Tag: lifestyle

Earning Travel Money: Fiverr

Published on by LostViivi5 Comments

“Earning Travel Money: Fiverr” or maybe better said

 

My First Month In Fiverr To Earn Extra Travel Money:
What You Should And Shouldn’t Do…

 

I have been super busy lately and so had hard times having time to write blog posts. I was trying to come up with easy to write post idea when it was standing right in front of me. Big part of my busy schedule has been earning money in Fiverr. If you don’t know what this site is about you will soon find out!

What is Fiverr?

I think we have talked about this before here in my blog but Fiverr is internet site that lets you work as freelancer for anyone wanting to buy your services. Fiverr takes small part of your earnings for providing you the easy way of finding jobs.

What can you do in Fiverr?

Literally anything. I have been doing translation and blog writing but you should decide the jobs depending what you are good at. Give advises, take photographs or teach languages. I have also seen people sending post cards, cursing people or depending to be someone’s boyfriend online. Any gift you have can make money for you in Fiverr.

If you can’t come up with any gig ideas you should look ‘buyer requests’ board where anyone can search workers for their projects. I have found few interesting projects to take part from here so I can totally recommend using it.

My Tips

So now you have been introduced to the amazing world of Fiverr and I bet you want try it too. I mean who wouldn’t? Specially if you are traveller extra money is always handy. I have learned many thing in this short month so I wanted to share them with you. Enjoy this list of things you should and shouldn’t do in Fiverr:

  • Don’t expect someone to hire you just because they contacted you. I have been contacted by many people telling me about their super interesting projects. We have been talking for few days and then they stop answering to my messages. Don’t feel offended they have probably found someone more fitting for their project or someone who is cheaper than you. Or they just decided to not hire anyone.
  • Always answer for everyone. If you don’t answer in your profile “Response Rate” percents are going down. And yes you need to answer even if they say something stupid. And you need to be the one who gets last word in every conversation. For me as quiet Finn this is super hard and sometimes my response bar has been under 50%.
  • If you start to regret promising to do gig just cancel it. Same goes if you realize you can’t do what you have promised. I had one $60 dollars gig that I realized was too big and hard for me to handle. I told to the orderer that it was too much for me and then cancelled the gig. It is easy!
  • Count how long it takes to finish your gig and decide the price with that in your mind. How much is your hourly wage? I decided right away when starting Fiverr that mine would be a little under 10$. When you get better you can decide to get more money per hour.
  • Watch out for cheaters! Some people will try to cheat you and make you work without pay. Be careful and you should be okay
  • Use the ‘holiday’ mode when you are busy. When you are on holiday mode in Fiverr people can’t order from your gigs. Use this when you are too busy to work in Fiverr.
  • Be friendly and always do the works as well as you can. Even if it may seem like few euros gig isn’t worth of doing properly you never know what can come out of that small gig. People tend to first buy small gig and if you do well they will order more. So if take every work seriously there is better change of getting bigger and better paying gigs.

My First Month in Fiverr

So now you may be interested how well have I done in my first month. I have to say I was surprised by the amount of gigs I have done! 13 gigs and earned $200 in my first month. It has taken me approximately 20 hours of work and too many cups of tea.

My first gig was translating product descriptions and made me totally anxious. I know I can write well in Finnish and I know I am fluent in reading English however I had never done any translation work. Surprisingly the client liked my translation. I got four stars out of five (because few compound mistakes with the product names) and new order from them.

After that first gig I have only got five stars out of five stars review and positive feed back out of my translations. Apparently I am quite good at it, who would have guessed! So my first month went mostly doing translations and getting better and quicker at it. In the end of September I saw someone searching for Finnish travel blog writer and I got my first article writing job. And apparently I am quite good at that too!

Right now during my second month I have done more article writing, longer translations and archived level two as seller. So I could say I’m totally hooked to Fiverr.

 

Do you have any experiences from Fiverr? Or other sites like it? I’m always happy to hear your stories and experiences!

