which is fantastic. But let's look at some examples of freelancers that have not chosen a specific niche of logo. So for example, if we scroll down, let's have a little look. Okay, so for example, this one here I will design a unique hand lettering logo. So this particular person is specializing in a handwritten logo. Remember what I said before about being the leg Dr. or being a normal Dr. If you have a problem with your leg and you know you have an issue with your leg specifically, you're not going to go to just a general Dr. who offers all different types of services. You want to go to a leg Dr. because you know that that's what they specialize in and that's where you're going to get the best result for your money. When someone buys a service or anything, it doesn't really matter how much something costs, as long as it's within your budget. What really matters is how likely are you to get the thing that you want for a price that makes sense to you? So for example, I am not going to pay for something if I'm not 100% certain that that person is going to give me what I need. That's why I am willing to pay more for the peace of mind that a specialist in, you know, hand lettering logos for example, is going to give me a handlettering logo which I like. And that is how you can position yourself as a freelancer that people have to work with as opposed to just another option in the market. So let's try and find a bad example. So for example, here I will create a modern logo design. It doesn't really differentiate this particular freelancer very well. Let's try and find another example. I will design your minimal logo, so again, it's kind of niche down, but not really as much as I'd like. Let's look at another example of how it shouldn't be done. So if we scroll down, okay, we see one here where it says, I will professionally perfect logo any design. So it's very apparent that this person isn't an English native speaker. And that's fine obviously. But they should probably get that checked in regards to how they arrange their title because that's going to really significantly impact their ability to connect with others who are also English speakers and who need someone who's trustworthy and capable. They also haven't niched down enough to capture anyone's interest. Because ultimately all they have said is we can professionally perfect any logo design. So it's basically like, okay, any work that is possible to come to me, please come to me because I need the work, please give me work. That's what they're basically saying through their title. So there's no surprise that this particular gig has no reviews. Nobody's, you know, ordered the specific gig. And this is a result of nine down not checking your title properly and also the actual logo design. Not really looking that great on the thumbnail either, so yeah, you know, really great. Try but not really hitting the mark for me now. Don't just want to show you one example. Let's dive into copywriting and see if people are doing the exact same approach. Let's dive in. So I'm searching for copyrighting and I'm scrolling down, I will be your SEO copyright. Okay, So it's SEO related, but listen, there's so many SEO copywriters on fiber. You need to be an SEO copywriter for a very specific type of situation and solution. So for example, let's look at, okay, this is a good example, it's not SEO, But let's just take a little look. I will copyright your marketing and sales e mails. So marketing and sales e mails if you have that problem. This is the guy for you, and obviously he's done 333 gigs at Five Star and he's charging $100 per e mail or whatever. Okay. So this is pretty great. This is well niched down to a specific type of service that connects with a problem that the client has. So just remember that it needs to connect to the problem that the client has. Let's look a little bit deeper. Okay, so here's a really great example. I will write SEO website content as your copywriter, what she's done is she's taken the SEO side of things and she's basically said, okay, I'm going to be your content writer for your website to help you with SEO, which is essentially search engine optimization. If you're not 100% certain what that meant, this is what I mean by nation down. You need to make sure that you give the client a reason to choose you. So if you are offering logo design, make sure you specify what type of logo you specialize in. Why is someone going to choose you? If you are a copywriter, make sure you tell them the solution that you can offer them. If you are a website development company or a website developer, you need to make sure you specialize in a particular type of website or a particular industry so that you can drive home the solution that you can offer to clients. And nation down is one of the most powerful things in all of freelancing and business in general. Be the best at one specific thing and offer that solution better than anyone else. Build your processes, build your systems around being super efficient and effective at that specific thing. And you are going to never have to worry about making money. I can promise you that 100% guarantee. So to summarize, find something that you want to be or you are the best in the world at, that you could one day be the best in the world at. And it doesn't have to be website development for example. It can be website development for real estate companies or website development for real estate rental companies. You know, it could be as nice as that, but just experiment, figure things out, do a little bit of research and try to find a little slither in the market where you can really capitalize and be the best at once you find that thing, obviously you have to train to be, you know, as good as possible. And that will come with experience and time. So be patient. Also, make sure that you present yourself as an expert within that particular realm. I know that it's human nature to try and spread everything as thin as possible and try to, you know, appeal to everyone. But, you know, one of the most famous quotes in all of marketing is if you try to sell to everyone, you will sell to no one. This is a lesson which you can either learn the hardware or the easy way. And trust me, the easy way is a lot faster and a lot less painful. But anyway, I hope you found this particular lesson helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 21. Strategically selecting the services you offer: Okay, so you're ready to create your service list. Now there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind when you're thinking about what types of services you want to offer to your clients. Now the first step is to obviously understand what type of service you want to offer. So, for example, let's think about website designers. You know, what type of service could a website designer offer to a client? Now, the first thing is obviously website development, right? That's the most obvious one. But then you need to think a little bit smarter. And you need to think about, what is it that people who need a website need either before or after? So let's think about it like this. If someone needs a website, have they already developed their marketing strategy to drive traffic to the website? Because the type of approach that you're going to take to actually drive traffic to the website is going to ultimately define the style and the design of the website overall. And this all comes down to strategy. You need to think strategically about the services that you offer. So for example, if you are offering strategy and marketing strategy offerings before actually building the website to make sure those two fit together. What comes after the website's built, Think about it. You know, you've got blog posts, you have maintenance, you have SEO development. You have, you know, updates of the website, which is obviously going to happen if people are obviously growing their business and developing their business. So all of these things are potential packages that you can offer to clients. So once you've built the website, you can say, oh, you know, for an extra $100 a month, I'll write two blog posts on your website which are going to help with your SEO. And for an extra $250 per month, I will manage XY and Z. And maybe for just $50 a month, you can get 2 hours of maintenance and updates for your website to make sure it's always up to date. So already after you've sold the website to the client, you can then start to offer packages such as maintenance, such as, you know, blog writing, such as SEO. So this is how you strategically need to be thinking about the services that you offer. Yes, you offer website development, but what else does the client need? Maybe you sell them a marketing strategy which is, you know, an extra hundred dollar or whatever. And then maybe you sell them, you know, SEO copywriting and, you know, maintenance and then updates and maybe even hosting, for example. All of those things add up and then all of a sudden the client may have only spent, you know, 1,000 $2,000 $3,000 or $10,000 on the website. But then you've got recurring revenue of 200 or $300 per month for doing pretty much next to nothing. And this is predictable revenue that you can count on every single month for the term of your agreement with the client. Now if you're stuck for ideas, make sure you do a little bit of research on fiber and on other platforms as well. And even agency websites to check out what others offer as part of their services to clients. For example, as a brand development specialist, it took me a few years to realize that a lot of clients actually needed brand management. So once the brand was developed, they essentially needed help with their actual marketing and actually managing the brand and making sure everything was kept consistent across their website, across, you know, their social media platforms to make sure everything felt wholesome and perfect. This was money that I was leaving on the table for four to five years without realizing it. So make sure you do your research and check out all of the different avenues that you can take advantage of and the different services that you could offer clients because they actually want those services to take their pin points away. But remember, one of the most important things is to stay true to your talent and the thing that you want to be the best in the world at. And the reality is you can be the best in the world at anything that you want as long as you're interested and curious in the topic. So make sure you take time to really focus on learning what your customer needs, what your customer wants within your particular realm of expertise. And then develop a service offering which can deliver on those particular expectations and what they want. I hope this lesson was helpful. I look forward to seeing you in the next one. So I will see you soon. 22. Fiverr Pro Application - When is the right time to apply?: So you want to be a five pro. Now I have some good news for you. And that is that if you want to be a five a pro, you do not have to wait until you're a top rated seller to apply. Now, I know that sounds a little bit weird, but when I was in my introductory interview for the five pro process, I was actually in an interview with a couple of people who had never been on five or even offered a service before they applied to be a five. Now this is actually quite interesting because this means that if you have experience or you can at least prove that you have experience in a particular field of expertise, you can ultimately become a fiber pro whenever you want. You don't even need to go through the whole process of being a new seller or a level one seller or a level two seller to eventually become a top seller. You can literally just apply from D one, which is obviously fantastic. Now there's a very specific approach to how to apply to maximize your chances of success. And we're going to go through that in the next couple of lessons. Where I actually go through the fiber application process to become a five pro. But I can't share that with you because it's just super interesting that you do not need any experience on the fiber platform to become a five pro. But with experience on the fiber platform, it definitely has its advantages because you're obviously starting and operating in a dashboard and obviously within an environment which you're more familiar with. So the takeaway from this very quick lesson is that you do not have to wait to apply to be a five pro. But do not be disheartened if you get rejected. Because I was personally actually rejected twice, or maybe even three times, to be honest, before I was finally accepted. In the next couple of lessons, I'm going to share with you how I went from being rejected two or three times to finally being accepted. And I only change one or two really simple things, but it takes a very specific approach. And you also have to do a little bit of work outside of fiber to actually build your presence and credibility outside the platform so that they know that they're actually going to be allowing an expert within the particular field that they want to be a five pro in to actually be a five pro on the platform. So we'll cover everything in the next couple of lessons, but I just wanted to let you know that you do not have to wait to apply to be a five pro. And I'll show you in the next couple of lessons how you can apply and how you can maximize your chances of success. So I'll see you very soon. 23. Fiverr Pro - Preparing before applying to maximise success: Okay, so how do you prepare before actually applying to be a five pro to maximize your chances of success? So this is a lesson which I had to learn the hard way. And it ultimately left me in a state where I didn't actually know what I was doing wrong. But after a while, I figured it out. And as soon as I figured it out, everything fit into place and I got accepted straight away. So the first thing that you need to do before you actually apply to be a five pro is to make sure that across all your digital presence, whether it be linked in Youtube, you know your website, Instagram, everything that you're going to present to the five pro application process, you need to make sure that you are positioned as an expert within one specific discipline. Now, this is the mistake that I made personally three times, I was basically presenting myself as someone who could do a little bit of everything because I thought, okay, well let's just try and be a pro at as many things as possible when five don't like that. What five actually want is for you to be an expert in one particular field. Now if you go to my profile, you'll see that I'm a five pro in multiple different categories. In areas of expertise such as copywriting, brand naming, marketing strategies, et cetera, et cetera. And even influence of marketing for example. Now the way that I did that is very specific. And that is because, first and foremost, before you actually start to extend and expand your areas of expertise, which comes afterwards. Once you've been accepted, which is super simple, you first have to be accepted under the program to be a five app. So the best way to do that is to select one single service or skill set that you are the best at and extremely experienced at. And then afterwards you can start to build on that skill set and actually apply to have your gigs converted into five app gigs based on other areas of expertise that you are also good at. This may seem a little bit crazy and counterproductive, but this is the way that I managed to get accepted under the Fiber Pro platform because I specifically said that I was an expert in brand naming. And then I began to add all the other disciplines that I was good at afterwards. Once I've been accepted, this is the most effective way to do it. I don't know if anyone else has any other experiences, but that's what worked for me specifically. So that's the first step. Making sure that every single element of your digital presence, your linked in your Instagram, Everything states that you are an expert in a particular field, whether that be website development, UX design, logo design, naming, anything, copyrighting, whatever you want. Now the next step is to make sure that you have an online website or portfolio. This doesn't need to be a separate website, for example, it can just be a hands portfolio if you're a logo designer for example. Or maybe Ear medium account, you know, where you can showcase your copyrighting. Basically all this needs to do and we're going to go through the actual application process and, you know, I'll actually show you how to fill in the application process and give you some tips and tricks in the next couple of lessons, one of the things that you really need to do is you need to showcase your expertise. Father is going to look at your application and say, okay, this person says they're an expert in logo design. Let's get someone who understands logo designs, so are part of their internal team to check out their specific logo designs to see if they are an expert and if they can actually prepare logo designs to the recommended standard that we expect for a Pro on the platform. And this is super important. And one other little tip that I'll give you when you're preparing to actually file your Fiber Pro application is to make sure your best work is at the top. Now this may seem super basic, but ultimately if you have a portfolio, you want to make sure that at least the first six to nine projects are your best work. You need to make sure that they are seamless, crisp, professional, and incredible, and to the highest standard possible. Because if they see a piece of bad work, then they just assume that you thought that that was okay. So I would even take down any projects that you're not 100% certain of. And I would only showcase work that is of the highest possible standard. Because if they see a piece of work that doesn't quite hit the criteria that needs you to hit, to become a five, you're going to end up shooting yourself in the foot and it's not going to end well. So hopefully, that gives you a little bit of guidance and support in regards to how to prepare yourself before applying to be a five pro. But in the next couple of lessons, we're going to actually go through the application process and also what actually happens when you get accepted as a five pro. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 24. The Fiverr Pro application process: Okay, so what does it look like to actually apply for five app? Well, I'm going to show you one of the forms that you'll have to fill in to actually apply to be a five pro on the fiber platform. So let's dive right in now. This isn't the exact form that you'll have to fill in, but it's very similar. This is an extension form, so once you've actually been accepted onto the platform, you can then extend and convert your expertise or other gigs that you have on offer within fiber. You can extend them to become a service really easily. But the first step is to actually fill in the pro application process, which is very similar to this. The only reason that I can't show you that on this particular circumstance is because I already have a profile and it's impossible for me to actually get back to that particular application form. So before you can apply to be a five app, you need to have a five profile. You don't have to have sold anything, You don't have to have any experience on the platform. But you do need to have a five profile set up. Now once you do that, you can go to Google and simply type Apply to be a five app. And you can find a little box which simply says Apply. And then all you need to do is just find yourself on a form very similar to this. Now you start off by just simply adding your user name, which is first then the e mail address that you actually have associated with the account within fiber. Now what it'll ask you next is essentially what type of service and what type of area of expertise do you have? So for example, here, it would be something like, you know, if I was a website designer, it would be something along the lines of graphic and design and then maybe something such as website design. Okay. And then I'll ask you some questions such as, okay, how much experience do you have in these particular areas? They're all really simple questions, but I want to just cover the things that could potentially trip you up throughout the application process. And then the next lesson I'll actually share with you what happens once you've actually applied to being a five app, just so you know exactly how to manage the entire process easily. So we'll get some questions similar to this. I'm not sure if they've changed the form now. It was obviously a good while ago since I actually applied to be a five app myself. But if you go through each of these and just click them now, Fiber will not ask you any of these questions when it comes to the application process to become a five pro. But what they will ask you things like, do you have any links to examples of your work? Can you send us what you would typically send to a client? How much did you charge this client for this particular type of work? Do you have any names of clients that you've worked with in the past? So what you have to do is basically compile all the evidence of work that you have. Maybe two or three examples for each service that you think you want to apply for. And then ultimately send that to five. What I would suggest is you just apply for one single service that you are the best at, that you have the most experience in and the most examples of work for. And then go on from there. And then you can convert your other gigs into Pro gigs later on down the line. Another thing that they'll deal with in the five pro application process is to ask you to record a quick 62nd video. Just to ask what you're the most proud of and also why you think you'll be a good fit for the five pro program. And they'll also ask for links out to your personal website and other digital presences that you have, like your linked in Facebook and Instagram for example. The only thing that I can say is to make sure that you remember to stick to one single service. Don't try to be the master of everything. Just focus on being the best of one single thing. Change your job title on your linked in page if it isn't already very focused on the thing that you want to be a five Pro for, like website design or brand naming or whatever. And make sure that everything is super focused on one single discipline because that is going to help you get successfully accepted onto the five pro program. Then once you finish the form, simply submit it and then it is all just a waiting game. Now fiber will get back to you if you are unsuccessful. And they'll also obviously get back to you if you're successful as well. So you'll know exactly where you stand at all times. Now if you're not successful, then that obviously just gives you a little bit of time just to look at where you may have went wrong within the application process and then you can try again. There's no limit to how many times you can try, but just make sure that you think about what you could have done better. And also research the different fiber pros on the platform already to see how you could potentially look to improve yourself to get to that level. For example, if you're not presenting your logos in a very professional way, that could be something that you can improve before you reapply again. However, if you are successful in the fiber pro application process, then you will ultimately be given an e mail with a form to book in your meeting. Which is super exciting. And I'll go through that and the rest of the onboarding process with you in the very next lesson. 25. Fiverr Pro application - How long does it take to be accepted?: So what actually happens when you finally apply to become a fiber pro expert? Well, the first step is to simply wait for them to get back to you. As I said before in the previous lesson, they'll get back to you whether you're successful or whether you're unsuccessful. So do not worry. You will know exactly where you stand at all times. Generally, it takes around three weeks for them to get back to you, sometimes a little bit faster. And actually, in my experience, it took a lot longer for them to see that I was successful. So if you don't hear back from them straight away, that's actually a good thing. So once you get your acceptance E mail, you will be given a link to book your on boarding call. Now I thought this was going to be an interview with someone from the five team to see if I could actually be accepted to be a five a pro. But it actually wasn't anything like that. It was actually just an on boarding call with everybody else who had applied to be a five Pro expert. And it was actually hosted by someone within the five team who went through all the pros of being a five a pro and also some other rules that you needed to follow in order to be a five a pro and be successful over the long term. It was actually pretty simple stuff like make sure you meet your client's expectations, make sure you deliver on time. All the simple stuff that we're going through in this course anyway. So as long as you color everything in this course, you're going to be more than ready to be a fiber pro anyway. So do not worry now after the onboarding process, you simply have to wait a couple of days, maybe around a week, for your fiber profile to be converted into a Pro profile. Now, this is obviously super exciting and I cannot lie. It's a pretty good feeling when you log in the fiber for the first time as a pro and you see that the branding is all black and it just looks super sleek professional. And it also unlocks some great features as well that you can essentially use to present yourself in a more professional way on the platform. In regards to applying to be a five a pro, remember, you don't have to wait until you have a presence on fiber before applying. But you do have to have a profile set up. Simply go to Google, Type in how to apply to be a five pro and you should find the link fairly easily no matter where you are in the world. But anyway, I cannot wait to see you as a Five Pro on the platform. And I'll look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. See you soon. 26. How to handle anxiety as a freelancer on Fiverr: Okay, So there aren't going to be many freelancing courses out there that talk about anxiety and mental health. But the reality is that when you're working for yourself and when you're obviously managing a lot of expectations from clients and different people that you're working with. Mental health is a real thing and you do need to take care of yourself to make sure that you don't get super stressed, and it essentially ends up affecting your personal life quite significantly. Now the reality is that no matter what anyone tells you, all freelancers get anxious, no matter whether you're an expert or a newbie. The reality is that when someone gives you the expectation of delivering on something, it comes with a certain level of anxiety. And that even comes from me who's been doing this for ten years. But what happens is you generally get better at dealing with it. And the confidence that you have dealing with anxiety comes from your ability to organize yourself properly, which is something that we're going to cover later on in this course. But it also comes down to the fact that usually our minds tend to think the worst is going to happen when in reality that is actually very unlikely. For example, one of the things that used to give me crippling anxiety is if a client didn't get back to me for maybe two or three days. And I would be really worried thinking, okay, they're here at my work, they're not going to get back to me. They're going to want to cancel the order. When in reality they just sent my ideas off to a couple of friends and people that they trust and they were waiting for the people to get back to them. So, you know, what I was imagining in my head is often not what was happening in reality. And then obviously they said that the designs were fine or the names were fine and everything was amazing. But if you do generally find yourself getting anxious, I want to just give you a couple of little tips as to how you can manage your anxiety and ultimately just suppress it a little bit so that you don't feel as anxious as you probably would if you didn't have these methods in place. Now, one of the main reasons that we get anxious is because we feel out of control or we feel like something's going to happen. Now, the first thing that you need to do is you need to make sure that you understand that the worst is very unlikely to happen, to be completely honest, as I mentioned before. And the second thing is you need to make sure that you have processes in place to control the process when you are working with a client. So for example, when you are working with the client, make sure that you give yourself plenty of time to fulfill the order, including giving a couple of extra days for revisions just in case you want to know work on something else or you want to explore other options with the client. Also, make sure that you are keeping your clients up to date. So, for example, if you are running a little bit behind on a project, don't just sit there and get super anxious about the fact that you are falling behind. But instead, stay super calm and just message the client on fiber and say, listen, I would likely just pop you a really quick message. The process is going super well and we are pretty much on schedule for the delivery date. As promised, I just wanted to explore a couple of other options and I think it's going to be really worthwhile. Would it be possible to just extend the delivery date by one date just to give me a little bit of extra time, just to explore a couple of other options for you. Because I really think it's going to be worthwhile spending an extra a, an extra 24 hours will give me enough time to explore these other ideas that I have. Is that okay? And when you explain it to the client, like it's going to allow them to ultimately see you as someone who really cares about the project. So try not to put yourself under too much pressure. I know it's super easy to do that, but really try to take care of yourself as a freelancer, as a person, as a human being. Because if you are being super anxious, you're not being your best self and you also are not going to be able to produce your best work as well. Now the reality is that anxiety doesn't really ever go away as a freelancer or in any job or any situation. To be honest. You know, I'm not a naturally anxious person, but I do feel a little bit of anxiety when I go into meetings with big clients, for example. Or when a client has just been a little bit challenging. You know, I'm human, it's just normal. So one of the things to remember is it's fine to feel anxious a little bit. And it does get better the more confident you become in your skills and also the more credible and experienced you become at delivering the type of service that you are best at. Now, one of the things which always used to get me anxious as a freelancer was if I wasn't making enough money. And I think financially, if you are making enough money, it actually takes a lot of the weight off your shoulders because you don't have to create as many opportunities and you don't have to worry about if the bills appeared that month. Now I'm in the super fortunate position now of being able to take a month or two off for three, or four, or five, or even a full year or three years if I really wanted to. But I understand that in the very beginning it wasn't quite like that for me. I wasn't making, you know, 10,000 or $20,000 a month as a freelancer, I was only making maybe one or maybe two or even three sometimes if I was lucky. But over time, that does change. So it does make things a little bit easier. So later on in this course, I'm going to be sharing some of my financial tips to help you charge more for your services. To help you manage your money in a way where you can basically build a nest egg so that you don't have to take every single project that is presented to you, which can give you a ton of power when coming into negotiation. So for example, if someone says, can you give me a discount for the project, or I'll go to someone else? Then you can just say, listen, I completely appreciate and support whatever decision you make, you go and get it cheaper elsewhere, I'm going to stand firm on my price. Thank you so much for your time. I really respect your decision either way. When you have that sort of momentum behind you and you don't have to take on the project, you actually have a lot more power when it comes to negotiation, which ultimately ends up with you landing more projects at the price that you want to be paid for your services and time, as opposed to basically offering discounts in order to secure the service because you're scared you'll lose that particular client. Now, I hope this lesson has been helpful. I know that anxiety is one of the things which I've definitely struggled with when I first started out as a freelancer. So I just want to let you know that if you do feel anxious, do not worry. It's completely normal. And if you need any personal support or any guidance from me, you know, directly, please feel free to message me. Obviously, I'm always here to help as much as I possibly can. I'll see you in the next lesson. 