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I'm a Buyer....CAN SOMEONE HELP ME NAVIGATE THROUGH THE NONSENSE!


frhughes

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I’ve been trying to get a a website designed for 2 months now and you freelancers…LIE …LIE …LIE…AND MAKE IT REALLY HARD FOR US HARD WORKING INDIVIDUALS OUT HERE TO TRUST YOU!

Why isn’t “fiverr” screening these individuals more?

Fiverr needs to get involved more with helping “buyers” weed out the “deadbeats”.

I’ve wasted 2 months of my life just trying to get a website designed. This is crazy. I’m scared to book any work on this site because you “freelancers” lie!

Most of the more affordable ones, are from overseas and there’s like a 10 hour difference. When I’m sleeping they’re awake.

Is there any tricks or anyway to find “freelancers” that understand the importantance of “good communication”… and know how to be professional and courteous?

I feel like most of these people are “freelancers” because they cant cut it in the… “real world” and seem to be “very unprofessional”.

CAN SOME ONE HELP ME NAVIGATE THROUGH THE NONSENSE!

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I’ve been trying to get a a website designed for 2 months now and you freelancers…LIE …LIE …LIE…AND MAKE IT REALLY HARD FOR US HARD WORKING INDIVIDUALS OUT HERE TO TRUST YOU!

Why isn’t “fiverr” screening these individuals more?

Fiverr needs to get involved more with helping “buyers” weed out the “deadbeats”.

I’ve wasted 2 months of my life just trying to get a website designed. This is crazy. I’m scared to book any work on this site because you “freelancers” lie!

Most of the more affordable ones, are from overseas and there’s like a 10 hour difference. When I’m sleeping they’re awake.

Is there any tricks or anyway to find “freelancers” that understand the importantance of “good communication”… and know how to be professional and courteous?

I feel like most of these people are “freelancers” because they cant cut it in the… “real world” and seem to be “very unprofessional”.

CAN SOME ONE HELP ME NAVIGATE THROUGH THE NONSENSE!

Most are from over seas and there’s like a 10 hours difference. When I’m sleeping their awake.

We need some more specific examples of what has gone wrong exactly.

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I’ve been trying to get a a website designed for 2 months now and you freelancers…LIE …LIE …LIE…AND MAKE IT REALLY HARD FOR US HARD WORKING INDIVIDUALS OUT HERE TO TRUST YOU!

Why isn’t “fiverr” screening these individuals more?

Fiverr needs to get involved more with helping “buyers” weed out the “deadbeats”.

I’ve wasted 2 months of my life just trying to get a website designed. This is crazy. I’m scared to book any work on this site because you “freelancers” lie!

Most of the more affordable ones, are from overseas and there’s like a 10 hour difference. When I’m sleeping they’re awake.

Is there any tricks or anyway to find “freelancers” that understand the importantance of “good communication”… and know how to be professional and courteous?

I feel like most of these people are “freelancers” because they cant cut it in the… “real world” and seem to be “very unprofessional”.

CAN SOME ONE HELP ME NAVIGATE THROUGH THE NONSENSE!

Most are from overseas and there’s like a 10 hours difference. When I’m sleeping they’re awake.

Indeed you are talking about Asian people like me. But some of us don’t even sleep… Can you explain the issue in more details?

Is it a problem with time or with work?

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I post jobs and I’m very specific about my needs so there is no “misunderstanding”…They seem to just “ignore my post”…and bid on the job without reading any of my request.

When I ask them to read it. They say they did and continue to ask me questions that are in the “job request posted”…

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Most are from overseas and there’s like a 10 hours difference. When I’m sleeping they’re awake.

Indeed you are talking about Asian people like me. But some of us don’t even sleep… Can you explain the issue in more details?

Is it a problem with time or with work?

It’s a communication problem and a respect problem. They have no respect for other peoples time and they communicate very sloppily for someone who wants you to trust them with a job.

It’s just not very professional and when I explain this to them …They either “lie” about understanding or they get frustrated and decide after long periods of me trying to communicate that they cant do the job…

Which really means if they have to be “professional”…They don’t want to deal with it.

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It’s a communication problem and a respect problem. They have no respect for other peoples time and they communicate very sloppily for someone who wants you to trust them with a job.

It’s just not very professional and when I explain this to them …They either “lie” about understanding or they get frustrated and decide after long periods of me trying to communicate that they cant do the job…

Which really means if they have to be “professional”…They don’t want to deal with it.

So the problem is communication or maybe your job request gets tough enough for them to start avoiding you. Some tips for you.

1. Look for a level2 / Top Rated sellers with good reviews in the specific field.

2. Refine your request and contact with few seller at once. I mean summarize your request.

3. Wait for their response analyze their response accordingly and understand their capability and choose one to discuss your project with

I hope this will help.

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Website design is not something you should be hiring from BR. There are experienced, good sellers bidding but they are rather sparse, most of the bidders are desperate for any job.

I recommend you hire from gig page, level 2 or TRS. Check their profile and all their gigs description to ensure a solid, well written and engaging wordings.

Look at their profile picture and gig picture to see If it’s been stolen off of Google. If they pass all, inbox them, not with requirements but a simple test question. If they reply with incoherent writing, say never mind and move on.

If you end up having a nice conversation, ask them to fix or design a small section for minimal cost.

I always test sellers with small purchase, regardless of level, on 1st gig before forking out a big “dough.” Experienced sellers know this, frankly, great sellers are as skeptical working with you as you are with them.

Edit: Almost all sellers have 5 star or good reviews, so don’t bother wasting your time reading. I mean don’t pick the only seller with a 4.5 review, but I think you get the picture.

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I share your sentiment a lot. During my search for a reliable service provider (seller) I found it is extremely difficult and the ratings/reviews offer very little help if at all. After the initial disappointment on Fiverr as a whole (I am not alone) I managed to find a good service provider, partially by luck and partially being cautious.

IMO rating 4.8 and 5.0 do not make much differences, since we do not know the 1% situation that makes the difference. But, rating text with extremely short sentences and exclamation point at the end is a red flag. The most notorious is “Outstanding Experience!” that almost certainly signals unnecessary risks for a buyer.

My experience is to have extensive chats with the sellers, not asking for free stuff, but to test his/her intelligence and willingness to listen and the ability to understand what you want. In my own experience about 20% of the sellers can pass the interview process. After that you can check the quality of the samples more carefully then make sure the samples are original (plenty of copying around) by doing reverse image searches. Once you get down to 2 or 3 options then you can discuss pricing and other technical details, you do all these before ordering.

EDIT: the most successful sellers, those who always have 30-50 jobs in queue, could be an agent or reseller. IMO I can’t trust them but I am sure they are successful for a reason. I prefer individuals who took time to listen and understand. They are usually not the cheapest, not the fastest, and not the best rated. But in the end you get the impression it is a real person who is a professional and is willing to do the job. It is possible the ideal seller has bad reviews maybe 5 in a year, I would not worry it too much. All in all it is just like a job interview, you screen the candidates, to reduce the failure rate

EDIT2: so say you spend soem time like an hour or two working with a seller and get the job done, you are happy with the result, showed it to your boss, did the google reverse search, and will use the result in your company’s project. Now come rating time, you want to leave a text feedback and all you can write is empty but instead let’s just spend 2 minutes going through rating questions give it all five stars then put a piece of auto-generated text “Outstanding Experience!”. That’s all BS. If this process was real the buyer is determined to have the feedback show up, the buyer is likely add more than two words in the feedback. If the seller have most of the feedback as “Outstanding Experience!” that seller is a risk not worth taking. Some self claimed experts do not have the basic idea of buying and possibly never left a feedback before.

During my search I found many such sellers, often level two sellers with great rating history (just shows how ineffective the internal metrics are) looking like completely jokes. Their main common attribute is the widespread “Outstanding Experience!” in many of the feedback supposedly by real buyers. Take the following case as an example, perfect 5.0 rating, perfect feedback history, level 2. But his first sample image is a collection of known commercial logos. Do a reverse image search his second and third images are from http://www.freepik.com this is the type of sellers who feature high percentage (3 out of top 5 reviews) “Outstanding Experience!” the magic word. Is this seller completely fake? maybe not but at the same time too risky to consider

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We have almost all countries and cultures here. For web design communication and a proven track record is important and you won’t find that in buyer’s request. There are a handful of web designers I would contact who are level two sellers. I don’t think there are any top rated sellers who do this and this is a wide open area for anyone who is truly professional and talented.

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No need to be disrespectful. You dont know the predicament people are in. Saying “freelancers” can’t “make it in the real world” is condescending and unnecessary. This is the only oppertunity for alot of “those people”. Change your attitude and “be patient”.

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I’ve been trying to get a a website designed for 2 months now and you freelancers…LIE …LIE …LIE…AND MAKE IT REALLY HARD FOR US HARD WORKING INDIVIDUALS OUT HERE TO TRUST YOU!

Why isn’t “fiverr” screening these individuals more?

Fiverr needs to get involved more with helping “buyers” weed out the “deadbeats”.

I’ve wasted 2 months of my life just trying to get a website designed. This is crazy. I’m scared to book any work on this site because you “freelancers” lie!

Most of the more affordable ones, are from overseas and there’s like a 10 hour difference. When I’m sleeping they’re awake.

Is there any tricks or anyway to find “freelancers” that understand the importantance of “good communication”… and know how to be professional and courteous?

I feel like most of these people are “freelancers” because they cant cut it in the… “real world” and seem to be “very unprofessional”.

CAN SOME ONE HELP ME NAVIGATE THROUGH THE NONSENSE!

I’ve been trying to get a a website designed for 2 months now and you freelancers…LIE …LIE …LIE…

I’ve wasted 2 months of my life just trying to get a website designed. This is crazy. I’m scared to book any work on this site because you “freelancers” lie!

Most of the more affordable ones, are from overseas and there’s like a 10 hour difference. When I’m sleeping they’re awake.

Im a new buyer here too, so do feel your pain and frustration. But the overseas thing is just one of those things. You can see where a seller is before you open any negotiations with them. Fiverr even tells you if it may take some time to get a response when its night time in their country. If this is an issue for you just use sellers in countries with time zones closer to your own. Or arrange a time with a seller that’s best for communication at the start and end of each other’s days, so you can synchronise with one another when you’re both awake. You have to decide if the affordability of an overseas seller is worth it for the incovenience of delayed communication. If not, buy more local.

The lying is more of a concern to me though if that’s the case. Without naming and shaming can you give a bit more of a clue as to what sellers are lying about? I know pricing often seems to be higher than the stated gig prices when it comes to getting a quote. Often this is just about reading the gig descriptions carefully and understanding what’s included and what isn’t, but I have experienced one seller who was having a laugh with his quotes versus his advertised pricing.

Yes, I’ve also found that sellers don’t always read the messages they are sent, and then ask questions that they don’t really need to. It does sometimes feel like people are just saying yes to an enquiry regardless of, or without even reading, what a buyer wrote in their first enquiry. Maybe that joust boils down to human nature. You have to remember that Fiverr is never going to be about top end professional services and professional customer service at the end of the day. Not at prices starting from $5. That’s not excusing bad service at all - its just realism.

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The overseas issue shouldn’t necessarily be a problem - I am frequently 10+ hours away from some of my buyers and we communicate effectively just through messaging. Sure I might get a message while I’m asleep, but I address it as soon as I can.

Being generalist and claiming that freelancers all lie is a very unfair statement to make. I echo everyone’s sentiment here in saying that the buyers request area can be very dodgy and is not the ideal place to go hunting for something as intricate and advanced as web design. I agree that you should look through top rated or level two sellers and choose from there. Sure you may pay more, but in the freelancing world that’s how it works. As someone cleverly said on the forum awhile ago, I can’t remember who it was now but “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”

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To be honest, it sounds like you might be on a budget which a high-quality seller simply might not be able to work with. If you don’t like things like time differences, look for a seller based in your country.

Designing a website is far from easy. I need to design a site at the moment and there is a seller on Fiverr who is absolutely perfect for what I need doing. The thing is, I can’t afford him. In this case, I’m using my time trying to get a head start myself, before potentially passing on what I have done to someone to help me tidy things up.

Fiverr is great for one-stop pieces of work like writing, graphic design etc. When it comes to open-ended projects like web design, however, it’s not really reasonable to expect to find budget buyer requests sellers who will be able to provide the same level of service as a more carefully sourced seller from your own country or region.

The best thing you can do is get your server, domain name, and everything else set up so that you can send your cpannel log into the person you end up working with. Before you do that, though, find a similar site which you would like to emulate the general theme and feel of. Next list exactly the kind of features you need on your site and break these down so that they are clear and easy to understand.

i.e. Don’t say you need an email contact form so that people can arrange to buy your amazing makeup and get 30% off by mentioning a certain discount code. - Just say you need an email contact form.

It is important to create as technical but also as matter of fact a brief as possible as if you don’t many good sellers won’t be interested in working with you. Yes, you need to have good communication but if you come across as a budget buyer who is going to be extremely communication heavy, this will scare people away.

Just draw up a plan of what you need, post a new BR and start actively messaging sellers who have good reviews and will be happy to answer a couple of questions.

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I share your sentiment a lot. During my search for a reliable service provider (seller) I found it is extremely difficult and the ratings/reviews offer very little help if at all. After the initial disappointment on Fiverr as a whole (I am not alone) I managed to find a good service provider, partially by luck and partially being cautious.

IMO rating 4.8 and 5.0 do not make much differences, since we do not know the 1% situation that makes the difference. But, rating text with extremely short sentences and exclamation point at the end is a red flag. The most notorious is “Outstanding Experience!” that almost certainly signals unnecessary risks for a buyer.

My experience is to have extensive chats with the sellers, not asking for free stuff, but to test his/her intelligence and willingness to listen and the ability to understand what you want. In my own experience about 20% of the sellers can pass the interview process. After that you can check the quality of the samples more carefully then make sure the samples are original (plenty of copying around) by doing reverse image searches. Once you get down to 2 or 3 options then you can discuss pricing and other technical details, you do all these before ordering.

EDIT: the most successful sellers, those who always have 30-50 jobs in queue, could be an agent or reseller. IMO I can’t trust them but I am sure they are successful for a reason. I prefer individuals who took time to listen and understand. They are usually not the cheapest, not the fastest, and not the best rated. But in the end you get the impression it is a real person who is a professional and is willing to do the job. It is possible the ideal seller has bad reviews maybe 5 in a year, I would not worry it too much. All in all it is just like a job interview, you screen the candidates, to reduce the failure rate

EDIT2: so say you spend soem time like an hour or two working with a seller and get the job done, you are happy with the result, showed it to your boss, did the google reverse search, and will use the result in your company’s project. Now come rating time, you want to leave a text feedback and all you can write is empty but instead let’s just spend 2 minutes going through rating questions give it all five stars then put a piece of auto-generated text “Outstanding Experience!”. That’s all BS. If this process was real the buyer is determined to have the feedback show up, the buyer is likely add more than two words in the feedback. If the seller have most of the feedback as “Outstanding Experience!” that seller is a risk not worth taking. Some self claimed experts do not have the basic idea of buying and possibly never left a feedback before.

During my search I found many such sellers, often level two sellers with great rating history (just shows how ineffective the internal metrics are) looking like completely jokes. Their main common attribute is the widespread “Outstanding Experience!” in many of the feedback supposedly by real buyers. Take the following case as an example, perfect 5.0 rating, perfect feedback history, level 2. But his first sample image is a collection of known commercial logos. Do a reverse image search his second and third images are from http://www.freepik.com this is the type of sellers who feature high percentage (3 out of top 5 reviews) “Outstanding Experience!” the magic word. Is this seller completely fake? maybe not but at the same time too risky to consider

Firstly, I think it is important to be careful even about who you get advice from. While someone like Gina has been here a long time and bought thousands of dollars worth of gigs, there are others who are offering advice having only had one or two purchases and been on the site for just one month!

For example, a review saying “Outstanding Experience” should not be seen as a red flag because up to a month ago, it was actually the auto-text that was left when a buyer gave 5 stars but no comment!

Anyway, to get to your question about how to filter for good sellers - the first thing to be aware of is that there is definitely a lot of poor quality on the site, however labeling everyone in the same way as “you freelancers lie”, “cant cut it in the real world” and “seem to be very unprofessional” is not going to get you very far.

I would reject what you have said above and I am coming from a place of over 200 purchases with 80+ sellers. I think you did make it clear why you are having such problems. “Most of the more affordable ones” to me is a very clear sign that you are looking for extremely cheap work. You see on Fiverr, pretty much every standard service you find here is around 30-60% less than in the “real world”. By looking to the cheapest of the cheap as you seem to have, even putting price ahead of something as important as the ability to communicate, you are showing that it seems to be you who is not cutting it in the real world! 🙂 You can only cut price so much before quality suffers, if you then cut the price again you are likely to get scammers and rubbish - no matter what site or place you are looking, not just on Fiverr.

Below is an answer I gave last year on another site about how to sort for quality on Fiverr. Hope it helps. I also find it useful to create a budget which takes into account my own time calculated on an hourly rate and not just the financial aspect. This allows you to assess more than just price but also communication and value, as if you have to fix things up, explain things in more detail etc for a poor communicator, it may be worth paying a higher rate that saves your own time.

How do I sort for quality on Fiverr?

This is an excellent question and one that too few Fiverr buyers actually ask! Many simply order from the first seller they see and then wonder why they had a problem. Hiring a freelancer is easy but having a particularly good experience is not just a case of hiring a freelancer, on any platform. This is why agencies and middle-men exist.

To go directly to a freelancer yourself you need to be prepared to replace the middleman and do some work. If you are not prepared to do this then go to an agency instead!

Although I am a seller, I have also bought 125 times from approx 40 different sellers for a variety of services. Out of those, I have had 4 negative experiences, or actually just not positive experiences. 1 cancelled, 1 could not deliver on time, 2 delivered work that was outstandingly awful. In each of those, I received a refund. Every other experience was positive and this is not by accident or good luck. I could write pages in response to this but I will keep it to a few points.

I choose to have a mentality that leads to successful experiences on Fiverr.

Be Prepared

Buyers who do not know what they want are a nightmare. Would you believe some buyers will ask for a website, blog post, logo etc and give 1 or 2 short sentences as instructions? It’s true! How can a seller deliver what the buyer wants if the buyer does not tell them? You can almost never give too many instructions, but you must give them at the beginning, not after the seller has delivered. Sure, you can ask for modifications at the end - slight adjustments - not new concepts that you never mentioned before. Also, give as much time as possible, some of the best sellers have long delivery times. This also gives you the best chance of lower prices too.

Searching for Sellers

Using the Fiverr search and filters is straight forward and self explanatory. However, searching for quality takes some time. Check reviews (use the filter to check negative reviews). Check portfolios where possible. Check exactly what the gig description says, if it does not deliver exactly what you are looking for then contact the seller first. If your project is big, with a value of $100+ then I suggest doing a trial order with 3 or 4 sellers. For example, for website content. Place an order with 4 sellers you like the look of having checked their reviews and give them the same instructions. With most sellers, you will get between 100–600 words for $5. That’s a huge variation, how much will you save if you go for the cheapest, is the most expensive one worth the extra money? A paid sample of their work will answer those questions for you. Every seller’s work is individual and the result can be subjective. You may like the cheapest guy’s work best - lucky you!

Be prepared to work with the seller

You are hiring a freelancer, not buying from a vending machine. Having given all the information you can, be available to answer questions, approve drafts etc. The Fiverr app is excellent for this. It is one of the few apps that only sends you relevant notifications! Sometimes a quick Q and A through the app can make all the difference in the result and the time spent on an order.

You don’t like what you got? Don’t threaten a negative review, don’t ask for a cancellation - talk to the seller. Give detailed, relevant feedback and ask them to change it. I had a buyer who wanted a cancellation yesterday because he said my translation was not accurate and the grammar was terrible. I asked him to send me some examples of what he meant and he did. Having looked at it, there were no grammatical errors and the translations were accurate. Not being a native English speaker, he was going on what he “felt” was wrong. By giving feedback to me it meant I could assure him of the quality so he was happy to use it. It should be a team effort where everyone goes away satisfied.

Give the opportunity to change/fix errors without any penalty.

Having the mentality of working with a seller means that you should allow for little errors, as is normal in any workplace. Excessively complaining about little details in a big job is extremely annoying for sellers. Sure, these need to be fixed but just say so rather than threatening, whining or cancelling!

Be generous

My Fiverr rate is approx 33–50% less than what I charge elsewhere. The quality of work is the same. Most people on Fiverr have similar pricing structures. 20% of the fee goes to Fiverr. With the above in mind, if the seller does a good job, give an appropriate tip, I recommend around 20%. This also makes the seller more keen to work with you in the future. As a seller, I remember the buyers who tip and are easy to work with. If you are one of those, you will likely get a better price, better delivery time and some added extras/freebies.

Edit in response to an edit above which called my opinion on “Outstanding Experience” reviews BS:

EDIT2: so say you spend soem time like an hour or two working with a seller and get the job done, you are happy with the result, showed it to your boss, did the google reverse search, and will use the result in your company’s project. Now come rating time, you want to leave a text feedback and all you can write is empty but instead let’s just spend 2 minutes going through rating questions give it all five stars then put a piece of auto-generated text “Outstanding Experience!”. That’s all BS. If this process was real the buyer is determined to have the feedback show up, the buyer is likely add more than two words in the feedback. If the seller have most of the feedback as “Outstanding Experience!” that seller is a risk not worth taking. Some self claimed experts do not have the basic idea of buying and possibly never left a feedback before

Are you saying that you understand how every buyer thinks?

The majority of jobs on Fiverr are “microjobs” which are lower ticket items. If a job is bigger then perhaps I may choose to leave a detailed review but if it is a straight-forward job then I am not going to put in much effort on reviewing. It doesn’t mean the work was bad, it means I don’t have the time or the inclination to leave a review. I am not the type of person who buys a toaster on Amazon then feels the need to tell the world that the toast is perfectly golden but the noise of it popping up woke up my baby so therefore I am taking one star off.

I, like many other buyers, am a professional who has other things to do which I deem more valuable than giving a detailed review to a small job I have done. It’s easy to click the stars and show the seller I appreciate their work but I’m not going to wax lyrical about someone just doing the job I paid them $5-50 to do, its just not something I deem worth doing.

Edit 2

this is the type of sellers who feature high percentage “Outstanding Experience!” the magic word. Is this seller completely fake? maybe not but at the same time too risky to consider

Or, they do low-cost, low quality logos which are customizations of free-to-use images and as I mentioned above, the buyers have the attitude that it is a low cost service and rate in the way I mentioned above. If what you want are low cost customizations then that is what you get so why not rate 5 stars? Paying $45 for two logo concepts is extremely low, do you expect to get something spectacular and original for what would be less than an hour of a graphic designer’s time? If so then you should manage your expectations because that is totally unrealistic!

I personally wouldn’t buy that service but for many people, that is perfectly acceptable for what they need it for; a low budget blog, a churn and burn affiliate site etc.

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I share your sentiment a lot. During my search for a reliable service provider (seller) I found it is extremely difficult and the ratings/reviews offer very little help if at all. After the initial disappointment on Fiverr as a whole (I am not alone) I managed to find a good service provider, partially by luck and partially being cautious.

IMO rating 4.8 and 5.0 do not make much differences, since we do not know the 1% situation that makes the difference. But, rating text with extremely short sentences and exclamation point at the end is a red flag. The most notorious is “Outstanding Experience!” that almost certainly signals unnecessary risks for a buyer.

My experience is to have extensive chats with the sellers, not asking for free stuff, but to test his/her intelligence and willingness to listen and the ability to understand what you want. In my own experience about 20% of the sellers can pass the interview process. After that you can check the quality of the samples more carefully then make sure the samples are original (plenty of copying around) by doing reverse image searches. Once you get down to 2 or 3 options then you can discuss pricing and other technical details, you do all these before ordering.

EDIT: the most successful sellers, those who always have 30-50 jobs in queue, could be an agent or reseller. IMO I can’t trust them but I am sure they are successful for a reason. I prefer individuals who took time to listen and understand. They are usually not the cheapest, not the fastest, and not the best rated. But in the end you get the impression it is a real person who is a professional and is willing to do the job. It is possible the ideal seller has bad reviews maybe 5 in a year, I would not worry it too much. All in all it is just like a job interview, you screen the candidates, to reduce the failure rate

EDIT2: so say you spend soem time like an hour or two working with a seller and get the job done, you are happy with the result, showed it to your boss, did the google reverse search, and will use the result in your company’s project. Now come rating time, you want to leave a text feedback and all you can write is empty but instead let’s just spend 2 minutes going through rating questions give it all five stars then put a piece of auto-generated text “Outstanding Experience!”. That’s all BS. If this process was real the buyer is determined to have the feedback show up, the buyer is likely add more than two words in the feedback. If the seller have most of the feedback as “Outstanding Experience!” that seller is a risk not worth taking. Some self claimed experts do not have the basic idea of buying and possibly never left a feedback before.

During my search I found many such sellers, often level two sellers with great rating history (just shows how ineffective the internal metrics are) looking like completely jokes. Their main common attribute is the widespread “Outstanding Experience!” in many of the feedback supposedly by real buyers. Take the following case as an example, perfect 5.0 rating, perfect feedback history, level 2. But his first sample image is a collection of known commercial logos. Do a reverse image search his second and third images are from http://www.freepik.com this is the type of sellers who feature high percentage (3 out of top 5 reviews) “Outstanding Experience!” the magic word. Is this seller completely fake? maybe not but at the same time too risky to consider

If the seller have most of the feedback as “Outstanding Experience!” that seller is a risk not worth taking.

That is absolutely incorrect!

As has been explained, it was the response left by the Fiverr system when a buyer left a 5 star review, but no comment.

It’s only in recent weeks that it has changed and buyers have to leave some sort of comment which isn’t auto-generated.

By all means try to help, but please make sure the information you’re giving is correct - if you’re not sure, please ask - we’ll all be more than happy to help you.

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Every problem has a solution.
If you have a problem with time. You can first discuss about this problem with the seller, maybe the seller work according to your time or maybe you can find a time period where both feels comfortable to work with each other.

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There are just as many or more satisfied or happy buyers on Fiverr than dissatisfied. Too bad you want to categorize all sellers based your experience with website development. I never had a buyer give me a 5 star rating unless they felt I deserved it. Usually their praises came before they even did the feedback but the rating system is legit based on that’s buyer experience with a seller and the project involved. Otherwise, why would a seller give a 5 star rating unless they felt the service deserved it. I know I didn’t point a gun at the buyer’s head and say “rate me 5 stars or else”. The seller has zero leverage over how the buyer rates them.

I wish you luck in your journey.

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There are just as many or more satisfied or happy buyers on Fiverr than dissatisfied. Too bad you want to categorize all sellers based your experience with website development. I never had a buyer give me a 5 star rating unless they felt I deserved it. Usually their praises came before they even did the feedback but the rating system is legit based on that’s buyer experience with a seller and the project involved. Otherwise, why would a seller give a 5 star rating unless they felt the service deserved it. I know I didn’t point a gun at the buyer’s head and say “rate me 5 stars or else”. The seller has zero leverage over how the buyer rates them.

I wish you luck in your journey.

I know I didn’t point a gun at the buyer’s head and say “rate me 5 stars or else”.

Sshhh… Don’t give away our secret tactics! 🙂

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Firstly, I think it is important to be careful even about who you get advice from. While someone like Gina has been here a long time and bought thousands of dollars worth of gigs, there are others who are offering advice having only had one or two purchases and been on the site for just one month!

For example, a review saying “Outstanding Experience” should not be seen as a red flag because up to a month ago, it was actually the auto-text that was left when a buyer gave 5 stars but no comment!

Anyway, to get to your question about how to filter for good sellers - the first thing to be aware of is that there is definitely a lot of poor quality on the site, however labeling everyone in the same way as “you freelancers lie”, “cant cut it in the real world” and “seem to be very unprofessional” is not going to get you very far.

I would reject what you have said above and I am coming from a place of over 200 purchases with 80+ sellers. I think you did make it clear why you are having such problems. “Most of the more affordable ones” to me is a very clear sign that you are looking for extremely cheap work. You see on Fiverr, pretty much every standard service you find here is around 30-60% less than in the “real world”. By looking to the cheapest of the cheap as you seem to have, even putting price ahead of something as important as the ability to communicate, you are showing that it seems to be you who is not cutting it in the real world! 🙂 You can only cut price so much before quality suffers, if you then cut the price again you are likely to get scammers and rubbish - no matter what site or place you are looking, not just on Fiverr.

Below is an answer I gave last year on another site about how to sort for quality on Fiverr. Hope it helps. I also find it useful to create a budget which takes into account my own time calculated on an hourly rate and not just the financial aspect. This allows you to assess more than just price but also communication and value, as if you have to fix things up, explain things in more detail etc for a poor communicator, it may be worth paying a higher rate that saves your own time.

How do I sort for quality on Fiverr?

This is an excellent question and one that too few Fiverr buyers actually ask! Many simply order from the first seller they see and then wonder why they had a problem. Hiring a freelancer is easy but having a particularly good experience is not just a case of hiring a freelancer, on any platform. This is why agencies and middle-men exist.

To go directly to a freelancer yourself you need to be prepared to replace the middleman and do some work. If you are not prepared to do this then go to an agency instead!

Although I am a seller, I have also bought 125 times from approx 40 different sellers for a variety of services. Out of those, I have had 4 negative experiences, or actually just not positive experiences. 1 cancelled, 1 could not deliver on time, 2 delivered work that was outstandingly awful. In each of those, I received a refund. Every other experience was positive and this is not by accident or good luck. I could write pages in response to this but I will keep it to a few points.

I choose to have a mentality that leads to successful experiences on Fiverr.

Be Prepared

Buyers who do not know what they want are a nightmare. Would you believe some buyers will ask for a website, blog post, logo etc and give 1 or 2 short sentences as instructions? It’s true! How can a seller deliver what the buyer wants if the buyer does not tell them? You can almost never give too many instructions, but you must give them at the beginning, not after the seller has delivered. Sure, you can ask for modifications at the end - slight adjustments - not new concepts that you never mentioned before. Also, give as much time as possible, some of the best sellers have long delivery times. This also gives you the best chance of lower prices too.

