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Level Systems Update: What Fiverr Sellers Need to Know


mjensen415

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fiverr wants to earn more now

And why is this bad? Fiverr is a business. The goal of any business is to earn, build, and grow profit. Fiverr is well within their rights to design ways to improve their revenue.

I am havent termed it bad. I just indicated that fiverr is shifting from low earning place to higher earning side.

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Hey @mjensen415, I only have two questions:

  1. seeing that every level requires 90% completion rate, if a TRS drops below that will they be demoted to no level at all?

  2. why is the completion rate taking into account mistake orders, chargebacks, orders from troublesome buyers who demand more work or something entirely different that the seller can’t provide, and so on?

Surely it cannot be fair to be demoted because of all those situations where the seller has absolutely no control over 😕

I mean, it’s not like it’s the seller’s fault when a buyer makes a mistake order, or tries to get away with free work or more work than advertised for the same money… What if competitors buy “by mistake” other peoples’ gigs just to demote them? 😦

I’m totally agree to woofy!

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As a top rated seller myself, I deliver things late, I rarely have above 80% in replies, but I maintain a high ranking and many awesome reviews. This is done by over delivering on orders and giving great customer service… and answering weekend messages on Monday… all of which these percentages cannot account for.

What really sucks is now I have to be with in 24 hours of something to answer messages on 7 days a week… for someone who already pulls 10+ hours a day on weekdays I am not looking forward to having to spend 2-3 hours Saturday and Sunday answering messages just to keep a percentage that means nothing to me above 90%. You will find that almost all buyers understand if you do not get back to them immediately on weekends, and if they do care that bad, they will just find another seller…

It doesn’t even solve the problem, it just creates more work for myself, because now instead of spending time on Monday thoroughly going through messages and send quotes, I’m going to have to make a saved response to explain that I can’t get back to them until Monday… which basically creates more work for myself… and doesn’t help me at all… except to keep a percentage up… and then I still have to get back to them on Monday… so just busy work for nothing.

This site really needs to have scheduled days off for top rated sellers, doing 10-15 hour days and then not getting any time to step away from the site is going to take its toll… it already is on me honestly. I mean I love this site it makes working for myself possible, but when you can’t get 1 or 2 days rest a week… it is very easy to get burnt out.

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New level standards show fiverr departure from its birth policy of $5 dollar to a strategic shift in pursuit of making it higher profit and competitive market place. New income bounds clearly suggests that its no more a $5 market place rather welcoming large revenue projects. This will quickly put low earning sellers out of lime light; serious business will go towards experienced and expensive sellers which would gradually flushed out new sellers. This policy is double edge knife. On one side it will provide skilled people a better chance to get paid and on other end it will blow away low earning skills and casual business gigs. Its evident that major improvements in project time limit, pricing and other areas will be seen to accommodate this strategic shift.

I see another possible positive effect of the new income based criterion for the sellers who play by the rules.

It might keep some sellers from using multiple accounts and thus ‘cluttering the marketplace’ (and hopefully all those people writing on other forums and in books that having multiple accounts is pretty much a prerequisite of success on Fiverr and make it sound the legit thing to do, will change their tune to spread the great secret tip that now ‘you should only have 1 account to hit the financial level threshold sooner’).

A point against account throwaway mentality too.


Like many others, I really have to wonder about the order completion criterion though.

The last time I had to look at a less than perfect rate every day for 60 days, for example, was when a client had ordered the same gig 3x instead of 1x, hence 2 cancellations in a row, which had happened because she had not seen any indication of her first 2 orders having gotten through.

And judging from how often buyers complain on the forum about bugs during payment (by far not all complain on the forum, as we all know, most people, buyers even more than sellers, don’t use the forum at all), this is a common cancellation reason.

Could we please get an answer to the question if indeed all cancellations for reasons that aren’t due to anything the seller could have done, even those due to Fiverr bugs, will count against us in the level evaluation process, or if such cancellation reasons are exempt, in line with what CS told many of us, that the system differs between ‘good and bad cancellations’? @mjensen415

Thank you.

