For many people trying to work from home, drop servicing sounds like the dream business opportunity. You don’t need to have any skills, experience, or qualifications to make thousands of dollars per month.
But, when starting a new business, there is almost always a problem with capital. So, is it possible to do drop servicing with no money?
I’ll answer that question soon, but first, I’ll give you a little recap on what drop servicing is.
What Is Drop Servicing?
In simple terms, drop servicing is almost exactly like dropshipping except with services instead of products. It works like this: you offer a service.
A customer buys that service but instead of handling the work yourself, you order that same service from a freelancer and pay them.
Once the freelancer delivers, you send your customer the work and take your income from what remains once you’ve paid the freelancer.
Drop servicing’s meaning can be defined in many terms, but it’s much easier to understand when examples are used.
Many people might find drop servicing attractive but find that it does come with a few costs.
You’ll need a platform to market the services you choose, a place to display and deliver your services, and money to advertise and draw more customers.
However, despite all these costs, there is a way to do drop servicing with no money.
But you’ll need to do it on Freelancing platforms like Fiverr.
What Is Fiverr?
Fiverr is a platform where freelancers can offer their services by posting “gigs.” Many companies and entrepreneurs use freelancers on Fiverr to get work done cheaply and easily.
So how does that translate to drop servicing with no money? It’s simple. All you have to do is host your business on Fiverr.
Sound confusing. Don’t worry; we’ll show you exactly what you need to do.
How Do You Drop Service on Fiverr?
Drop servicing with no money on Fiverr isn’t as bad a deal as you may think. According to SimilarWeb, Fiverr received over 57 million visits in September 2020 alone.
With such stats, you’ll probably have an advantage over most drop servicing websites in terms of exposure. And with exposure come clients (eventually).
To start a drop servicing business on Fiverr properly, you’ll need to do quite a few things. These procedures can be categorized into three stages.
Each is as important as the other, but the last step is the most difficult to accomplish. We’ll explain more below.
Stage #1: Finding Your Business
The fact that you’re reading this means that you’re interested in selling services as a drop servicer.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always translate well to planning. A drop servicer needs to have a service s/he is selling to start a business. So, what service do you want to offer?
Luckily, you can pick and choose from hundreds of service categories available on Fiverr. The best thing for people who want to start drop servicing with no money can do is to look for a category without a lot of sellers but with high demand.
It can you a fair bit of time to find your niche with these criteria. You’ll need to carefully look at how many sellers there are, and compare them to the average number of reviews on gigs.
If there are fewer than 500 sellers in a single category, it’s almost certainly safe and not all that competitive.
Next, you need to check if the gigs in this category have buyers. This will help to determine how well they’re selling and whether the service is actually in demand.
After all, you need to choose drop servicing niches that are in demand. If you see several sellers with over a hundred or two hundred reviews, then you can assume that the service is in demand and will turn a profit if you raise the price.
This stage is probably where you’ll spend the most significant amount of time. But if you want to skip the process, we have a guide explaining the best niches for drop servicers. That can probably save you a bit of time.
Stage #2: Finding a Freelancer
Once you’ve found a niche you like, the next step is to find a freelancer to perform the service. You can do this in two ways:
- Find a freelancer on Fiverr.
- Outsource your jobs to freelancers on other platforms.
Each way has its pros and cons, as you’ll soon see.
1. Finding a Fiverr Freelancer
Finding a freelancer to perform that service for you on Fiverr is the more comfortable option. After all, your business is also going to be set up as a gig on Fiverr.
With a Fiverr freelancer, you can easily assign the job as soon as you get it. You can also collect it as soon as it’s due and get easy access to the freelancer.
However, there are some demerits. Pricing is one of them. Most freelancers in the same niche, and at the same level, sell at almost the same rate. As a drop servicer, you profit by selling services at a higher rate than you bought them.
Unless you’re a level one or level two seller buying from a newbie, there really won’t be much difference. This means hardly any profit. And most people won’t want to buy from a new seller with high prices.
2. Outsource Your Jobs on Other Platforms
Outsourcing your jobs to freelancers on another platform can make it a lot easier to net a large profit. Contrary to the popular myth, Fiverr freelancers do not all sell their services at $5.
Some services are worth a lot of money even if you’re buying from a new seller. These freelancers are certainly not the cheapest.
To earn more profit, it’s best to find an alternative but cheaper service on other platforms. However, you shouldn’t compromise quality because of larger profits.
That’s a quick way to kill your business. Look closely at the reviews of the platform and your prospective freelancers. Make sure that their customers are satisfied with their results before making your decision.
Also, try contacting your chosen freelancer and informing them that you’d like to drop service their services. This is important to gauge the freelancer’s response time and if they can do the work.
It’s also possible that some gigs may be abandoned and their owners inactive so remember to hit them up.
Stage #3: Start Selling
This stage has two parts, both related to getting your business up and running. Now that you have your niche and you have a freelancer on standby, you need to start making money.
To do that, you’ll need to register an account on Fiverr. Once that’s done, you’ll need to set up your gig.
While this setup sounds easy, Fiverr is a bit more complicated than it looks.
There are several little details you need to note – so many that we could write another article on them. So we did. Here’s a guide we wrote to set up your Fiverr seller account the right way.
But, setting up your account and creating a gig is the easy part. Next comes arguably the worst part of starting a new drop servicing business – waiting for the first sale.
There are ways to make the wait shorter and give your gig more exposure. Here are 11 ways to get your first order fast. Some of these methods require cash but most only need your gig link and an internet connection.
The first sale is usually a breakthrough that leads to reputation-building reviews. Once you start getting reviews, it’ll start to get easier to get customers.
And as you get more customers, you start to become qualified for a level up. Once you become a Level 1 Seller, you can justifiably increase your prices.
But, while drop servicing on Fiverr is a great way to start a drop servicing business with no money, it does come with its cons.
Cons of Drop Servicing on Fiverr
There are two major cons of using Fiverr instead of a drop servicing website.
1. The Service Fee
Fiverr takes 20% of all sellers’ earnings. This also includes tips. This can be quite a lot for beginners because most newbies sell their services at quite a low price.
Shaving off 20% can mean depriving you of all of your profit. Drop servicers need to keep that in mind when choosing their prices. Reselling Fiverr gigs on Upwork can help solve this problem since sellers’ prices on Upwork are often way higher than Fiverr’s.
2. Unreliability
If your drop servicing business is hosted on Fiverr, then you’re pretty vulnerable to Fiverr’s actions. If their servers are down, so is your business. If they shut down your Fiverr’s seller account for some reason, that will be the end of your business.
These two cons don’t mean that your business can’t be a good drop servicing example to make it on Fiverr. However, it won’t be easy.
I recommend that you get a monthly subscription for a hosting service and run drop servicing on a website you own if you can. This could be a WordPress website or a Shopify store.
It’ll pay for itself after a little while.
Conclusion
Starting a business without any capital can prove difficult. Drop servicing itself isn’t a difficult business but drop servicing with no money and website is harder.
If you think you can’t hack it, there are other easy ways to make money with Fiverr.
