Welcome to "Fiverr 3.0"!

[jamayalt]

It’s hard to figure what went wrong and which metrics I dropped if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

This is probably the thing that annoys most people. We don’t know what we did wrong.

I’m all up for updates and I’m confident in the quality of my work. But I’m not a fan of drastic changes like I just experienced.

I did make some changes to my gigs. But they were long overdue.

It’s hard to figure what went wrong and which metrics I dropped if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Some buyers are sneaky, they’ll give you a 5 star rating but when Fiverr will ask them how happy they were with your service, they’d say it wasn’t good. I feel, this internal rating system also plays a great part. As the OG post has mentioned, I would say focus on delivering the best quality that you can with the best customer service that you can provide. All these things are too mechanical otherwise.

Hope you bounce back!

[frank_d]

It’s hard to figure what went wrong and which metrics I dropped if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Some buyers are sneaky, they’ll give you a 5 star rating but when Fiverr will ask them how happy they were with your service, they’d say it wasn’t good. I feel, this internal rating system also plays a great part. As the OG post has mentioned, I would say focus on delivering the best quality that you can with the best customer service that you can provide. All these things are too mechanical otherwise.

Hope you bounce back!

Sneakiness aside, the exit survey asks some very important questions.

One of them is: “will you be using what “X” delivered?”

Sometimes the buyer was not 100% happy, or hired 3 sellers to see which one would work out, or maybe the project got cancelled…

So if they respond to that question with a simple “no”, then immediately the exit survey is going to negatively affect your buyer satisfaction metric.

[kendal1747]

I started off as level 0, and then proceeded to get every single badge there is on this platform.

One might argue that buyers who purchase my Pro services are “the best” but since I have about 100 more Pro orders completed than you do, allow me to know first hand that this is not the case.

The only “different level of clientele” I have seen are buyers who have a “Fiverr business” account.

All levels have access to them. As long as you have a strong offering.

Still waiting for “facts”.

@wordsfire Not sure if it’s available for everyone. It’s on my dashboard since 2017.

I spoke to the product leader back in 2018 and they said they planned on making improvements and rolling it out for everyone.

Not sure they did either.

I guess the pages 1 through 20 or 30 that people are listed on do not matter.

[frank_d]

I guess the pages 1 through 20 or 30 that people are listed on do not matter.

Yes that’s exactly right.

It doesn’t.

The results buyers get are dynamic and are based on what I described above.

You are still thinking in terms of “ranking” the way Google serves results.

[kendal1747]

Well, you must be living in a bubble. People on different levels get access to different clientele.

No they don’t. Your price differentiates the clientele you get access to. People that want a very complex project don’t choose $5 sellers for that. And if you set a huge price, then someone with a budget of $10, $20 won’t contact you.

As far as I am aware, it’s more common sense than any algorithm. No one is living in any bubble… Some people like @frank_d just have a lot of experience in their field and they can charge more. They also have the portfolio to back it up. There was an user recently that had 0 reviews and he was here for less than a month, and without any portfolio he was asking $100+ for his gigs. Social proofing is what matters here.

I am not on here most of the day because of work. I apply to jobs on the request page every day. I was told to start out with $5. That is what I did and being on the last pages doesn’t get me seen very much. That has beent he way it has been for me and I do have some experience.

[frank_d]

I am not on here most of the day because of work. I apply to jobs on the request page every day. I was told to start out with $5. That is what I did and being on the last pages doesn’t get me seen very much. That has beent he way it has been for me and I do have some experience.

Well if Fiverr is a side gig for you, and you are busy with your full-time job, how do you expect to gain more traction on the platform if what you are doing is literally the bare minimum?

This is a legitimate question as I have read all your replies and it seems like you are not really paying attention to what the original post was about.

A TL:DR would read like this: your performance as a seller will now determine how often the system serves your gigs to buyers.

Rankings are no more.

When you search for your gigs, what you are seeing is most often not accurate.

[donnovan86]

I am not on here most of the day because of work. I apply to jobs on the request page every day. I was told to start out with $5. That is what I did and being on the last pages doesn’t get me seen very much. That has beent he way it has been for me and I do have some experience.

