Fiverr algorithm: a quick preview

[frank_d]

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to make this quick post, to share that I am now working on an updated guide to the Fiverr marketplace landscape.

My previous post titled "Fiverr 3.0" is still pretty much current, as the way Fiverr works is the same as described in that article.

However, I am now able to expand upon that thesis and actually provide everyone with a few additional pointers, as things have shifted due to the promoted gigs formula being updated, amongst other factors.

I will probably opt for multiple short posts, rather than a large one, and I will try my best to divide them up depending on what key feature is described.

In  the meantime, enjoy this meme I made, that captures perfectly how I feel about the current algorithm behaviour and how it's perceived by users. 🙂

 

[visualstudios]

🍿🍿🍿🍿 🍿🍿🍿🍿  🍿🍿🍿🍿 

[misscrystal]

The promoted gigs formula has shifted the algorithm it seems.  As your meme so correctly shows, it can be a wild ride.

[frank_d]

@misscrystal There are a bunch of things happening behind the scenes right now.

The success of the promoted gigs feature shifted some of the algorithm’s goals.

But there’s a lot going on. Some things are still unannounced but they are slowly being implemented one by one.

This year the ups and downs were neck-breaking, as the marketplace tried to re-balance itself.

We are inching closer to a more stable version, I can feel it. 🙂

[gina_riley2]

Hey Frank,

Anything happening behind the scenes in regards to helping us buyers searching for qualified sellers.

It's getting more and more frustrating in finding the right person. I use my own advices in finding great sellers, but the filter only does so much and with thousands of gigs, in just the article writers alone, it's mind boggling.

Many of my writers have folded shop. There are many top and pro writers that are good but they just don't match my style. When it comes to writers, we have to click.

It seems 5r does quite a bit to help sellers get the best positions but they rarely do anything to help the buyers have a more pleasant experience.

Enough venting. Thanks!

-- G.

[misscrystal]

I'm happy with it so far.  Keep it coming fiverr!

[frank_d]

Hey @gina_riley2 that’s an interesting question.

There are several things in play here:

1) there are more sellers than ever joining the platform

2) a higher than usual percentage of sellers is “faking it” without actually caring about “making it”

3) legitimate sellers -I assume like your writers- can’t take the roller coaster anymore (fig. 1) and want to work in a more stable environment or just kicked-off their personal website

4) the marketplace is preparing yet another fragmentation between sellers, which is meant to solve that problem. But at the same time, until it is officially launched, said problem becomes worse by the day.

Don’t know if you read my ranting the other day about not being able to find a copywriter myself for a few days, but yeah, this is not just you. This is a huge lump under the proverbial rug, causing all sorts of issues.

[vinctosc]

Thank you for sharing! appreciate it!

[mobilemensa]

9 hours ago, frank_d said:

Hey @gina_riley2 that’s an interesting question.

There are several things in play here:

1) there are more sellers than ever joining the platform

2) a higher than usual percentage of sellers is “faking it” without actually caring about “making it”

3) legitimate sellers -I assume like your writers- can’t take the roller coaster anymore (fig. 1) and want to work in a more stable environment or just kicked-off their personal website

4) the marketplace is preparing yet another fragmentation between sellers, which is meant to solve that problem. But at the same time, until it is officially launched, said problem becomes worse by the day.

Don’t know if you read my ranting the other day about not being able to find a copywriter myself for a few days, but yeah, this is not just you. This is a huge lump under the proverbial rug, causing all sorts of issues.

Hi Frank,

What do you mean there is another fragmentation coming between sellers?

[Alex.M]

10 hours ago, misscrystal said:

The promoted gigs formula has shifted the algorithm it seems. 

indeed and it wouldn't be a problem if it actually worked however promoted gigs is currently acting strange at least to me for the past 3 month... it's very hard to believe that from 100 clicks I get one order when 2-3 months ago from 100 clicks I was getting 20 orders , I don't think it's something from my part since I haven't changed much to any of my gigs.

[aarontgladiator]

13 hours ago, gina_riley2 said:

Many of my writers have folded shop. There are many top and pro writers that are good but they just don't match my style. When it comes to writers, we have to click.

Have you tried going for Buyer Requests? I mean, do you want writers like Roald Dahl or Robin Sharma? You might wanna just specify your style in there and you'll probably find many people who never turned up in the search results.

[mariashtelle1]

17 minutes ago, aarontgladiator said:

You might wanna just specify your style in there and you'll probably find many people who never turned up in the search results.

There is a reason why sellers who has to get orders only in BR section never turn up in search results. Because most likely in 98% cases they are crap sellers. 