27. Dealing with impostor syndrome as a freelancer: So what is imposter syndrome and how do you deal with it as a freelancer now? Much like anxiety, which I covered in the previous lesson, impostor syndrome never really fully goes away, but it gets pretty close. And this is actually something which you need to wrestle with when you start to raise your prices as a freelancer. So for example, when I first sold a website for $20,000 I was sitting there thinking there is no way that this client is going to pay $20,000 for me to build a website, considering I'm not even really a website expert. There are people out there who understand how to build a website better than me. But the unique value that I brought is I understood how to brand the website better than anybody else. And I also understood the brand strategy better than anyone else. So what that meant was I brought a unique level of value, which no matter how good anyone else was at building a website, they couldn't provide an amount of value based on their lack of experience with that particular brand. But it doesn't matter what type of service you're offering unless you have an unbreakable level of confidence in providing that particular service. There is always going to be a certain level of imposter syndrome at play in your mind. And again, as you start to raise your pricing, this is going to get gradually worse, until it gets better. But you need to stick with it and understand that it isn't how much you think you're worth that matters. It's how much the client thinks that you're worth. So for example, if a client has a really big issue that's super painful to them and you can solve that problem. They will peer anything to get rid of that pain if it's causing a lot of stress and discomfort to them. So all you can do as a freelancer is offer them that particular solution for a certain price. And if they peer it, then ultimately you are worth that amount for that particular service, that particular solution. But I actually think that the feeling of being an impostor or having an impostor syndrome comes from our limited beliefs. Because if you have just worked a 95 job for your entire life, and then all of a sudden you're a freelancer and you can get paid, you know, $1,000 to create a logo or you know, $1,000 to come up with a brand name. You know, I charged $1,195 minimum just for five brand name ideas before when I was working, you know, a full month to get that amount of money. I could never have imagined that that was even possible. Now, the way that I broke my limited beliefs when it comes to imposter syndrome is I was actually traveling at the time and I wanted nobody to contact me on fiber. But instead of setting my availability to unavailable, I simply just times all of my prices by five. And this, to me, was the best way to stop people contacting me because nobody in their right mind is going to pay $600 for a brand name, right? That's just impossible. Like why would someone pay that amount for a brand name, especially on fiber, right? But after two days of upping my pricing, I realized that even more people were getting in touch with me. And this was very strange because I did not expect that whatsoever. But I ended up making more within three clients than I usually do all month when I'm working nonstop with like 20 clients. So from three clients, I basically made more than working with 20 clients the month before. And this was a huge eye opener for me. And I would actually suggest that you double your pricing every month if you can afford to. And see what happens. Because if you're getting a lot of clients at your current price point, that's great. But what you actually want to do is try to double your pricing so that you can work with less clients and provide a better quality of work. That's ultimately what's happened to me. And now I work with a maximum of, you know, five to ten select clients every single month. And I mean, just as much, if not more than I ever did working with, you know, 20 to 30 clients. And just being a busy idiot ultimately. Now, much like anxiety, it does get easier over time once you get more confident. And once you actually up your prices and start working with less clients, but essentially start becoming the expert that you know you can be. But it does take a little bit of time, so be patient. Work hard through it. And I'll see you in the next lesson. 28. How to manage lots of projects without feeling stressed: Okay, so how do you manage lots of clients without getting stressed? Well, this is an interesting topic because I think that no matter how you manage your clientele, it can always be a little bit stressful. But it doesn't have to be super stressful. And I'll explain what I mean. So as I've mentioned in previous lessons before, the goal is to work with the least amount of clients possible. And to get paid as much as possible, okay? Not because you're greedy or not because you want to know be overpriced, but basically because you want to be able to provide the best quality work and you want to also have a good level of work life balance. And in order to do that, you need to first and foremost work with a lot of clients so you can really fine tune your managerial skills to eventually be able to really deliver that quality afterwards. Once you're a little bit more experienced, well, before we dive into how not to get stressed, we're managing lots of different clients and how to manage that whole process. Let's talk about why we get stressed in the first place when managing a couple of clients or having a lot on our plate. Now our brains are ultimately a little bit like a computer, right? Like if you ask a computer to do lots of things at the same time, it's going to get very heated, very fast. And you've got neurons, you know, firing everywhere. And it's just going to get very messy very quickly. Now, in order to fix that, we need to focus on prioritization. So what do I mean by that? Now the only reason that you're getting stressed is because you're trying to do too many things at once. So the only way to fix that is to prioritize the things that you're trying to do from the most important to the least important. There are certain strategies that can help you schedule your day and manage your day in an effective and efficient way. Which will run through a little bit later on in the course. When we get to that stage, basically you're not actually stressed because you have too many clients, you're stressed because you do not have any prioritization and you do not have things organized. Those two things are very, very different. Now, another little tip to not being stressed when managing lots of clients is to stagger your deliverables. So for example, if you were working on five logo development projects at once, I would deliver each of those projects on a different day so that the feedback that you get from the client is going to be staggered and it's not going to all come at once. Because the last thing that you want is to get five E mails in your inbox all on the same day, on the same morning, and just basically blowing up your entire day because every single one of them need revisions. What is far more achievable and far more manageable is if you stagger out your deliveries to one day, one day, one day, one day, one day. And then what you're going to do is you're going to delay the response that you're going to get from the client to make it more manageable when you need to do revisions afterwards. Now I've mentioned this before, but another way to really decrease the amount of stress that you have when you are managing a lot of different clients is to keep clients up to date. One of the things which really annoys me when I work with different freelancers is when they don't update me and the delivery date is long gone and they still haven't told me how things are going. I I'm extremely impatient when it comes to people not telling me what's going on. Because obviously I have other clients to deal with. So I don't want to be thinking about the thing that they're responsible for, if that makes sense. So what you should be doing is keeping your client up to date and if you're going to be a little bit late, then tell them why and just say, okay, is it okay if I take an extra day just to make sure everything's perfect for you and they're going to be fine unless they have a really tight deadline, which is very unlikely. Most of the time they're happy to give you an extra 20 to 48 hours to make sure everything is right, as long as you're obviously focusing on delivering quality to them. But one thing, which is a big no no, is just ignoring them and just basically saying, listen, you know, like I'm not going to update you in my grass to anything. I'll just deliver it whenever it's ready. That is not the best way to do things because, you know, as a client, I don't want to be taken for granted and I also do not want to have things delayed without me understanding why it's being delayed. And that actually takes me onto my last point and last little tip when it comes to significantly decreasing stress when it comes to managing lots of different projects or clients. And that's to give yourself a little bit of wiggle room. So what I usually do is I add maybe two to three days on the delivery date just to give myself enough time, just in case, you know, something happens. Maybe I need to go to hospital for a day and something happens or an emergency, you know, occurs. Maybe I have an opportunity with another project where I need to jump on a call and it takes up most of my day. So I don't have time to finish the project. Having two to three days as wiggle room on every single project that you're working on is actually really useful because this gives you the ease of pressure that is going to allow you to do your best work, but it's also going to allow you to not get stressed and not have lots of projects piling up on top of you. You know, very little flexibility. So keep all of those in mind as you're kind of working through learning how to manage clients. We're going to be going into how to manage clients more effectively later on in the course. But I just want to share those with you because these are going to be super useful to you on your freelance journey. I will see you in the next lesson. 29. Gig Titles - Write titles that get clicks: So now it's time to start creating incredible gigs to attract high quality clients. How do we do that? Well, every quality gig starts with captivating title. And that is exactly what we'll be learning how to develop in this very lesson. Now, before we start exploring different ideas for our gig title, we first need to understand exactly what the purpose of a gig title is. Now as I've mentioned many times during this course, it is not as much the service that you're looking to sell, but it's the problem that you need to solve for your target audience. By having that mindset shift and looking to solve a problem instead of sell a service, it will change everything about how you look to develop your gigs and how you sell your services going forward. Hopefully that makes sense, but if not, do not worry. We're going to make everything crystal clear very soon. So if we start with the purpose of your Get title, it is essentially to capture the target audience's interest and then promise them a solution to the problem that they're currently facing. So for example, if I'm selling a brand naming service, I'm not just selling a brand naming service. I am solving the problem that the client has of finding the perfect brand name that is ready to trademark. This is a very subtle shift and it essentially is selling the exact same thing, but it is packaging it in a way that the client is thinking, okay, this is going to solve my problem and this is going to give me peace of mind that my problem is going to be solved. Let me give you another example just so it's super easy and clear to understand. For example, if I was writing blog posts for a website, then I may say something along the lines of, I will write blog posts to increase the conversion rate on your website or something of that nature. Or I will write blog posts to increase engagement on your website. Or I will write blog posts to position you as an authority figure in your particular niche. Can you see how I'm not just a blog writer anymore. I'm actually solving a problem that the client has. And you have to do the exact same thing in your gig titles if you want to capture your target audience's attention. And the thing is, we're always willing to pay more for something that we need as opposed to just something that we want. So this is another differentiating factor which is going to help you to not only earn more money, but attract more clients and get a better for your time. So how do you actually write catchy titles? Well, the first thing is you need to keep it as short as possible, but not too short. Make sure you add some context to what you're actually saying. And also make sure that you get across the fact of what you're going to be doing for the client, but also how you're going to be helping them. What is the problem that you're going to solve for that particular target audience? Let's look at some good and bad examples of gig titles so you can understand what to do and what not to do. So if we go into fiber and we look for people who can offer sales copy, we're going to be given lots of different options in regards to copywriters who can write persuasive language for our website or landing page. And if we look at the gig titles alone here, we can see that some of them are actually far stronger than others. For example, if we look at this gentleman's gig title, it says, I will write powerful landing page copy to boost your sales So what is that saying? It's saying that if I'm a client and I'm struggling with sales and I need someone to help me with copywriting, this is going to help me boost my sales. This is going to solve my problem. Do you see the difference between I write sales copy and I write powerful landing page copy to boost your sales? It's a completely different dynamic and I think the only negative about this particular gentleman is the fact that he's maybe being on the platform a little bit less. So that's why he's got less sales or when you actually get inside his gig, maybe his packages are not structured correctly, therefore he's not going to be persuading people to buy. But his gate title, if you just focus on his gate title, it's extremely strong. Let's look at some other examples in different Nes so we can really get across how important it is to have a great gig title. So if we go to fiber again and search for Shopper Fire websites, you'll see again that there's lots of different types of gig titles being used. Now one that stood out to me personally is this one here by Boris where it says, I will create a high converting shopper, fire drop shipping store or website. Now this is telling me that the website that they're going to create is going to be high converting. Therefore it's giving me peace of mind and it's telling me that it's going to solve my problem because I want a drop shipping website that is going to actually convert as opposed to this title here which simply just says, I will build a shopper fi website, shop fi drop shipping store. It isn't giving you a promise, It isn't giving you any assurance that you understand what I want. Because ultimately anybody can just build a shop fi drop shipping website rightly and you can get them for $10 basically. But if you actually want a drop shipping website that's going to convert into customers, then that is completely different. You know, it's a completely different kettle of fish. If you do not have a website that converts, then you essentially have nothing, okay, Like the website is completely useless. So by giving that promise in your gig title, it gives your target audience a reason to trust you. It gives them something that you can promise them, and that's going to be key when you're actually building your relationship with your client to make sure that they are willing to invest in your service. And the promise and the guarantee that you are giving them. Now when you're looking to write your gig title, make sure you do some research in regards to others on the platform that are offering the same type of service as you. This is super important because this allows you to understand what you're up against in regards to competition. And therefore, you can look at what others are doing well and not so well. So that you can write your gig title. With that in mind, you can compete more effectively, which is always going to be an advantage on your part. So just to summarize everything in regards to writing the perfect gig title. One, do your research and make sure that you understand your target audience and the promise that they want to be given when you're writing the title and offering your service. Number two, make sure that your gig title is simple and clear. But also make sure that the client knows the exact solution that you want to provide them. Number three, make sure you think about the types of words that the client is going to be using when they actually search for your specific service. This is going to make sure that when people search for those particular words, your gig pops up. And number four, keep things short and be always focused on the target audience and the problem that they are currently facing. If you follow those tips, then you're going to end up with gig titles which are high converting and they're going to be able to help your listings drive further up the fiber page. So ultimately you'll be found by more clients and then you can make more money. Anyway, I hope this lesson was helpful. I will see you in the next one. 30. Gig Description - Write descriptions that converts buyers into sales: So how do you write the perfect gig description? Well, I actually covered this earlier on in the course when I spoke about your father profile description. And the approach that you need to take is very similar if you want to write persuasive copy. When it comes to writing descriptions, the purpose of your gig description is not to sell your service directly, It's to allow the client to understand that they have a problem and that you are here to solve it, and that you understand the problem that they're currently facing. And in regards to structuring your gig description, it's the exact same structure as your gig video, which we've already covered beforehand with the three step process of hooking in your client by understanding them, telling them a little bit about you, and then basically inviting them to have a chat with you so you can learn a little bit more to see if you're the right fit for each other. Now what we're going to do is we're going to dive into some examples of good descriptions and not so good descriptions, so I can show you how they should be written and also how they should not be written. So let's dive in, first and foremost, to look at some descriptions which are not written so well. So if we look at the lovely ans description, you can see here that he starts off instantly talking about himself and his credibility. You can see that he says, the UK's top rated shopper, fire drop shipping expert, over seven years of experience, blah, di, blah, di, blah. Now this is all good and well, but the reality is that the client is not going to be persuaded, because there are tons of people who are literally offering the exact same service and literally saying that they're just as good as each other. What I want as a client is I want someone to actually understand me and the problems that I'm facing. So let's look at another gig which has a really poorly written description so we can understand what they're doing wrong and how you can write a better description for your geeks and services. So this particular seller starts with, hi there, Webflow expert webflow design issues. Amazing webflow responsive design. Now if it actually started with this line in regards to their geek description, I would have to have given them a little bit of credit because it's actually a really great line to hook in their target audience. But the fact of the matter is this here high there, which is basically like wasting the client's time. They are not here to say hello. They are here to get a solution to the problem. And you have to give the problem a solution as soon as possible. So by saying hi there, Webflow expert webflow design issues, amazing webflow responsive design, it's just wasting time. It is telling them that they're in the right place, but it's not really connecting with them. Whereas this line specifically, are you looking for a web floor expert? Yes, I am. Tell me more. That's something that I have to give this lady credit for because she is actually thinking about connecting with the problem that the target audience has. However, what she should probably do is be very specific in regards to the problem that they're looking to solve. So for example, she is basically saying, are you looking for a Webflow expert? Yes. But what do I want with a Webflow expert? Do I want them to build a website? Do I want them to fix a problem? Do I want them to migrate my Wordpress website into a webflow website? What do you want? What challenge are you currently facing? And if you can create gigs that are specifically there to solve the problem, this is going to change everything and it's going to increase your conversion rate and the quality of the conversations that you have with clients. So if you look at this example which is ultimately on my profile, and you can check this out yourself in your own time. The first line which is highlighted says, are you struggling to find the brand name mattress Feels right. Hopefully now you're understanding why I communicate like that, why it's persuasive and why that would connect with a client who is struggling to find a brand name. That just feels right. Okay. This is the difference in regards to language between a person who is going to sell a lot of products and someone who is not going to sell any products or sell very few products. Because when I'm connecting with the client in regards to the problem that they're currently facing, it changes everything. The conversation is completely different. They know that I understand them far better than most and that I've experienced in solving that particular problem. Let's go on further down the description and learn a little bit more. So, struggling to find a brand name that feels right, well, you are not alone. I'm empathizing with them. I'm telling them that I understand their pinpoint founders often find it harder because they don't have a tried to tested creative system to guide them. You don't have a creative system. There's no wonder why you're struggling to find the perfect brand name. Let's read on here at Clementinehouse Branding Agency. So I'm telling them a little bit about us and what we do. We have been developing world class brand names for founders just like you for a decade. So we've worked with founders just like you for over a decade. We've solved this problem thousands of times. Okay, let's continue reading and where others may just suggest a name, we make sure every name is fully ready to trademark, Has a.com domain available and can rank on the first page of Google faster. So we don't just come up with brand names. Okay, every name is ready to trademark. Every brand name can be ranked on Google really fast. And we also make sure that we understand that you need a.com domain with your brand name. So the three things, the three biggest issues with naming that I understand, because I've been doing it for the past decade, I am already talking to the client about it and putting their mind at rest in, You're not going to have to worry about trademarking. You're not going to have to worry about Google. And you're not going to have to worry about finding.com domain. Because we are going to solve all of those problems. And you can do this for literally every single type of service. Look at the things that the client is worrying about most when it comes to providing your service or securing your service. And then simply put them at ease within your description. Now once you've hooked in the client and you've told them a little bit about yourself, now you can say exactly what your service is going to be providing. So for example, for my particular gig I see a names that we develop are going to be strategic, easy to see, memorable, protectable, searchable, a little suggestive and visual only message us if you're an ambitious founder wanting to invest in finding the best brand name which will stand out. So I'm saying listen, if you're just like an average founder that doesn't really care about their brand name, then don't get in touch with us. We're not the right person for you. There's lots of other people out there offering the exact same type of service that we are obviously not the same because they don't focus on trademarking, et cetera, et cetera. But they can give you a brand name if you're not serious about it. But if you're serious, if you're an ambitious founder who wants to do things right, we're the right people for you. So this is our target audience. This is who we want to speak to. We want to speak to high quality entrepreneurs and founders who want to get their brand name in right and think about things strategically. And this is ultimately the approach that you are going to have to take if you want to connect with high quality clientele who take you seriously as a service provider and as a strategist, you know. So this is ultimately the approach that you have to take when you are arranging your gig description. So that should be helpful to you, Hopefully it is. And hopefully you know exactly how you're going to write your description for your particular gig. So I guess I'll see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 31. How to create the perfect Gig video for your Fiverr gig: So developing a video for your gig is one of the best things that you can do as a seller on fiber. And the reason for that is it simply gives you more awareness. And it also helps to build trust with potential clientele far faster and far easier. And I know this because I've actually had conversations with my clients who have specifically said that the reason that they hired me on fiber is simply because they saw my video and they light what I had to say. When you create a video, it helps you to actually understand a person and see how great they are at communicating. For example, if I made a video on my fiber gig and I didn't communicate very well, then the client is going to know that it's going to be a bit of a headache to actually deal with me and it's going to maybe take them more time to get the result that they need because they have to communicate with me. And I don't understand how to communicate effectively. But the reality is I've actually been communicating with clients for ten years now, so I understand how to navigate through a process with them, and I also know how to sell my service effectively through my experience with copyrighting and persuasive language. And the reality is that it isn't difficult for you to learn how to persuade a client to hire you if you use the right words at the right time and in the right way. And remember what I said earlier on in the course about focusing on the client's problem. This is exactly how you need to approach your gig video as well. For example, the first thing I'm going to say on my gig video is not, Hi my name, Scott Lancaster. I own a Brandon agency. I do this, I do that, I can do this. That's complete nonsense. The thing that you need to be starting with on any gig video is talking about the client's problem and the pinpoint that they currently have. Because this is going to hook the clients and have them thinking in their heads, subconsciously, Mmm, this service is for me, this is a problem that I have and I need it solved by this person because they understand that I have this issue. And this single thing alone, by making a gig video that actually speaks directly to your target audience, who has that challenging problem. It's going to help you to connect with them instantaneously. And it's going to give you an advantage above everybody else on the fiber platform. Now, the best structure that I've found to create an effective gig video to persuade potential clients to hire me, is to use a three stage process. The first stage, as I've mentioned before, is to hook the client by telling them the problem that they're currently facing. I understand you, I know what you're currently going through. Which then leads on to the next phase, which is to tell them a little bit about me and how I've solved this exact same problem many times before. So I may say something along the lines of, by the way, my name's Scott Lancaster. I've been a Brandon Expert for the last decade, Working with many businesses just like yours to help them overcome this specific problem that you're currently facing. And this problem comes up all the time. And for stage three, I may say something along the lines of, by the way, I fully appreciate how difficult it can be to overcome this specific situation that you're currently facing. I've dealt with it before with many different businesses, and I would love to have a chat with you just to see if we're the right fit for each other and to see if I can support you through this process. So feel free to pop me a message and I will talk to you very soon. Can you see how that isn't very pushy, it isn't very sealsy, and it's actually more supportive like the healthful Dr. Method that I mentioned a little bit earlier on in the course. It just oozes professionalism and it says that I am here to support you if you really want me. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I'll have a chat with you and I'll offer a solution to see if we're the right fit for each other. This is going to build a lot of trust with potential clients. Now just to finish off, I want to go over two examples. One example is a good gig video, which I actually made myself one of my gigs. And the second is a gig video which just doesn't look great and it isn't structured in the way that I've just mentioned in this particular video. So in this example, this is my gig for my naming packages, which I offer. As I said before, it's $100 for a five name package. And as you can see here, the actual video looks very professional, It looks very crisp. It is not, you know, amateurish. You need to invest in how your video looks because people are going to make an assumption of how professional and how credible you are based on how your video looks and how you come across in your video. Now, if you look at this example here, you can see that this looks very, very different. And if we check out his video, we're going to find that he is not using a persuasive structure when it comes to crafting the script for his video. Let's watch and find out. Hi guys, My name's Ian and thank you for checking out my Shopify. Still good gig. So there we go. Hi, my name is Ian. Thank you for checking out my shop fi web building gig. Now listen, Ian, the fact of the matter is that you could have the best service in the world, but if you can't sell it effectively, that's the difference. People don't really care what your name is to be completely brutally honest. They know already what you offered because they've actually clicked on the link already that says Shopper fi drop shipping website, so they know why they're here. You've just wasted 7 seconds and God knows how much more, talking about what you're going to offer them. They already know what you're going to offer them. So talk in a persuasive way and actually get to the bottom of how you can help the client. Another thing, just aesthetically, from looking at this particular video, is, does it look great? So the background does actually look, you know, quite clean and quite, you know, polished. The lighting on the video and the quality of the video is one thing. Secondly, his head is at the very bottom of the screen. You shouldn't be across the bottom of the screen. You need to be above the top third so that people can actually see you and you look professional, and credible, and trustworthy. This is something that clients will pick up on subconsciously when they're reviewing your gig and ultimately making a decision based on who is the most trustworthy to resolve their problem. Now I really hope this video was valuable in helping get across exactly how you can create an incredible gig video for your services. So I will see you in the next lesson. 32. Crafting eye-catching Gig thumbnails: So if you don't want to create a gig video, then you have to create a gig thumbnail. Now obviously, catching the eye of your target audience is going to be super important and you need to make sure that you get as many clicks as possible on your gig. So how do you do that? Well, in this video we're going to share some tips and methods to creating eye catching gig thumbnails to make sure that you get as many clicks as possible on your service. And I'll also be showing you some good and bad examples so that you can learn from those that are doing it right and some that are doing it well, not so well. Okay, So first let's just confirm what the gig thumbnail is trying to achieve. Well, first, it's trying to capture attention, right? We want to catch the eye of the clientele. Number two, it has to be clean and professional. Now, what I mean by that is if you start using images which are pixelated and that don't look good, then ultimately you're not going to be taken seriously by clientele and they are not going to take you seriously as a service provider. And number three, it needs to get across exactly what you can do for the client. So let's dive in and look at a couple of examples in different niches to basically see what you should be doing when it comes to thumbnail design. So the first place we're going to start is logo design thumbnails. Now, if we go down and just look at these top eight thumbnails, which one is popping out to you? Now, to me personally, there are two or three which are really standing out. The best one is lighthouse, two is robo be, and three is peer watch. Now, in regards to these other thumbnails, what are they doing incorrectly? Well, I think that this one personally should be showcasing the actual logos that it can create. Because I'm here to get a logo design, so why aren't you showing me the logo designs that I can have, the style that you have so I can see if you're the right fit for me. Now, this particular example is a little bit too busy. It doesn't really show me one quality logo designs because these logo designs are quite cheap and a little bit too busy anyway, It also breaks it down into Fall Square, so there's just too much going on. I can't really compute everything that's happening in the logo designs themselves in comparison to this example. And this example where it's just super simple and you know exactly what you're going to be getting. And ultimately, if this is the style of logo that you want, you know that you want to click on this particular logo because it is going to be more relevant to the type of style of logo that you are looking to achieve. This particular thumbnail doesn't really hit it for me because it doesn't really look like a logo design. It looks more like a leaflet or some sort of advertisement, which is obviously not why we're here. And for this thumbnail, I just think that the logo itself is just extremely busy and it's just not my personal taste. I like logos that are a little bit more simple and minimal and professional, whereas this one looks extremely playful and basically like the persons, just try to do five logos and put them together into one single image. Which obviously isn't generally the style that you would go for when designing a logo, which is simple and minimal. Now let's look at some examples of gigs that are selling website development services. So if we look at the top eight services again, you can see that there are some incredible examples of website development service thumbnails which really capture your attention and interest. Now, in regards to this particular thumbnail, I don't like how busy it is. I don't like how much is going on inside the thumbnail itself. And then it clicks to this video, which looks pretty good. To be quite honest with you, I'm not sure what he's saying, but it seems to be a lot better than the actual thumbnail. Now we look at this thumbnail, it looks a little bit cleaner, but there's just too much going on. You're not showing me the type of website design that you can offer me. Whereas if you look at something like this, which is super great, it actually gives you an incredible insight into the types of websites that they can offer. And it's also just quite interesting in captivating, right? Like you can literally see all the different websites that they can develop in one single video, Which is fantastic. This thumbnail itself is probably the worst out of everything. It is literally just a picture of someone, you know, typing on a keyboard. And I can't imagine that this particular thumbnail gets a lot of clicks to be completely brutally honest. Now, this thumbnail is quite interesting because it actually showcases the type of website that you can be promised from this particular seller. It showcases a nice design. It is, you know, very simple and very aesthetically pleasing. And it does actually come across as extremely professional. So I can't actually say anything bad about this particular thumbnail itself. Now let's look at one final niche, which is SEO blog writing to see how people in that particular niche create thumbnails to capture the interest of their target audience. So again, if we go through the top eight thumbnails as we've been doing before now you can see that SEO blog writing is a little bit different to other types of services where it isn't quite as visual, right? It isn't quite as easy to create a visual stimulus for this particular type of service. So for these types of services, it's actually a lot more important to give a little bit of an insight in regards to your experience and what you can offer to the client. So for example, this particular service from Mike has over 1,000 seals and is a five star rating. Now this is simply because obviously Mike is extremely good at what he does. I can imagine, but also as well as actual thumbnail is extremely well designed. Now the yellow and blue isn't quite doing it for me, and he could probably change this around a little bit. But it also does something that's extremely important, It captures your attention. So he basically has different things written on the thumbnail, like ten years of experience, 100% unique content, 5,000 satisfied customers, custom pricing and projects. So he is essentially selling you on the solution and pinpoint that you are currently facing. Because people are worried about the fact that their writers don't have enough experience. Some clients are worried that the content isn't 100% unique. Mike is actually telling you in the thumbnail that 5,000 people have been satisfied customers with his work. So he's really getting across the fact that you can trust him. So hopefully, that gives you an idea of how to create a thumbnail that is perfect for your specific niche. So basically, if your particular service is more visual, then you can actually show your work and show what you can do in regards to your visual. Maybe designs or, you know, what you can actually provide, whether it be Cad renders or whatever else. But if your service is a little bit less visual like copywriting or something like that, then focus on your credentials and focus on satisfying the Pin points that the client is currently facing. To put their mind at ease, I really hope this lesson was helpful. Thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the next video. 33. Pricing your packages strategically: Structuring your packages in the right way, and getting your pricing right is going to be super important if you want to drive value to potential clients. Now, if you are not using anchor pricing to get more sales and get paid more for your services and time, then you are missing out big time. And in this very video, I'm going to show you how to use anchor pricing to get paid more for your services. To get more clients and get higher quality clients with no additional effort whatsoever. Now, the first step is to structure your packages. Now what do I mean by that? I mean that you are going to have to ultimately come up with three separate packages which offer different levels of intensity or different levels of deliverables for your client. So for example, if you're offering logo design services for the basic package, you may offer one logo idea. For the standard package you may offer two logo ideas. And for the premium package you'll offer three or four logo ideas and so on and so forth. Ultimately, the higher you go up in regards to the standard of your package, the more you can expect to have delivered to you as part of the package secured. Now obviously you can offer any type of package that you want, but using anchor pricing is one of the most powerful ways to get paid more and to also persuade your potential buyers to buy the package which is the best value for them and which also is the most efficient for you to deliver. So what do I mean by that? Now let's look at this gentleman's profile and gig to give you an idea as to how you can structure your packages and then how not to structure your packages effectively. So for example, this gentleman sells literally the exact same products and services as me. The only difference is that for five brand names that he comes up with, he charges $30 So I'm not surprised that there's 25 orders in the queue for his particular gig. Now for my particular package, I charge $995 which is 30 times more than what he charges. So for example, he would have to get 30 clients, happy clients in order to get paid the same amount as I would have to work to get one happy client. That is the difference between using persuasive language, understanding how to sell yourself, and understanding how to package your offering to be able to deliver value to potential clients. And also working with higher quality clientele who are not restricted in regards to budget. But it also comes down to how he structures his packages. So for example, he has a basic standard and a premium package. His basic package is $30 His standard is 60, and his premium is 90. Now if you look at each of those packages side by side, there's only $30 difference between them. So when I'm thinking about which package is the best option for me, it doesn't really give me any incentive to choose the premium package or the standard package. Because I can literally spend $30 on the five business names package. If I just buy three of those basic packages, I still get the exact same as the $90 package. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So I'm not actually incentive buyer to spend anymore with this particular seller. So how can we use anchor pricing to make the seller feel like they're getting a great deal and that they are getting more value then the anticipated? Well, if you look at how I structure my pricing, I structure my pricing very differently. So my basic package is 995, my standard package, which gives you seven names, that's only two names, Extra 1,395 But then you can upgrade to the premium package, which is $2,495 which gives you ten names and ten slogans. The question that you're probably asking is, why is this particular service price so high? Well, this is all about the anchor pricing approach because if you look at these three services, which one looks like it's the best value? Well, for the basic package, you get five names and three slogans. For the standard package, you get seven names and five slogans, and you're only paying an extra $400 for the extra two names and extra slogans. Now in order to get ten names and ten slogans, you're going to have to pay almost double the standard package. So therefore, the standard package stands out as being the best value overall. Now there are obviously other things as well which are included in regards to the premium package. For example, you get a brand positioning call which is extremely valuable and it's worth a couple of $100 itself because it can really help the business to grow. But what I'm basically trying to say is if you place the premium package as being a super luxurious package, which has things in it which most people are not even going to need or want, then you can actually make your standard package look and feel far more valuable and far more desirable. Shopping centers and retail stores use this approach all the time. What they do is they basically would place a really expensive pair of shoes beside an even more expensive pair of shoes. So that you're not comparing the 30,000 pair of shoes by itself, but you're actually comparing it to the $90,000 Pais shoes which are beside it. Obviously, I know there are not many shoes in the world that are 30,000 or $90,000 But I'm just trying to drive home the message here. So in simple terms, if you play something which is quite expensive next to something which is extremely expensive, then the thing which is just quite expensive actually looks far more affordable. And like much better value than it actually is. And by using this approach, you're going to encourage buyers to buy more of your standard package and get more sales because they think that they're getting a much better deal when as a matter of fact they actually are. And they're going to be getting far more value because you can dedicate more time to their gig and to get them the best result. Now, in the very beginning of your five journey, you can still use this approach. But remember that when you first start out on five, you are just building up the credibility and the trust that you need to charge these level of prices later on down the line when you're more established and you have more authority on the platform. So keep this in mind. I hope this lesson has been helpful to help you structure your packages and do it in a way which is smarter and strategic. And I will see you in the next lesson. 34. Using your FAQ section to convert more sales: Okay, so what should you include in your FAQ section within your gate? Well, the simple answer is you need to make sure that any questions that your common customer is going to have before they want to purchase your service, you need to make sure you answer every single one of those questions within your FAQ section. So let me show you some examples of the FAQ section being used effectively, so that you can use your FAQ section in the right way to land more quality clients. So let's use this particular gig again just as an example. So if we're scrolling down and I'm a client and I'm looking to potentially hire this person to help me find a brand name for my company. And we get to the FAQ section, we are simply met with the questions which are the most important to me as a client. So I've basically structured these in a very specific way to help the client to feel more at ease when securing my services. So for example, what do you need for me to start the process? Because I don't know, I'm the client. I'm going to clear what you need to start the process. So I actually go through the exact process of how to get started next. How can we guarantee a.com domain for $20 less? Because.com domains are really hard to get, but we have creative approaches and methods to acquiring.com domains for really cheap. So this is another thing which we have to explain within our actual FAQ section. Now this is the question which I think pretty much every single person who we've worked with in regards to brand naming asks us if they haven't read our FQ section already. And that is. So what happens if I feel none of the names work? Now, over the past decade, we've developed a process that works within our brand naming system. Which helps us to guide clients through the brand naming process effortlessly, without much stress, and, you know, frustration. This is something which I need to say within our FQ section and not shy away from to make sure that our clients feel at ease. Because ultimately the client is not going to hire you if they don't have peace of mind that you can deliver on what you're promising. Now as you can see, the top three questions are the most important ones. The rest of them are not as important, but obviously still very important in regards to the actual service that's been offered. Now the most important thing is that you really take time and think about what you're asking in regards to the FAQ questions, you make sure that all of the most common questions are included there. And you also make sure that you answer them in a way that puts your client's mind at rest. Peace of mind is one of the things which will stop a sale going through. And it will also give you the best opportunity to close in a client effectively. And FAQ sections also give you the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive. So for example, if all of your competitors are offering a service which is turned around within 24 hours and your process takes seven days, you can turn that negative into a positive. You can say, yes, our process takes seven days. And this is because we really go into the depths and really explore as many avenues as possible, which just isn't possible within 24 hours. So that's going to help you to connect with clients who don't mind taking their time, who aren't under the stress of meeting a really tight deadline. Or who just want things super quick and just want to do things over and over again. It attracts the right level of clientele. That is going to be a pleasure to work with. Now, some quick tips in Garson right in your FAQ section. In the best possible way is make sure you check your grammar in your spelling. That's super important. Also make sure that you are ordering the questions from most important to least important. And also make sure that you're updating them as you go along because there's nothing worse than having out of date FAQ sections and out of date copy on your website or on your fiber profile. So make sure you really check that out and make sure that it's optimized to make your life easier later on. I really hope you found this lesson helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. 35. Optimise Gig SEO with Fiverr Gig tags: Now if you want to find the perfect tags for your fiber gigs, then you need to do a little bit of research and look at what your competitors are using so you can find the perfect ones to help you stand out. Now a little tip to help you find the gigs which are going to work best for you is by going to any profile or any gig that is relevant to the thing that you're wanting to sell in regards to services. Then going to the bottom of that gig, and then basically looking at the related tag section at the bottom here. This is going to give you some ideas in regards to what other people are using. So that you can either use similar ones or you can use slightly different ones to help you stand out based on what the client is searching for. And then once you've found the ones that work best for you, make sure that you're testing and changing them to make sure that you are optimizing the ones that are working best. For example, when I was looking at the different tags that were being used for marketing strategy and marketing consulting, I didn't come across anyone using brand marketing or marketing for shop Efi. So this is something which I utilized and have ultimately been able to get a lot of clients through those particular tags being used because they're not commonly used elsewhere. I personally am a branding expert, so I want to work with people who want to build brands, not just businesses. And obviously, building a business and building a brand are very different things. So I want to make sure that I'm connecting with the clients that are searching for someone like me as a poster of searching for another person to develop their marketing strategy. So do some research and look at the different types of tags that your competitor is using. And then use a couple that are a little bit more unique and distinctive so that you can stand out on the fiber platform for your particular service or offering. I hope this lesson has been helpful to help you understand how to use tags more effectively to stand out on fiber. And I will see you in the next lesson. 36. How to showcase your work like a professional: Now showcasing your work on fiber is going to be super important if you actually want to land high quality clients. And the reason being is before they hire you, they're going to want to see some examples of the work that you've done in the past for previous clients before them. Now, one of the tips that I literally give to every single person who is on fiber, trying to showcase their work in the most professional way possible, is to look at how the best agencies and the best people in your industry are presenting their work and then copy off them. The thing is there's a reason why they are the best of what they're doing. If you can take inspiration from how they do things, then you can ultimately accelerate your progression and development far quicker. Let me give you an example of two designers on fiber that are creating brand identity services. So as you can see here, this is Nypun's portfolio, which I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that correctly. You can see here that he is showcasing all of his logos. And some of these logos actually look great. Some of these logos are really well designed. It's a little bit all over the place. There's no consistency there when we're looking at how is he presenting his work. And this tells me that I'm not 100% confident in the result that I'm going to get. You know, is it going to look like this or is it going to look like this? Is it going to be this style, is it going to be this style? You know, what am I going to get for my money? So the consistency just isn't quite there. And that puts me at an unease and it doesn't really give me peace of mind when I'm looking to hire this particular person for my project. Now in comparison, let's look at my portfolio on fiber. Now obviously, I'm not saying that I'm the best on fiber in regards to showcase of my work, but there's a consistency there which can give clients a peace of mind that I am going to deliver and I understand what I'm doing. So if you look at how I present my projects in regards to my brand development, I can show you exactly what my thought process is. And not only what the logos are, but also what the color palette is and how that's going to apply to different mock ups in different physical environments within the actual real world. Without you having to work too hard to wonder, does this guy know what he's doing? And as you can see, this isn't a fluke. I've shown many times, and there's a lot more examples on my website too, at Clementine House.com to show that I know exactly what I'm doing when it comes to developing a captivating, an interesting brand identity for brands. And the truth is, I wasn't great at showcasing my work early on in my career. I actually had to learn from great agencies such as Pentagram, for example, who know how to showcase projects and design work more effectively than I probably ever will. But I took inspiration and I made my portfolio as great as possible based on how they approach things and how they showcase their logo designs. And how they showcase their brand identities to really build trust with potential clientele. Now I know that logo design is one of the most obvious types of projects to showcase as part of a portfolio. But here's another example from a copywriter that we actually mentioned earlier on in the course, who does it super well too. Now as you can see here in his portfolio, this gentleman's portfolio is great. It really showcases a consistent theme and it also showcases how his copy can be effective in actually driving home the message for the brand. And the person can actually click into each project and read some of the copy. Although it is very small, you would have to read, zoom in to get a good idea of what it actually says. But it gives you an idea that this guy knows what he's doing. And it also gives you the peace of mind that if you hire this person, he's going to be able to take care of you and guide you through the copyrighting process. But even just showcasing your work in general, whether it be on your website or dribble, or be hands or medium, or wherever else you're showcasing your work. You need to make sure that you are showcased in a way which is consistent and professional at all times to build trust and credibility with your target audience. So they'll hire you. I hope this lesson was helpful. Thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the next lesson. 