As an entrepreneur, you’re probably facing many constraints, especially as you work day in and day out looking to grow and scale your business.

Ever wonder if there was a cheap yet accessible marketplace where freelancers from almost any field imaginable were made available to offer their services to you, all for $5 a project?

Well, look no further, all thanks to an online marketplace called Fiverr.

What is Fiverr?
what-is-Fiverr - Fiverr enables anyone to list what they'd do for $5 (the services are called "gigs" while giving anyone with $5 to spare the opportunity to purchase them.

We wanted to put ourselves in the shoes of a small business owner and see what we could purchase given a limited budget of $50 in hopes of highlighting its effectiveness as a legitimate resource for your business needs.

While it’s not difficult to navigate the site and start finding services, there are some general tips that will help you use Fiverr more effectively:

1. Look at the positive rating percentage and the number of votes to determine the seller’s popularity and how many people have used them in the past

2. Keep in mind the number of days on average it takes to deliver and how many orders the seller has in their queue to gauge how busy the seller is (Tip: if you need it sooner, you’ll encounter the “extras” where you’ll normally be able to pay a premium for faster delivery)

3. Make sure to read the comments section - that’s where you’ll see both the good and ugly and see if the seller is actually reliable and whether the quality of their services holds true.

Okay, so just what did we buy?

We bought a total of 10 individual services, five of which we thought were particularly handy when running a small business, and five which we thought were hilarious and buzzworthy purchases that would at least snag a small business some commentary on social media.

Here we go:

Five Handy Purchases

1. A Logo
[/b]Sometimes when you’re starting out, you don’t have the upfront pixel-perfectt in a polished, pixel perfect logo from one of your designer friends. You might also be tempted to use crowdsourcing services like 99designs or LogoTournament, but again, maybe even those are beyond your budget. Instead, a logo from fiverr will serve as a decent placeholder as you work your way up.

Here’s what we got after specifying the following to a seller on fiverr: “Please include the word Shopify, make it light green, and put in a shopping bag or cart.”

Instead of creating one logo, the user surprised us with two options in PNG with both clear and black backgrounds. Take a look:


[b]2. A Video Homepage Review to Increase Conversion Rates

Optimizing your homepage to reach your conversion goals is no easy task, it’s both an art and science practised by designers and online marketers.

But getting access to one long enough even get a gut check on your site could cost a pretty penny. However, we were able to get a video review done by someone who claimed to be an expert expert (10+ years in the field) with some handy tips and pointers for the Shopify homepage.





[img]3. A SEO Optimized Blog Post
[/img]Content is king, but you need lots of it to get seen, with a premium on original, unique, and useful content geared towards your target market. We're always on the hunt for quality content for the Shopify blog, which is why we thought we'd test the waters and see if we could get a quality post written on a hot topic: “How Retailers Are Using Instagram to Connect with Their Customers”.

Read it and you can gauge the quality for yourself. It requires some rework (minor grammar, formatting, more examples, research etc.) but for $5, it's a start and something to work with.





[b]4. Targeted Media List
[/b]PR can pay major dividends for your business in the form of brand awareness, getting people to talk about you, and most importantly getting people to your website.

However, working with a traditional PR firm doesn’t come cheap and can often run into tens of thousands of dollars a month. So, you’re probably looking at a more DIY approach at the beginning, but where do you start?

In any given vertical, you can have hundreds of publications, blogs, and other mediums. We went on fiverr and put the following request to a seller for a targeted media list:

“I work at an ecommerce platform and I’m interested in getting a targetted technology and entrepreneurship media list.”

In less than a day we received 482 names, beat, publications, email, and even phone numbers. Publications include All Things D, Ars Technica, Bloomberg, CNET, CNN, Giga Om, Huffington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

Our Head of PR, Mark Hayes crossed referenced some of the contact information provided with his own personal Rollodex at Shopify and although some of the beats were a little outdated, most were fairly accurate.

5. Facebook Timeline Page Image
[/b]With over a billion users on Facebook, you want to make sure that when people come to your company page they're greeted with a professional, trustworthy, and well designed cover image.

We commissioned this image to show how easy it can be to play in the big leagues. Not bad for $5 bucks. For more tips on optimizing your Facebook timeline page, check out this post.

[b]Five Hilarious Purchases


[b]1. A Rap Song
[/b]That’s right. On Fiverr, you can buy a few rhyming verses for your business and give yourself an extra leg up on the competition. (The other e-commerce stores selling what you sell probably don’t have 16 bars worth of branded rap).

We purchased a 40-second rap from fiverr and all we had to do was give these four lines of instructions:

1. Start selling online with Shopify (shopify.com)
2. Easily set-up a beautifully designed e-commerce store
3. Choose from over 100+ templates or create your own design
4. Get paid, start selling, live the dream and leave the rest to us

Needless to say, we were quite pleased with the end product. Word.



[b]2. Short Message in the Froth of a Cappuccino
[/b]Who doesn’t like coffee? When we went with this seller, we got back nine variations with different angles and four different background colours. Yummy.





[b]3. Speed Draw Graffiti of Your Company Name
[/b]Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted your company’s name speed written in graffiti, who wouldn’t?

We couldn’t resist ourselves.



[b]4. Recording in an Incredible Movie Trailer Voice
[/b]The almighty trailer can excite audiences to get ramped up for an upcoming film and build up the hype to the point where someone will probably say they’re dying to see it. Now, you can do the same for your business.


[b]5. Your Very Own Company Mascot
[/b]We like to call him Shopy, pretty cute no?

A mascot is the ultimate symbol of a company’s pride, glory, and the flame that keeps both the fans and players going, in this case the employees and customers.

Might be time you think of getting one made for your business.



Well there you have it, $50 well spent if you ask us. Have you used fiverr?

Source: http://www.hotproforum.com/topic817.html