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I see another possible positive effect of the new income based criterion for the sellers who play by the rules.

It might keep some sellers from using multiple accounts and thus ‘cluttering the marketplace’ (and hopefully all those people writing on other forums and in books that having multiple accounts is pretty much a prerequisite of success on Fiverr and make it sound the legit thing to do, will change their tune to spread the great secret tip that now ‘you should only have 1 account to hit the financial level threshold sooner’).

A point against account throwaway mentality too.


Like many others, I really have to wonder about the order completion criterion though.

The last time I had to look at a less than perfect rate every day for 60 days, for example, was when a client had ordered the same gig 3x instead of 1x, hence 2 cancellations in a row, which had happened because she had not seen any indication of her first 2 orders having gotten through.

And judging from how often buyers complain on the forum about bugs during payment (by far not all complain on the forum, as we all know, most people, buyers even more than sellers, don’t use the forum at all), this is a common cancellation reason.

Could we please get an answer to the question if indeed all cancellations for reasons that aren’t due to anything the seller could have done, even those due to Fiverr bugs, will count against us in the level evaluation process, or if such cancellation reasons are exempt, in line with what CS told many of us, that the system differs between ‘good and bad cancellations’? @mjensen415

Thank you.

Those are the exact loop whole everyone is indicating.

  1. Order cancellation
  2. Wrong gig purchase
  3. Completion time
  4. etc.

Actually being a business person i analyzed the new policy and summarized some major gaps in the new policy.

  1. Order structure

Order structure and mechanism is to incorporate a fixed requirement order and completion time is maximum 30 days. Now according to new TOR completion of order and earning is contradictory to that. An order of $400+ requires usually 20 days to complete so that doesn’t seems in harmony to have 10 orders and $400 dollars income. To incorporate a system must be flexible to incorporate changes and other mechanism of timing. Breaking a project in two orders is bad idea as in first phase you are not usually presenting a tangible deliverable which make a buyer suspicious and cause confusion. In short current order management system is not according to policy.

  1. System bugs & rigid system flows

    There are major system bugs which effects delivery time, response time and other analytic. System commits changes without context eg if you have already delivered the order and for any reason you deliver it again it marks it as late. Spam messages are counted in response time even they are technically bared from response. It clearly indicates that system is committing changes without context.

  2. Poor CS

    Fiverr customer service is one of the most poorest in marketplaces. They usually respond with per-written text which lacks solution. Secondly more disturbing thing is that they make account changes without taking all things in consideration. Like if you have received a warning 60 days before and you contact them they count those warnings with seeking their issue and expiration period.

  3. Gigs system

Gigs are restricted to offer service with < $1000 and in 30 days and provide fixed project system. Now that is not aligned to work flows of large systems which worth $1000 + with philosophy of changing requirements. Now system is running time counter and buyer is providing continuous requirements. Now either you say no to such projects or create a pusdo project cycle which is obviously has no platform protection.

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In order to maintain your level 2 you need to have a certain level of sales. And this is actually Fiverr’s job, not mine.

Seriously? No. It is NOT Fiverr’s job to give you sales. Is IS your job. It will ALWAYS be your job if you wand to stay in business. Your gigs are YOUR responsibility, not Fiverr’s.

Fiverr decides who gets listed first, and all I can do is wait.

Again, no, no you don’t. No one succeeds in life by waiting for success. Go out and grab it by the horns and teach it how to work for you. Your success is YOUR responsibility. Be a doer. Get out there and build your success, take action… DO something productive to reach your goals.

You do have goals, right?

How am I suppose to make sales? Do I go out in the highway with a sign?

If you think that will result in sales, then yes. Market your gigs. That’s how real world businesses find their customers. That’s how you can find your customers as well. reach out to your target customers, wherever they may be located. If you don’t tell them who you are, what you do, and where they can find you, you’re not going to make any sales.

Again, your success is YOUR responsibility. There is always something productive that you can do to grow your business. Waiting is not productive.

it’s not ME who controls my revenues, it’s Fiverr’s algorithm and ecosystem.