37. When should you use custom Gigs: Custom gigs. When to use them, how to use them, and how to use them effectively to earn more money and get higher quality clients and projects. Now I suppose we should start with why would you offer a custom gig in the first place? Well, custom gigs can be quite useful, you see. When a client gets in touch with you and maybe they want your premium package, but they just don't want a particular element of that package. You can offer them a custom gig, which includes everything that is included in the premium package without the one element which is kind of putting them off because they don't want to pay for it, because they don't need it. So ultimately, custom gigs or custom packages are a way to tailor you're offering to exactly what your client needs or wants. Now one thing that's super important when you're creating a custom package for your client is not to overprice what is already stated in your gigs. I've personally worked with a couple of freelancers on fiber who I've asked for a quote for. And they've basically send me a completely different pricing to what is stated in their gig. So I basically just end up going with a package which is in their gigs because it's far less expensive. And I basically get the exact same thing. I think for some reason some people just think that you don't check their gigs and you just get in touch with them because they're an expert in their field. So just make sure that if you are going to offer a custom gig to a client, make sure that it represents the pricing and the value that you are offering in each of your gigs that are relevant to the custom gig you're going to be creating. Basically, if you create a custom gig which is highly overpriced, the client's not going to trust you and they're probably just going to go elsewhere for their business. Now, one other thing which is really important when you are thinking about creating a custom gig is to never ask what the client's budget is. And the reason for this is the client is never going to tell you first and foremost, and secondly, you shouldn't have to ask. The reason being is if you're an expert, then what you are offering costs a certain amount. And if a client is already getting in contact with you, then they have probably already seen your gigs and your packages. So they are already expecting a price roughly around that figure anyway. So never ask the clients how much their budget is. In my personal opinion, I would rather just say this is how much my price is. If you want to pay, then that's fine. If you don't want to pay it, then there are plenty of other people out there who you can hire. Now when you're creating a custom gig, one thing to keep in mind is to give yourself an extra two day buffer just to get the package perfect for your client. It's always better to have a couple of extra days just to basically, you know, refine anything if anything goes wrong. And also to make sure that you exceed your client's expectations and you deliver early instead of delivering either on time or late. Another great tip that I always recommend for pretty much any freelancer out there on fiber is to have an introductory discovery call with your client to really discuss the project in depth first, before you dive into the project together, this just makes sure that you're a great fit for each other and it also makes sure that you fully understand the expectations that they have for the project. Now one thing which is really important when you are offering a custom gig is to let the client know that this particular offer is only valid for a certain period of time. So for example, if you offer a package and you do not state that it is not valid after 48 hours, and the client secures it after one or two weeks and you're super busy with other projects, this could lead to you potentially delivering that project late. Because you're busy with other projects and you've already stretched yourself too thin. So make sure you limit the amount of time that the clients can actually take to purchase the order. And if you want to purchase the order in a week or two weeks or maybe in a few months time, then they can do that. But simply just reassess the situation and either extend the delivery date or adjust the pricing accordingly. Make sure you check your schedule and always make sure you give yourself enough buffer and enough profit to work efficiently on every single project that you are working on. Another thing, which is super important, is to make sure that within the custom gig, you state exactly what is going to be delivered within the deliverables. This is to make sure that before you start the gig and before you start the project, you and the client are completely on the same page, so there is no confusion and that you are completely aligned. This is going to save a ton of hassle and potential arguments later on down the line when you deliver the project and the client says, where is this, this and this when it wasn't stated in the custom gig. So just be careful and please please take your time and make sure that everything is fully explained within the custom gig so that once the client confirms it, they can confirm that that is exactly what they're going to get when the gig is delivered. I hope you find this lesson helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 38. Are milestone Gigs useful?: So Milestone Gigs and how to use them. Now, Milestone Gigs are very similar to custom gigs. And if you've watched that video, then this video is going to be quite similar. The only difference is Milestone gigs allow you to break down bigger projects into smaller bite sized chunks. Now, personally, I feel like Milestone gigs are not as effective as they probably could be. And there's a reason for that because when you work with the client, you are ultimately trying to satisfy them. Every single time you engage with them. And throughout a larger project, sometimes things can happen which can leave the client quite annoyed. Now obviously this is something that we try to avoid, but sometimes it happens beyond your control. So, for example, maybe the client makes a mistake or edit something on the website whilst you're building it, which knocks the project back by maybe a couple of days or maybe even a week. Now, this is not something that is down to you or it's not your fault, but basically the client may not understand that it isn't your fault and they may basically blame you for that particular thing happening. Basically, what I'm trying to say is with milestone gigs, it is far better, I think, personally, to set up separate gigs where things are finished and complete, instead of having milestones within a gig so that you're still working on one large project, but you only have separate milestones which you're working through instead of having completed phases which are completely put away and tied up and finished. Now, to be completely, pretty honest, I've been on fiber since 2017 in April, and I have not used a milestone gig at any point during my fiber journey. So to be quite honest with you, I'm probably not the best person to speak to emongrass this. But as I've said before, I do not agree with how Milestone gigs are structured. I do not think there's any benefit to them. I would rather have three separate gigs, so you can get three separate reviews. And you can also have the freedom of leaving the gig halfway through the process if you really want to. So for example, if you're designing a website and you do the first part of the website, and then you don't really want to follow through with the second two phases because maybe the client is asking for too many revisions or they're just really difficult to work with, then you can walk away without being shackled to the milestone gig where you basically have to finish the full project. That's just my opinion, but please, you know, make your own judgment and do your own decisions. But I just want to give you my humble opinion to make sure that you are looking after yourself whilst also making sure that you make the best use of your time when serving clients. So you can work with the best clients. And you have the flexibility to change if you need to. I hope this video was helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 39. Better requirements equal a smoother client experience: Now, setting up your gig requirements is one of the most important steps to any gig creation process. And what I mean by that is if you don't do this correctly, it's going to make your job a lot harder during the process of actually delivering the package. Now, for me personally, I've spent a lot of time over the past six years to really understand what it is that I need for each package that I deliver. To really understand exactly how to meet the client's expectations and to satisfy the objectives that they are trying to achieve. Now, even though you may have little experience in regards to providing the service that you are looking to sell, you do probably have a pretty good idea in regards to the questions that you should ask to really help yourself throughout the creation process when you're actually delivering and developing the deliverables. Now these are the requirements that I personally arrange for one of my marketing strategy gigs. So the first question that I always ask is to basically book a 1 hour consultation call so we can actually discuss the project in more depth. I give them a link to book that and that goes directly into my diary. And I actually have a video a little bit later on in this course where I show you within that lesson how to link up your calendar to your fiber account really easily. So your clients who end up booking with you can essentially end up booking directly in your calendar without discussing time zones and without discussing availability. So it saves you a ton of time. So make sure you do not miss that. Now within the actual requirements, I also state things like these. Requirements are meant to give me an insight in regards to your business before we actually start to strategize and actually build your marketing strategy. So I tell them that and I basically structure my questions to really get as much insight as possible in regards to their business to make sure that I can basically serve them the best possible way that I can use my expertise and my experience. And one of the most important things as well when you're actually developing your requirements for each gig is to basically refine them as you go. So for example, I had a situation, you know, back when I first started on fiber, where the same problem kept happening again and again and again. And what I basically did is I thought, okay, I can either let this happen again and again and again, or I can add something to the requirements and something to my process to make sure that this doesn't happen anymore. And I think that the situation was that people who were getting brand names were essentially expecting to get a clean.com domain which cost, you know, $50,000 for $20 Which obviously just isn't realistic. But they didn't understand how rare those types of domains were. So what I did is within the requirements, I stated that even Facebook had the domain, the Facebook for the first stage of their business before they actually invested in just Facebook.com for $100,000 after around two to three years of being in business. Now this is really important because it actually manages the client's expectations before they start the process. Because now they know that getting a domain which is clean for $20 is just not realistic. Especially if you're looking for a brand name which is four to five letters long. It just is so rare. It's kind of like filing a Ferrari for $10 It's just not going to happen. One thing that you need to make sure of when you're setting up your requirements is to just simply make sure that you get all the information that you need. And do not expect to get everything perfect first time your requirements are going to take a little bit of refinement. Do not expect to get everything perfect the first time you do a project with a client. Make sure that you simply are open to learning what went wrong. And if anything does go wrong, take it on the chin. And then use that to refine your process and refine your requirements so that you can get more information. So that particular problem or challenge never happens again. I really hope this lesson was valuable and I really appreciate the fact that you're taking the time out to really investing yourself in your fiber career as a freelancer. So I look forward to seeing you in the very next lesson. See you soon. 40. The blueprint to managing client expectations: So how do you manage clients like a Fiber Pro? Well, there are some rules that you should follow if you want to manage your client's expectations and make sure that you get those fires. Star reviews that every fiber freelancer wants to achieve. Now if you really want to manage clients properly, expectation is going to be key. So the first step to that is to make sure exactly what your client is expecting and then to try to overdeliver wherever possible. A really simple example of this is within my packages of five brand names, I usually add a couple of extra brand names in there just for good measure, just to give them a few other variations and just to show that I really care about them getting the result that they want. Another example of this is making sure that you actually understand exactly when your client is expecting the gig to be delivered. For example, if they've already discussed that they have a deadline which is 48 hours and the gig is seven days long. You need to understand and manage that expectation to let them know that, listen, our process takes a minimum of five days to complete. So if you want to have the deliverables done in 48 hours, that's fine. But it's not going to be us that you need to work with. You need to work with somebody else. But if you're willing to wait five days and really get things done properly, then you know we might be the right people for you. So think about that. That is something which you need to really discuss with your client and make sure that you're on the same page. You are sometimes going to have difficult conversations with clients and tell them that something isn't particularly possible that they want or need. And this is just a simple case of you're telling them that what they are wanting is unrealistic based on your processes and the results that you think that you can achieve. And if you think that being realistic, then don't work with them. It's not worth your time and effort and it's not worth the stress. The only time a client is ever going to be disappointed is when their expectations are not met. So if you do not meet the delivery date and the expectations that are set there, that's going to be a problem. You do not meet the expectations in regards to communication, that is going to be a problem. And if you do not meet the expectations in regards to quality, that's also going to be a huge problem. But if you hit those three things, there are very few things that you can actually do wrong as a freelancer. So focus on hitting those three and you should be okay. Now one thing which I've mentioned a couple of times in this course, is that if anything happens in your personal life, or if something comes up and you need to refine things, always have a two D buffer there within the project. Just so you can have that peace of mind that you can always deliver on time and to the highest quality. And that just allows you to always make sure that you are honest and transparent with your clients at all times. And it also just establishes a certain level of trust if you can deliver earlier or even, you know, on time, which is at the standard that they are expecting or even higher so you can even exceed their expectations, which we'll talk a little bit more about later on in the course. It just sets a certain standard which your client will begin to start to expect from you every single time they work with you, both now and in future. Now one thing which I think is pretty standard, but a lot of freelancers that I've worked with through the fiber platform do tend to forget. This is to keep clients updated at all times. Even if you're popping them a little message just to say, listen, just a really quick update. My go to your website, logo design, whatever, but things are going really well. I just need a couple of extra days just to tie things up and really get things in place. I'm not 100% happy with how things are right now, but I'll update you as soon as things are ready. If you have any questions in the meantime, please let me know. I'm here to support you. Those little messages go a really long way and it just gives your client peace of mind that you are on the pulse, you're professional, and you are keeping them up to date at all times. Now later on in the course, we are going to be diving in deeper in regards to how to manage clients and how to manage their expectations and Dave exceed them so we can get those five star views that we are looking for on the fiber platform. But in this particular lesson I hope it's been helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. 41. The perfect sales call structure to land any client: So how to structure an effective client. Sales Call sales is a skill which I think every freelancer can benefit from. It is the ability to communicate to a client and ultimately guide them and persuade them to buy from you or to purchase something that you are offering. So there's a particular structure that you can use to basically maximize the likelihood that someone is going to buy from you. And I will also add some examples of my sales calls through zoom on this call so that you can actually see me personally in action selling a service to a real client. But the first question that you should be asking yourself is what you actually want to achieve from the sales call. Now, in my personal opinion, the first thing that you should be looking to achieve is to be as supportive and as helpful as possible. This does not mean spending every hour of the deal with the client and basically giving them all the answers on the sales call. Because you have to respect your time as an expert, what you should do is answer all of their questions as best as possible. Or if they ask a question which requires a little bit more thinking and a little bit more time, then either see I can get back to you a little bit later on with a more fleshed out answer. Or if they're actually starting to creep into the realms of a project, then basically say, this particular answer would take some research and it would actually take a lot more time than me just giving you, you know, a quick fire answer on this call. So when we're actually inside the project, I'll be able to answer that question a lot more effectively. So hopefully we end up working together and then I can answer that properly for you. Now one thing to remember when you're actually in a sales call with a client is what is your client thinking? Now when you actually watch some of my sales calls, maybe after this lesson you'll see that the clients that I have never spoke to before are pretty much always a little bit dubious and a little bit scared. And they're quite skeptical of, you know, talking to me. They don't know if I'm going to be super salesy or if I'm going to be professional, or if I'm going to be, you know, approachable by the end, you'll see that they actually are, you know, laughing a little bit. And obviously, they've all been up a little bit more. And they trust me more simply because I'm trying to be the helpful Dr. and being as supportive as possible to try and help them get the solution that they need, Whether that be working with me or working with somebody else. And as I've said multiple times within this course, it's really important that you dig as deep as possible to find the challenge or the issue that the client is currently facing. So you always need to come back to the challenge that they're facing So that you can say, okay, this is the challenge that you're facing. These are the services that we offer. This is how we can create something which is custom and tailored to you to help you rectify that problem and get the solution that you need. But in regards to pretty much every single sales call that I've had, there is a structure that I try to follow as best as possible to make sure that I maximize my chances of success in signing the client. Now when I first come on a call with a client, the first step is always to introduce myself and just thank you for their time. And then basically ask them what their situation is. So if a client comes on a call, I'll hear something along the lines of, listen, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And I know how busy you must be. I know you mentioned that you were looking to potentially find a brand name for your company. Do you want to tell me a little bit about the journey that you've had so far and how that's been and what challenges you're currently facing. What this basically does is it sets the client up to basically start telling me everything about their journey so far. And what I said at the very end, which was quite clear is what challenges are you currently facing? So they're going to be telling me how hard everything's been, how much, you know, pain they're in, basically in regards to trying to find the perfect brand name. All the things that are wet, wrong. So that afterwards I can say, okay, you've got this problem. This problem, this problem, this service that we offer will literally solve all of these issues. So you'll literally have the service there to rectify all this pain. All you have to do is secure it and you are ready to go. Now, whilst they're telling you all of their problems and challenges, make sure you are super attentive. So just be there on the call and just be nodding, listening and actually be listening to what they're saying because they're going to be giving you lots of clues to be able to connect to them later on when you're offering your solution in your services. Now when they're finished, they're going to essentially, you know, be pretty much out of breath by the time they tell you all of the things that are either being going wrong or all the challenges that they're facing. And at that point, it's your turn to start speaking. Until then, you should have just literally not said a word. And you should literally just be agreeing with them and nodding and just letting them know that you are listening to what they are saying. Now, once they've told you everything, it's your turn to say, okay, from what I understand, you are challenged with this. You're having this problem, and this is the main issue that you're facing is that correct? So basically what you've done is you've listened, you've been attentive, you're caring. But then you've repeated back to them what the challenges is that they're facing. So they've just told you everything, then you've just summarized everything up in a super short and concise way and said, okay, I understand you're currently being faced with this, is this correct? Is this what you're currently facing? And if we can solve this, is this going to help you? Okay, this is the next step. Now you're starting to actually take everything that they've crafted and everything that they've told you. And you're starting to offer them a solution which is custom and perfect for them. Now, at this point, you may need to ask them some additional questions which is the perfect time. So you may ask them. Okay. So you said that the challenge was this. What was the main thing about that particular challenge which you personally, you know, kind of struggled with? And do you think that this particular solution could be, you know, a possible, you know, resolution for that particular challenge that you're facing. Now, once you've answered all your questions and you fully understand the client situation, it's now time to put your healthful doctor's costume on and simply go through everything that you would personally suggest to help them rectify those problems. Now, this is simply just your suggested approach to resolving the problem. You're not giving them the answer yet. You're telling them how you're going to get to the answer. So, you know, I might say something along the lines of, okay, sir, you've been really struggling with trying to get a website to convert. So how I would approach it is I would actually first look at the website that you have in place right now. And we'd learn as much as possible from that website to see what you're doing well and what you're doing not so well. We look at all the data to see, you know, what's working and what's not working. And then we would redesign the website with your new brand, which is going to be far more aligned and far better at converting customers based on what we've learned from the failure of the first website. Then you should ultimately have a website which works for you which is high converting and should also look far better as well because it's obviously being branded by a professional agency that knows what they're doing. Now, once you've provided your suggestion, the client is going to ultimately you have to pretty much go away. And they're probably going to have a couple of questions before they actually leave to consider if they want to work with you or not. Now at this point, I always like to take control and say, so what I'd like to do now is just basically open up the floor for you to ask any questions for me. I'm sure you have a couple of questions in regards to maybe, you know, my agency, you know, maybe clients who I've worked with in the past, our process. Anything else that's on your mind? Just please let me know. I want to be as helpful as possible. And at that point, they're probably going to ask you a couple of questions maybe in regards to pricing or something else, which is actually a really good sign because it shows that they're interested. But at that point, you just simply listen and you just literally respond to every single question that they have. Now one thing that I always make sure that I do before I end any sales call is to thank the person for their time. So what I would generally say is, listen, I know how busy you must be. Thank you so much for your time. And if you have any further questions, please let me know. But just let me know if you want to work with us or if you need any further help whatsoever. Thank you so much and then just end the call and that is it. Now, I understand that it may take a little while to get used to, you know, doing sales calls, but you will build confidence over time. And as long as you just try to be the helpful Dr. and you just try to understand the client, you can't really go far wrong. So just take things at your own pace. Practice makes perfect, so please do not try to rush things. Just be patient and you will get better at it, I promise. And I know you can be a little bit uncomfortable sometimes to actually, you know, have conversations with clients, especially difficult ones. When you actually get to a point where you can really drive home the suggestions that you can suggest for the particular issues that your client is facing. You can really be a super helpful freelancer who your client can value and trust. So I hope this lesson was valuable. Thank you so much for your time and I'll look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 42. Setting up quick responses to improve workflow and save time: So how do you set up quick responses within fiber to save you a ton of time and energy? Well, I personally think that there are certain quick responses that you need and that you're going to use pretty much on a daily basis when people are getting in touch with you and then when people actually secure your services, depending on which service they want to buy from you. Now, in regards to each quick response that you need to have set up, there are obviously different ones that you will need for your specific services that you'll be offering your clients. But I want to just quickly run through the ones that I have set up so that I can essentially and efficiently manage my business through fiber. And ultimately save myself a ton of time and energy just typing out the same message again and again. So if we just dive into my inbox, I'll take you through some of the most common messages that I send on a regular basis. So the first one is a generic requirement. Thank you. So for example, when someone actually sends their requirements and answers all the questions when securing a gig, I'll send them this which just simply says thank you so much fulfilling your requirements. I'll be getting back to you soon. It's just a little thank you for their answers and it's just to let them know that I'm on the ball and I'm going to get back to them very shortly. Now, in regards to the next quick response that I have set up, it's essentially an inquiry response if someone wants to be interested in my brand naming packages. So for 99% of people that get in touch with me in regards to brand naming, I just simply send them this exact message. And it basically just outlines all the details to make sure that we're the right fit for each other so we're not wasting too much time. Now, another really important quick response that I have set up is a feedback request. Now make sure that when you set up a feedback request, you do not state that you want a five star review because that is not allowed within fiber. But what you can say is something along the lines of what I say. Which is basically to note that the review that you leave on this order is very important to us. We always look to exceed expectations and deliver a perfect experience for all clients. Especially clients who are as ambitious and focused as yourself. Flattery will get you everywhere once a gig is finished. I really love it if you could take some time to leave some positive feedback on your experience with us, so you could basically just let us know if the result was perfect for you. And then I just basically want to say, you know, we try to go above and beyond for every single client. Thank you so much for trusting us, et cetera, et cetera. So this is just a really great message to have just to send, you know, if you are finishing up with a gig just to remind them to leave feedback if they want to. Now another message which I always keep up my sleeve is the closed gig message. Which is ultimately just to say that if the gig is closed automatically, so if for example the client doesn't respond to you within a couple of days, then the gig will be closed automatically. If you've delivered it, I simply send them a quick message. Once it is delivered to basically say, listen, I know that the gig is being automatically closed, but I'm still here to support you. I'm still here for any refinements if you need any additional support or help. So please let me know. What this does is it basically shows the client that you're not just here to get paid. Because once the gig is closed, the money is ultimately released to fiber, which can then pay it to you within seven or 14 days, depending on what level you are within the seller system. Now, this has really helped me a lot because it essentially allows me to build trust with the client and allows them to understand that I am actually there for them. And then to support them and help them through the process. Regardless of whether I've been paid or not, I want to make sure that I am there for them to support them if they need me. Now, another message which I always have and I sometimes use is my feedback, thank you. This is simply just to say thank you once they've left some feedback and just to basically leave things on a really sweet note to say, you know, listen, if you ever need any help in the future, then please let me know. I'm always here to answer any questions that you may have. Now, when you're actually delivering packages, it's always good to have a template in place when you're delivering the gig. Now for example, with my name delivery gig, I always make sure that I follow a structure and link out to certain videos that I have on loom, for example, to explain things in more depth. This just make sure that I can fully explain everything in regards to next steps, what the client needs to be thinking, what they should be doing. So that, and I've just nearly knocked my cup over so that the client knows exactly what the next steps are and so, you know, I don't have to explain myself over and over again. So this is a really important message to get right, and this is something that you're going to refine over time as well as you become more experienced in delivering that particular service. Now obviously, I have some other messages as well which I don't use super often, but those are the main ones. So just to kind of summarize, you need ones that are used for your inquiry. So unless a client, you know, sends you a very specific question, you can use kind of an initial inquiry message just to ask for further information. Or to maybe send them to your calently to book an appointment. Or to maybe just, you know, send them, you know, some kind of brief requirements just to get a little bit more information in regards to the project just to kind of see if you're the right fit for each other before you jump into a call and waste a ton of time and energy. Because, you know, sometimes, you know, you can come out of the fiber and you can literally have, you know, 20 or ten messages of clients wanting to work with you. And at that point, it's simply just a case of being the most efficient at finding the clients that you're the best fit for, the ones that you can help the best. And setting up these quick responses is a sure fire. Were to do that as efficiently as possible, Hopefully that lesson was helpful and if you need any questions answered them, please let me know. I'm more than happy to help and support. But I will see you in the next lesson. Thank you. 43. How to use reviews to get more clients: So how can you use the reviews that you get on your fiber profile to market your services better for future clients? Well, this is an opportunity which I think personally, so many freelancers miss out on when they are replying to reviews within their fiber profile. And let me explain what I mean. So if we go into my fiber profile, you'll see I have around 294 reviews on my naming gig. So this is my naming package, which again is priced at between, you know, $995 to $2,495 roughly for the premium package. Now if we take one of the packages like this one, for example, this is from Janina Hutchinson, who I'm still working with now by the way, I'm just helping her with her packaging. This is a really great example of, you know, Janina saying, you know, exactly what it was like to work with me. So working with Scott and his team was absolutely amazing experience. We feel lucky and blessed to have found him to help guide us to the perfect brand name for our business. From start to finish, we felt Scott got us and he knew exactly what we were looking for with the brand name. His communication throughout and the entire process was exceptional. And we did nothing but exceed our expectations. Sorry, he did nothing but exceed our expectations. Scott is one of kindness, fed, and an absolute pleasure to work with. Most freelancers and people on fiber usually just say thank you and you know that's great. You know, thank you so much for your time. And you know, it was a pleasure. The pleasure was all mine and then that's it. But this is a prime example of how you can use this opportunity. Because clients that are looking to work with you, potential clients are going to want to read your reviews. And they're not only going to be reading what the reviews are that have been left by other clients, but they're also going to be reading your response as well, most likely. So this is how I approach the responses within my reviews. So the first thing is I always say something along the lines of, okay, the pleasure is all my, Gena and Nick, because I want to make sure that I'm obviously personal because I really build a relationship with Jana and Nick throughout the process. You know, we really dug deep and really made sure that, you know, we got the best result for them. Now, after that, I say something along the lines of, thank you so much for following our process and communicating with us so well, that's basically saying to any new client that, if you want a great result, like Jana and Nick, follow our process and communicate with us. And if you don't want to communicate and you don't want to follow our process, then go away. We don't want to work with you. And I mean that. So after saying something along those lines, I'll say something much like, this is the secret to a successful creative project when clients and their vision is matched perfectly with an agency who can help bring their vision and ideas to life. So again, I'm keen into the desires of future clients. You know, future clients are thinking, okay, I've got this vision but I'm not sure how to bring it to life. Well, I'm an agency and a founder and a freelancer who can help you do that. So you're kind of building up the aspiration of working with you and the desire to work with you because you have something that they need. So we continue, thank you for giving us the time to really dig deep for you and find some amazing options. Looking forward to working with you on the next step in creating your brand names, logo and brand identity. So what have I just done there? I've basically said that thank you for giving us the time to really dig deep for you and find some amazing options. So thank you for giving us the time. Thank you for being patient. So if you are a client who is patient, you can work with us. If you're in a rush, you're not for us. There are plenty of other people out there who want to rush things. We're not the ones for you. And lastly, I also say, looking forward to working with you on the next step of creating your brand names, logo and brand identity. So what I'm basically saying is, okay, we've developed your brand name, now we're going to do your brand's logo and identity. Which we did for the brand name which is Solara. It's a really incredible brand. They create amazing jewelry. And ultimately, all I'm doing here is just preparing future clients to work with us that are also high quality, like Jana and Nick. I want to work with clients who want to do things properly. I don't want to work with people who want to rush and, you know, kind of, you know, rush our process. I want to make sure that we are respectful of each other and that we get the best result. Because this is ultimately why Janina and Nick got such a great result with us, because they trusted us, they followed our process, they answered our questions, we answered their questions. And it was a collaborative effort to get the best result for the brand. And now, you know, we're creating something super special and we're helping them with different areas of their business to really help them get the result that they need. So hopefully, this was helpful to really help you understand how you can use the reviews and the replies to your client's reviews to market your business better. Hope you find that helpful. Thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the next lesson. 