When there are just so many voices out there, the best tickler wins! Just ask Ben Huh of icanhaz.cheezburger.com - a multimillion dollar blog network that has millions upon millions of page views in any given day. Their business model? "Make people laugh."
But don't take our word for it, take GoDaddy.com's Executive Chairman and resident funny mogul Bob Parson's advice,
Keep people happy, give them a good time and give them what they want"
Get Some Talent Juice from Fiverr
The Internet is a big soupy goo of everything and the thing is, not all of us have the talent to make people laugh. Not all of us have the confidence to even go on video. Just like in real life, we need other people who have this distinct talent for evoking emotions. This could be expressed in writing, art, video, music and humor. This is where Fiverr.com comes in.
So for my next #MBUStorm brainstorming project I asked the good folks from +MyBlogU to share their Fiverr.com secrets and how they've used it for their online marketing efforts.
But before that, do take a look at this #MBUStorm Video I made using Fiverr.com talents diegoclaudiu and meathousebeats
Caricatures and Artwork
I take a look at Fiverr now and then to find something cool. I never go crazy and it does take some time to find something worthy. As an example, our MyBlogU social media profile pic is done through a Fiverr gig. I send in our team's photos and got the cartoon created. I re-arranged the cartoon faces and added our graduation hat after that. The result is pretty neat!
I find some cool gigs in the following categories:
- Creative and instructional voice-over for my videos
- Creative logo mashups
- Cool video mashups
Some gigs get me really inspired as well! Like I can come up with a cool video idea by just coming across an interesting voice-over gig at Fiverr.
I usually stay away from crazy videos. I never buy likes or followers from Fiverr...
Whiteboard Explainer Videos
True to my form, I researched Fiverr for the best bang for whiteboard video creation. Even created a spreadsheet: how many minutes or words, how many images allowed, would they synch your voice, would they add music, what were the upsells, what was their rating, etc Then I put out a request because I was planning a series for my upcoming book. My choice was Everyvan For the first 3 or 4 of 6, he was timely and got more creative. But then I think the word got out! Fortunately, I was patient and when things didn't happen in 24 hours I knew he would make good and he did. I think tipping him every time helped! Here's one of the series he and I created with the most comments and thumbs ups:
Introverts unique power tools in selling
Design and Art
Another great qn, Danny.
The rap is cool, by the way.
I can't share any links or do any shout outs, because this was sometime ago (and I don't exactly remember who I hired for my needs).
I can't say I have hired anyone to do any marketing per se; I have mostly hired folks more design (although that is part of marketing as well) - Designing logos, eBook covers and so forth.
I have thought of hiring folks for marketing (such as posting stuff to 100 pages, or getting 100 likes), but the truth is that it is useless. It's just a waste of time and effort (trust me, I had a hard time with this, especially on my old Twitter account. I had grown my followers pretty fast, using follower exchange services and so forth, but I didn't have a connection with most of these folks).
It's great to show off the numbers, but they are just that - numbers. As an entreprenuer, and as an online marketing, I should be thinking about loyal fans/followers - it might be just 10 fans, but they are worth a lot more than 1000 mindless followers (I mean this in sense that those folks don't really care about what we say. They followed us for other reasons).
Hiring designers has been a wonderful (and painful) experience. It's only 5 bucks, so expecting too much might be a big mistake (unless you pay more for extra work).
The trick is to find good ones - whatever your need might be. There are a lot of bad designers, along with a few really good ones (find those! Look over the reviews and such).
Anyways, that's all I have for now. Hope that has helped!
Vector Art and SEO Services
Hi Danny, I've used fiverr three times.
For keyword research - I was curious if someone who specialises in SEO can come up with better keywords than I could and she couldn't. Her list was pretty similar to mine, so it wasn't worth it, but it gave me confidence that I'm good at keyword research.
For tagline creation - again, I didn't like any of the suggested taglines and some of them had nothing to do with my request.
I had a cartoon character drawn by Dhevan Pratama and this guy was awesome. Great response time and I loved the character.
In conclusion, fiverr can be hit and miss. There is some fantastic stuff there and there are also some gigs that don't deliver great value.
Logos and Press Releases
One of the things we do at Digital Analytics 101 is to teach small business owners about marketing and branding. We use Fiverr all the time to give them ideas of what new logos might look like, some sample press releases... I can't say enough good things about the talent and experience we've had with the folks we found on Fiverr. The ability to get three great concepts to present for less than $20 has really been business-changing for us.
*More to come - I'll keep this post updated. Keep em coming guys! Thanks
Cartoon characters seem awesome!
ReplyDeleteOne of the crazy ideas I had some time ago was to create a mascot for my blog (not just as a part of the logo, but completely integrate the character into my blog posts).
You know like, add bonus tips as comments made my this particular character. I tried creating a mascot, didn't quite work out (I didn't think of hiring someone at Fiverr; perhaps I can do that).
This is perfect, since I am renovating the site right now..so, great timing ;)
Thank you for the awesome tips shared here, Danny :)
I love the answers here - blogging redefining life and inspiring folks to act.
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome. I can relate back to that; blogging has had a profound effect on my blogging (I have never really thought about how it has affected others; good to see that it has changed their lives too).
Anyways, thank you for this, Danny :)
Glad you liked it. Let's spread some more good ideas and maybe just maybe, the world could change a little.
ReplyDeleteMascots are good -especially if you want a younger demographic to read. They work well for sites with a comic or gaming theme. That would be cool. Yeah, I saw your site is under renovation. Are you on Wordpress?
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of moving to Wordpress myself but am weighing the costs against the benefits. I mean if I could do the job here on blogger, why should I pay to have it on Wordpress?
Hope you can convince me on this - so many people have been trying to tell me this but I am very hard to sell to. :/
Of course :)
ReplyDeleteYes, I was. I have temporarily moved it to Blogger though...get everything done and then move it back :D
I used to be on blogger, and I do love it. But, in terms of functionality, WP is far better.
The main advantage is that the blog is yours. With blogger, that's not the case. Google hosts it (and they can take it down; I have many friends whose blogs were took down...without citing any valid reason).
Although that was a few years ago. Not sure how things are now.
It's all up to you :) Blogger is great, but WP offers more functionality - plugins, a large community and so forth (and it is often better for business).
Themes are another thing. Sure, you could do some CSS editing with Blogger, but it's pretty limited. WP allows you to work with millions of themes, and theme frameworks (where you can easily build your own themes).
Drag and drop themes make it even easier!