I am not on here most of the day because of work. I apply to jobs on the request page every day. I was told to start out with $5. That is what I did and being on the last pages doesn’t get me seen very much. That has beent he way it has been for me and I do have some experience.

I agree with the things Frank said. There are people, like me for example, that work mostly on Fiverr. I am here around 12-15 hours a day, so obviously it can be hard to get traction against people that are doing this full time. That being said, you will eventually receive exposure and orders, it all comes down to being resilient.

Switching to Fiverr full time now, during the pandemic, can be hard since the number of users is doubled, tripled or even quadroupled in some categories. Yet it can still work as a side business. But you can’t expect growth and exposure similar to what Fiverr veterans have. I do wish you all the best with your side business here.

[alliemadison12]

Hey everyone!

frank hello600×600 2.06 MB

A disclaimer: The following post/article is not an official Fiverr statement. It’s a summary of my personal observations over how Fiverr works and I am sharing because I noticed that more and more sellers come here, stating that they “lost their ranking”.

This is my effort to provide them with some answers and some food for thought.

Hold up. Fiverr 3.0?

If Fiverr’s early days (the wild wild west days) was Fiverr 1.0 and we count the facelift in 2014 (I think?) as v2.0, then we quietly got v3.0 late last year.

Without an official announcement, without much fanfare, the website slowly rolled out a back end update which seems to have concluded late last year.

How do I know this?

This is a good time to remind you to read my disclaimer.

I have no way of actually knowing anything, no one from Fiverr shared insights with me either. This is just a gut feeling and tons of personal observation, from a seller obsessed with performance. (and figuring out how things work)

Ranking is no more

I started hinting about this mid-2020, then started actively talking about it.

Talking about ranking is moot, as there are no more results pages. Well technically there are, but you’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Fiverr transitioned from being a search engine like Google to being a match making service like Tinder.

It no longer serves users (buyers) with pages filled with search results, ranked according to how well they are “performing”.

Fiverr also no longer counts on buyers clicking on verticals to find what they need.

It’s all about the search function.

Fiverr’s new engine tries to match a buyer with a potential seller that will be as close to a 100% ideal match as possible, as soon as possible.

A great match is when:

A) a seller offers something relative to what the buyer is searching for

and

B) a seller has great “performance”

It’s all about reducing risk for Fiverr.

Risk that the buyer won’t find someone to hire and therefore won’t spent their money.

Or risk that the buyer will not get a great service and ask for a refund, never to return again on the platform.

What is this “performance” you keep going on about?

Here comes the good stuff.

There are two kinds of performance that Fiverr keeps track of:

A) performance as a seller (converting prospects into buyers)

B) performance as a vendor (satisfying buyers, successfully completing orders)

THAT’S IT.

Fiverr doesn’t care if you are the best designer, video editor, animator, writer, what have you.

All it cares is that you can make people spend and then making sure that said people don’t ask their money back. (And therefore stay on the platform to spend some more)

I am oversimplifying things, as the system actually keeps track of a bunch of interesting metrics when serving buyers with sellers.

Which is why searching for your gig, or your competition on Fiverr, even using incognito or clearing cookies and what not, will NEVER show you anything useful.

The new engine qualifies buyers and knows a lot about them, before serving your gig their way:

-their purchase intent

-buying history

-browsing habits (I mean on site)

-how they respond to custom offers

-when they spend

-how they spend

The list is long, and I am sure that even if I am right on some of the stuff I think I understand, there are hundreds more variables that only Fiverr’s coders know.

OK, let’s say you are right. What now?

Well just like every change in life, it is always met with resistance.

The new “engine” is here to stay apparently, since its sole purpose is making the platform more money.

What should we do?

Why are people losing their “rankings” out of the blue?

This is where I will try to sound less like a lunatic and actually try to form all the observations into some -hopefully- actionable advice.

When people start noticing that their gigs are losing impressions, or that messages stop coming in, etc, it’s usually because their performance has deteriorated.

They dropped the ball somehow.

I know it always seems like it’s out of the blue, but there are indicators.

Here are some things to keep in mind.

The new system values speed and relevance over anything else.