44. How to turn negative reviews into a positive: Now. I would love to sit here and say that I have never received a negative review on fiber. But the reality is that no matter how hard you try and no matter you know how much you pour your heart into every single project, there are some clients that you just want to be challenging and kind of see the world burn. You know, sometimes it is actually the freelancers fault. And there are some, you know, cases where I have literally, you know, canceled a gig just because I haven't been up to the standard. Especially in the early days, you know, when I wasn't really that experienced in regards to, you know, handling clients or using the fiber platform. So I made a few mistakes on my naming gig. I also have a couple of negative reviews as well, which I want to go through with you. And I want to essentially explain exactly what happened in each particular circumstance to ultimately give you a little bit of peace of mind. That even if you get a negative review on fiber and a one star review, which is kind of like a death sentence in the world of fiber. It isn't the end of the world. And you can actually use it to have advantage, to turn things around. And I'll actually show you an example of a five star review that I got on the platform which was originally going to be a one star review. So I'll show you how you can turn everything around to actually be a positive and actually showcase that you're a professional and that clients want to work with you. And you can also highlight the fact that these particular clients were just a little bit difficult and a little bit overbearing. So let's dive into the reviews and I'll explain each of them specifically. So this is actually pretty fun because I haven't read these reviews for quite a long time. But the first one is as follows. It was honestly one of the worst experiences I've ever had, Poor customer service. They only check their inbox once a day and sometimes not even once. The service was just awful. These people are clearly untrained and lack creativity. This was four years ago, by the way. I do appreciate the effort but genuinely think they are unqualified and would not recommend them. So I responded with, you know, being as professional as possible, saying this is another prime example of what happens when a client feels they're no better and don't follow the process. That has helped hundreds of other businesses find a great brand name. Basically, what happened with this particular client, which I remember very clearly. Basically what happened was they were trying to tell me that the names did not meet the brief, so I sent them a full breakdown of the neurological, you know, reasons why that particular word or that particular phrase or that particular name was connected to the meaning that we'd already confirmed in the decision stage. You know, when we were kind of setting directions and setting ideas and they just basically disagree with me, I think they were just looking for a refund and when I didn't offer the refund, they basically just said, okay, you know, we can't get the refund. So we're just going to literally chop this guy down as much as possible and, you know, this is what happens. You know. You know, I could have just canceled the order and avoided getting a one star review, but I put so much effort into this particular package that I knew what they were trying to do. You know, there was no way, you know, in any stretch of reality that not a single name was hitting the mark and not a single name was even something that we could learn from within the process. So they were just being extremely dramatic and they weren't really respecting me as a professional. So I thought, okay, you know, if you want to waste my time, I'm going to charge you for that wasted time. And then I essentially said, developing a great brand name needs great communication and cannot be pulled out of a hat. Light magic, best of luck. So, you know, I just basically said, listen, you know, if you want to get the best result, you need to communicate with us. You know, it's not just the case of pulling out a magic rabbit out of a hat. It is a case of communicating and really making sure that we, you know, explore all variations of each option and learning throughout the process. I think they expected us to get it, you know, absolutely spot on, perfect first time. Which is now something which I've refined within our process to say, listen, in our first initial presentation with the brand names, we're not looking to find the perfect brand name. We're looking to learn as much as possible. That takes all the pressure off the clients, and that allows us to have an actual conversation about what they like and what they don't like. So on the second attempt at developing brand names, we know exactly what their personal preferences are, so what they like and what they don't like. Anyway, let's dive into another review and see what this lovely client had to say about me. So would not accept cancellation of the order that I requested before the gig was remotely complete. Never received a complete gig. Was not happy with the initial work. So basically with this client again, they basically received the presentation as we sent it with like everyone else. And they ultimately didn't reply to us and the gig was automatically closed. Now they started to try and request a refund after we'd already sent the names. We'd already been through the whole process and they didn't give us any feedback. They literally just wanted to know request a refund and just take the names that we, you know, basically worked a week on to develop into trademark check and all this stuff. And, you know, it just wasn't something that I'm going to accept. You know, if we work super hard to actually develop the names and we spend, you know, a week of our time to really develop the names and explore lots of different options and work really hard to, you know, develop those ideas. There's not a hell's chance that I'm just going to let a client not give us any feedback, not communicate with us whatsoever, and just take all our creative work and then just expect a refund. It doesn't make any sense if they went through the entire process and then by the end they said, listen Scott I'm not 100% happy with, you know, the names that have been developed. You know, can we arrange something and can we maybe, you know, come to some sort of agreement then? Fair enough. We would be open to that if we really feel like we'd missed the mark and we hadn't, you know, you know, met the standards that we would, you know, usually meet in regards to brand naming. But the reality is we have worked with, you know, 2000 you know, clients minimum in the last couple of years. You know, since this review is being, you know, posted and every single one of those particular clients have reached a result. Solely because we've learned from these types of experiences where we've said, listen, you know, the initial presentation is not about getting it right first time. We need to learn as much as possible and then go forward from there. So let's look at another review and we can learn a little bit more about how we can turn things around. Because actually in regards to this review, I wasn't able to reply in time to the review, so I wasn't actually able to leave, you know, kind of a response to their reply which is unfortunate, but, you know, whatever it is, what it is. Now, in regards to this specific client, he said that I have asked for names five or sticks up for their sellers and does not offer refund when the seller only provides the names of existing companies, of which is not what I am needing or looking for. I have had several e mails and being my first time using five, I will not be using this company again. He said that he was disputing charges with the bank as they claim that they have not refunded 100% satisfied. So yeah, basically he goes on and on to say that I missed the boat in regards to the presentation and the ideas and they automatically completed the audit even though it was not complete. So ultimately, this is another case of fiber automatically completing the gig. I sent him the initial presentation and essentially he didn't reply in time and it automatically completed. I tried to reach out, as I always do, to say, listen, it's automatically completed. Please reach out to me if you have any further questions, and obviously, once you've reviewed the presentation, please let me know so we can actually discuss things. You know, don't leave a review without actually going through the full process because that's just the initial presentation. He wasn't happy with the initial presentation for whatever reason. He said that we missed the boat on it and that's fine, but you need to talk to us about it. Don't just leave a reading negative review and then expect a refund without going through the full process. You've only went through like 25% of the process. So it isn't really fair to, you know, assess the entire process on just 25% of the experience. So then I simply responded with, unfortunately, this is what happens when the client feels they know better and they don't want to follow the process that is tried and tested to great shame. As we did send five messages before the gate closed, we have contacted five about the unfair review. But best of luck with your business, Jeremy. Then, the day I did message them five times when the, you know, gig was closed and before it was closed to try and alert them that the gig was going to close automatically. They didn't listen to me. I can't do a whole lot about it. One thing that you really need to keep in mind when you are dealing with clients is you can only do what's inside your control. So if a client is not responding to you, or they're just not communicating as much as they should be, then you can't control that. All you can do is say, listen, I need you to communicate a little bit more, is that okay? And if they don't want to, the result is based on their ability to communicate. It's not based on you, okay? So you need to take a certain level of accountability, but not too much where you're actually carrying the client as well. You need to guide them, but you don't feel like you have to carry them on your back the entire way up the hill because that's just not. And in regards to this particular review, which is the last one star review, not under standard or level expected. So, you know, essentially I ended up sending this client like ten messages asking them to have a conversation in regards to the names. Instead, they completely ignored me and had no passion for the work and find an effective name. Good luck with your business. The reason why this creative process doesn't work and we end up getting, you know, like one star reviews out of the 200, almost 300 reviews that we have, we've got 41 star reviews. This is simply down to clients just not communicating and not following the process. And now I literally say to clients, if you don't want to follow the process, go and work with someone else. Because we don't want to work with people who are going to make our life a living hell, basically. Now I just want to give you a little bit of an insight in regards to this particular clients and our engagement and how we basically ended up turning around from a potential one star review into possibly one of the best reviews and I've ever received to be completely brutally honest. And it was actually one of the most satisfying clients that I've had to work with, even though it was one of the most challenging projects that I've had to endure, and I'll explain why. So essentially, Andrew was looking for a name which was Korean. I don't speak South Korean. I don't speak any other language apart from English. So that was quite challenging in itself. But basically, Andrew was very, very detailed in his response. And as you can see here a little bit earlier on in the process, this is, you know, all of the feedback that he gave me. He said that he literally took two or 3 hours to reply and give me all the feedback that I needed. Now, this is the first set of messages. This is the second, the third, fourth, fifth. You know, it goes on and on and on and on and on. And, you know, he sent so many messages throughout the process, including other things like it literally went on and on and on. And I basically said, listen, this is all incredible. This is exactly what we need. And he said, honestly, I tried my best to give you enough feedback. And then at that point, I basically Broke everything down to really make sure that we were, you know, focused on getting the best possible result for Andrew. And also saving him a ton of time. So he started complaining, saying that he essentially had spent, you know, 3 hours on developing feedback for us. As you can see, you know, he did send a lot of feedback, but that's not what we asked for. We simply asked for, although I was obviously grateful for the amount of feedback that he sent. And it was incredible and it really helped us. All we asked for was three bullet points of pros and cons for each brand name. And as we go through the last few messages that we went through, you know, we were still very, very far away from what he wanted to get. And, you know, we were looking at other words, we were looking at other things. And I basically said, listen, I'm going to be at my computer for the next few hours, let's jump on a call and let's basically get this resolved. I jumped on the call with him and I sat on the call with him for basically, you know, maybe 1.5 to 2 hours. And we sat there and we basically just sat there and we just fleshed it out, we figured it out. And that was when he left the review, literally about an hour later. And he basically said, foremost, all the positive reviews written about Scott are true. Communication with him was extremely fast, open and responsive. But I would like to highlight how willing Scott was to roll up his sleeves and dig deep into the mud right alongside me. Entrepreneurship is a long and hard road, but people like Scott make it a bit more bearable. I give Scott extremely difficult task and it was extremely difficult, to be completely honest. He had super high standards, but, you know, that's why we do what we do. That's why we, you know, pull to the table and try our best. That's all you can do is try your best for an unbelievably nip picky and finicky Asian marketplace. Scott handled it like it was John Wick. Thank you. And quickly and effectively Got things. Yeah. Anyway, you get the idea. This was an absolute pleasure for me to help Andrew and it really helped him get over the finishing line. I believe the name that we came up with was imagine with E instead of I. So it kind of worked really well in the Korean language, which he was really happy with, and it wasn't trademarked and it wasn't protected anywhere. So that was great as well. So basically what I'm saying is, as long as you really care about getting your client's results and as long as you just respect yourself and you don't, you know, let the client, you know, take, you know, the mickey out of you. You know, you can get some really great reviews and it's very rare that you're going to get a review, you know, like the one star reviews that I've actually had on my, you know, particular profile. But it does happen. You know, it's not the end of the world. It isn't great when it happens, but you'll get better, you'll recover. And as you can see, you know, all the one star reviews on my profile are all from, you know, four years ago. You know, that's the last one that happened and it was simply just a case of me, I think, just not being experienced in managing the process and maybe following up a little bit more. But ultimately, sometimes you just run into some clients that are just a little bit, you know, difficult as well. So anyway, hopefully that was helpful just showing you a little bit about my experience on the fiber platform. But anyway, I will see you in the next lesson. Thank you. 45. How to get long thoughtful 5-star reviews from every client: So as you've probably seen in my previous lesson, you know, I've got a lot of five star reviews on my profile that are very well written and they are written with a lot of care. The clients really put a lot of thought into what they write when they leave a review on my profile. So how do I do that? Well, there are a few things that I like to do throughout the process of working with clients to make sure that I build a relationship where they actually really care about what they write on my profile. And I want to share them with you in this very video. Now first and foremost, I want to just share the reasons why clients tend to like to leave five star reviews. Now first and foremost, they're going to leave a five star review if they feel like they've received an incredible amount of value. So if they feel like they have had their expectations exceeded or they have been delivered a certain amount of value that exceeds what they were expecting, then ultimately they're going to leave a five star review. It goes without doubt. You know, it is one of those things that just is very important When you are providing a service, you need to make sure that you deliver more than what the liner is expecting. So that you can really make sure that you give them the best possible experience. And then another thing is you need to make sure you get them a good result, right? So, for example, if I'm offering a brand name in service and I'm not good at creating brand names, then that's going to obviously result in some issues, right? You need to make sure that you're very good at what you do. And that is one of the reasons why I state, you know, previously in, you know, lessons beforehand in this course, that you should focus on being, you know, a freelancer who has a single occupation or is very, very good, or, you know, one of the best in the world At one particular thing, I strive every single day to be one of the best freelancers in the world and one of the best, you know, brand naming experts in the world to help my clients find the best result for that particular business situation. So by focusing all your energy on one single thing, you managed to get extremely competent and extremely good at achieving results within that particular area, which then results in more five star reviews. And it ultimately results in you becoming extremely good at that particular area of expertise. Now, two other things which really help to get five star reviews is to include your client in the process. This is something which I personally feel really helps. I think that clients who pay a certain amount don't want you well, Pretty much any clients to be honest, they don't want to just be handled something in for it, not to feel like theirs. I think that a lot of clients that I've worked with have wanted to be included in the process so that at the end of the day, it actually feels like they've been given something which they've been a part of. And lastly, I think it's just a case of being liable. You know, I think that, you know, I'm actually quite an introverted person, but when I'm speaking to a client, you know, I try to be as nice as possible, as professional as possible. But also, you know, I ask about my client's families. I have a client at the moment called Manuel, who I'm helping, you know, build his brand and his website. And we've done the brand naming, we've done his branding, We've done, you know, his website. And before we even talk about business, we talk about his family. He's got a little girl who's around four months old now, and obviously I'm expecting my first little boy. So, you know, obviously we're sharing stories in regards to, you know, what it's like being a parent. You know, what he's struggling with being a dad, what he's good at, being a dad, all these things. And when you build these personal relationships, it just makes it extremely obvious that your client is not going to go anywhere else. It just makes it extremely easy for them to hire you again because you're not just working with a client anymore. You're kind of working with a friend, as cheesy as it sounds, and you do make friends with these people even though they're paying you. You are still kind of emotionally invested in their success, which is actually really nice. Now one of the things which is kind of like the most basic pieces of advice that you're ever going to get from any course anywhere. But just make sure you listen to your clients. Make sure that you really, really listen to what they want. Make sure that you guide them the best possible way that you can. And make sure that you have difficult decisions sometimes. And say listen. You know, there are sometimes with clients that are, you know, I really want the brand to be green, okay? This is just a really stupid example, but I really want the brand to be green. And I'll say to them, okay, what's the reason that you want the brand to be green? Is there a reason behind that? Or is it just your personal preference? Let me know because ultimately you're going to make the decision for your brand, okay? You're the captain of the ship. I want to understand that if we're going to be making a decision like that, I want to make sure that we are really truly understanding why we're making that decision. So that we're not just made a decision based on your personal preferences on what you like personally, but what's going to work best for your business. Is that okay? If we have that conversation, and you know, any client who is respectful and any client who is actually interested in their business doing well is going to listen to that conversation. If they still want to color that brand green, then fine, that's it. You know, you just have to guide them in the best possible way that you can. But ultimately, if you speak to them in a way which is respectful and professional, you're going to be able to guide them and actually give them a better experience overall. Which is going to end up with a better result in the very end of the process anyway. And one of the things which is really important, and again it seems like basic advice, but it actually isn't, it's actually really, really useful is to just be as honest and transparent with the client and never be scared to, you know, ask them difficult questions, much like I've just mentioned a little bit earlier on in this lesson. You know, if a client is, for example, you know, trying to decide between two logos which literally just happened with Manuel, which I've just been talking about with a little girl. He was basically struggling to decide between two different logos that we developed for his brand name. And I said, listen, I'll be completely honest with you, is that okay? He said, yeah. I said, I really like these two logos and, you know, I know that, you know, you can probably pick one of them and you'll be very happy. But there's something about the little icon on top of the eye which just doesn't sit right with me. Is it okay if I take the weekend just to look at a couple of other options? And this was before he even mentioned the dot above the eye on either of the logos. And what that says is it says, listen, I care about your project just as much as you. And that speaks volumes. So if you can actually showcase that you actually give a crap about, you know, your client's end result and your client's business. And you can be seen as a partner instead of just a service provider. They're going to give you the trust. And they're going to be transparent and authentic and they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt and they're going to actually value what you say to them. And I think that if you follow everything that I've just mentioned in this particular lesson, but also the rest of the course as well, five star reviews are never going to be a problem for you ever. And you know they're always going to be more than happy to write that really long, nice meaty review for you. Which is going to help you get higher quality clients later on in the future. Because ultimately the no that you've put your heart and soul into the project and most of the time that's what truly matters as well as gaining, obviously a great result for them as well. Listen, I really hope that this lesson was helpful. It sure would have been helpful for me when I was first starting my freelance journey. So I will see you in the next one. See you soon. 46. Balancing quality with quantity perfectly: Now, balancing quality with quantity is one of the balancing acts that you are going to struggle with when you first start out on fiber. The reason being is much like I've mentioned earlier on in the course, at the very beginning of your five year journey, you're going to be looking to work with as many clients as possible to really boost your rating and get as many gigs as possible. Now, as I've mentioned earlier on in the course, at the very beginning of your five journey, you are going to want to really focus on getting as many projects as possible. So you can start to build your gigs up and start to get more reviews. And really start to fine tune your processes so you can become a professional at what you do. Now, there's a certain point in time within your freelancing journey on fiber where you'll start to tip over to working with less clients and focusing more on providing a quality experience when it comes to clientele. And this will probably come when you start to up your pricing. So for example, you know, when you are not charging, you know, the same as the rest of your competitors. When you're charging a significant amount more or maybe, you know, maybe 25% more or 50% more. This is when you're going to be expected to really deliver an exceptional client experience. This is going to be strategic calls. This means, you know, being super responsive. This means really being thoughtful about what you communicate with your client about. And when you do this, you will ultimately provide a better experience which is, you know, fairly basic, but this is also going to justify the extra amount that the client is going to be paying you for that experience. Clients will pay more for a better experience and to be, you know, sent personalized videos that you are really taking your time to craft and you know, you're really taking your time to respond to them thoughtfully. Instead of just giving them, you know, an auto response, E mail or whatever. And ultimately, the balance between quality and quantity is all about you eventually working to a point where you work with less clients, who are less fussy, who are more respectful, who trust you more, and who are willing to pay you more because they value you more. This is the goal. If you can get to a point where you work with, you know, maybe five clients a month, and you're making more than enough money that you need to live on. What else do you need in life? To be completely honest, you know, I, you know, I've made the 20 to 30 grand per month. I've did that, you know, on a couple of months during my freelancing journey. And it's nice, it's a nice little legal boost. But the reality is that, you know, now I've never been happier. I work with, you know, five clients maximum a month. Because I'm very selective with who I work with. Because my peace of mind and getting a good quality sleep at night is far more valuable than earning an extra 15 grand per month. Money is money, and once you have, you know, a nice nest egg, you know, in the stock market, and once you have a nice nest egg to fall back on, you don't really value money as much. You value your peace of mind, your health, and your relationships. Obviously with my beautiful wife and obviously with my little boy, that's due in the next couple of months, which depending on when you're actually viewing this course, he might have actually been born by now, which is quite weird, I didn't think about that. Nevertheless. Anyway, the balance between quality and quantity is something which you are going to have to manage. So I just wanted to give you a hedge, it more grass that because it is going to be something which I personally struggled with and I'm sure you will struggle with a little bit as well, but hopefully not as much now that you've watched this video. So thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the next video. 