So today I had to break off from my Friday posting schedule because we returned from London yesterday. Guess what that means! Next Friday you will get travel diary from my trip to London. If you want to have sneak peek to what I did check out my INSTAGRAM photos.

With love

Viivi Severina

 

Travel Rant: Being Scared of Taxis

Published on by LostViivi12 Comments

I’m going to start this post with confession:

I’m scared of taxis!

I know this sounds crazy for some of you so let me explain a little bit before we start. In Finland we don’t really use taxis that much. It’s more something older or drunk people do. So I have driven taxi in my home country only for few times. Because of that I haven’t been very eager to use taxis in foreigner countries.

I never planned to talk about this insane fear of mine. Well at least not until I got email from company named Ride.Guru. You see the closer I have come to my one thousand readers the more I have started to get emails from different brands. I read all of those messages and see if there is any I want to introduce for you.

Ride.Guru was the first one that caught my eye enough to make me mention them for you (and no this is not paid post. I just really fell in love with their idea!) I think because of them I will more confidently use taxis starting from now on. And their ‘ask the guru‘ section has already helped me to get know more about the “new things” like Uber and Lyft. I may soon be there asking too many questions…

However today we talk about my experiences using taxis while traveling and why my fears are quite insane (like fears usually are…)

So my main reason for being scared of taxis is the price. How the heck can you know what will the ride cost?!? Using taxi seems expensive even if in some countries it may be cheaper and easier than public transportation. And it also is safer than using metro or bus at night time (especially for solo travellers).

For example taking taxi from Paris’ airport to our accommodation with my family was much cheaper than using train. The whole taxi ride I was in fear of huge bill but got happily surprised when it didn’t cost almost anything. Before our trip I had tried to find how much it would cost from different internet sites and forums but found nothing.

Another fear of mine is how to get taxi. Should I call or wave my hand around for all taxis on street? Well I can say now with some experience that this depends on where you are. Getting taxi from airport is easy. Getting taxi somewhere else is super scary (or is it just me?)

Apparently it isn’t as hard as I am imagining… Nowadays you can just use apps like Uber or websites or whatever to get taxi for yourself. And now when I can search from net the prices I think I can start using taxis more. Maybe even on my trip to London next week! I will update you later on if I did or did not have courage to try taxi travel in London.

Do you have any insane fears with transportation like I do? Or am I only one fearing taxi rides? And also if you have any good websites to recommend like Ride.Guru I recommend for you just mention them in comments. I’m always trying to find new places to research for my travels.

I hope you are doing well.
With love,

Viivi Severina

Travel Diary: City in 7 Hours

Published on by LostViivi11 Comments

Like I left my last travel diary we had to wake up at 6 am and soon after leave our cabin and the cruise ship to explore rainy Tallinn. It was my first time to Estonia which is surprising because most of the Finns have visited there at least once.

So we woke up, left the ship and arrived before seven at morning to the Tallinn’s old town. That early wake up did something good. The old town looked abandoned and we didn’t see anyone at that hour. Perfect moment to take photos without disturbing tourists.

For moment we took in the city and then our hunger grew so big we had to find the closest shop. Or we tried to find but got distracted by beautiful garden full of interesting art works. We walked past them and stopped to eat our breakfast cookies (because couldn’t find any shop). Of course right after that we did find the shop and went to buy our second breakfast.

We got some wondering looks from the local people when we went in and walked around aimlessly. We got even more odd looks when we bought chocolate cake. For our defense we were on holiday/adventure so eating something sweet before eight in the morning is acceptable! It was delicious (and cheap).

So after enjoying our odd second breakfast sitting on deserted park we continued our walk. There was still no people when we walked past the tall walls of the old town and it’s deep moat (guarded by birds not crocodiles.) The longer we walked the more people we started to see. Park’s caretaker, homeless man under bridge, people hurrying to work but no other tourists yet.

We walked up to the best observation spot in Tallinn (or so all the guide books say) and looked over the city. That may have been the moment I fell in love. I love old towns but Tallinn’s pastel colored buildings charmed me right away.