Searching for Sellers

Using the Fiverr search and filters is straight forward and self explanatory. However, searching for quality takes some time. Check reviews (use the filter to check negative reviews). Check portfolios where possible. Check exactly what the gig description says, if it does not deliver exactly what you are looking for then contact the seller first. If your project is big, with a value of $100+ then I suggest doing a trial order with 3 or 4 sellers. For example, for website content. Place an order with 4 sellers you like the look of having checked their reviews and give them the same instructions. With most sellers, you will get between 100–600 words for $5. That’s a huge variation, how much will you save if you go for the cheapest, is the most expensive one worth the extra money? A paid sample of their work will answer those questions for you. Every seller’s work is individual and the result can be subjective. You may like the cheapest guy’s work best - lucky you!

Be prepared to work with the seller

You are hiring a freelancer, not buying from a vending machine. Having given all the information you can, be available to answer questions, approve drafts etc. The Fiverr app is excellent for this. It is one of the few apps that only sends you relevant notifications! Sometimes a quick Q and A through the app can make all the difference in the result and the time spent on an order.

You don’t like what you got? Don’t threaten a negative review, don’t ask for a cancellation - talk to the seller. Give detailed, relevant feedback and ask them to change it. I had a buyer who wanted a cancellation yesterday because he said my translation was not accurate and the grammar was terrible. I asked him to send me some examples of what he meant and he did. Having looked at it, there were no grammatical errors and the translations were accurate. Not being a native English speaker, he was going on what he “felt” was wrong. By giving feedback to me it meant I could assure him of the quality so he was happy to use it. It should be a team effort where everyone goes away satisfied.

Give the opportunity to change/fix errors without any penalty.

Having the mentality of working with a seller means that you should allow for little errors, as is normal in any workplace. Excessively complaining about little details in a big job is extremely annoying for sellers. Sure, these need to be fixed but just say so rather than threatening, whining or cancelling!

Be generous

My Fiverr rate is approx 33–50% less than what I charge elsewhere. The quality of work is the same. Most people on Fiverr have similar pricing structures. 20% of the fee goes to Fiverr. With the above in mind, if the seller does a good job, give an appropriate tip, I recommend around 20%. This also makes the seller more keen to work with you in the future. As a seller, I remember the buyers who tip and are easy to work with. If you are one of those, you will likely get a better price, better delivery time and some added extras/freebies.

Edit in response to an edit above which called my opinion on “Outstanding Experience” reviews BS:

EDIT2: so say you spend soem time like an hour or two working with a seller and get the job done, you are happy with the result, showed it to your boss, did the google reverse search, and will use the result in your company’s project. Now come rating time, you want to leave a text feedback and all you can write is empty but instead let’s just spend 2 minutes going through rating questions give it all five stars then put a piece of auto-generated text “Outstanding Experience!”. That’s all BS. If this process was real the buyer is determined to have the feedback show up, the buyer is likely add more than two words in the feedback. If the seller have most of the feedback as “Outstanding Experience!” that seller is a risk not worth taking. Some self claimed experts do not have the basic idea of buying and possibly never left a feedback before

Are you saying that you understand how every buyer thinks?

The majority of jobs on Fiverr are “microjobs” which are lower ticket items. If a job is bigger then perhaps I may choose to leave a detailed review but if it is a straight-forward job then I am not going to put in much effort on reviewing. It doesn’t mean the work was bad, it means I don’t have the time or the inclination to leave a review. I am not the type of person who buys a toaster on Amazon then feels the need to tell the world that the toast is perfectly golden but the noise of it popping up woke up my baby so therefore I am taking one star off.

I, like many other buyers, am a professional who has other things to do which I deem more valuable than giving a detailed review to a small job I have done. It’s easy to click the stars and show the seller I appreciate their work but I’m not going to wax lyrical about someone just doing the job I paid them $5-50 to do, its just not something I deem worth doing.

Edit 2

this is the type of sellers who feature high percentage “Outstanding Experience!” the magic word. Is this seller completely fake? maybe not but at the same time too risky to consider

Or, they do low-cost, low quality logos which are customizations of free-to-use images and as I mentioned above, the buyers have the attitude that it is a low cost service and rate in the way I mentioned above. If what you want are low cost customizations then that is what you get so why not rate 5 stars? Paying $45 for two logo concepts is extremely low, do you expect to get something spectacular and original for what would be less than an hour of a graphic designer’s time? If so then you should manage your expectations because that is totally unrealistic!

I personally wouldn’t buy that service but for many people, that is perfectly acceptable for what they need it for; a low budget blog, a churn and burn affiliate site etc.

@eoinfinnegan You just earned your keep for the month on that reply! A pint for you and treats for the pooches.

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