47. Why some freelancers can sell their service for 3x more: So how can you sell your services for a premium on fiber? Well, that is exactly what we're going to be covering in this very lesson. And we even went through it early on in the course that my naming gig is $995 whereas the closest competitor is selling for $250 So the question is, what types of services can you actually sell at a premium on fiber? And the reality is that you can pretty much sell anything. You know, there are tons of different options for clients and businesses out there for brand naming packages. But the reality is that as long as you understand how to communicate, how to solve a problem in a very specific way, like we've already discussed in this course before, there are going to be clients that are willing to pay your prices. And as a matter of fact, I'm always looking to increase my prices whenever I feel like I can't handle the amount of clients that are getting in touch with us. So, what are the main differences between a premium service and just a regular one? Well, a premium service is like a tailored suit. And if you've never experienced buying a tailored suit, I can tell you it is very different. And what's different is the suit is made for you as opposed to just made for anyone. Now, this requires a certain level of expertise and experience because if you are not experienced in providing the solution that you're offering to a client, then you're not going to be able to tailor it perfectly to their body, to what they need. And this is the thing that qualifies a premium service from a regular one. It is the ability to take your solution and the thing that you're good at, perfectly fit it into the problem that the client is currently facing. If we summarize everything that we've already discovered in the course into one single sentence, it's to find a problem worth solving. So, if that's the case, then isn't every problem the same? And, you know, could one solution be just as good as another one even though this solution costs five times as much? Well, not always, and it all comes down to perceived value. So for example, if I'm a client and I am looking for a brand name for my company, these are the two experiences that I can buy on fire right now. In one hand, I can pay someone 100 or $200 and basically just be given five to ten brand names that I hopefully like. Yes, If I don't like any of them, they may revise them. And if I don't like any of those ones, then I may leave a negative review. Now, on the other hand, you have the approach that we take where before we even start developing brand names, we ask for requirements so we fully understand what the client is looking to achieve. Then we have a 40 minute two, 1 hour call to discuss the directions that we want to actually take in regards to achieving the perfect name for the client. And then with our experience with the first initial draft of names, we're not even asking you to make a decision. We are asking you to learn as much as possible from that first draft of names so we can refine and dig deeper in the areas that we know we're going to be successful. And then that isn't even the end of it. Before we end the package, we have another call with the client to discuss how that specific name is going to be brought to life through your client's logo and then that isn't even the end of it. Once the client has a couple of names that they're like, we have another call where we'll discuss the different names and which ones are strongest and which ones are weakest from a strategic standpoint. And then finally, we'll actually advise from a design standpoint which of the names is going to be better and which is going to be brought to life more effectively as a brand identity. So can you see now how much value is provided in our approach as opposed to just handing the client five to ten brand names and hoping they like. So it's a completely different dynamic And well, it doesn't cost me anything to be having a zoom call with a client apart from my time, which I personally value very highly. It just adds that extra layer of expertise and experience for the client to help them make the best decision for their business. And what does that result in? It results in the client trusting me and seeing me as a professional, and then ultimately trusting me to bring their brand name to life through design, with their logo and their color palette and their typography and all that good stuff. Here's a reason why you should be selling premium services on fiber and pricing yourself well above the competition. One, you work with less clients and they're always higher quality 99% of the time. Two, you are able to take the time to do your very best work. That means having space and room to make errors, make mistakes, and do you know forms of exploring, which you normally wouldn't do if you had time restraints. This allows you to get the best possible results for the clients without wasting their time. And three, there is power in being the most expensive for a particular service on fiber. As long as you can back it up and provide value for that particular price, then people will hire you 100% All you need to do is make sure you have the credibility and you have some trust on the platform, through reviews and through time on the platform. But not only that, but every time you get onto a call with a client, they know that you are the most expensive on the platform. Therefore, subconsciously, they're thinking that you're the best. I really hope this video is helpful, and if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out, but I will see you in the next one. 48. What do when a client does not reply: So what do you do if a client doesn't reply or answer any of your messages? Well, this is a situation which I find myself in a fair few times within the fiber platform. Now this is for a multitude of different reasons. One of which is the one star review situation, which I mentioned a little bit earlier on in the course. But sometimes it's just our mind playing tricks on us. So for example, I was in a situation where a client did not answer me for a week or a week and a half. So I was understandably getting a little bit worried. I didn't know if they'd seen the presentation. Just being like, you know, this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And, you know, it was getting a little bit unnerving and I was feeling a little bit anxious and worried. So after around three days, I messaged again and again just to say, listen, I hope everything's okay, I hope everything's al right, I hope you're safe and well. And out of the blue, I got a message from I think her name was Sarah. I can't remember. Basically saying that she'd been rushed into hospital and, you know, something had happened. And, you know, she had obviously not been able to get in contact with me. But she loved the presentation, she loved all the ideas. She's making a fast recovery and we'll have a meeting next week. So we had a meeting and I was obviously wanting to make sure that she was okay and make sure that obviously, you know, she took as long as she needed to actually review the document probably. And obviously, she'd had a bit of a stressful week the week before and she was so thankful for me not putting any pressure on her, not trying to close the gig, not trying to just get paid. And that was simply from me actually putting her first as opposed to just thinking about myself. And I know I keep saying this, but there are only two things as a freelancer that you can actually do within your control. One is to just try your best sometimes. And I can definitely speak, you know, personally in regards to this. When I was just starting out as a freelancer, I would, you know, I would try my best but I wouldn't do 100% I'd maybe do 95% just in case. Maybe as a little protection trigger for my ego, I could say, oh, I didn't put in 100% So, you know, maybe that's why, you know, they didn't like it. You know, if I put in 100% and they didn't like it, then that would be my fault. But if I only put in 95% then it's not as much my fault. I can kind of have a little bit of a, you know, an escape route. That is actually the stupidest thing I have ever thought and done. It only lasted for, you know, kind of a couple of months until it really kind of drilled home that you have to put in 110% with everything that you do, whether it be freelancing or anything else. And this completely shifted the level of work that I was doing. No longer was I keeping this little kind of, you know, safety net when I was delivering work. I was putting everything I was going all in, Everything that I was doing, not just in freelancing, but in every aspect of my life, workout, everything. And what happens when you do that is your mind just shifts. It is no longer an option to, you know, be unaccountable for your actions and what you are putting forward on the table. Listen. If a client comes up to me and says, listen, Scott, I know you've putt in 100% with these names. But they're just not resonating, they're just not kind of feeling rights. That's my job then to jump in and be accountable and say, okay, these names are not working at the moment. Let's go through them and actually find out why they're not resonating what you don't like about them. And maybe, you know, we might get lucky and find something that you actually like about, you know, one particular name or two particular names, et cetera, et cetera. When you take accountability and really try your best, it can be Earth moving. You can completely shift everyone's perception of, you know, how much effort you're actually putting in. And the difference between 95% and 100% or, you know, 100% 10% is astronomical. It's not just 5% it's the whole thing. Yeah. That's the first thing of just trying your best and making sure that you keep that under your control at all times and be mindful of what you're doing. And the second thing is to always put the client first. Under no circumstances should you ever be thinking about yourself. They care about the result that they're want to achieve. And, you know, like situations when Sarah didn't get back to me for seven to ten days, I was worried about me and I didn't think about what could have happened to her. But thankfully, I was, you know, experienced enough to, you know, be constantly asking. Listen, I hope you're okay. I hope you're al right, You know, I hope you're safe, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, these things mean a lot to a client. It's not just a case of, okay, let's deliver the audio as soon as possible and then get gone and then, you know, I never have to speak to you again. And I can just get paid and, you know, walk into the sunset with my money. Clients don't like that. I've actually got clients who've left reviews that simply state that, you know, Scott wasn't in a rush to close the order because that's actually what fiber is all about. You know, fiber is full of freelancers who just want to close the order, get paid as soon as possible and move on to the next client as fast as possible. People don't like working with people like that. It is slimy and it's not professional and you know it's a long game and you need to play it like a long game. So what do you actually do actively if a client doesn't reply? Well, it's as simple as just following up. Make sure that you follow up every day. And, you know, if they say, you know, I need a little bit more time to say, listen, take your time. You know, you don't have to race through everything when it comes to, you know, creative work or any type of service that you're providing, unless there's a deadline to hit. And even then, you know, there's a client who said to me once, you know, I need this done by Thursday. And I said, just out of curiosity, what's the reason that you need it for Thursday? And he actually said, you know, actually I don't really need it for Thursday, I would just like it for Thursday. I said, okay, let's try our best to it it for Thursday, but if we need an extra couple of days or a day or two, is that okay? You know, if we think it's worthwhile exploring a couple of other options, he was like, yeah, sure, why not Always think about the one single thing that is going to make your client happy, getting them the result that they need. If it takes an extra day or two, communicate with them and actually, you know, have that discussion with them. Don't just take an extra two days and then hope that they understand because they won't, they'll be super annoyed. So, yeah, manage the expectations of your client. Make sure that if they don't reply, you follow up with them. And you don't just leave them in the lurch and just focus on the other client which you know is answering you and taking lots of revisions, et cetera, et cetera. Make sure that you always follow up and make sure if they don't reply, that you're professional and that you put their interests first. I really hope that this lesson was helpful and I cannot wait to see you in the next one. See you soon. 49. How to handle a client who wants to cancel the order: So what do you do when a client tries to cancel an order? Well, I've had a few instances in situations where a client has wanted to cancel the order. And to be honest, it isn't the best experience in the world. I wouldn't really, you know, advise it for anyone. But it is definitely something that you need to learn how to manage and you also need to make sure that you manage it with care and with professionalism. When a client is either not happy with the process or they're just not quite feeling that you're the right fit for each other, they will ultimately request via the gig to cancel the order. Now you'll get a notification which will ultimately alert you to this situation and you can either accept it or reject it. Now the clients will tell you why they want to cancel the order. And in all fairness, out of the 50 orders I think that have canceled over the past six years of me actually being on the fiber platform. Some have been from clients just literally, you know, ordering the gig wrong and then regretting it after, before they're even spoken to me. Some have been from clients who have, you know, just basically not been willing to participate in the process. And some have been from clients who have just not been happy with, you know, the work that was provided. You know, this was obviously, you know, kind of four to six years ago when we first got started. But it is just a case of rolling with the punches and taking it day by day. But there's a very specific approach as to how to limit the amount of damage that a canceled order can do. Now the first thing that you need to manage is your emotions. You know, if you've worked super hard on a particular project and then a client wants to cancel the order, it can knock the wind out of your seals a little bit, it can be a little bit disheartening. I remember personally when I was on a zoom call with a client and, you know, he was extremely rude to me throughout the zoom call. And, you know, I try to be professional and I try to obviously, you know, be as nice as possible. But during the last 10 minutes of the zoom call, he started really being heavy with, you know, being rude and, you know, not really being the nicest person to be dealing with. And I'd have said to him, listen everything that we've worked on so far, and we'd already been working a week on this project. By the way, everything that we've been working on so far, this is not usable. This is our intellectual property. I'm going to cancel the order and I wish you the very best. And as soon as I said that, he completely shifted his behavior and he started being a lot more polite and a lot more apologetic. But at that point, it comes down to how much you respect yourself and whether a client is canceling on you or you're canceling on a client, it doesn't really matter. You need to respect yourself and understand that you can't please everyone, okay? And sometimes you have to bite the bullet and just cut ties and just move on because there's nothing worse than going to bed every night. At least for me personally. And you know, for a fine fact that a client in the morning is going to be waiting with their pitchforks, trying to, you know, make your life a misery pretty much every single day. It's just not a nice place to be. So I think that in my personal situation, canceled orders are actually a little bit of a blessing. And at the end of the day, it is up to you in order to decide whether you want to reject or accept the cancellation. In my experience, you know you are going to get the one star review if you do cancel the order. And I even think that fiber is allowing canceled orders to leave reviews now. So it doesn't really incentivize you to cancel the order. You might as well just get the one star review and then take the money, if that makes sense. But it all depends on if you think it's a fair cancellation or not. If you think that the client is, you know, just taking advantage of the fact that you've put in all this work and then they don't really have a legitimate response. And they've kind of, you know, wasted your time and they're not following your process, or they're not giving you what you need, that's not really your fault. You have grounds to reject the cancellation and say, listen, this is the process that we follow to get you the result. We give you the process and we can guide you through that process. But if you can't give us what we need in order to get you the result, then we can't get you there. That's not our fault. And a really great question, which I always ask in situations where the client isn't, you know, quite happy fully with the service is okay. What do you think is a reasonable resolution for this particular situation, considering we've putting obviously a lot of time and effort into the project, but I understand that you're not 100% happy. What do you think is going to be a reasonable solution? And at this point, you're going to get a little bit of an insight in regards to the client's mind and what they think is, you know, a reasonable solution to the problem. However, most of the time they may just say, you know, I'm not paying for something that I'm not going to use, et cetera, et cetera. And that's just going to get really ugly really fast. So if that happens, then, you know, just make a decision based on what you personally think is best. But one thing that I do want to say lastly, is that you shouldn't ever lose hope. I have had situations where clients have been extremely unhappy during the last stage of the process, and I've said to them, listen, we've got two options here. We can either go out a separate ways, and, you know, obviously, you know, we've both lost a little bit of time, but you know, we will live and we'll move on. Or we've already came so far. Now we know what we don't want to do. Let's try once more to get things right. And I don't know what it is about this particular approach, but it really drives home the fact that one, you care about the client so they actually feel like they have, you know, your time and energy to really find a solution. But secondly, it's kind of like the movie effect where it's like everything's filled up until now. But let's give it one last try. And, you know, the fact of the matter is, it might seem a little bit cheasier cliche, but it actually works. I had a client around three years ago who had bought a website from us, and they wanted the website built on Wordpress. And, you know, we kind of tried to build it on Wordpress, but for the website that they wanted, Wordpress just had these design restrictions that were not the best. I basically said to them, listen, the website doesn't look as good as we thought I was going to. That's a fact we both know that if you give me two days, I'm going to completely redesign this particular website and building in webflow and you are going to get the perfect website in a brand new platform, which is going to be a lot easier to manage. It has more design capabilities and it's going to be able to make you a ton more money because it's ultimately going to be providing a better experience for your visitors. At this point, they were all in it cost them nothing more. And I was going to rebuild the entire website in two days and it was going to look great. The problem was I'd never used web floor before. And it was a very intense two years of Youtube videos and forums and all that good stuff. But the reality is I managed to figure out how to use web floor super fast because I was under that control pressure. So the way that I was thinking about it is, Mm, this client is going to want to cancel anywhere or, you know, they're not going to be happy anywhere. So let's use it as an exercise to learn a new skill. So let's learn web floor. Let's build a website and web floor. In the very best circumstance, the client's going to love the website and everything's going to go well and then, you know, obviously I'm going to get paid the final payment. And then I'm also going to have a new skill of building websites on web floor. Or at the very worst, the client's still going to be unhappy. I've completely screwed up, but I've still acquired the skill of being able to build a website on Webflow. Thankfully, the client loved the website and they even used a referral link, which I gave them for Webflow, which ended up basically getting me an extra $180 which was incredible for the two days of work. Now this is something that I would really recommend for anyone to use bad situations as a kind of, you know, we can't really lose, we've already hit rock bottom. Why don't we just go the extra mile and just really try to revive this? It's completely up to you. You obviously need to make the decision, You're the captain of the ship, do whatever you think is best. But I hope you found this helpful. Thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the next lesson. 50. Clever sales technique to land more clients (Snowball method): Now if you go to fiber and you see a gig which has, you know, 23 orders in the queue, what do you instantly think now? A few things probably go through your mind. One, that person must be extremely busy and extremely stressed. And two, you think, okay, whatever they do must be pretty good because obviously, you know, otherwise people wouldn't be ordering it right. There wouldn't be so many people waiting for that particular service. I still remember being in Rome with my brother around two years ago. And we were walking down the street and there's this little tiny pasta store, which has this queue of maybe 30 people queuing up to get into this tiny little shop, which was only letting two people in at a time to get carbonara and bolinas. And we never even heard of this particular restaurant. But the fact that there were so many people queuing up for it made me think, okay, this must be worth the wait. And, you know, in all reality, it was worth the wait. We went to the back of the queue. We waited for like, I think 40 minutes and then we ended up getting some food. And that is the power of having a queue for your services. The reality is that if there are tons of other people trying out a restaurant or going to a certain place, we feel more at ease as humans doing the same. So what can you do to ultimately get more clients on Father? Well, one thing you can do is to keep people in the queue until the last minute and then actually deliver their service, you know, well within the time period, but not as early as possible. So that you can keep people in the queue so you can get new clients and you can keep the rotation going of clients that are in the queue to give you credibility and trust. Now, I personally can say, this is a great idea and I've tried it myself and it does work. People are more likely to hire somebody if they know that there are already others working with that particular person. Now, reviews obviously play a part here, but also the amount of people that are in the queue for the service also plays a part. So do not be in a rush to deliver every single project that you're working on. Take a little bit of time and use those clients to bulk up your queue so you can get more high paying clients in future. By the way, this is a really fun exercise and test, which I would really recommend that you try next time you have around three to four, maybe five people working with you, so that you have plenty of people in your queue. Triple your pricing. So why would you triple your pricing? Well, firstly, it's going to limit the amount of people that get in touch with you. Because obviously people are not going to want to pay three times the price for the same service, right, wrong. And the reason I say that is I actually done this exact same exercise with my naming gig around three years ago where I was charging around $80 for my naming packages at the time. And then I basically tripled it to $300 roughly and I ended up getting an order the very next day. So why did this happen and why is someone willing to pay $300 as opposed to $80 for the exact same package? Well, the reality is that when a person is looking at the gig which says $300 they have never seen that gig before, most likely. And if they've previously seen it for $80 then they are going to tell me via message anyway. But if they don't, then there assume that the five people that are in the queue have already appeared $300 And also everyone that has left to review beforehand has also appeared a minimum of $300 In their mind, the cost that they are going to pay is the same as everyone else. They don't know that literally 24 hours earlier you were only selling it for $80 or $100 or whatever. And this is a super powerful tool to allow you to break your limited mindset. Because if you are always selling your services for $50 or whatever, then in your mind that's how much it's worth. But it might not be how much it's worth, in reality, to the market. And this is a super important lesson that every single freelancer needs to learn. Test your pricing, okay? When you have too much work, double your pricing, sounds crazy. Try it, okay? Because this is one of the biggest realizations that gave me, personally, so much freedom when it came to, you know, developing my pricing and income and really getting a good amount of wealth behind me simply by finding out what I'm truly worth to the clients, not what I'm worth in my own head, because those are sometimes very different things. Hopefully, this little golden nugget helped you, and it certainly helped me over the years. So hopefully it can add some value to your life and your journey as a freelancer too. But I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next lesson. 51. How Fiverr freelancers get hundreds of favourites on thier Gigs: Okay, so how can you get more favorites on your gigs? Now, having favorites on your gigs can help you rise up the ranks when someone is searching for your service or your area of expertise. Now one of the ways that you can get more favorites more quickly is to actually optimize your gig description and you know your video and all those lovely things. But another way is to kind of fast track things where you can go to Facebook and just type in fiber boost gig promotion and exchange. And what you can see here is if you join this group, and I've never joined this group, but I do know people who use this type of approach where they simply add a link to their fiber profile. And people basically go on there and they will like and favorite all of your gigs and then you basically return the favor to them. Now listen, I will be the first to say that I I've never used this particular approach. I think that it's a little bit of a waste of time, but if you're just starting out and you do need just that little bit of a boost, then this could be a great way for you to actually connect with new clients and just get yourself up the rankings a little bit. It's not going to make a huge amount of difference. Personally, in my eyes. I think that, you know, it's definitely not going to hurt. It's definitely not going to have a negative impact. Ultimately, take your time. Try it out. Hopefully that is helpful and hopefully you find some success with it. But I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. See you there. 52. How to effectively upsell and cross sell on Fiverr: So how do you upsell and cross sell to existing clients? Well, this is potentially one of the most powerful marketing and sales tools that you will ever use within your freelance business. And let me explain why now. In business, one of the most important things to get right is customer acquisition or client acquisition in our case, and the truth is that companies and brands will do pretty much anything within their power to land a new client or get a new customer. The thing is, the money isn't made in customer acquisition, it's made in customer retention. For example, a restaurant might have a ten to 20% discount when you first dine with them. So that they can ultimately show you how great their experience is and how great their food is. So that hopefully you'll return later on and they can make more profit from you afterwards. You see this with home food delivery services, where they'll literally give you a free box of food worth about 40 pounds as long as you sign up for six to 12 months. So that they can make a profit later on down the line. Now this is a super powerful approach for any freelancer, no matter what type of service you're offering. And the trick is, as a freelancer, as I've mentioned earlier on in the course, you need to find services that complement the main service that you can provide. If someone wants a logo, then they're probably going to need stationery. And if they need stationary, then they're going to probably need an online presence. So they're probably going to need a website. And if they need a website, and they'll probably need their social media branding as well. And if they need their social media branding, they probably need social media marketing. The list goes on and on, and hopefully you get the idea. Basically, what you are doing is you are offering further services which appeal to a very specific clientele who is trying to create something or solve a specific problem. Now just to give you a little bit of an insight in Garst at how I personally use this particular approach. I always work with brands in regards to their naming and then I actually have a consultation call with them to discuss how the brand name will look visually in regards to their branding. Now, in regards to their branding, this is obviously a completely separate service. So this is an upsell based on what they have already purchased. And then once they do their branding, the next natural step is to do their website. So from that single sale, which even if I gave away the first, you know, the first service for literally next to nothing, it would then allow me to work with the client on the logo design and then also on the website where they already trust me. They are willing to spend more because they've already experienced my expertise and they've already experienced one great result with me. So it actually gives me a great benefit when I'm negotiating with them through something called the halo effect. And what that is, is when you are great at one thing, clients automatically assume that you're great at everything. For some reason, I don't know why. It's something that I found from a great guy called Christa, who you can find at the future. Check him out on Youtube. He is super knowledgeable and you will learn a lot. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that, yes, you should be offering other services that compliment your primary service, the thing that you're the best at. But for example, I mentioned social media marketing as part of something that you could potentially offer your clients because there will need that. The fact of the matter is that it is actually going to be very messy to offer that type of service. If you're not in a position to set up systems and actually provide that service on a regular basis, yes, you could do it. But the reality is that if you're not providing that type of service every single day consistently, you're not going to be very good at it. So it's actually far better if you're not to offer that type of service And just focus on the key four or five services that complement your existing service as opposed to spreading yourself too thin. So be very mindful about the types of services that you cross sell and up sell to because that's going to really help you to keep things super efficient within your business so you can have a perfect work life balance. Now you should 100% be thinking about a service or something that you can offer the clients which can retain them for the long term. So this could be, for example, for a website designer, it could be writing blog posts where you simply hire someone for $15 to write a blog post every single month for the client, but you charge the client 50. That is essentially $35 for absolutely no work whatsoever. So think about these little creative ways where you can just make, you know, $35 a month. $50 a month, you know, even 100 or $100 a month, depending on what you're actually offering, to make sure that you are literally squeezing the juice out of every single engagement that you have with every single client. I hope there was some golden nuggets in there for you, and I hope that that was helpful, and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. See you soon. 53. The importance of building your portfolio website outside of Fiverr: So why should you build your brand and your portfolio outside of fiber? Well, when you get to a certain stage when selling services on fiber, when you start becoming, you know, kind of like a premium seller, clients will want to see something else as opposed to just your fiber profile. They'll check out your website. They'll check out your linked in, they'll check out your Instagram. They'll check out all of the accounts to get a sense of why you're so expensive. And this is obviously not as important early on in the process. They won't really check if you're selling stuff for like 1015, even 50, or $100 But when you start charging you know, 1,000 or $2,000 for your services and your time, this is going to require you to have a personal brand outside of the fiber platform. So the question is, where should you actually build your personal portfolio? And, you know, where should you actually showcase your work? Well, it kind of depends on the type of service that you're offering. But I think that no matter what type of service you're offering, you should always really have a website. A website which is either positioned as you, as a personal brand, or as an actual agency that you manage. And the fact of the matter is that I've actually took the agency route for pretty much the last nine years. I only did my own personal brand for the first one year. And then I kind of figured out that it didn't make a lot of sense to just be a solo freelancer when I could be perceived as an agency, which just makes a ton more sense. Plus, I actually have a team of freelancers that I work with. They just don't work within a specific office with me that I work with pretty much on a daily basis in regards to different client projects to help to deliver the best possible results for my clients. So building a portfolio on a website platform like Wordpress or Webflow for example, is going to be super important to just adding that extra layer of credibility and trust when a client is checking you out. It just gives you that extra edge. It just gives you that extra little bit of authority and, you know, reassurance to the client that you're going to take care of them. You've put in the effort to actually create an incredible website which is, you know, going to position you as an expert in the field and where they can find out more about you. The fiber profile is quite restricting, so having that extra freedom to express yourself, maybe add some additional videos, some blog posts to showcase your expertise. All that good stuff to really drive home that you are great at what you do and this is all the difference. As soon as we really got our website right, we started to get a lot more inquiries through our website. And not as many through fiber itself, because people would find us on fiber. Then they would just say, wow, I might as well work with them directly. Let me just e mail them right, Like the e mail is literally right there. And although this wasn't like a conscious plan or strategy that I went through, it just happened. And then I just started getting, you know, clients through fiver who got in touch with via message. And then just miraculously I just started getting a lot more clients through my website, whether they were find us through Google or fiber or whatever. So yeah, really think about investing in, you know, building your personal brand, Building a portfolio so you can be found on Google. So people when they Google your name, they can find you, they can learn more about you. Because when you're selling a premium service, it can really help to have that extra edge when it comes to trust and credibility. If you're really struggling to kind of present your website in a certain way, there are tons of really great templates out there. And also check out how the best in your industry are already doing it. And then just basically take inspiration from them. Copy how they showcase that work. Copy how they are. Word things on their website. If you're not sure how an agency should present itself, check out some of the best agencies in the world. And then just basically copy how they do things. Then put your own little spill on it to make it yours. That's going to save you a ton of time and help you be perceived as an expert that knows how to showcase what you do listen. I really hope that this lesson was helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 54. How to create a professional email signature: So if you're wanting to build your presence outside of the fiber platform, then you're going to need a professional looking email signature to go along with your personal brand. And I found two really great ways to get an amazing e mail signature for your company. And the first is to use a website called Ys stamp.com Now as you can see, it's extremely easy to add images, change your socials. You can also delete them if you don't like the look of it. You can also obviously change all of the details in regards to your email signature to make it personal to you. And ultimately, it makes it just super simple to actually create a professional email signature which looks and feels great so that clients can take you seriously when getting in touch with you via e mail. And then once you're done, all you need to do is copy and paste it into your e mail signature and you are ready to go. Now another way that you can get a professional e mail signature is to buy one on fiber. You can probably get one for around ten to $15 and as long as it looks and feels professional and you can just copy and paste it into your settings and your e mail signature, then you're good to go. So yeah, never underestimate how powerful it can be to have a really professional e mail signature as a freelancer. It just really sets you out above everyone else who is just simply writing their name. It just doesn't look very professional or credible. I hope you find this helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. 55. Project management system using Notion (Free Online Software): How to manage lots of clients and lots of projects easily using Notion. So first and foremost, what is Notion? Well, if you've never used it before, Notion is a software which is completely free, which allows you to manage any sort of project or anything that you're working on really simply and easily. And it looks and feels great to use. Learning how to manage any sort of project or process is super important if you want to be successful as a freelancer. And notion just helps to make that super easy and effortless. So in this video I'm going to show you my personal approach to managing projects and managing my schedule so that you personally can either copy of me or make your own hybrid. An approach that works perfectly for you. So I actually have two different systems that help to keep all of my projects organized and keep my time management in place. Now the first tool is Notion, which I've already mentioned and which we'll dive into a little bit more later. But the second is Google Calendar. Now if you look at my Google Calendar here, you can see that all of my meetings are in red. All of my project work is in purple. All of my bricks are in yellow. And other things like e mails and business development, things that I'm working on are all in light purple. Now as you can see, I tend to keep quite a tight ship when it comes to my personal time management. Now this is only possible because within notion I have my priorities set and I know exactly what I need to be doing each and every day. So if I go into notion, I met with my sprint fears, which are essentially my highest priority projects that I'm working on right now. And then if I go to this tab here, these are my client projects that I'm currently working on at the moment. Now within notion, I like to keep my active projects and my business development efforts separate because obviously those are two very different things. And what I basically like to do is essentially create different tabs for the different things that I need to be focused on. And then, for example, I'll assure you here I have different ideas and notes that I'll use to ultimately keep everything in check when I'm trying to remember something simply. So I can revisit that later on down the line when I have more time or when that is more of a priority. So how do you start creating your own project management system as a freelancer? Now, the first thing is to use something like Google Calendar to block out time throughout your day. By using Google Calendar, you can stay super organized on a weekly basis to make sure that the next seven days are all planned out. Now, it doesn't have to be super accurate, but it just gives you a little bit of leeway so that you know exactly what's coming so you can prepare. You can always be ahead of the curve. So Google Calendar is all about right now and the next seven days. So I never schedule anything beyond seven days time unless it is a meeting, which has been automatically put into my diary through my calendary links, or it is something really silly, like someone's birthday. Or I need to renew my toothbrush every six months. So unless it's a long term reminder, like canceling a subscription or buying a toothbrush for example. Or it's someone's birthday. Or it's an automatic meeting that's being booked by a client I only book for right now and the next seven days ahead. So if it's not within the week that I'm working within, then I don't think any further ahead than that. This is simply because things can change and obviously new projects can come on board. So I need to keep my diary fairly open so that I can ultimately manage my time more effectively. And, you know, basically just have a little bit of freedom as well to do other things for my personal life and obviously with my wife and then eventually my little boy now notion is very different where it actually allows you to plan further ahead. So for example, if we look at this particular business plan that I'm building at the moment for my education company, which you're currently watching now, which is kind of weird, we have lots of different things. So this is the course that we're actually developing right now, which is high priority because we want to get it finished and out to you as soon as possible. These are all of the tools that we're making and this is everything that we need to do or that we want to do for the business to really create the best possible experience possible for you. Now, all of this stuff is going to take years to do. It's going to take a lot of time and energy and we're not going to be able to just get it done within one week. So what notion is really great at is it allows you to prioritize things and it also allows you to understand that you can't focus on everything at once. You need to make sure that the things that are the most important are placed at the top really easily by just using the priority tab. So for example, if I suddenly realized that this particular element was super important, I would put it as high and then it would automatically be put within the higher priority elements within that particular section. So remember Google calendar is for short term, one week bursts of really getting things actionably done and then notion is for planning long term and really keeping things organized and prioritized. As I said before, I'm not working with as many clients right now simply because I'm building my education business and creating courses for the likes of you and other people. But this is essentially how I keep my current clients in check. And these are all big projects of websites which are going to span over the next two months. So it's going to keep me extremely busy, even though it looks like there's not a lot there. This is just a really great way to prioritize them and tell me, you know, where they are in regards to the process. It can also allow me to manage things to say, okay, maybe Dermis Bar is going to take a little bit longer because they're taking photos of the location for example. So I would not this in the little side peak option here, which would just give us a little bit of room for notes and anything that I may be discussing a meeting with the clients. And it also just gives me everything that I need in one single place so I don't have to think about it in my mind. This just really helps you to manage your workload more effectively. And it just gives you peace of mind because ultimately our brain is only so strong, right? It can only take so much. What I found is the more that I can offload onto things like Notion and Google Calendar, like buying a toothbrush every six months for example. It just helps me think about the things that I actually want to be thinking about like course content and you know, ideas and projects and tools that I want to build. And it's really empowering. It's really empowering to just be able to focus on the stuff that you want to have everything else kind of automated or just stored away to remind you later on which you know isn't, you know, really super interesting advice. But it's a simple stuff that usually works best. Now one thing that I will say in regards to using Notion and Google Calendar is to spend an hour one day during the week. Usually a Sunday for me, but it could be Friday, Saturday, or any day for you to just clean things out and just get things in place. The reason being is when you are in the hecticness of a week, if hecticess is even a word, you tend to get things a little bit messy. And things may be not in the right place and maybe you've pushed things back to the end of the calendar just because, you know, you've kind of not gotten a round to it or it isn't as important anymore. So just tidy things up and just prioritize things, you know, based on what has happened during that week. A lot of things may have changed. So it's going to give you a different perspective based on what is important to you right now. And you know this is going to help you to keep that momentum week on week and eventually get you exactly where you need to be Anyway, I hope this lesson was helpful to you. Understanding at least how I manage my time and using Natan and Google Calendar together to really manage my projects and everything that I have going on within my businesses. So thank you, sort your time and I will see you in the next lesson. 56. How to stay unbelievably focused: So how to stay focused when you're working remotely? Well, this is a topic which not a lot of people talk about. And the reason being is it's kind of a taboo topic, right? Like it's something that everyone just thinks that focus just naturally comes when you work remotely. And the reality is that it isn't. It's actually extremely hard to stay focused when you are working in the comfort of your own home, for example. Or maybe in a cafe or maybe on a plane if you're traveling. Which will cover a little bit later in the course. So having some systems and rituals in place which have personally helped me anyway, I think can really add a lot of value to your ability to focus more effectively when working from anywhere. Basically. Now, there are a lot of difficulties and challenges with working remotely, one of which is the fact that the fridge is only two second walk away and there's a lot of food in there. That's personally my challenge, but, you know, it might be different for somebody else. Another thing is if you're working in a public place, it could be quite noisy, there could be quite a lot going on. So that is another thing which you have to manage and ultimately find a solution for. Now, one thing that really worked for me is really creating a space that I enjoy working in. So for example, instead of buying a laptop when my computer basically died on me, I ended up getting a desktop because I actually wanted to create a desk and an office, which I enjoy being in, because it's just pleasurable to be here. I have my nice desk, I have my lamp, I have my coffee, I have my little thing which holds my coffee, which is completely useless. But anyway, it just makes me happy cause it's well designed. I have my books behind me. I have a lot of space to think and just to breathe and, you know, I don't feel, you know, kind of sucked into, you know, a little tiny space. It's just a nice place to be. And I enjoy being here. I sometimes just come here and just watch videos and just hang out because it's my safe space. So I think that's the first thing that you can do, if you can find or dedicate some sort of area of your home to just working, is just make your desk as beautiful as possible. Make it a really pleasurable place to be. And then guess what? You're going to want to spend more time there, and if you spend more time there, then you might just get more work done and stay more focused as well. Now, another thing that has really helped me is to actually get into the mindset of work and understanding that, you know, I can't just roll out of bed and just expect to, you know, just literally get to work straight away. I need a little bit of time, you know, to have my morning coffee to, you know, get a little bit of sun and, you know, just relax a little bit and then work my way up to the warmth of getting into work and to be really effective and productive. You know, sometimes I do my best work late at night when I'm usually super tired. But for some reason I'm just switched on or I'm excited about the project or I've had an idea and something just kind of clicks sometimes it happens. You just have to roll with the punches sometimes. And just really kind of listen to your body and what's going on within, you know, your biology. Now an absolute game changer for me, which was quite an expensive one, but it was well worth every penny. Were these noise canceling headphones? Now, these obviously from Apple, they're roughly around $600 I think. Maybe just under, maybe 575. But if you can't afford Apple headphones, then pretty much any headphones or noise canceling headphones will do the trick. Now these really help when there is any noise from outside. For example, I currently live in a house which is near a construction site, which are building new houses and stuff. So this really helps just to really cancel all of that noise out so I can really focus on work. You know, sometimes I have these on and I don't even play any music in them. I literally just wire them to cancel out all the noise which is happening around me, which is the same in cafes and stuff like that. Because, you know, maybe there's a baby crying or maybe there's people talking and, you know, I can be heart focused sometimes, so investing in some noise canceling headphones or, you know, some sort of, you know, ear wear, if that's even a word, to really kind of channel your focus just so you're not being distracted by, you know, noises and stuff that's going along or around. You could be really helpful. At least it's really helpful for me. Now, weirdly enough, when I do listen to music through my headphones, I find it really difficult to study of focus when I'm listening to English speaking songs. So songs where I actually know what they're seeing. Now on the other end of the spectrum I can listen to and still focus and function fairly well. Whilst there's music which has either no lyrics or lyrics in a completely different language which I don't understand. For example, like Korean, there is playlist which I play all the time which is, you know, kind of really upbeat Korean music, which I, for some reason really like. It just helps me feel extremely positive when I'm working. It helps me feel really upbeat and I don't have a clue what they're saying to be completely brutally honest. But it just puts me in a nice mood and I enjoy working whilst listening to it in my ears. I'm not sure why, but you know, we live and learn. But one last thing that I want to share with you in regards to, you know, finding the time to really do deep focused work and to not be distracted as a freelancer when you're working remotely, is to study or work for really short sprints. Now, this sometimes work for me and sometimes it doesn't. It just depends on the deer and you know how I'm feeling. Sometimes I can literally be working on a project and then I can look at the clock and it's like 5 hours later. And I'm like, where did all the time go? I literally have no idea how that happened. And sometimes hopefully that happens for you. That's called being in the flow. That's just, you know, the flow state and the love of doing what you're doing. But some other times it's not quite like that. Sometimes it's a little bit more challenging to actually, you know, get to working on specific projects just because you may be, find them a little bit boring. Or maybe you're just not as engaged in that particular industry or that business. Or maybe the client has being, you know, a little bit challenging, I don't know, in that case. And when you really kind of just want to get yourself through it, it really helps to break things down into tiny little segments. So for example, when I'm shooting this course, I am shooting it in three video segments. So I'll shoot three videos, then I'll go and make myself a coffee, or I'll spend some time with my wife, or you know, I'll do something fun like play guitar or something and then I'll come back. So I'm just doing short sprints of three videos or little tiny focused efforts to basically achieve the bigger objective, which is to finish the course. So this is actually a really useful and tried and tested technique where and you spend 20 minutes to actually really focus on doing the thing, and then you take 10 minutes to relax and do whatever you want to do. And it's kind of like this little mini reward system right where you're working your way through the thing, but you're not killing yourself and really, you know, hitting yourself by the end of it. So hopefully that helps you. Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to seeing you in another video. 57. Tips on freelancing whilst traveling the world: So how to travel effectively whilst freelancing. Now I've had the experience of traveling in a lot of different countries whilst being a freelancer. In particular, when I lived in China for a few years, I now live in Southeast Asia. I've lived in Dubai, Georgia, Europe. I've literally been everywhere since I started freelancing. Just because I had a ton of time and, you know, lots of energy to travel and obviously a lot of freedom as well. Because I wasn't restricted to a specific job in a particular location. One of the things that I personally did when I was starting to freelance and I actually went freelancing full time, is to book a flight to actually teach myself how to freelance whilst traveling. So my first ever trip was for my birthdear, when I booked a flight from where I was from to Madrid. And I spent my time in Madrid by myself, just working in cafes and just hanging out and just enjoying spin. And what that taught me is that I could actually do the work that I was going to do at home, but I can do it anywhere that I want in the world. So what that started to teach me is that the further I went away from my hometown, the more comfortable I became with the fact that I could literally freelance anywhere. And that might sound a little bit silly, but there are some things that are quite difficult about freelancing when you're in a foreign country. For example, in China, the Internet connection is pretty terrible in the fact that you cannot use Google unless you have a VPN, which is super annoying, or you can't have meetings sometimes because they're just, you know, the connection is never that great. And, you know, for example, when I was in the Philippines, my data got hacked, so I basically lost all of my accounts. Although it has some of its challenges, the pros outweigh the cons by a long, long way. And the reality is that when you start to get good at managing projects and kind of having a consistent income through fiber, you can literally go anywhere in the world and basically live anywhere without having to worry about ever coming back to your hometown. I mean, I haven't been back to Britain for a good few years now. And I know that if I ever want to see my family, I can invite them to come and see me and we can spend some time together in a really nice place in the world. Or I can maybe meet them in another city. And I know that no matter where I go, I will always have my work with me as long as I have my laptop and an Internet connection. And one of the main challenges when you're actually freelancing on the goal is finding great places to work. So some of the best places that I've personally found is to schedule my time to do most of my work when I'm either flying and just before I actually get on the flight when I'm in the airport because they always have really strong Internet connections, at least in the airports that I've been in. And when I'm on the flight, I always do a ton of work because obviously I've got nothing else better to do. Obviously, it's very rare that you have internet connection or at least decent internet connection on the actual flight. But as long as you download everything and you can just, you know, work offline, you can get a ton done. So that's a really great tip. Um, obviously cafes is a great one. Finding great cafes where you can really spend the day. Once you find a cafe where you really feel comfortable and you really feel productive, don't change it, just keep going to the same place and you are going to be super productive. Then you can go out and enjoy your time and obviously explore and see all the incredible places that your particular city that you're visiting has to offer. And another place where I always tend to spend a lot of my time when I'm freelancing, when traveling or at least when I used to freelance and travel is to basically use my airb and beyond my hotel. Because I know that it's reliable. I know that I can definitely have meetings there because the Internet is connected. I know I always have a plug sucker, which is always the biggest challenge when you're a freelancer and you're traveling around and you need charge for your laptop. But you know, the only cafe that seems to have, you know, an actual extension or any sort of power suppliers, Starbucks, which, you know, Starbucks, love them or hear them. You know, it's not really my cup of tea or coffee, should I say. It's just really important that you have that safe space where if you need to, you can really get some productive work done. Because it's really easy when you're traveling to get distracted by everything that's going on. And obviously you want to go to this new place and that place. And I mean, one thing that you could always do is just kind of give yourself a little bit of a holiday. That doesn't always work because obviously you do want to keep that momentum of running your business and actually keeping up with clients and obviously making as much money as possible. Now obviously, managing your work life balance when you are traveling as a freelancer is super difficult sometimes. And you're kind of fighting between your responsibilities as a freelancer, but also wanting to travel the world and see all these incredible places. And what I would suggest is to simply make sure that you get up as early as possible, get your responsibilities done, and then enjoy the rest of your day. Because there's nothing worse than going around and trying to enjoy, you know, different experiences in different locations and different sites, for example. And worrying about the work that you have to do when you get home. It's just not great and it's just personally what I prefer, I prefer getting everything done early in the morning or as early as possible and then going out and enjoying the rest of my time so I can really relax and enjoy my time within the new culture that I'm exploring. Anyway, I hope you found the experiences and I'm sharing with you helpful. If you're thinking about traveling as a freelancer, please feel free to pop me a message if you have any questions. If you're thinking about traveling in regards to where you should go or anything like that. I'm more than happy to share some of my experiences with you personally. But until then, I will see you in the next lesson. 