Received my First Warning after 3 years!

[khalilseoexpert2]

Okay so let me begin from start, I am Khalil Ahmed a student of BS(hons) in computer Science. I started blogging and SEO like 4 to 5 years ago.and started giving Guest Posting services on Huffington Post (I had contributor account at that time). I started cheap like with 5$ per guest post (and now I think why would i give such service in just 5$). But anyhow I made up to 350$ and I mentioned it clearly in my gigs as well in my orders that I am a contributor and these posts will be live only till my account is live. So one day my contributor account got disabled. Hence the posts were gone as well. But Fiverr Support I don’t know why refunded 150$ worth of money (Even I had clearly stated everywhere that these are not permanent post etc). I got disappointed with that and left fiverr for like 2 to 3 years.
Then I came back last month, after learning a new skill (Programming) and started giving my services. I made some good money from that and got good orders as well. But after like 1 month (3 to 4 days ago), when I woke up I opened my eyes to see if their is any customer who would’ve sent me a message then I should respond immediately but I GOT A SURPRISE !!!
I received an email from FIVERR saying that " I’ve voilated their TOS by helping some students in their academic work and It is against their TOS and hence my GIG was removed (my only working gig 😢 )". I mean I was getting paid when someone comes in and give me some project to do and I was just completing it simply. Perhaps there was a german client who sent me a GERMAN document explaining the instructions and Upon my saying that I dont understand german he said that He just want me to look at the pictures in the document and see how the program currently works and he wanted me to made some changes to it (Mostly HTML , CSS and JavaScript changes). I did that and apparently that was my mistake because I should’ve guessed it out of no where that this is a document that was academic. I mean I am a programmer and I get money to program things, How would I know whether the person wants me to do their academic work or not. Anyhow , I contacted support explained them everything but always got same reply saying that " This was reviewed by the Trust and Security Team and they cannot reinstate my GIG nor remove my warning" … I asked them if I ask a person always before accepting their order that "If it is your academic work or not ? " would then i am allowed to work normally ? Their reply was quite surprising “This still won’t ensure that they wont use it for academic use”. I mean how in the world I would then ensure that the person should not use it for academic purpose.
Now I had to build up a new GIG and start working from zero again.
So here I am, Disappointed all again. I was thinking making it my full time job (along with my studies of course). But I don’t think I can rely that much on that now because if something like this can happen once, I can get strike for something like this again and have my account disabled.

So, what I learned from all this is "Never rely on one income source ever. " Always create multiple income sources for you. Though I wasn’t that lucky and I failed badly on other platforms and Fiverr was the only place where I got lucky or something and got some orders.

So, this is my story and this was my first strike ever.

[coolarchitect]

Very informative. Thanks

[Guest humanissocial]

I sympathize, but if Fiverr could ascertain that it was academic work, why couldn’t you?

From what you described it sounds like the buyer was having you do an assignment. I’m not sure why anyone would have an order like that unless it was for a school assignment.

[Guest ahsanul2019]

Very informative. Thank you.

[salargabol]

@khalilseoexpert2 It’s fine now because it’s done already,at least now you have learnt something and you are right that we must have multiple sources and Thanks for sharing with us your experience.
Best of luck for coming days!

[cyaxrex]

I would really like to know how Fiverr knows when a seller has worked on an accademic project or not? Is there some kind of questionnaire in which buyers tick a box saying they used work for academic purposes?

I ask, because it is impossible (in most cases) for sellers to know how an end product might be used by any buyer. I had a potential buyer a while ago ask me if I could write a blog post on content marketing best practices.

I get requests like this all the time. However, I had to turn down this one, due to the buyer mentioning in passing that they needed it as part of a school work project. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been any the wiser.

[daveaba]

Thanks for sharing your experience.