This is a revised guide with ten well-detailed chapters on how to start freelancing in Nepal to start making money from the most profitable gigs online. Again, this is a complete blueprint for Fiverr marketing, building a successful profile, and ranking services. In fact, top-selling freelancers use these exact techniques to multiply revenue by getting more customers.
According to data, there are more than 1 billion freelancers worldwide. Among them, 86% of them work from home, 94% do it full-time, and 60% work while traveling. Likewise, the freelancing industry contributed more than $1.3 trillion dollars to the United States economy last year.
Likewise, it is contributing between $23 to $42 trillion dollars annually worldwide. So, this article about how to start freelancing in Nepal will help my readers join the industry. Now, before we start jumping right into the guide, here are a few things you must know.
- Performing techniques written here takes time and patience.
- Getting your first customer is not that easy.
- You must follow all the steps properly without skipping anything.
- Don’t start an account on Fiverr without reading this whole post.
- This guide is not 100% perfect, we are still improving it. Please share your feedback with us in the comments below after reading.
Let’s start.
Chapter 1: Introduction to Freelancing
Fiverr is an online freelancing platform connecting workers with clients. Freelancers create services and publish them in the form of ‘Gigs’ so that a buyer can purchase them.
In other words, Fiverr is like a broker who connects & distributes goods between service providers and potential customers. The consumer should pay for the service in advance to maintain the integrity of the platform.
Requirement: Passport
Fiverr asks for a Passport as a legal document to verify identity. They don’t accept driving licenses or national citizenship certificates for freelancers in Nepal at the time of writing this article.
So, make sure to issue a passport by visiting the official government office while learning these techniques. It may cost around Rs. 5,000+ Nepalese Rupees. Also, it could take up to 2 to 3 months to arrive if you live outside of the Kathmandu valley.
Chapter 2: Skills Development
If you are looking to make money online through freelancing, the first step should be to develop the necessary skills. This gives us the confidence to deliver the services appropriately and on time.
Therefore, take your time to find the expertise and learn the skills to perform the tasks better than the competitors. One of the very common practices is to use your pre-existing skills.
Suppose you might be an engineer having knowledge of AutoCAD drawings. So, you can deliver services like 2D drawings, valuation, and estimation of the property. Similarly, there are jobs from different departments, including every faculty, not just engineering.
2.1 Places to Learn Skills
For some reason, if you don’t have any skills, there are multiple resources to find them. First, enroll in a local institution or training center to develop talent. If you cannot find one, learn it online from the following platforms.
- Udemy (Free & Paid)
- Skillshare (Paid)
- YouTube Videos (Free)
- LinkedIn Learning (Paid)
- Teachable
- Thinkific
- Blender Cloud Training (3D Animation Training)
- and more
2.2 Examples of Services on Fiverr
Below are some examples of service ideas to deliver on Fiverr:
- Android & iOs App development
- Website Development (News Portal & E-Commerce)
- Web Design (Theme Construction for WordPress Sites)
- Content Writing (News, Articles, Editorials, etc.)
- Ghost Writing
- Graphics Design (Logo Design, Infographics, Photoshop & similar)
- Video Editing
- Narration & Voice Over for videos
- Virtual Assistant
- Data Entry
- Digital Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- 3D Modelling
- Animation, Rigging, Sculpting, Compositing, Lighting, etc. (Learn how to use Blender, Houdini, Maya, etc.)
- Video Game Development (Mostly Unity)
- Engineering Works
- Converting File Formats (Example: PDF to Word)
- English Related Tasks (For people with proficiency in English)
- Writing Codes (Programming)
- Social Media Marketing & Management
- Translation
- Music & so many more.
To find the potential of an industry, just visit the Fiverr website as a customer. Then, you can use the search feature to find related services. There you can check the gig’s price, reviews, and ratings to learn about its demand.
Chapter 3: How To Start Freelancing in Nepal
First and foremost, you need to create an account by visiting Fiverr.com.
- Click on the “become a seller” option from the top menu.
- On the next page, scroll down and find the “become a seller” button on the page body, click on it.
- There are four options to join Fiverr, either by using Facebook, Apple, Google, or Email ID. I prefer using your custom email id because you can receive notifications of updates and account changes through it.
- After placing your email, verify it.
- Then, fill up your contact information and other necessary things to start.
After signing up and verifying our email id, we must optimize the Fiverr profile and make it stand out. The profile is all about gaining the trust of buyers so that they can spend money on you.
Therefore, it is essential to fill out your qualifications, language, skills, certifications, tagline, and proper description. When it comes to profile pictures, don’t put a random selfie.
Wear some formal dress with nice background and shoot a clean headshot with an HD camera. Although buyers rarely care about how you look, it is still essential to make it look formal as a professional.