58. The importance of tracking and growing your net worth: So how do you track your net worth and why is it important? So let's start with what actually is net worth. Well, if you took all of your assets and all of your liabilities and then put them together, what would you end up with? So if you literally sold everything that you have in your, your house and everything that you own, and then you also appeared off all of your debts, how much are you left with at the end? Now, it's important to understand your net worth because it helps you track how you're doing financially. This is essentially your nest egg. It's what you have to fall back on. And it also allows you to have the freedom and the ability to see, not to projects, and just to simply manage your life in a far more effective and efficient way. And if you use the tool that I've supplied in this course to track your net worth and to really start to systemize how you're managing your money and finding out, you know, where the most of your money is coming from and also where you're spending most of it. And if you can budget, you know, realistically and also focus on building your business, then your net worth can only really go one way. I actually became aware of net worth and really started to manage it and measure it on a monthly basis after hearing very wealthy guys speak on a podcast. Which really opened my eyes to how important it is to not just measure how much you're earning per month and how much you're spending, but what you're trying to build. And if I go to the very bottom of my financial management tool, which I showed you in previous lessons, I can see how my net worth has slowly grown over time depending on the decisions that I've made within my life. It just gives you a green or a red light based on how well you're doing. And as long as your net worth is going up, it means that you have more savings, which means you have more freedom, which means your family has more safety and security, which means you're going to have a better and a more stress free life. So listen, please make sure that you download the financial tool which will be linked in the course somewhere. And make sure you use it on the first of every month to track your finances and make sure you understand exactly where your money is coming and going. Anyway, I hope this lesson was helpful. I look forward to seeing you in a future one. See you soon. 59. My personal freelance journey: So I often get asked what it's like to be a full time freelancer and not have a normal 95 job. And just be able to focus 100% on growing your freelance business. And how did that whole transition go? What was the journey like? And although I think everyone, you know, obviously goes about it in a very similar wheel where they maybe test the water and then obviously they, you know, leap head first into the world of freelancing and self employment. Everyone's journey is a little bit unique. So what I want to do in this video is to share my story with you. So that you can maybe find some things which are similar to your life. So that you can hopefully use them to make your journey a little bit less painful. So I still remember the exact moment where I realized that this fiber thing could actually be something serious. Beforehand I was just literally, you know, making ten, $15, you know, every gig that I was selling, selling, you know, stupid stuff like social media packages and all that sort of stuff. I was just testing the water and seeing what was possible. But I remember I decided that I was going to focus everything on branding. I was going to be the branding guy. This is like, you know, six years ago when I first started on fiber. And I remember getting a message from a lady in Australia who was the head of marketing for Ear counsel in Melton, I believe the city was. And she basically said, listen, we need all these things, can you send me a quote? And I was like blown away by the amount of stuff that she needed. But please bear in mind that I also, at the time, had no experience on Adobe Illustrator. I had no idea what I was doing in regards to, you know, branding or logo design or anything like that, or just design in general, overall. And I had to deliver all of these goods within 30 days. Now I decided to offer a solution for everything that she needed for the most amount of money I could comprehend. And that was $1,000 So I said, okay, if I can spend the next 30 days and get paid the same as my job, basically that would be a win for me and she's never going to go for it anyway. But she did, She ended up securing the offer because it was probably five times less or ten times less than anybody else who quoted her because there was so much stuff that needed to be done. The thing that I did, which I think at the time was kind of smart, but I didn't really do it intentionally, was I was basically getting paid to learn because I didn't have the first clue what to do with the bi illustrator. I didn't really know anything about logo design. I had to study these things and understand how to use type faces in the right way, use colors in the right way, how to organize a banner image, all that sort of stuff. And it really put me on a crash course to learning all of the skills that I needed that I use, you know, pretty much every single day now. But I was getting paid for it. That was a difference. So I wasn't just sitting there reading books. I was actually doing things and getting paid while I was doing it. So although I spent literally every week and hour of the next 30 days, and I think it even went over to like 45 days overall. And obviously, she was very happy because she got all this free work out of me. But obviously, I spent the 30 days really fine tuning my skills and really trying to make this client happy. And I learned a lot along the way. And then after that package was delivered, and obviously she was happy, I started to realize that, you know, maybe there's something about this fiber thing. Maybe I can make enough money to get by. Maybe I can get enough money just, you know, to live and eat and pay my mortgage and live a long, happy life and just never have to leave the house. Basically last words of an introvert. So I started to think about how I can create my profile and how to refine it and work my way towards being a full time freelancer. Now I started to get a few more packages through, although I definitely wasn't earning, you know, 1,000 every package. And by the way, this package for 1,000 included like about 20 grams worth of work. Like it was it was so much work. It was like 30 to 45 days worth of work. And I was working every minute that I had spare, including weekends, everything. I didn't go out, I didn't do anything. So over the time that I started to realize that fiber could actually be a thing for me, I started to take it a lot more seriously. So I started to create gig videos. I started to learn about copyrighting. I started to learn more about branding and logo designer. And, you know, all these things that were really important to position me as a branding expert. And slowly but surely I started to make more and more money on fiber. The more reviews I got, the more, you know, good feedback I got from clients, the more clients wanted to work with me. And it got to a point where I was really overwhelmed with the amount of clients that wanted to work with me simply because they could see how passionate I was about learning and working with them. And I think honestly, that was the thing that I did better than anyone else at the time. That's the reason why clients really wanted to work with me at the very beginning, just because I was super excited about working with them and getting them the result that they need. Now, there was a turning point where I remember my income from my normal nine to five job, which I was still working by the way, was around $1,500 roughly. Now, my five or income had been slowly creeping above that over the last couple of months. So I said to myself, okay. If I can get three months where I make around $3,000 and I can prove to myself that I can make that fairly easily without a sweat. I'm gonna leave my job because if I'm making the same amount as my job, just working a couple of hours every single night basically until I fell asleep 'cause I was so tired after my normal work on if I just dropped my job. And I just dedicated all my time to fiber and working with clients. And that was the turning point because the first month, I think I made around two to 3,000 The second month I think it was a little bit more. And then the third month was actually quite funny because the third week I think in the third month, I got a call from my manager because I'd slept in because I'd been up all night working on client work. And obviously, I wasn't really performing at my normal night on five job. Because I was focusing every spare second that I had on client work and building my business behind the scenes, which I do not recommend by the way. So please do not copy me. I'm sure there are far better ways to do the transition than what I did. But this is just how smart I was at the time. My boss called me and said, listen, Scott, you haven't really been performing. You haven't turned off for work today. Do you want to just, you know, do you want to just get fired basically and just leave the job and, you know, we'll pee you up until this date and that's it. Job done. And I remember having a really tight deadline for that particular day. And I literally lay in bed and I was like, this is great, this is perfect. Okay. I was like, yeah, cool. Thank you so much. Bye bye. And I literally went straight to my desk and started working. And I still remember that morning because my friend who was renting the room above me from me within my house, said that he'd med downstairs. And I just looked at my desk. Not this desk but another desk that was in the UK. And he said, you just looked super lost, like you didn't know what to do. And it's a really weird feeling when you first kind of make that leap from being in a 95 job to being a freelancer. Even though I knew that I could comfortably make enough money to survive, It was still a little bit weird not having anywhere to be and just focusing on what was on my computer screen. And I just remember sitting there eating my con flakes and he was just like, it's pretty covid self employed, right? Because he had been a self employed addresser for, you know, like ten years. I was like, yeah, it's pretty weird So then I went to see my mom and Grant and basically told them, listen, I'm going full time with the freelancing thing. I'm going to give it 100% and see what happens. Super scary, obviously because I'd just initially bought a house. I had a loan on a car at the time, so there was a lot of stuff going on. It's pretty much the perfect time not to start a freelancing business and take a ton of risk. But nevertheless, we're still alive today and everything's going good. So thankfully, everything worked out. Now, one decision that I did make sure I made very early on when I started freelancing full time and getting all this freedom is I wanted to travel because I had, you know, a little bit more disposable income at the time. And I hadn't been to that many countries. I'd been to the likes of Greece and Spain with my mom, but I hadn't really traveled any further than that. So I started to take trips every few months. So, I first went to Madrid, Spain. Obviously, I didn't want to go too far. And then on the way back from Madrid to the UK, I booked another flight to Dubai because there was a super cheap flight and I just wanted to Garda, I've never been to the Middle East, I've never been that far away from home. So I booked that flight, I went, I was super excited, and I basically ended up meeting some guys there who were German and really, really friendly. And they invited me to China within the next couple of months. So then I went to China, and then after that, I just ended up traveling to all these different places and basically figuring out that I can live and work anywhere. And I've lived in tons of different countries like China, Dubai, Georgia, Thailand, so tons of different places that really give you a different perspective in regards to the balance of work and play. And once I had realized that I had done all the traveling that I really wanted to, I really started to take my business seriously. And I really started to scale to a point where I can make, you know, 10,000 15,000 $20,000 per month if I really wanted to. And it all comes down to how much work life balance I need. So for example, right now I am expecting my first baby boy, and I can't wait to meet him. And obviously, my wife is pregnant at the moment, so I need to take care of her. So I'm not really doing much client work. I have a nice nest egg took to wear, which I don't touch, and I just work with a couple of clients every couple of weeks if I really want to, you know, if I get a little bit bored. But back in the early days, it wasn't quite like that. It was very much the case of being all in, working with as many clients as possible so I can get super efficient and good at the things that I wanted to offer as a service. And this is the secret I think I think during the start of your freelancing career, you really need to focus on fine tuning your skills and getting, becoming one of the best in the world at the things that you can do. And, you know, over the years I've not just proven myself to being one of the best branding experts for start ups on the planet. I have a track record of, you know, thousands of clients that have worked with me that have left reviews on fiber that have ended up coming back to me again and again and again because I understand what I'm doing because that is my target audience. That's what I learned was my sort of happy place of the types of clients that I wanted to work with. And sometimes I do just sit back and just think about if I hadn't made that single decision way back when, when I was sat there and I thought, Mm, maybe this father thing is something quite special. I wouldn't have met my wife because I wouldn't have probably had the freedom to, you know, come to Asia. I probably wouldn't have my little boy who obviously isn't born yet. But I'm looking forward to, you know, spending time with him and everything that I've kind of got in my life. Taken out of the context of, you know, money and finances and stuff that doesn't really matter. What matters is everything that I have in my life and the happiness that I feel has all came from just putting a ton of work on fiber and with clients and building systems, and really trying to be the best that I possibly can be when it comes to freelancing and a branding expert. And I think that if you were willing to put in the work and, you know, trust the things that I'm going through with you in this course. And, you know, obviously being curious and just putting in the time you can have anything you want, anything. And I truly truly mean that. I truly mean that. And yeah, hopefully this story has, you know, giving you a little bit of perspective maybe. And, you know, helped you to kind of navigate things a little bit better your side, and made things a little bit less painful. But yeah, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and I'll see you in a future video. 60. How to know the perfect time to go full-time freelancer: So when do you know that it's the perfect time to go full time as a freelancer? Well, there are some things that I personally kept in mind as I was making that transition, and it was around a three or four months transition overall. And I'm going to go through with you the things that I did to minimize the amount of risk that I took. Now, first and foremost, what does it mean to go full time as a freelancer? Well, it basically means that you are not dependent on anyone or anything else for your financial income, then your freelancing work. And the fact of the matter is that yes, you can make as much money as you really want being a freelancer, depending on obviously how much you want to work. But it does have its pros and cons. The pros are, obviously you get a ton of freedom. You can earn as much as you want, and you can basically do whatever you want to set your own hours, and, you know, choose who you want to work with. However, it does have some negatives as well. For example, you could have the added pressure of providing for your family. If that's something that you know you're responsible for, you obviously have to be accountable and really responsible for everything that you deliver. So you can't, you know, hide or be irresponsible at any time. You have to be really focused on the work that you're providing. And also sometimes as well, it can be quite stressful if you've got tons of clients that you're trying to work with. And, you know, sometimes, to be completely honest, I've had some experiences where I've thought, you know, having a normal job wasn't actually that bad. Really, really. And then I quickly kind of snap out of it and I'm like, no, no, no. I'll take all the negatives, I'll take all the negatives times ten, and I'll enjoy it. I'll enjoy every second of it. But how do you know when it's the perfect time to actually transition from your normal job to becoming a full time freelancer? Well, I can tell you how I approached it and then some lessons that I learned from other freelancers who have done the exact same thing. So I was basically working a normal nine to five job and then just doing some freelancing work on the side when I got home. However, what I found was that my freelancing income was slowly surpassing my normal income from my normal nine till five job. And what I realized one evening was, well, if I just make this my total focus, and I can do that for an extra 8 hours per day, maybe I'm going to make more than my normal job. And then I don't have to travel to work, I don't have to pay for gas. I don't have to deal with colleagues. I don't have to deal with other responsibilities. I'm actually fresh when I'm working with clients. So I can have more calls, I can have more opportunities and just made a ton of sense. So what I did was I basically set three months where if I made enough to survive for those three months solely from my freelance income, while I was working my nine to five job, I will quit. And what basically happened is on the first and second month, I made enough to survive quite comfortably. And then on the third month, I basically got a call from my boss while I was still in bed because I had slept in because I'd been working super late the night before. And he said, listen, Scott, you haven't been performing at work obviously because I've been staying up all night working on project work. And he said, listen, you're not performing. You haven't turned off for work today, we're going to have to let you go. And at the time I remember being in bed and I was like, I've got a really tight deadline for a project tonight. This is perfect So I was like cool, no problem. He was like, what? I was like, yeah, that's cool, no problem. And I literally just left him on the phone and just got straight to work. I literally went straight to my desk and felt a little bit lost. But nevertheless, I ended up meeting the deadline and everything was good. Now if I could do that again, I think that it was a pretty irresponsible thing to do. Especially because at the time, I'd just bought a house and got a lawn on a car, which wasn't smart. But thankfully, it ended up working out. Now if I did it again, I would probably make sure I had around three to six months worth of income saved up so that I knew that if I didn't get any clients whatsoever for the full six months, then I didn't have to worry and I could just, you know, if it didn't work out, just get another normal job and just act like nothing ever happened. I think that saving and giving yourself a nest egg is probably the smartest way to do things. And it also just makes a ton of sense from a financial standpoint and also a mental health standpoint. Because the last thing you want is to be going to every single client meeting, knowing you have to win that client to pay your bills or even feed your family. So I think that just having a little bit of money behind me would help me just select the right projects to keep my mental health a little bit, you know, more in tune. And also it would help me to select projects that I actually wanted to work on so I could actually further myself far quicker. Now that would definitely make the transition between working in a 95 job to becoming a freelancer. A lot smoother and a lot less risky. But one piece of advice which I'd really like to leave you with is that you should never burn your bridges. What I mean by that is there is nothing wrong with saying to your boss, listen, this is what I'm planning on doing. You know, I've really enjoyed working here and I really love working with you. But I need to try this. It's something that is burning deep inside me and I need to try and start my own business if there's no job available. If it doesn't work out, I completely understand. But I just want to make sure that we stay, you know, very respectful and that, you know, if I do ever need to come back or want to come back, then, you know, I'd like to have a discussion with you and potentially make that happen. And I think that if I have one regret of that particular period, I wish I had been a little bit more strategic in regards to not burning bridges with my past employers and ultimately leaving the door open a little bit. You can also argue that, you know, it's kind of like the saying of burning the boats, right? Like if you have no other option, then that's going to be the fire that you need to really drive forward and steer that extra hour to get that logo perfect or do that extra bit of research to really drive the message home and, you know, get that result for the clients. So, you know, it all depends really. I personally like to back myself into a corner. Now I find that that is when I'm my most effective and it's when I generally get the best work done. When I'm backed up in a corner, my back's against the wall and I really need to make something happen, otherwise, you know, poop is going to hit the fan. So anyway, I hope this lesson has been helpful and yeah, I hope to see you in the full time freelancer cocktail parties, which never happened because we're all introverts and we just stay in our office all day. Okay, see you soon. Thank you. 61. Investment strategies for freelancers: So what are some investment strategies that you can take advantage of as a freelancer as you start to get more disposable income. Well, first and foremost, if you are getting more disposable income, congrats, I know it feels great. And the one thing that I think that everybody should do, although each to their own, you can do whatever you like, is don't buy crap. Well, I mean by crap is the things that you think are going to bring you happiness, but they just don't. And I'm talking about shoes, a nicer car, bigger house, all these things that you don't really need, but you just want them. Just for the sake of it, I've never did that. Thankfully, I did spend a little bit more in my first few months when I was a full time freelancer, mostly on travel and experiences. But I don't regret that whatsoever. I think that that is something that I personally enjoyed and I needed to get out of my system. But, you know, everyone's different. So if that's your thing, then, you know, do whatever you like. All I can say is one of the most important things for me when I was building my wealth and my, you know, financial security is that I didn't spend my money on crap and I saved as much as possible. I wanted a nest egg stored away so that I never had to worry about money ever again. And I'm slowly getting to the point where, you know, I basically may never need to work ever again if I don't want to. Which is ultimately a result of me just focusing on work, not really having any distractions, and just literally saving every single penny that I earned. But when you actually start getting these savings and you have your nest egg, what's the next step, Like how can you start to really, you know, enrich your life through the money that you're storing away? Well, the first thing that you should always be investing in is yourself. And I know that a lot of people say this, and I know it's like a broken record sometimes. But invest in courses, invest in experiences. Invest in working on projects that may not pay you the best but are going to give you the best learning experience. Invest in spending time with your family and friends. Invest in your health. Invest in everything that means something to you. And that is going to make you into a better and more capable professional so that you can make more money over the long term. For example, I've spent, you know, thousands and thousands on courses and programs and you know, workshops and all that sort of stuff. And it's really weird because the knowledge that you actually acquire through, you know, a course that you may be peer a lot for mere, not be instantly actioned. So for example, I took a marketing course around two years ago, I think by one of the most respected professors in the marketing world. And I didn't actually use it instantly. I understood marketing to a different level, of course. But I didn't actually start offering marketing services or integrating that into my actual offering from my branding agency until maybe a year or two later. And that was something which just took time for me to integrate into my life. I could have maybe actioned it sooner. But ultimately, by investing in yourself, you're always going to be setting yourself up for a better day tomorrow. And then once you feel like you have read all the self help books, once you know you've got some money saved up as a nice nest egg, you have your S and V 500 where you're really investing in you and your skills and everything else. You mere want to invest in something like the stock market. In regards to the stock market. This is not financial advice, but I think that playing it safe with dividend stocks is really, really useful. I have tried lots of different types of investment strategies. And to be completely brutally honest, I've lost a hell of a lot of money by trying to experiment and think that I was smart than everyone else. And what I learned is I'm not, I'm not smart than anyone else when it comes to stock markets, and investing and trading and all that sort of stuff. So the basic two pieces of advice is pick companies that are going to be successful over the long term and then hold them long term. And I know that 99% of people are not going to listen to that advice because it's not exciting, it's not sexy. But that's what works. Statistically, that's what works, and that's what I've been doing. And my portfolio has got about, I think, $100,000 now, roughly give our tick. And, you know, I just let it sit there. I don't touch it. I don't really check it. It's just there if I need it. So yeah, hopefully that gives you a little bit of ear structure as to how to actually invest your money. Now, of course, this isn't an investment course, but I mere, you know, launch something like that in the near future. So, you know, check out my profile and there might be something active by the time you watch this course. Hopefully this has been a healthy lesson for you and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. 62. Legal stuff you should watch out for: Okay, so we're near the end of the course and I just wanted to finish off with some important topics that I think are going to be really useful for you personally to keep you on the straight and narrow. So the first thing is taxes. Obviously if you're a full time freelancer, you need to make sure that you're paying your taxes to the government. Now, I am not an accountant, I am not a tax advisor. This is not tax advice, but all I'm saying is make sure that you learn everything that you need to for the country that you're in in regards to paying your taxes. And simply make sure that you follow the rules because the last thing that you want to do is get in trouble with the government. I do know that if you live anywhere other than the US where they're basically tax you, no matter where you go. There are some extremely great countries like Georgia, Dubai, and Hong Kong, where if you live there, you basically pay zero taxes. I think Singapore's tax free as well, but I'm not 100% sure. So basically, if you do want to pay less taxes, you can look at those particular destinations. Again, not tax advice, but if you want to live in a different place, then it might be nice to set up your business in one of those countries so that you can pay 0-1% taxes, on average, roughly. Now, the next thing is legal and licensing. So in regards to legal, make sure that you set up a limited liability company once you get big enough to set one up. The reason for that is if someone tries to sue you for some work that you did, then ultimately you will be personally liable. However, if you have a company set up which is limited liability, that simply means that if someone tries to sue you, it's actually the company getting sued. So for example, if you had a savings account and it had all of your savings in there, that would be nice and safe. And it would only be the assets within the company that would be at risk. Now obviously we hope that that never happens, but Touchwood, we just want to make sure that we're prepared in the worst case scenario. Now, in regards to licensing, this is only really applicable if you are doing things like design and where you actually have to buy digital assets. So for example, you can't use pictures without a license for them unless the website offers free pictures. And licensing like Pixels or Free Pick.com for example. And this also goes for fonts and other assets as well. So let's make sure that if you are providing work to a client that you either tell them to buy the license or you personally buy the license to make sure that you are covered. If anything happens in regards to that particular asset being used, for example, you can't just use any fund that's online, even though they're super easy to download, you will potentially get in trouble. And although this isn't legal advice, it's just better to be safer than sorry. And in regards to licensing and the details of each particular asset, you can find this really easily wherever you download that particular asset. We have to legally put that beside the download button, so just make sure you read it fully, make sure you understand it, and make sure you're careful with what you're using and how you're using it. If you do not have a license to use it anyway, I know this is super boring stuff, but I wanted to just add in at the end just as a little extra bonus for you. So thank you so much for spending your time and I will see you in the next lesson. 63. Show me your updated profile (Project Time): Well, it's been a wild, wild ride. I really want to thank you for your time. If you've literally watched every single lesson in this course, I really appreciate you being here. I really appreciate the fact that you've trusted me to help educate and guide you throughout your freelance journey. And one thing that I want to say as well is that I'm always here to support. I do like to connect with freelancers and people who are wanting to, you know, really explore the world of freelancing. And I want to support you as much as possible. So, you know, please feel free to reach out. If you have any questions, you can find me on, you know, Instagram, Youtube, e mail, whatever. And, you know, if you want to reach out, if you want to chat about anything, then please just let me know. I'm here to chat and answer any questions that you may have. Now one thing that I will say is within this course, I really want to make sure that you personally have took something away from everything that we've learned within this program. I want to know what the most valuable thing has been for you. So what I'd love to do is if you can just do a little write up about the main three things that you have taken away from this course, which you think are going to help you on your freelancing journey. This is not only going to help us understand how we can help freelancers better in future, but it's also going to just give us a little bit of reassurance that everything that we're teaching in these courses that we're creating, whether it be freelancing, branding, marketing, whatever, that we are hitting the nail on the head and we are actually helping people. That's the only reason why I sit here in front of this camera for days on end and, you know, talk and share. And, you know, try to create value for people like you who, you know, I really care about and really want to see succeed. So yeah, if you can share that as a project on this particular course, that will be absolutely incredible and I'd really appreciate it. But make sure that if you have any questions, please please reach out. Because I'm here to help. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for taking this course and I will hopefully see you in a future course soon. Bye bye.