This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Fiverr in partnership with Kasai Media. All opinions are 100% mine.
What’s the quickest way to pay off your student loans?
If you answered clipping coupons, shopping sales, or cutting expenses you’re completely wrong. The answer is earn more money.
While there’s definitely merit in cutting your expenses, that will only get you so far. When you aim to earn more money, you have unlimited potential. So, if you want to get rid of those pesky student loans for good, the best thing you can do is cash in on your talents.
Here’s how to get started.
Set Yourself Up for Side Hustle Success
When you have a goal as motivating as paying off debt, earning extra money should challenge you in the best of ways. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of earning that extra money I first want you to determine how much extra money you need. What amount would make a huge difference in your debt? A thousand dollars a month? Ten thousand a year? More?
When you have a concrete goal you’ll be able to much better map out a plan for the side hustle platform we’ll discuss below.
So pick your number and we’ll get started.
How to Make Money Doing Absolutely Anything
If you haven’t heard of it before Fiverr is a freelance marketplace where you can sell just about anything, starting at five dollars.
Here are just a few samplings of some of the post popular gigs on Fiverr:
- Music recordings (Including writing songs, recording bass, guitar, Chinese violin and more)
- Illustrations (This is currently trending for Mother’s Day)
- Singing (Recordings of singers singing your song or writing an original song for you.)
- Unique Advertisements (Including logos on rocks and even having someone draw a company’s message on their body!)
Aside from these unique ideas there are more mainstream services that also do exceptionally well, such as:
- Copywriting
- Blog Post Creation
- Logo Creation
- Keyword Research
- Internet Marketing
- Voice Overs
- Website Building
I don’t have enough words on this page to list all of the different Fiverr gigs. But I think you get the point – the products or services you can sell on Fiverr are unlimited.
If you still don’t have any ideas, check out this list of over 100 ways to make money even while you’re in college.
How to Make Some Serious Cash with Fiverr
It’s important to note that while you start out offering a $5 service with Fiverr you’ll have the ability to charge much, much more once you’ve proven your worth. If you’re ready to make some serious cash here’s what you need to do to get started.
Determine What You’re Going to Offer – Think about your skills and hobbies. What kind of product or service do you want to offer? As you can see from all of the examples above no idea is a bad idea. You’d be surprised at what people will pay for! It doesn’t matter if you’re idea is “out there” or is more mainstream. Choose something that you genuinely enjoy doing and want to get paid for.
Also keep in mind that you’ll only be netting $4 per gig after Fiverr takes their 20% cut. Don’t pick something that’s going to take you hours to complete. (You can do this after you “level-up” and are able to charge a lot more money.)
Sign Up With Fiverr as a Seller and Add a New Gig – Your next step is to sign up with Fiverr as a seller. You can sign up here. In your dashboard you’ll be able to add a new gig. From there you’ll also need to title your gig, give it a description, and add important details like your turnaround time.
Earn the Right to Charge More – This where Fiverr gets fun. If you remain active and complete ten gigs within thirty days and keep a 4 star rating or above you’ll have the ability to add two “extras” to your gig of $5, $10, or $20 and send direct offers of up to $325!
Keep Leveling Up – Fiverr has seller levels that enable you to keep charging more and more for your services based on how well you do. When you reach the five star level you’ll be able to add gig extras of up to $100 and will also be able to send custom offers with no maximum amounts.
How to Earn $10,000 In a Year with Fiverr (Example)
I want to use a very realistic example of how you can earn an extra $10,000 in a year with Fiverr.
Let’s say your gig is writing descriptions for Amazon products. (I saw this on Fiverr and liked it!) You offer $5 for a 160 word description for a product someone wants to sell on Amazon. You get your ten sales within thirty days, which are all highly rated so you get to add extras. You then add the following extras:
- $20 – 24 hour turnaround time
- $ 10 – Add HTML Code to the Product Description
In order to earn the extra $10,000 you’d need to sell 480 of the $25 service or 343 of the $35 service. (This is AFTER Fiverr’s cut of the revenue.) Assuming each description took you a half an hour to do you’d spend somewhere between three and a half to four and half hours per week on your side hustle.
Would you give up 3-5 hours per week for an extra $10,000? I know I certainly would and that’s why I’m a huge advocate of side hustles!
Also keep in mind that the gig extras can increasingly go up as you move up the Fiverr ranks. That would mean you could either work a whole lot less for that $10k or earn a whole lot more! Think of all the student debt you could pay back with that amount of money.
Fiverr is a Great Place to Get Started
Fiverr is a great place to get started with your side hustle. When you sign up with Fiverr you get to access their pool of thousands of buyers. While you’ll still have to prove yourself they’ve taken some of the normal side hustle marketing leg work from you.
Ready to get started earning some extra money to pay down that debt? You can sign up here or check out their blog for more helpful tips.
Robert Farrington is America’s Millennial Money Expert® and America’s Student Loan Debt Expert™, and the founder of The College Investor, a personal finance site dedicated to helping millennials escape student loan debt to start investing and building wealth for the future. You can learn more about him on the About Page, or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.
He regularly writes about investing, student loan debt, and general personal finance topics geared towards anyone wanting to earn more, get out of debt, and start building wealth for the future.
He has been quoted in major publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox, ABC, NBC, and more. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes.