I get too many orders and have to set vacation mode too often

[dscott88]

Hi, I’m an engineer but because life is so unpredictable I’ve been working as an English-Spanish translator for almost 4 years.
I’ve slowly gained ground on fiverr, and usually have many orders to deliver in the span of a couple of days, so I have to set vacation mode to be able to deliver everything on time without getting more requests.

How do you people handle this? Is this a signal that I should increase my pricing again? When I increase my pricing I always fear I’m going to lose clients, but so far I’ve always got new ones. But if I increase it again I’ll be charging as much as the top in my field on fiverr, and I’m not sure how things would turn out with this being my only source of income right now.

[lucycodex]

There is actually a setting in your gig menu that only allows X amount of gigs to be on your queue at once.

[mariokluser]

You are leaving a lot of money on the table.

[jamesbulls]

Embrace the law of scarcity.

If you’re in demand, this means that people see value in what you’re offering.

If you’re available to take orders 24/7/365, then this actually cheapens your value in the eyes of your potential buyers. There’s no urgency to buy because they think that they can come back at any time.

Also, if you’re occasionally unavailable it will give the impression - true or not - that you’re valuable. There are plenty of Walmarts open 24/7, but how many times have you ever seen a Tiffany’s open 24/7? Never. There’s a reason for that.

If you don’t want to enjoy the luxury of vacation mode, or impose a cap on your orders (which when reached puts you on vacation mode), then you have to either increase your prices or extend delivery time.

You can only select one of the following:

Fast and good, but expensive.
Fast and cheap, but low quality.
High quality and low price, but slow delivery.

[dscott88]

There is actually a setting in your gig menu that only allows X amount of gigs to be on your queue at once.

I know about that, but orders are not always the same. Sometimes I have 8 orders in queue that are pretty straighforward and short texts, but sometimes I have 3 that are very long documents, so I limit the work manually with vacation mode.

[dscott88]

Embrace the law of scarcity.

If you’re in demand, this means that people see value in what you’re offering.

If you’re available to take orders 24/7/365, then this actually cheapens your value in the eyes of your potential buyers. There’s no urgency to buy because they think that they can come back at any time.

Also, if you’re occasionally unavailable it will give the impression - true or not - that you’re valuable. There are plenty of Walmarts open 24/7, but how many times have you ever seen a Tiffany’s open 24/7? Never. There’s a reason for that.

If you don’t want to enjoy the luxury of vacation mode, or impose a cap on your orders (which when reached puts you on vacation mode), then you have to either increase your prices or extend delivery time.

You can only select one of the following:

Fast and good, but expensive.

Fast and cheap, but low quality.

High quality and low price, but slow delivery.

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate the new perspective.

From the options you mentioned, the first one sounds like the most fitting for me. I once tried to offer fast, good, and cheap work and it was madness, I could barely sleep. But it helped me get traction on the site.

[Anna]

You are too cheap. Raise your prices. If you are good, clients will still come back to you.

That way you will still generate the same $$ if not more with less stress. You have enough reviews to back you up. Be confident in your work and service and take a leap of faith ;).

[eoinfinnegan]

If I told you that an average price for English/Spanish translation by an agency is $40/1000 words and that it is likely many of your clients are reselling your work for 5 or 6 times what you earn, would you ask yourself why you are doing that?

You could double your price and still be good value, even going up by 50% should not affect you too much.

[writer99025]

Raise your prices! (20 char)

[dscott88]

Thank you all for your feedback, I’m going to polish my profile and reduce the number of words offered for $5, thus raising the prices.

[madyr9228]

If I told you that an average price for English/Spanish translation by an agency is $40/1000 words and that it is likely many of your clients are reselling your work for 5 or 6 times what you earn, would you ask yourself why you are doing that?

You could double your price and still be good value, even going up by 50% should not affect you too much.

Last year, I had to get a work contract professionally translated and the lady charged $45 a page. There were 2 pages and only 800 words TOTAL. She makes a lot of money. I am just commenting to second what you said. Haha