My goodness… You haven’t learned much about running a business, have you?

I strongly disagree with your opinion.

Fiverr is a marketplace, just like Amazon or Aliexpress. When a regular shop wants to sell more, they post their products on Amazon as a parallel form of revenue, because they trust Amazon will help them to sell more items as they are exposed to more customers. Obviously, if the product is overprized or useless, they won’t sell a dime, but let’s imagine for a moment the product is good enough and the prize is acceptable. Do you think this hypothetical shop owner will do a big marketing effort to gain exposure of his shop in Amazon? Nope. He or she is ready to give away part of his or her profit, because they know their volume of sales is going to increase, simply because Amazon has an enormous amount of traffic to expose those products to the masses. Amazon sends more customers to their sellers. That’s their job. In the same way, Fiverr is here to bring me customers. My job is to sell a good service.

See it this way: If a seller does the job and the marketing and the customer service, what does he need Fiverr for?

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And another thing guys, never offer your services at low prices, do samples for free, or give your contacts out of Fivver. It’s time to grow in Fivver.

Oh, see, I don’t agree with this. NEVER work for free here on Fiverr. Why would you? Time and resources cost money. Free samples have no profit associated with them – and you’re actually WASTING time and resources by giving things away for free. Are you a seller on Fiverr because you feel like running a charity for people that want free stuff? Or are you a seller on Fiverr because you want to share your talents with the world… and get paid for what you do?

As for your “give your contracts outside of Fiverr”, no, no, no, and no. I sincerely hope you’re not being serious with that statement. It is against the rules of Fiverr to communicate about your orders outside the Fiverr platform. Breaking this rule can easily result in unpleasant consequences.

@jonbaas please read my texts carefully, I just started the statement with “…never offer your services at low prices, do samples for free, or give your contacts out of Fivver” what is wrong with that??? You just misread my text. I bet you expected me to repeat the word “never” in all the subsequent verbs. No I follow English rules!

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I strongly disagree with your opinion.

Fiverr is a marketplace, just like Amazon or Aliexpress. When a regular shop wants to sell more, they post their products on Amazon as a parallel form of revenue, because they trust Amazon will help them to sell more items as they are exposed to more customers. Obviously, if the product is overprized or useless, they won’t sell a dime, but let’s imagine for a moment the product is good enough and the prize is acceptable. Do you think this hypothetical shop owner will do a big marketing effort to gain exposure of his shop in Amazon? Nope. He or she is ready to give away part of his or her profit, because they know their volume of sales is going to increase, simply because Amazon has an enormous amount of traffic to expose those products to the masses. Amazon sends more customers to their sellers. That’s their job. In the same way, Fiverr is here to bring me customers. My job is to sell a good service.

See it this way: If a seller does the job and the marketing and the customer service, what does he need Fiverr for?

See it this way: If a seller does the job and the marketing and the customer service, what does he need Fiverr for?

Hosting space, and the ease of not having to set up and maintain their own website, obviously.

Do you know how much work it is to build and maintain your own website. I do. Fiverr is a convenience in that regard. They let me have space on their website, in exchange for 20% of my profits. That’s a pretty sweet deal!

And, on the topic of sales, if it was, as you claim, Fiverr’s responsibility to bring sales, then why do they specifically indicate that they do not guarantee sales, just because a seller has a gig on Fiverr? The fact that they have said that sales are not their responsibility would seem to contradict your entire argument.

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See it this way: If a seller does the job and the marketing and the customer service, what does he need Fiverr for?

Hosting space, and the ease of not having to set up and maintain their own website, obviously.

Do you know how much work it is to build and maintain your own website. I do. Fiverr is a convenience in that regard. They let me have space on their website, in exchange for 20% of my profits. That’s a pretty sweet deal!

And, on the topic of sales, if it was, as you claim, Fiverr’s responsibility to bring sales, then why do they specifically indicate that they do not guarantee sales, just because a seller has a gig on Fiverr? The fact that they have said that sales are not their responsibility would seem to contradict your entire argument.

I happen to run an online business myself, with payment integration, hosting, file sharing over Amazon Cloud, ticketing system, I could go forever, and this does not represent 20% of my earnings. However, hosting, file sharing, payment processing AND marketing, yes. And needless to say, it’s much cheaper to design and maintain an infrastructure for 1.000.000 sellers than painstakingly build everyting from scratch for each and every one of them.

Of course Fiverr does not guarantee sales, I never said so. Read this:

Obviously, if the product is overprized or useless, they won’t sell a dime, but let’s imagine for a moment the product is good enough and the prize is acceptable.

If you sell a useless talent you will not get sales, and this is why Fiverr does not guarantee them. Fiverr, however, should guarantee EXPOSURE. Traffic. When you create a new gig, they say “let’s get some customers rolling” or something like that. That was my point. You could have the best gig ever, a bargain, the most amazing talent you could think of and sell it for 5 bucks, but if Fiverr drowns it to the last page, for reasons you cannot control, it will be like preaching in the desert. It’s at least 80% out of my reach to achieve sales on Fiverr because they handle exposure, not me. Hence if your level depends on this, it is a highly unfair method.

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Fivver is making its own initiative, and we are in forum discussing how good or bad it is for both the sellers and the buyers. So giving a personal opinion doesn’t change anything, but it makes us (seller/buyers) see how severe or beneficial the deal is. You should keep in mind that some of the sellers do buy products and services here on Fivver. As such, they benefit either way.

We are here to learn and handle issues together, this is a forum where no one should be intimidated at all cost of their expression unless otherwise.

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I happen to run an online business myself, with payment integration, hosting, file sharing over Amazon Cloud, ticketing system, I could go forever, and this does not represent 20% of my earnings. However, hosting, file sharing, payment processing AND marketing, yes. And needless to say, it’s much cheaper to design and maintain an infrastructure for 1.000.000 sellers than painstakingly build everyting from scratch for each and every one of them.

Of course Fiverr does not guarantee sales, I never said so. Read this:

Obviously, if the product is overprized or useless, they won’t sell a dime, but let’s imagine for a moment the product is good enough and the prize is acceptable.

If you sell a useless talent you will not get sales, and this is why Fiverr does not guarantee them. Fiverr, however, should guarantee EXPOSURE. Traffic. When you create a new gig, they say “let’s get some customers rolling” or something like that. That was my point. You could have the best gig ever, a bargain, the most amazing talent you could think of and sell it for 5 bucks, but if Fiverr drowns it to the last page, for reasons you cannot control, it will be like preaching in the desert. It’s at least 80% out of my reach to achieve sales on Fiverr because they handle exposure, not me. Hence if your level depends on this, it is a highly unfair method.

If you sell a useless talent you will not get sales, and this is why Fiverr does not guarantee them. Fiverr, however, should guarantee EXPOSURE. Traffic. When you create a new gig, they say “let’s get some customers rolling” or something like that. That was my point. You could have the best gig ever, a bargain, the most amazing talent you could think of and sell it for 5 bucks, but if Fiverr drowns it to the last page, for reasons you cannot control, it will be like preaching in the desert. It’s at least 80% out of my reach to achieve sales on Fiverr because they handle exposure, not me. Hence if your level depends on this, it is a highly unfair method.

So you market your gig elsewhere, on your own, and you bring in your own customers. Fiverr doesn’t owe you anything – except adherence to the terms of service they wrote for you, and both you, and Fiverr have agreed to when you opened your account.

And there’s nothing in that TOS saying, “sign up for an account, and we’ll put you on the first page, and guarantee that you have so many orders that you become rich in a week.” Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but I made my point.

Fiverr does not guarantee sales, visibility, or success. That’s just not in the Terms of Service. So, anyone complaining that Fiverr doesn’t give that to them, just because they want it, is just making noise in a noisy room.

