Get paid to do the job you love: a freelance case study with Fiverr

People like case studies, which are basically “people watching” in better detail. Hearing how someone else has handled a real-life situation is more informative and interesting than a list of facts. I’d like to write about freelance work on sites like Fiverr, and since I have personal experience working there, I want to briefly share some of my discoveries and a little about what might lie ahead.

Hi, I’m Dr. Ron Masa. I am a Jungian psychologist, now retired from private practice. I am also an artist, I have sculpted in stone for many years and sold almost a thousand small paintings online. I started freelancing with Fiverr in 2013. I wanted to learn how to make professional quality voice recordings from home.

In the 1960s, he had worked as a television director for the NBC affiliate, KVOA-TV in Tucson, Arizona. So I had to do a little voice announcement, and I loved it. Since then I have wanted to do more voice work. My first inclination was to seek a formal training program for speech education. Fortunately, I learned that they charge thousands of dollars a year! I say thankfully because that cost, plus the delay before I could do actual voice work, convinced me to try something new.

I decided to “venture out” to become freelance with Fiverr. I read several books on voice work, found a plastic microphone out there, and created my first gig on Fiverr.com. You too can start very simply and upgrade as you learn and earn. I grew a little with each job. I made mistakes. I learned how to correct them and eventually avoid them. As I gradually improved my voice skills, I also updated the microphones and the software involved.

By choosing to work limited hours, for three years, I was paid over $ 7,000 to learn voice over work by doing voice over work from day one. I finished 450 professional audio jobs! To my surprise, they got 100% satisfaction ratings. I canceled a couple of “tough buyers”, but it was great to work with just about everyone else. Buyers know they are getting a great deal, they want the services to work, and they are generally very supportive.

In addition to recording the traditional voiceover scripts, I found that I especially love voice acting. Who knows? Yes, self-discovery is one of the rewards for designing and doing the work you love. I was soon the dramatic voice of pushy reporters, worried and brooding presidents, creepy evil villains, doting parents, haunting alien predators, and a variety of WWII generals and battle-weary soldiers. These recordings, and hundreds more, now appear in movies, television, video games, the Internet, and corporate audio systems on multiple continents.

I also found that I love doing educational storytelling for children about whales, stars, and dinosaurs. I made endless commercial messages. I was even able to narrate several entire books. An influential Dale Carnegie classic was way ahead of its time. Another book taught planning and financial literacy. The book I was most honored to record was “A Summary of Things Falling Apart for Chinua Achebe.” It summarized the life and novels of the powerfully inspiring “father of African literature,” Chinua Achebe.

I loved being able to jump right into real voice work and learn the trade by doing real projects. And I especially liked that they paid me to learn. If I count the $ 15,000 I saved on formal training, plus the $ 7,000 I earned from doing voice work, this independent path put more than $ 20,000 ahead of me! If someone prefers traditional training methods, there is nothing wrong with that. Personally, I found freelance work most exciting and engaging.

When you do a job that you love, which invites you to become self-employed, you are much more likely to meet like-minded spirits and find related opportunities that really suit you. There are immediate, and then secondary, benefits to following your heart on the job. While practicing voice work, I also learned how to edit the audio of my own recordings. I later used that experience to teach an online audio editing class.

Now, the combination of my original voice over training and those audio editing skills has allowed me, really empowered me, to teach online. (And yes, they’ve been praised for their exceptional audio quality!) Unexpected benefits are more likely to come when you follow a path with heart. Now I know that it is possible to make a long-term dream come true through carefully chosen freelance work. Do you want to get paid for a job that you would happily do for free? How would you design the kind of work or service that – I now admit – you would really love to do?