We visited some souvenir shops and wandered around without clear plan. No, we didn’t really plan anything before hand so our time went to thinking what to do next. Then we decided to stop by in the tourist information and almost took two hours long free walking tour. We however noticed that our time was ending too soon so no time for the tour.

Then we exited the old town and went shopping because what would Tallinn trip be without huge bags of stuff to take home. We found lovely shop from Viru mall. The clothes were cheap, cool and funny. Everything I look out for when shopping.

It was starting to be dinner time so we walked back towards the old town to find restaurant. On our way we somehow ended up in Tallinn’s biggest bookshop. We both love books so rather than eating we spend over an hour getting lost between the shelves full of books.

And so I bought some more stuff! I bought three notebooks that had inspiring travel text in them (one of them above). How would I have left those inspiring notebooks to the shelf? I’m always in need of more wanderlust notebooks.

One fun thing (well, for us but not for the people outside…) was huge rain starting right after we entered the bookstore. It had been sunny for a while but when we walled towards the shop here and there few water drops came down. We went inside the shop and the sky broke down. Mother nature loves me!

So after the fierce book shopping we were super hungry and decided to finally hunt down some food. Finding restaurant wasn’t easy but in the end we sat down to the terrace of restaurant called Scheeli. (I recommend!)

All the other restaurants were full but in this one we were the only customers. We were joking about the food probably being bad or maybe the dishes were super tiny. Then the waiter gave us plates that didn’t look like the things we ordered and had only small amount of food in them.

The small dish we were scared would be our 14 euros meal but ended up just being gift from the chef.

We were laughing awkwardly and for moment were scared that we had really paid for those small portions. Fortunately the waiter told us it was gift from the chef. And before our food we even got fresh bread.

The real food we ordered, succulent corn chicken with potato-carrot purée, mushroom fricassee, flat peas and cheese sauce (14 €), was amazing! The staff were nice and funny so I totally recommend this place if you ever visit Tallinn.

Our real meal that was so good!

After all the hassle with food we only had a little time before our cruise would left back Finland. We went to buy some souvenir candies and walked back to the port. This time the mother nature decided to hate us because it started to rain and when we got back to the ship we (and all our things) were totally soaked.

And this basically was it. Maybe a little boring for you to read but super fun trip for me. My first time to Tallinn and new country to add on my list of places visited.

 

I will be writing again next Friday and then we are going to be talking about using taxis abroad! I was recently contacted by website called ride.guru and I totally fell in love with their site (No, I’m not paid to say this. I just sincerely like the idea they have.) You have to thank them that I even got this idea of writing about taxis.

So basically I have always been scared of riding taxis but still done it few times when traveling. Next Friday I will be talking about some of my experiences and tips for adventurers who are scared of taxis like I am.

Until then with love,

Viivi Severina

 

Travel Rant: Insane Courage

Published on by LostViivi18 Comments

 

I’m addicted to getting lost.

Walking unknown paths, not having map, getting scared of unfamiliar streets.

Some people would say I am crazy. And maybe that is why I keep most of my lost adventures secret from my loved ones. Traveling alone as twenty something girl looking all lost in country you have never visited before. Crazy? For me not.

It’s living. Having the feeling of something. Finding new places you would have never seen if you hadn’t taken the step towards scary and uncertain. Meeting people you would have never believed to know and finding unexpected friendships.

I used to live safely and never take the risks. My life was miserable and I didn’t know what was wrong with me. One quote changed my life. A couple of sentences that I chant in my head if I feel like going back to my safe but grim life.

“You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.” -Benjamin Mee, We Bought a Zoo

It took me twenty seconds to book my first three months solo trip to Japan.It took me twenty seconds to say yes when I was asked to come and visit people I didn’t even know properly to France. Twenty seconds insane courage to talk with stranger in train. (Later on because of her I got to see the local side of Tokyo.)

So when I go and don’t look my map. When I don’t know where I am or where should I go. I count the twenty seconds and follow the first idea coming to my mind. And then I go. Maybe I open the door of closest shop or take the small dirty looking back alley. I may be stupid doing it. I may even end up being scared for my life and safety. But never do I regret those twenty seconds.