It’s all RELEVANT: (performance A)

So performance A (being a good closer) has everything to do with how your gig is set up.

If you still think about SEO, and keywords, and ranking, you already lost the game.

Focus on your gig’s title, don’t try to capture everyone, don’t use pretty adjectives, focus on who you want to find your gig.

You need to be focused on your niche.

Relevance is key. You need to make sure that only the people you can help will find you, and that will make Fiverr LOVE your gig.

Don’t use the same keywords as what you used as a gig title. Trust me.

Fiverr 3.0 hates that.

Your tags need to be complimentary to your title. Not repeating what you say you will do.

Again: relevance.

If your gig’s description is written with “SEO” in mind, and is “keyword-rich”, you will once again underperform. Fiverr 3.0 no longer crawls for keywords, it rewards descriptions that answer questions and help convert.

The need for SPEED: (performance B)

Fiverr 3.0 loves speed.

The quicker you can respond to inquiries the better.

The sooner you get that custom offer accepted, the better.

Other factors that may show Fiverr you are rocking it:

-Delivering fast

-Buyers accepting their delivery relatively quickly

-Not getting lots of revision requests

-Not leaving order updates unanswered for too long (the “buyer has posted an update for X amount of hours” notification)

-Delivering before the “you have 12 hours to deliver” notification

-Avoiding cancellations

-Avoiding time extensions

Oh, one more thing:

Relevance and speed are just two faces of a multi-faced die, that calculates one very important thing.

Fiverr 3.0 is all about having satisfied buyers.

The platform no longer just focuses on making revenue and having gigs purchased.

The updated engine focuses solely on having happy buyers.

Which leads me to my last point for this article, to whoever wants to hear it:

Your reviews no longer matter as much. You can keep getting all 5-star reviews, and you will still experience lulls and droughts.

Because the system no longer takes public reviews into consideration, using the same weight as Fiverr 2.0.

They still count, but not as much.

And can you blame them? The majority of sellers on the platform can be phoning it in and still get a higher than 4.7 average.

The system has too many 5-star sellers for that metric to indicate anything.

If everyone is 5-stars, then no one is 5-stars. (to paraphrase something I keep saying for TRS badges.)

So unfortunately, and maybe even people gaming the system with fake reviews had something to do with this, public reviews no longer mean as much to the platform, when it calculates how happy our buyers are.

It’s a long and complex formula, but I simplified it to this for now:

Performance A + Performance B + Buyer satisfaction = Actual seller rating

I still think that “gig rotation” is not a thing. It does exist, but it would never tank successful sellers and truly valuable gigs.

So to sum up:

-When you search for your gig and find it, that’s a skewed POV, that’s not telling you the whole story. You should stop doing that.

-When your gig is served to buyers, it’s because Fiverr actually believes you can score.

-The gigs that are also presented along your offering, are also very carefully selected based on their performance. There is no “ranking”.

-When you notice a drop in sales/enquiries/impressions, start thinking about your overall performance. More often than not, there is definitely some indicator that “told” Fiverr that you were dropping the proverbial ball.

The bad news is that this will take some getting used to and sellers are once again asked to either adapt or “perish”.

The good news is that this new system is actually a lot more forgiving than the old “SEO/rank” system. Even if you drop the ball performance wise, all it takes is just a tiny spark to get things going again.

As I write this, and gave it a quick read I understand that I may have oversimplified things, or that I haven’t spelled it out as much as I could.

Please forgive me, as I have a birthday cake to attend to. 🙂

As always I will be here to answer any questions and discuss things in detail with you all.

Thank you!

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Thank you for linking to this post, Frank. It is incredibly helpful and thought provoking on how to better serve clients to the point where they want to leave fantastic private feedback. I love a good challenge. Keep doing what you do!

[uk1000]

Who are you replying to?

I think the poster means that you’re saying Fiverr 3.0 doesn’t like it when the tags used are also in gig titles

Don’t use the same keywords as what you used as a gig title. Trust me.

Fiverr 3.0 hates that.

you shouldn’t use the same words in your title AND your tags.

but in some of your gigs you use tags that are also in the gig title.

eg. in your gig that has the most reviews of your active ones, 3 of your 5 tags are also in the gig title.