Also, put a smile on your face in the snapshot because it brings positivity. Just a small grin on the side of your cheeks but don’t be overcomplicated though.
Chapter 4: Gig Title and Keyword Research
Immediately after completing the minor sign-up process, Fiverr Seller will take you to the interface for creating your first gig. If you cannot find one, click on My Business > Gigs and select “Create A New Gig”.
The first tab is the Overview where you can set your Gig Title, Category, Service Type, and Gig Metadata. The metadata includes ‘Industry Expertise’ such as Agriculture, Art, Design, etc., and language options.
While writing the title, insert relevant industry-related keywords in it. One of the best methods is by using Fiverr’s search box. Here’s how.
- Open Fiverr in an incognito tab by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + N on your browser.
- Type your seed keyword.
- The autosuggest will display keywords on the dropdown list.
Moreover, check your competitor’s profiles and discover keywords they are using to rank their profiles and gigs. We can use this exact same technique to fill up our gig description later.
Always aim to include 3-4 keyword variations on your Gig title. It is not essential to arrange the words in order, you can add them in any position. Also, we can add up to 80 characters max in the title.
Chapter 5: The Buyer’s Pyramid
This is something that you will rarely get to read in any other guide about how to start freelancing in Nepal. After completing the overview tab and title, it is important to understand the buyer’s pyramid. It helps to set our pricing structure for the service we’re offering.
Now, it is the value ladder that attracts customers to step in and try the offer. Basically, The Buyer’s Pyramid is made up of the following elements:
- Lead Magnet
- Low Ticket Offer
- High Ticket Offer
Let’s expand it more.
5.1 The Lead Magnet
Pyramids have many steps and we need to start from the first bottom to reach the peak. So, in order to make your profile visitors climb the first step, use something called the ‘Lead Magnet’. It is something with an extremely essential value to give away either for free as a bonus or at an extremely low cost.
Now, it is not necessary that the lead magnet has to be extremely useful. However, it must contain a value of money that is worth paying for when they buy from others. Since you are giving it for free, the users will get a chance to try your service first. And, if you become successful in impressing them with the lead magnet, they can be your permanent customers.
For example, if I am delivering services related to SEO, I can provide Page Speed Optimization as a bonus service. Or, I can provide them with free keyword research or a personal one-on-one consultation. Remember that all these free services should have an actual price of money they buy from your competitors.
However, everything on Fiverr has value, nothing is allowed for free. The lowest price one can set on Fiverr for a service is $5. Therefore, you can offer a super impressive service for $5 to get the users to jump into your market.
Now, once you become a featured top-rated seller, you can remove these items, reduce them, or increase their price. But for a newbie, a lead magnet helps to grab the attention and create satisfaction for the buyers.
5.2 Low Ticket Offer for Conversion
After the lead magnet, create something called the ‘Low Ticket Offer’. It is packaged at a slightly higher but affordable price. Average users with affordable budgets should be able to purchase it to become more familiar with your services & work.
The low ticket offer should be something helpful and a setup for the next step on the ladder. For example, if I am providing a Search Engine Optimization service, my low ticket offer could be something like On Page SEO for 10 pages. The numbers might vary.
Keep in mind, the low ticket offer will not include services like SEO for a whole website with hundreds of pages. We will save this for the next step.
5.3 High Ticket Offer for Maximum Profit
So, once your low ticket is complete, you need to provide an actual ‘High Ticket Offer’. As you move up the Pyramid, provide more decent value for the price.
The offer should be a complete package, something that you retain on a monthly basis. But the goal of the Pyramid is to get people to step into that lead magnet before they start spending the actual big money.
5.4 Fiverr Packaging System
Our goal is to make money from Fiverr and help people at the same time. To achieve that, Fiverr has facilitated the 3 packages offering system. Beforehand, we must decide what our Lead Magnets are, and what low and high ticket offers can be.
The final high ticket offer should be the master plan which makes the highest amount of money. Also, the buyer’s pyramid is not some kind of fantasy. I actually use this to attract as many as permanent customers possible. There are a lot of people not creating packages and they end up poor.
On the other hand, some people say that lowering prices will reduce the trust and belief in quality work, which is completely utter nonsense. While this statement might be true for higher-level sellers, for a newbie, things are different. A person won’t be blindly investing hundreds or thousands of dollars in you without knowing your performance.
So, structuring your gigs properly and arranging them is really important. I normally start from $5 as a lead magnet. This is also helpful as most people filter out the results for the price. Now, if you are a top-level seller on Fiverr, you can put the price according to your wish. But for a beginner with no ratings, just start out with $5 services.
