When you first think of it,
doing something for only $5 might seem like a terrible idea. Your
work is worth much more! What can you buy for $5, anyway? What's the
point?
The thing is, $5 is just the
beginning. The starting price. You offer an actual useful service,
yes, otherwise nobody would be interested in buying, but you also
offer something that you can do without too much effort. Then you can
do another one, and another, thus proving yourself, and becoming able
to offer upgrades and more expensive (but still a bang for the buck)
stuff. And in the process, you learn a few things, and see for
yourself that doing (at least some) stuff for $5 can be useful.
1. You get practice.
With the starting price of $5, many people are willing to take a risk
with a new seller (new to the platform, or new to them). You get to
use your skills, become better at what you do, and also become
faster, meaning that you spend less and less time on a single order.
And, because you become better, you're more likely to attract buyers.
2. Saying 'no' becomes
easy (or easier). Would you turn down a $1,000 job, even if
you're not certain how to do it, or if you don't like it, or
if you feel uncomfortable about it? It's much easier to turn down a
$5 job you don't like, or feel uncomfortable about, or would need too
much time to do. It's just $5, you're not losing all that much,
anyway. And once you start saying 'no', you learn that it's not that
hard, and you become more comfortable with the idea, and more
confident about what you want and don't want to do. You stop being
scared of refusing work you feel uncomfortable about for any reason
(you don't like that type of work, the buyer seems fishy...), even if
it's for far more than $5. You start feeling better and more
confident, and that definitely shows and attracts the kind of buyers
you want to work with.
3. It becomes easier to
experiment. Have an idea about something that you could offer,
but are not sure how that's going to work? Will you like it? Will it
become too much? Will you hate it? Will it attract exactly the type
of buyers you don't have the slightest wish to work with? Try it out,
and see whether you're getting sales and whether you enjoy it! If it
works out, great! And if it doesn't? It's $5 stuff, no biggie, you'll
try out something else. With $5 gigs, you not only lose the fear of
saying 'no' (something that can be quite difficult if you have family
to feed), you lose the fear of trying out new things and
experimenting, too. As a result, you learn new things, you become
better at them, you can offer a wider variety of services at a higher
quality while avoiding the stuff that you don't want to do – and
with hard work, it can only lead to success.
Getting practice. Losing the
fear of saying 'no' and the fear of experimenting. Learning new
things, and becoming better at what you do. And all of it for $5 at
the time.
Not bad. Not bad at all. And
it's just the beginning – at any time in your life.