[frank_d]

I think the poster means that you’re saying Fiverr 3.0 doesn’t like it when the tags used are also in gig titles

Don’t use the same keywords as what you used as a gig title. Trust me.

Fiverr 3.0 hates that.

you shouldn’t use the same words in your title AND your tags.

but in some of your gigs you use tags that are also in the gig title.

eg. in your gig that has the most reviews of your active ones, 3 of your 5 tags are also in the gig title.

Oh I see.

I have yet to optimize my gigs.

As I stated in my disclaimer, I posted from personal experience. My gigs right now are not performing well.

I have to edit my tags for sure. 🙂

[gongor32]

It’s a feature called Bring Your Own Business.

You create links to your gig and any order that comes from said link, 100% of the sale will go to you. Fiverr will not take 20%.

I have just found out BYOB from you. Seems to be all old articles, faqs are gone. Do you still have that feature ? I just want to bring my own customers without 20% for their end.

[muchoart]

I think the poster means that you’re saying Fiverr 3.0 doesn’t like it when the tags used are also in gig titles

Don’t use the same keywords as what you used as a gig title. Trust me.

Fiverr 3.0 hates that.

you shouldn’t use the same words in your title AND your tags.

but in some of your gigs you use tags that are also in the gig title.

eg. in your gig that has the most reviews of your active ones, 3 of your 5 tags are also in the gig title.

yeah this one i ask already

[uk1000]

yeah this one i ask already

I was clarifying as the OP didn’t know who you were replying to.

[muchoart]

I was clarifying as the OP didn’t know who you were replying to.

yes good 🙂 also thank you

[english_voice]

All this time should I have been treating these ‘reminders’ as warnings, and therefore ensuring that I don’t deliver orders in the final 12 hours?

Hey @english_voice !

Well this is just me making this assumption.

I could be wrong, but hear me out:

If Fiverr wants to track efficiency, and one of the platform’s main pain points is sellers missing deadlines, then this automated notification could be used as a metric.

It tells the system the percentage of orders you complete by “cutting it close”.

The machine isn’t that bright, so it can’t really tell if that’s OK or if your buyer didn’t get back to you on time on X, etc.

But it can see that out of 20 orders, 12 of them were down to the wire.

So this may tell the system that you are not that efficient, or that you are too busy at the moment.

Or that maybe your gig is not optimized as you should add a day to your delivery window.

Feel free to take this with a grain if salt.

Right now I am not getting as many messages or orders as before because I had 3 Pro orders, each one taking 15 days to complete plus some of my regular gig orders were delivered within that “last 12 hours” window.

So my belief is that it does count, not sure what the exact weight of this metric is. It’s definitely not as weighted as you missing the delivery of course.

Sorry to resurrect a thread that’s a few days old but I thought it might be useful to quickly outline what I’ve done to try and avoid receiving the ‘12 hour’ reminder / warning.

At the moment I’m getting more custom offer requests rather than organic orders. So, for example, in the message section I’m telling the client that ‘while I will be able to deliver your order tomorrow morning, it might just nudge over the 24 hours - hence me selecting the 48 hour delivery option’.

I’m still working on the exact wording - but basically by adding an extra 24 hours to the delivery time, it will avoid me receiving the 12 hour warning, and I’m still very clearly managing my client’s expectations.

@frank_d I know you said something like the 12 hour reminder message being used as a metric was just an assumption on your part, but hopefully by making the official delivery time a day longer, managing client expectations and, so far as Fiverr is concerned, delivering nearly a day early - this should safeguard my stats.

Others might want to think about doing something similar…

[frank_d]

Sorry to resurrect a thread that’s a few days old but I thought it might be useful to quickly outline what I’ve done to try and avoid receiving the ‘12 hour’ reminder / warning.

At the moment I’m getting more custom offer requests rather than organic orders. So, for example, in the message section I’m telling the client that ‘while I will be able to deliver your order tomorrow morning, it might just nudge over the 24 hours - hence me selecting the 48 hour delivery option’.

I’m still working on the exact wording - but basically by adding an extra 24 hours to the delivery time, it will avoid me receiving the 12 hour warning, and I’m still very clearly managing my client’s expectations.