Chapter 6: Writing Gig Description
When it comes to how to start freelancing in Nepal, it’s important that we do proper research and optimize the content with descriptions. Once our title, category, and price are set, it is now time to write our gig description. As previously described in Chapter 4 of how to start freelancing in Nepal, the Fiverr search system works on the basis of keywords, response rates, delivery time, price, and reviews.
They try to boost the visibility of new profiles for the first 7 days. So, in that duration, if you use proper keywords to target the right buyers, you can appear in higher search results.
Below is my personal strategy for writing an effective gig description:
- First of all, use Fiverr as a buyer in an incognito tab and search for your competitor keywords.
- Then, filter out the highest-selling gigs with the best star ratings.
- Now, open at least 10 to 15 services separately on a new tab.
- Copy their descriptions and paste them into a word document one by one.
After successfully copying the competitor’s descriptions, start reading and observing them. It will give you a hint about the words that people are using to rank on Fiverr.
Now, create a new list on a blank document. If you discover any interesting word, term, or phrase with significance from a competitor’s description, add it to the list. Remember, you are not allowed to copy and paste the whole description, as it goes against Fiverr’s policy. But, it’s okay to collect a few powerful informational words and use them in your own gigs.
6.1 Elements of Effective Description
Below are all the elements of an effective gig description based on my findings.
- The first paragraph of the description should be a single-line highlighted quote with keywords in it. For example, “High-Quality Android App Development at the best affordable price”.
- The second paragraph should contain the services that you offer in the lead magnet as per the Buyer’s Pyramid. Ex. “For $5, I will provide: ….” and then followed by bullet points.
- Similarly, the third and fourth paragraphs should contain unique details of your low-ticket and high-ticket offerings.
- In the fifth paragraph, mention why they should purchase from you than buying from others.
Fiverr only allows 1200 words in the description. Therefore, be really tricky while using the words to save space. In the end, I like to mention things like 100% satisfaction guaranteed or contact me before buying.
There’s also a FAQ section where you can answer commonly asked questions from the buyers. It’s a good practice to include the gig requirements either on the description or FAQ to clear confusion away.
Chapter 7: Making Multimedia for Gigs
When it comes to the Fiverr Gig cover, the proper size of the image is 1280×769 px. As usual, check the images of your competitors to get ideas of what to put in the cover photo.
Photoshop and Canva are my favorite tools for creating graphics. Plus, add some additional photos of the outcome or final delivery. If possible, record and upload a small video showing your results after work so that people can trust you more.
Download Fiverr Gig Image Templates
Chapter 8: Fiverr Skill Test
After your gig setup is complete, you might have to participate in the Fiverr Skill Test to maintain the quality of service you provide. Some categories of services require sellers to verify their skills to get their gigs published and running on Fiverr.
This is like an interview of 40 minutes where they ask you around 40 questions related to the service that you are providing. If you fail the test or get disqualified, you won’t be eligible to make the gig live. Don’t worry, you have a few more chances to retake the test if you lost the previous challenge.
The test will be taken on a separate window and you cannot close the window or switch the browser tab while performing the test. If you do so, you will be disqualified. After passing the test, Fiverr will list the skill on your profile and display a green checkmark next to it. It is a sign that you have good knowledge of the topic and people can trust you.
Chapter 9: Getting Your First Customer
The main challenge while learning how to start freelancing in Nepal is to get our first customer to apply these techniques. After publishing gigs, one of the natural ways to do it is by ranking your gigs. It means that if the buyers want something related to what you are selling, your gigs should appear on the top results whenever they search for it.
Thankfully, Fiverr helps boost new profiles and if you have done keyword research properly, your gigs should appear on top. Besides that, staying online is a huge factor these days. The more you stay active on Fiverr, have higher the chances of getting your gigs boosted.
Again, if you don’t want to wait, there are alternatives mentioned below. Also, there were ‘Buyer Requests’ on our list previously but they are now abandoned by Fiverr. So, we are eliminating them from our guide as well.
9.1 Gain Customers via Social Media Promotion
One of the common practices to get orders on Fiverr is to use social media. There are hundreds of niche-relevant Facebook Groups, Twitter Spaces, Pinterest Boards, Sub Reddits forums, etc. that allow you free promotion. Find them and post the things that you offer there.
In addition to that, you can create your own page or groups to spread the word about your business. Advertising on such platforms and using hashtags while posting can help. Similarly, you can create a youtube channel and make videos about your services to drive clients on Fiverr.
9.2 Sell Services Through Website
There are millions of people who are looking for services outside of Fiverr. A common way to reach out to them is by building your own personal website or blog and then ranking it on search engines.
You can do email marketing, build a following through your blog by educating people, or set up an automation system that sends people directly into Fiverr to purchase your services. SEO is one of the top techniques to find organic targetted customers.