I hope you will remember this later on in your life. Some decisions don’t need thorough thinking but bravery. Now ask yourself what you want to do with your life. 20 seconds what comes to your mind? For me it’s to travel and if you are reading my blog I bet for you it’s too. So another 20 seconds, don’t think too much and make your life your own.

.        .        .

I have been busy lately and got thrown to totally new environment without warning. So I thought this text was fitting one for me to publish now. It has been on my drafts folder for ages and I just haven’t found the right time for it to appear in my blog. No I needed reminder of that 20 seconds. It really helps.

With love,

Viivi Severina

Travel Diary: My Lovely Helsinki

Published on by LostViivi23 Comments

This past week has been busy one for me. I have been traveling around Finland and even did cruise abroad. A lot of new places and experiences on short time so a lot of travel diaries to write for you.

Today I’m going to tell about weekend adventure I did with one of my best friends. The idea for this trip started a few weeks back but we only bought the tickets week before leaving. Our destination was Tallinn, Estonia, but first we decided to spend day in Finland’s capital city Helsinki.

Today’s diary is going to be shortly about that day in Helsinki. Enjoy!

Our day in Helsinki was full of stormy clouds and rainy weather

Helsinki in Day

My mum drove us to the bus stop after nine in the Saturday morning and we had hour before our ride would leave. I had been bright like I’m every morning and decided not to take jacket with me. MISTAKE! We used the remaining hour to buy warm clothes from the super market close by.

The weather wasn’t on our side. It rained when we ran towards the bus and it rained the whole two hours ride to Helsinki. Rain became the norm of our trip. Whatever we decided to do the water was coming down from the sky. We didn’t let that dispirit us.

We had decided to start our day in Kiasma modern art museum. I have been there probably too many times and it’s one of my family’s yearly day trip destinations. My friend on the other hand had never visited this amazing museum.

I loved the exhibitions they had this time. Colorful and spectacular.

So after our daily dose of culture it was time to find something to eat. We of course decided pizza -eat as much as you can- buffet. No need for fancy meals because we were still in Finland.

Stomachs full we walked around in the rain. Saw some big attractions like Helsinki Cathedral. We even got lost in middle of running race in the bay area. The traffic was stopped and even trams weren’t moving. No idea what it was. All respect for the runners, I’m so lazy would never take part to event like that.

One of the amazing experiences we had happened in Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral. I have never seen Orthodox ceremony but ended going inside just in the middle of one. So interesting! It was more powerful and showy when compared to the Christian one I’m used to.

A little by little the black clouds were going away and the sun was starting to shine. What did we do? Went and bought ice creams! It’s Finn syndrome… Sun makes us crazy because we don’t see it enough.

We enjoyed the last sun beams and then walked towards the cruise terminal. Everything went fine in the boarding (odd because we had never done it by ourselves so I expected more problems!) we arrived to our cabin’s door safely and from there the “fun” began.

In the photo you can’t even see our cabin’s size. But basically it was made of toilet and living are. The toilet took over half of the cabin leaving just enough walking space for us. We had known it would be small but it’s size still surprised us… Fortunately it was going to be just one night so we survived.

After the shock and laughs for the situation we started to examine our “new home” more closely. That’s when I found information paper stating that we should leave our cabin before 6.45 at morning. Before seven!! Too early! Who the heck makes these cruise plans?

Because of the early wake up we then wanted to sleep early but next problem was waiting for us. The bottom bed was meant to come out from the sofa taking over half of the living area. We were pulling it with all our strengths but could not open it. We tried good five minutes and were going to give up and go to the reception for help. Then I magically pullet and pushed and can’t even remember how but it finally opened.

After all the hassle it was time to sleep. Reluctantly we put our clocks to wake us at six and tried to rest the remaining few hours in the wildly swinging boat.

 

 

Next time: story from Tallinn’s old town

Wait for my next travel diary to hear about the day we spend in Tallinn! Have you ever been in cheap cruise? I think starting from now I will only take day cruises to Tallinn…

I hope you are having amazing day.
With love,

Viivi Severina