Fruits of my Labor on Fiverr

I thought I'd post about how I'm actually doing on Fiverr these days. Now with a name like Fiverr, you'd think that one wouldn't make that much money. Well I haven't made a ton, but I have made more than I'd imagined. Over the last couple months I've gotten up to almost $100 in sales. I've created subtitles for people. Transcribed music for a wedding, for a blind lady so she could enter into a singing competition. I even for some reason transcribed a copy of a musical notation into an even messier version of itself (how strange is that?) I've written a song for a persons cat, sung a version of an SNL song, even song some childrens nursery rhymes. What I've discovered is that the people that are making it big on Fiverr, probably are doing one of three things. They live in a country where $5 dollars goes a lot farther. They are working like crazy for $5 gigs and burning out eventually or they are breaking the jobs up into smaller jobs so that it is worth it to work on. Now I believe these folks probably started out with larger jobs to get their ratings up and gradually got smaller and smaller taking advantage of the ratings so that they can get to the top of the search results. Lastly I believe that many people sell things that are really easy to deliver with minimal work. Such this as sending a tweet out for your product, sending an e-book on how to do something, or even saying someone's name or product name in a funny voice. My favorite is written your product or company name someones stomach, forehead or even their car (must be using photoshop)

So all in all, I've been working towards making many of my enter level gigs into e-books. For things that I will do manually I am looking at charging extra. Now that I've moved to level #1 I can charge extra $5 or $10 dollars on each gig, plus charge extra for speedy delivery. What I still need to do is make sure that the amount of gigs I advertise and the amount of gigs I can actually do within a given period of time makes sense. So I need to make sure my gig delivery times are longer than I original set them. If I set it up like this I might actually be able to make a decent side income and do things I find entertaining!

Check out all my gigs now at my Fiverr link

http://fiverr.com/tulleuchen

The Cat is the King!

One of my very first gigs on Fiverr was to write a custom song. The customer said that their wifes birthday was coming up and that he wanted to have a song written for her from their cats perspective. They gave me a couple pages of information on the various attributes of the cat. This was quite a challenge as I wanted to make the song clever, fun to listen too, relevant to the their cat. So I wanted to capture as many of the things they told me as I could. But I also needed it to tie together well as a complete song and not just a bunch of random ideas. Well I can't say that there was really any magic formula to do that. I simply read, read, and reread their message, over and over. Played with so many different lines. Deleted, edited each line of the song. Added lines, removed them. Rearranged them. I also played with many different chord progressions and ideas. I was trying at first to write it for guitar. But I though I hadn't used the piano for a while. Low and behold I finally came up with an idea. The final product is sort of a cat believes he is kind type of thing. Which I imagine all cats probably think don't they?

Once I got a groove going on the piano, next was the melody. As I was trying to get this done fairly quickly I improvised most of the melody and just learned it by doing it over and over again. I must have sung it about 50 times before I got it just how I liked it! 

I'll upload a video of me singing it soon, as on this gig the customer gave permission. 

I also realized going forward that I would make it my standard policy to retain the rights to the song and recording unless special payment was made to the contrary. 

Take a listen to it here! Don't worry, I wrote the song and was given permission, and the song doesn't give any information away about their identities

Opie

Lyrics 

I’m Opie

Love me for all the work I do around here 

You might help a little bit too. 

But aren’t just so you grateful I'm near 

You’re in my noble presence 

angles smiled, when I came into existence 

so you can understand my persistence when I say.

I'm the king, but I don’t get enough food 

I’m on the top of the ladder, 

So it’s time to make a dinner platter dude and fill it up 

With ice cream, pop tarts, cheese, 

chicken, chips, and soup, come on please 

I'm starving you didn't feed me yet.

(Bridge)

I am the best at judging with simple looks 

I'm a the master, just read my books! 

For all this education, I don't ask much 

I just expect, the following perks

I want my own 

5 star kitty restaurant, Hey! 

So I can feast each day 

I'll invite my girl Kitty Soft Paws. 

Cause she gives my heart pause. 

I’m high class! I think Sinatra would agree 

(Outtro) 

I'm the only one you'll need, 

ok I guess sis can stay too. 

But just take a look at me. 

And I Know you'll agree 

and If anyone says different I'll just say nooo.

