Editing Uncomfortable Nonfiction On Fiverr

Scarring myself for pennies on Fiverr in the early days

Every freelance writer starts somewhere. For me, that was Fiverr.com. Classic, I know.

I began in 2016 during my university years, attempting to build a writing and editing portfolio on top of my tutoring job with the university writing center. I thought, “If I can help tutor a masters degree student through their thesis, I can do Fiverr, right?”

Well, it turned out I could, and some of it haunts me to this day.

Everyone Has a Story to Tell…Unfortunately

I believe that everyone has a story in them. I also believe everyone has a right to tell their stories.

That doesn’t mean that some of them aren’t absolutely batshi*.

Now, as a good ghostwriter and editor, I won’t name names, and I guarantee that whatever I mention here you have never actually read, so don’t go: “*gasp* I know who she’s talking about!”

No, you don’t.

Like most Fiverr gigs that I edited, I worked on a lot of nonfiction narratives or self-published books that may or may not have ever been fully completed or properly published by the author. Some of them may have been published at one point but I never heard about it.

Either way, aspiring professional writer and editor that I was, I gave it my 100%

Scarring Myself for Pennies

(Note: this gets weird. Don’t say I didn’t warn you)

Most of the edits that I did were on personal essays or narratives, and some of them got quite uncomfortable…

In one, a person fully believed that they were the reincarnated spirit of an alien sent to Earth in order to spread love and mindfulness. In another, a woman and her partner would celebrate her femininity during her cycle by incorporating… well, the red stuff into their sex life. There were vague hints of criminal acts done in the past during teenage years (some of them quite worrisome) and others about their very explicit views and feelings surrounding certain groups or genders.

I read angry tirades, incredibly personal familial tragedies, crazy sexual encounters in way too-vivid detail, and plenty of website biographies that I was shocked that anyone would want to make public.

I took all of it with the bird’s-eye-view grain of salt that I think most early freelancers do in order to make a quick buck, but I was making pennies on Fiverr.

When I sent back my editor’s notes to certain clients suggesting that their work was showing themes of racism that would alienate their readers or that maybe they shouldn’t disclose the illegal things they had done in the past, they would get really mad and argue that it was their voice and their story — how dare I try to silence their truth? Then there were the ones who demanded that I edit nearly 20,000 words in 2 days (an impossible task that I never should have agreed to) and then after I gave it my all, they were angry when I missed a few spelling errors or punctuation marks, stating that I was a fraud.

So, I let it go, finished each project, and sent the completed document on its way. Then Fiverr took its large cut of the $5 or $10 that I earned, and I would stare at the total and sigh.

It wasn’t worth it.

Graduating from Fiverr.com

After earning probably my first $100 in three months on Fiverr, I started looking for other avenues. Starting a second income on Upwork felt like a step sideways, not forward, but it also looked more professional and I decided to sign up.

It took a LONG time to land my first client on Upwork, but when I did I started to feel like it was just another Fiverr (which I was simultaneously working with at the time). The clients were overly particular and rude, some of them just as overwhelming with their demands and time constraints as Fiverr clients, and then, after all that, Upwork would take its cut of the money.

Then, a miracle.

I found my favorite client through Upwork. They were kind, helpful, easy-going, and made their requests and intentions clear. They never forced unreasonable expectations upon me and always felt that my work had a place on their sites. I couldn’t have found a better client or a more steady stream of income if I’d tried.

After about six months of Upwork taking a cut of our transactions, they asked if I wanted to move off the Upwork platform and work with them full time. They would be my first major client.

It was a huge and amazing sigh of relief when I walked away from sites like Fiverr for good.

Fiverr is Freelance Writer Hazing

Unless you are a professional writer who decided to start freelancing with a preexisting portfolio and client list in tow, then you probably started somewhere like Fiverr.

You either dealt with mean or unreasonable clients, or were paid pennies by the really nice clients who didn’t have more money to spend. Every time you got tipped $5 extra you felt like you’d won the lottery, but then lost 20% to Fiverr’s house cut.

There aren’t a lot of other popular avenues for freelance writers to get started in their craft. It is hard to land jobs on Problogger without a portfolio and previous experience. Other sites like Contently take ages to set up and require that you also have a portfolio when you finally create your profile. Sites like Upwork take such big cuts that you have to pray your clients ask you to leave the platform and work with them independently.

Not to mention that Fiverr and Upwork are probably the only sites where first-time freelancers can feel like they are managing “clients.” Content mills like Wordagents pay $.03 per word (which is more than the $.02 jobs that most Problogger opportunities offer) and then you’re mostly writing into the void. There is no client/writer connection through content mills, so there is no room to grow.

So is this the permanent reality of every new freelance writer or editor out there with a laptop and a dream? Working for basically free while you build up a portfolio and testimonials that will hopefully one day land you your dream client?

With nearly 59 million freelancers in the United States alone, hundreds of thousands of those being writers, editors, bloggers, content creators, etc., then you would think there would be sites and systems out there that are better equipped to help train and get freelance writing careers off the ground.

Medium is a great place to write and create a portfolio for free, to get your name out there, find readers, and a community of voices that are like your own, but barely 8% of the Medium population earns more than $100 per month.

Where, then, is the best place for the budding freelancer to go when all roads seem to lead to Fiverr?