@frank_d I know you said something like the 12 hour reminder message being used as a metric was just an assumption on your part, but hopefully by making the official delivery time a day longer, managing client expectations and, so far as Fiverr is concerned, delivering nearly a day early - this should safeguard my stats.

Others might want to think about doing something similar…

I think that’s a solid move there @english_voice regardless of whether or not this is a thing.

Adding some padding and still working at your usual pace, will only help you avoid issues.

[michal247]

Sorry to resurrect a thread that’s a few days old but I thought it might be useful to quickly outline what I’ve done to try and avoid receiving the ‘12 hour’ reminder / warning.

At the moment I’m getting more custom offer requests rather than organic orders. So, for example, in the message section I’m telling the client that ‘while I will be able to deliver your order tomorrow morning, it might just nudge over the 24 hours - hence me selecting the 48 hour delivery option’.

I’m still working on the exact wording - but basically by adding an extra 24 hours to the delivery time, it will avoid me receiving the 12 hour warning, and I’m still very clearly managing my client’s expectations.

@frank_d I know you said something like the 12 hour reminder message being used as a metric was just an assumption on your part, but hopefully by making the official delivery time a day longer, managing client expectations and, so far as Fiverr is concerned, delivering nearly a day early - this should safeguard my stats.

Others might want to think about doing something similar…

I will definitely think about this, most of my orders I need to time extend (honestly my time estimation game sucks im too optimistic) which probably have very bad effect on my gig performance.

[trafficspurt]

I always deliver on time, but there where instances when I had everything ready and I waited until the last day to deliver. It’s crazy for me to think that delivering in the last 12 hours would negatively impact your gig.

Do we have any proof for this statement?

[frank_d]

I always deliver on time, but there where instances when I had everything ready and I waited until the last day to deliver. It’s crazy for me to think that delivering in the last 12 hours would negatively impact your gig.

Do we have any proof for this statement?

but there where instances when I had everything ready and I waited until the last day to deliver.

why would you do that? Just wondering what the logic behind that was.

There’s no proof for what I shared, I am just sharing my theory.

I feel like I’m sounding like a broken record, but I clearly need to repeat this point:

I am not listing penalties and things that force the system to negatively impact your profile.

I am listing possible indicators that tell Fiverr whether you are performing well and/or are too busy at any given time.

[trafficspurt]

but there where instances when I had everything ready and I waited until the last day to deliver.

why would you do that? Just wondering what the logic behind that was.

There’s no proof for what I shared, I am just sharing my theory.

I feel like I’m sounding like a broken record, but I clearly need to repeat this point:

I am not listing penalties and things that force the system to negatively impact your profile.

I am listing possible indicators that tell Fiverr whether you are performing well and/or are too busy at any given time.

why would you do that? Just wondering what the logic behind that was.

It’s a social proof. Again, this is purely anecdotal but I noticed that I get more orders when I already have orders in queue. It could be that Fiverr takes note and says hey, this guy look busy and people like him, let’s give him more work.

Or it could be that people see this as a social prof and order from someone who’s busy. The logic is they see me as a safe bet that other people trust.

This has been mentioned a few times on this forum. And I know other sellers had similar results.

[frank_d]

why would you do that? Just wondering what the logic behind that was.

It’s a social proof. Again, this is purely anecdotal but I noticed that I get more orders when I already have orders in queue. It could be that Fiverr takes note and says hey, this guy look busy and people like him, let’s give him more work.

Or it could be that people see this as a social prof and order from someone who’s busy. The logic is they see me as a safe bet that other people trust.

This has been mentioned a few times on this forum. And I know other sellers had similar results.

OK to each their own, but let me ask you a simple question:

what if one of your clients were to stumble upon this statement of yours?

How would that potentially made them feel?

That’s the ethical part of this conundrum.

As for whether or not Fiverr actually rewards busy sellers, I think I have to disagree, based on my findings alone. Once gain, there’s no absolute proof.

I can see the social proof argument though, it certainly depends on how you look at it.

Just as an FYI: when you deliver an order, it still appears as “order in queue”. Even if it’s under revision. Only when an order is accepted or automatically closed by the system, does it stop being calculated as an order in queue".