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If you sell a useless talent you will not get sales, and this is why Fiverr does not guarantee them. Fiverr, however, should guarantee EXPOSURE. Traffic. When you create a new gig, they say “let’s get some customers rolling” or something like that. That was my point. You could have the best gig ever, a bargain, the most amazing talent you could think of and sell it for 5 bucks, but if Fiverr drowns it to the last page, for reasons you cannot control, it will be like preaching in the desert. It’s at least 80% out of my reach to achieve sales on Fiverr because they handle exposure, not me. Hence if your level depends on this, it is a highly unfair method.

So you market your gig elsewhere, on your own, and you bring in your own customers. Fiverr doesn’t owe you anything – except adherence to the terms of service they wrote for you, and both you, and Fiverr have agreed to when you opened your account.

And there’s nothing in that TOS saying, “sign up for an account, and we’ll put you on the first page, and guarantee that you have so many orders that you become rich in a week.” Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but I made my point.

Fiverr does not guarantee sales, visibility, or success. That’s just not in the Terms of Service. So, anyone complaining that Fiverr doesn’t give that to them, just because they want it, is just making noise in a noisy room.

Strawman fallacy, I see. You got your point clear, I got mine as well.

Thanks!

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See it this way: If a seller does the job and the marketing and the customer service, what does he need Fiverr for?

Hosting space, and the ease of not having to set up and maintain their own website, obviously.

Do you know how much work it is to build and maintain your own website. I do. Fiverr is a convenience in that regard. They let me have space on their website, in exchange for 20% of my profits. That’s a pretty sweet deal!

And, on the topic of sales, if it was, as you claim, Fiverr’s responsibility to bring sales, then why do they specifically indicate that they do not guarantee sales, just because a seller has a gig on Fiverr? The fact that they have said that sales are not their responsibility would seem to contradict your entire argument.

I think you are taking whole fiverr model wrong and even the tors. They dont sell us a space rather provide a platform which provides potential sales and govern the process. So people on fiverr opt selling by making a contract with fiverr. Its fiverr responsibility to create environment for high sales and better buying experience.

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I dont know why you are dragging an logical debate here or either you are too naive to understand fiverr model. We provide 20% to fiverr for providing good sales opportunity. And what they say is that you keep following good practices to have higher volume sales. Are you too dumb to understand that whole this ranking system , niches and other features are to ensure high flow of buyers to the market and full fulfillment of their work in satisfactory manner just like any good market. Learn little bit on markets working

I strongly think that you need to be mindful of your choice of words while making your argument.

While I think you are right, I do not think you should be too raw with your words.

It might interest you to know that fiverr does the marketing for their platform while they also encourage you to do for your gigs. We have seen sellers who advertise their gigs in social medias and have garnered more sales. I think that @jonbaas is also right. He wants you to promote your gig hence increasing your sales.

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I strongly think that you need to be mindful of your choice of words while making your argument.

While I think you are right, I do not think you should be too raw with your words.

It might interest you to know that fiverr does the marketing for their platform while they also encourage you to do for your gigs. We have seen sellers who advertise their gigs in social medias and have garnered more sales. I think that @jonbaas is also right. He wants you to promote your gig hence increasing your sales.

I am totally in agreement with you and i think you have understood my statement wrongly. I am not expecting fiverr to extra things for me but my point is that fiverr is a market place which govern rules for better sales experience. So market places work in that manner not they are sharing space.

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If you sell a useless talent you will not get sales, and this is why Fiverr does not guarantee them. Fiverr, however, should guarantee EXPOSURE. Traffic. When you create a new gig, they say “let’s get some customers rolling” or something like that. That was my point. You could have the best gig ever, a bargain, the most amazing talent you could think of and sell it for 5 bucks, but if Fiverr drowns it to the last page, for reasons you cannot control, it will be like preaching in the desert. It’s at least 80% out of my reach to achieve sales on Fiverr because they handle exposure, not me. Hence if your level depends on this, it is a highly unfair method.

So you market your gig elsewhere, on your own, and you bring in your own customers. Fiverr doesn’t owe you anything – except adherence to the terms of service they wrote for you, and both you, and Fiverr have agreed to when you opened your account.

And there’s nothing in that TOS saying, “sign up for an account, and we’ll put you on the first page, and guarantee that you have so many orders that you become rich in a week.” Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but I made my point.

Fiverr does not guarantee sales, visibility, or success. That’s just not in the Terms of Service. So, anyone complaining that Fiverr doesn’t give that to them, just because they want it, is just making noise in a noisy room.

I have seen fiverr adverts on social media. I think they do advert on their own too.

Yesterday, a client ordered my basic gig without contacting me. He ordered a gig which offers eBook of 3000 words for $40 and in his requirement, he ordered me to write eight articles of 500 words each. Remember, the gig he ordered was not an article writing gig, and the word count is 3000, yet he insisted that I write 8 articles of at least 500 words each. I have to cancel the order and it affected my cancellation rate. In this situation, do you think it was the fault of the seller or the buyer.

There is a Nigerian adage that says “it is wrong for a dog to be eating stool, while the teeth of the goat will be decaying.”

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I strongly think that you need to be mindful of your choice of words while making your argument.

While I think you are right, I do not think you should be too raw with your words.

It might interest you to know that fiverr does the marketing for their platform while they also encourage you to do for your gigs. We have seen sellers who advertise their gigs in social medias and have garnered more sales. I think that @jonbaas is also right. He wants you to promote your gig hence increasing your sales.

Like any market fiverr provides flows which are proven to provide a health experience and if correctly pursued they create results. As my self working for a long time in ERP industry an market place or a business system provides you a wining strategy and implements through flows. Thats what exactly fiverr does. These gigs, ranking, etc is to amount that philosophy of secure market with better sales volume. So any change in a strategic manner will be level of worry for many people. So point is see fiverr like a market rather making it a web space with no connection with sellers. I have i made my point clear

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Counting cancellation levels (Orders Completed) it’s just ridiculous. It shouldn’t be like that. Every week I have orders from buyers who don’t read description and ordering ridiculous things (I have an information to contact me before ordering in 2 places in the description and it does not help). It is not my fault that I have to mutually cancel the order.

Mutual cancellation shouldn’t be counted in the rating.

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Group-think has run rampant here…

Have you guys actually read through the blog post announcing the new level system?

Read it here: http://blog.fiverr.com/level-systems-update-what-fiverr-sellers-need-to-know/

Some rumors that are flying around here that I would like to try and clear up by reading the actual facts:

  1. You do NOT have to MAINTAIN a steady $20k or $2k in earnings every 120 days. The post clearly points out: “Don’t worry, doers—in the updated system, an existing seller cannot be demoted just because the earning isn’t as required in the updated terms. As long as you maintain your response rate, deliver complete orders on time, and continue to receive good ratings, you will keep your current level.”

  2. Yes, everyone is freaking out about the response rate metric of 90%. But if you read about what the response rate is, it isn’t the 1 hr response TIME. It is the 24 hour response rate. That means as long as you respond to all inbound messages within 24 hours, your response rate shouldn’t go down.

  3. They run evaluations every 30 days… so what this means is if your response rate is below 90% one month and you are a level 2 seller, you will be demoted to level 1 for at LEAST 30 days. If you can get your response rate back up in 30 days, you will be re-promoted up to level 2.

I think this is a very realistic representation of how the level system should work. i.e. If you are TRS, but you’re unable to get to all of the work you have (inbox is part of your work), then maybe you are too busy and level 2 might give you a little break for a month. Think about it from the buyers perspective: I recently messaged a TRS to inquire about some SEO work, it was in regards to a gig that promised a 24-hour turnaround. I didn’t hear back on my message for 2 days. How much confidence would I have that if I placed the gig order, it would get done on time? Now I ended up placing the order anyway because they had thousands of 5* reviews. And guess what? 22 hours into the order, I get a request to extend the order by 3 days.

This new level system is intentionally dynamic because we as sellers are dynamic in how we provide our products. (I hope that makes as much sense to you guys as it did in my head just now…) Fiverr is just adapting to people who are adaptable in real life.

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