Cat image used via CC BY-SA 2.0 license from the following location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orange_tabby_cat_sitting_on_fallen_leaves-Hisashi-01A.jpg

The Cowboy Song

Below is a clip from Hulu of The Cowboy Song Part 2 with Kyle MacLachlan  Dana Carvey and the Late Phil Hartman. The original Cowboy song was done with Woody Harrelson, Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman.

This clip was the basis of one of my most recent Fiverr Gigs.

Here’s a link to the lyrics http://www.faqs.org/faqs/tv/sat-night-live/song-lyrics/#b

When you think of family time you might not think of people singing about slaughtering cows with the family. At least not in as graphic a detail as this. But as I many of us are omnivores and so we eat meat. Someone has to do it. Someone has to lead the cows to the slaughterhouse (as the song states).

For this fiverr gig someone sent an inquiry to my write a custom song, for me to sing this song from Saturday Night Live. I didn't realize it at first as they sent me the lyrics to The Cowboy song (Tame version) so I decided to look it up to see what it was. The non tame version is, well, disconcerting to say the least. It paints rather a horrific yet clinical picture in nature the describes large scale slaughtering of these animals for food. In the same vein it also romanticizes they journey, because, well we're singing to these poor doggies. I looked up the term doggies and it probably means a calf with a distended gut, although in modern cases it might just mean any cow, I'm not really sure as I'm not a cowboy.

But lyrics aside it is a rather fun song to sing. A slow paced country or maybe I should saw old style country western song. I can understand why they requested this tame version that a family would choose to sing now.

I listened to the SNL original song and it’s considerably longer than the tame version they sent. So I had to take some liberties with melody (they sent me some examples of the singing of the song but well it was rather incomplete and by their own admission they were no singers, hence why they ordered the gig)

So I thought the quickest way rather than trying to learn the whole song would be to chop up the SNL version and put it into my audio editor and then attempt to sing along to the SNL melody while singing the tame lyrics. Once I did that. I was able to sing along to myself doing a better job this time. Then I added some harmonies. That is always a more challenging part. You see with most music the melody is prominent and loud enough that you hear it the most. Hearing the harmonies takes a little more doing. But after a little work it was done. Add in the guitar strumming, and guitar simple bass line, take away the SNL version and there we have my rendition of the tame version. All in all, it was another unique Fiverr experience. It didn't involve much songwriting but it did involve some song arranging and a lot of mixing and song engineering. Another great Fiverr experience where I again learned a lot. 
Take a listen here to hear for yourself how I did!

Check out this and other gigs at http://fiverr.com/tulleuchen 

Wedding Song

As this is my first post, let me preface it with an introduction to what I am doing. I started doing gigs on http://fiverr.com as a friend of mine, Justin Matthew, told me about this place. I had seen how he had become successful on it and thought I would give it a try as I, too, would like to increase my income and work at home.



I've posted this one gig, I will transcribe your single note melody, which has already led to a few gigs. This particular user wanted me to transcribe not just a single note melody, but an entire song. The song consisted of female vocals and piano accompaniment. I had originally wanted to do only single note melodies because, well, it's a $5 gig site and anything beyond that is a bit much. But a couple of things really encouraged me to do this gig.

First of all, the recording of the song I heard was written and performed by this lady's sister for her wedding. That's great I was thinking. I read on to learn that her sister had passed away before the wedding and it was never performed. That's really sad. Now the lady wanted me to transcribe the song and music so she may have it performed at her own wedding. That's bittersweet; That's fantastic. I was glad to do it. Not only that but she offered an additional gig to do this as well.

I figured this is a win times three. One, I have the skill to help someone with something that means a lot to them. Two, I will get paid to do it (extra even). Three, I get additional practice doing something I really should have more practice doing, musically speaking.  Don't get me wrong, I have the skills. I just should be able to do it faster than I am doing it right now.

I was able to be a part (if only a small part) of this person's wedding experience. Get a listen to a great song. Be in some way touched by someone who I never knew who is no longer on this world. What a truely, bizarre, wonderful, and sad experience, all rolled into one. On top of that, I learned an additional use for Fiverr that I'd forgotten: Even if, on the face of it you are doing gigs that take you way too long for only $5 -or even $10 in this case - you gain so called on-the-job experience and you help increase your skills for the next time you do it.

I only wish I could share the song with you all. But that will always remain private. Customer confidentiality is number one in my book.

You know http://fiverr.com could be thought of a second source of income, a primary source income, and even a self-employed person's paid internship (with themselves of course).

Wanna check out my gigs?
Go to http://fiverr.com/tulleuchen to view all of them!