9.3 Ask Friends and Families to Try Out
To get started earning a good amount with Fiverr, you will need at least 10-star ratings so that people and algorithms recognize you. For beginners, it is very difficult to get those ten ratings due to the huge increase in competition.
Therefore, another good approach to reach that goal is by contacting the people surrounding you who are in need of a service and letting them know that you can work for them. Tell your friends or family members that you can work for them on Fiverr at a low price (just to get star ratings).
9.4 Affiliate with Local Companies To Send You Clients
There might be hundreds of local companies in your area who do the same work as yours. Approach them and offer them something good if they send you clients who visit their stores. It could be a certain fixed amount of money for every client that they refer to or pay them on the basis of percentage.
9.5 Pitch Emails To Gain Attention
If buyers cannot find you, then you have to find them first, something you need to do before performing email outreach. There are hundreds of methods and platforms to find customers and business owners willing to pay is listed below.
- Meetup.com
- Chamber of Commerce
- People doing poor social media advertisements
- Craigslist
- Yelp
- Online Directories
- SimilarWeb, and other website listings.
- Online Forums & Web 2.0 sites.
All you have to do is find their official websites where they publish their email addresses or any sort of contact information. Once you discover them, just pitch them an email offering your services. This works in any industry, any niche, and all sorts of gigs. Cold email outreach is itself a huge topic and I can write about it all day long. But for the sake of now, I want to end it here.
Chapter 10: Things To Avoid
Before ending our guide, I want to give one last tip to avoid some people on Fiverr in our last chapter on how to start freelancing in Nepal. Personally, I never prefer working with clients that are hard to convince and do not want to pay you well.
They squeeze all your energy from your body to get the maximum benefits at an extremely low cost. This is totally unfair for the time you spent learning those skills.
Also, you will often encounter people who ask you to give them access to your computer through AnyDesk or any other medium. If you allow them, they can do activities such as uploading a virus or getting your credit card information.
Therefore, whenever you get such types of messages, do not respond and report them immediately since a lot of people have fallen victim to this.
Similarly, there come other categories of people who claim that they will offer you jobs outside of Fiverr. They will try to convince you so that you provide them with your contact information. These types of messages come from people that are trying to scam you.
Fiverr does not allow sharing of your personal details such as email address, Facebook id, or so on. Therefore, if you want to keep your account safe, block these types of messages immediately.
Moreover, stay away from those who promise to send you cheques and Amazon Gift Cards in return for the work you do for them. Only make payments inside Fiverr’s built-in payment system which is 100% safe to avoid being scammed.
These types of people will block you without sending any cheque or gift card after you’ve done their work. Therefore, if someone tells you so, respond by telling them to make a payment in advance by purchasing your gig through the official Fiverr website. Otherwise, don’t waste your time on such people.
But remember, while handling these types of Fiverr users, always be polite and use respectful language. Fiverr does not tolerate offensive words and could lead to a permanent ban if you do so.
Is Fiverr Available in Nepal?
100% Yes, Fiverr is available in Nepal for both buyers and sellers. The payout rates of a freelancer are the same for an individual living in Nepal or any other country. Kindly read the topmost opening lines from this guide to understand the potential of freelancing.
We can do freelancing in Nepal via various national and international platforms. These sources are being recognized as legit income sources from the government as well.
There are two best methods to withdraw money from Fiverr in Nepal. They are using the Payoneer online transfer service or direct bank transfer via WIRE. However, you will have to issue a PAN Card from the tax department and present it to your bank in order to pay the 1% tax to comply with the government rules.
Final Words
In addition to the tips mentioned above, remember these few tips to maximize your success rate on Fiverr.
- Learn proper skills for customer satisfaction.
- Understands the buyer’s pyramid and value ladder.
- Make a keyword-rich profile, title, and description.
- Try to remain online most of the time.
- Speak fluently in English while having a conversation.
- Make your response rate as good as possible.
- Deliver on the time.
- Ask your customer to leave a 5-star rating after delivering.
- Be active on Fiverr Community Forums.
- Always put a gig video.
- Keep cancellation & refund rates extremely low.
- Increase social shares of your gigs.
- Publish your gig link on your own blog or a third-party website.
These are only the additional efforts that you need to put in if you aren’t getting any orders on Fiverr. As long as you put the right description, title, and catchy thumbnail as described earlier, you don’t need to do all this stuff. People will naturally come searching for you after getting some reviews. Freelancing is a topic that one person can talk about all day long and it’s never over.
I hope that this guide on how to start freelancing in Nepal through Fiverr has helped you. If you implement the techniques and strategies mentioned above properly, there’s nothing stopping you from becoming a top-level seller on Fiverr & making a huge amount of money. It’s your turn now. If you have any questions or queries, or just want to say hello, use the comment form below is all yours.