Just something to think about, as from my experience, delivering ahead of schedule creates delight for your clients, and helps create brand advocates and return customers.

[catwriter]

Sorry to resurrect a thread that’s a few days old but I thought it might be useful to quickly outline what I’ve done to try and avoid receiving the ‘12 hour’ reminder / warning.

At the moment I’m getting more custom offer requests rather than organic orders. So, for example, in the message section I’m telling the client that ‘while I will be able to deliver your order tomorrow morning, it might just nudge over the 24 hours - hence me selecting the 48 hour delivery option’.

I’m still working on the exact wording - but basically by adding an extra 24 hours to the delivery time, it will avoid me receiving the 12 hour warning, and I’m still very clearly managing my client’s expectations.

@frank_d I know you said something like the 12 hour reminder message being used as a metric was just an assumption on your part, but hopefully by making the official delivery time a day longer, managing client expectations and, so far as Fiverr is concerned, delivering nearly a day early - this should safeguard my stats.

Others might want to think about doing something similar…

At the moment I’m getting more custom offer requests rather than organic orders. So, for example, in the message section I’m telling the client that ‘while I will be able to deliver your order tomorrow morning, it might just nudge over the 24 hours - hence me selecting the 48 hour delivery option’.

I send custom offers with a delivery time of 5 or 7 days, and explain that I will deliver when we agreed, the official time of 5 or 7 days is just in case of trouble (site not working, power cuts, pandemic troubles, revisions needed…).

there where instances when I had everything ready and I waited until the last day to deliver.

There are buyers who are aware that some sellers do this, and they all hate it. To them, if you honestly need more time to do the work, it’s fine, but if you’re making them wait for no good reason even though you could have delivered already… Let’s just say, if those buyers realize you’re doing it, they will never order from you again, and they might warn others not to order from you, either.

[silver_seo]

Well if Fiverr is a side gig for you, and you are busy with your full-time job, how do you expect to gain more traction on the platform if what you are doing is literally the bare minimum?

This is a legitimate question as I have read all your replies and it seems like you are not really paying attention to what the original post was about.

A TL:DR would read like this: your performance as a seller will now determine how often the system serves your gigs to buyers.

Rankings are no more.

When you search for your gigs, what you are seeing is most often not accurate.

Sorry but this is not true. The search results are static, my wife and two of my friends always see the same results on search. Do a test, search for something while logged off on incognito mode and you will see that the results are the same every day.

[frank_d]

Sorry but this is not true. The search results are static, my wife and two of my friends always see the same results on search. Do a test, search for something while logged off on incognito mode and you will see that the results are the same every day.

Thank you for your input @silver_seo but while you are free to disagree with any of my research, I will personally take the two Fiverr employees’ word over your wife and two friends. (not to mention my own findings)

I have had 2 separate sources from Fiverr make the same claim about how search results work.

Oh, and logging off and using incognito, is precisely what my research showed won’t work.

So I don’t know what else to tell you.

[trafficspurt]

I guess I wasn’t clear when I made my last statement. Finishing the work in a day and waiting 4 days to deliver would be a shitty practice in my opinion.

I never let the report sit for more than a day. We often do this in creative fields because you might perceive things differently after a good night sleep.

Let’s just say I was never in a hurry to deliver. I took my time because I had an agreement with my clients. And I always delivered in the timeframe we agreed on.

There’s another reason why I did this. I delivered asap when I started selling on the platform. What happened was I got a few clients that came to me because I was recommended to them by their friends (my former clients). I sent them a custom offer with a 4-day delivery. They then started negotiating for shorter turnarounds because I delivered the same kind of work to their friends in a day or two.

It’s just easier to always deliver on the last day. This way all my clients get the same treatment.

I understand what your saying and I completely changed the way I approach my clients in the last days. Part of the reason is this post.

But it’s easy for me to deliver fast as I don’t have many orders now.

There’s a good Youtube video from a top rated seller that goes through this exact topic. He also said that he always delivers on the last day.

I don’t think that’s wrong because this way, all my clients get the same treatment, regardless of how many orders I have in the queue.