[aarontgladiator]

30 minutes ago, mariashtelle1 said:

Because most likely in 98% cases they are crap sellers. 

Well, yes, I suppose, but it never hurts to try.

[vickiespencer]

11 minutes ago, aarontgladiator said:

Well, yes, I suppose, but it never hurts to try.

From what I know of @gina_riley2 she once used Buyer Requests, but had poor success with them. There are too many desperate newbie sellers who apply for jobs they can not do and waste the buyer's time by doing so.

[aarontgladiator]

26 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

From what I know of @gina_riley2 she once used Buyer Requests, but had poor success with them. There are too many desperate newbie sellers who apply for jobs they can not do and waste the buyer's time by doing so.

Ah, well, makes sense. I used to use Buyer Requests as a seller back when I started, but I found it to be a waste of time.

[frank_d]

8 hours ago, mobilemensa said:

What do you mean there is another fragmentation coming between sellers?

Fiverr will launch a new feature that will promote top performers to a new select tier of buyers.

We will also see the gap between seller plus and non-members, grow considerably.

Not because the latter will be punished, but because the offering will expand so much, it will make 0 sense not to join.

[mayaillustrator]

17 hours ago, frank_d said:

Hey @gina_riley2 that’s an interesting question.

There are several things in play here:

1) there are more sellers than ever joining the platform

2) a higher than usual percentage of sellers is “faking it” without actually caring about “making it”

3) legitimate sellers -I assume like your writers- can’t take the roller coaster anymore (fig. 1) and want to work in a more stable environment or just kicked-off their personal website

4) the marketplace is preparing yet another fragmentation between sellers, which is meant to solve that problem. But at the same time, until it is officially launched, said problem becomes worse by the day.

Don’t know if you read my ranting the other day about not being able to find a copywriter myself for a few days, but yeah, this is not just you. This is a huge lump under the proverbial rug, causing all sorts of issues.

I read your original post and really appreciate it. It has some excellent points and information.
My problem with it was that it implied a really cohesive system that worked and that wasn’t my experience at all. I thought maybe it was because system was skewed towards making the buyer happy, not taking into account the seller ( which I still think might be the case: it obviously didn’t take into account that people can take only so much topsy turvy before quitting).  
But then I saw what Gina_riley wrote and that makes so much sense to me; when I look at search results in my categories it puts people with no experience in the front and that doesn’t align with “best performance” theory. There is no way that those people have a high buyer retention rate. I would be frustrated if I was a buyer as well. 
My impressions dropped months ago and whatever I do I can’t seem to get them back to what they used to be. Almost all buyers I get now are old buyers from “before” which tells me that

1) old buyers were happy with my performance 

2) new buyers apparently don’t see me

No conclusion just adding my two cents 🙂

[frank_d]

@mayaillustrator

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Your mileage may vary, but what my original post was t try ing to demonstrate is that Fiverr is out there trying to quantify performance.

And the optimal way to tweak their algo is to make it so that money keeps coming in.

So when sellers butt heads with the algo, it’s because maybe there’s a different definition of “performance” on each side.

My fiverr 3.0 post was about sharing what I assumed and what I discovered to be true about what Fiverr uses to make that complex calculation.

Lots of other key ingredients are missing, and a few new tools came into play since this past summer.

[uk1000]

19 hours ago, gina_riley2 said:

There are many top and pro writers that are good but they just don't match my style

I thought this was a good suggestion:

5 hours ago, aarontgladiator said:

Have you tried going for Buyer Requests? ...You might wanna just specify your style in there

Or maybe specify the style you want when you contact individual sellers.

In the search in the "service options" it has different options like "tone" and "article type" if you search for an article. Though maybe Fiverr could add an option there where you could search based on style where you could upload a document or two and it would search for sellers who have written and uploaded somewhere a sample in a similar style. They could also add things like required word count to the search page for the writing subcategories.

22 hours ago, frank_d said:

as things have shifted due to the promoted gigs formula being updated

Though the promoted gigs option isn't supposed to affect the standard search results as they're supposed to be independent (apart from maybe if you got orders (eg. that you delivered on time with good reviews)/messages that you responded to from promoted gigs that may have a positive effect on your normal gig position).

[rabihumakhan]

I hear you, frank. 

I'm baffled about a few things:

I'm a level one seller so believe promoted gig or plus seller options aren't available to me at the moment. 

Also, I may not want to use them since I have been getting regular sales for the last one and a half month. 

Like one of my gigs got 61 clicks in last few days and some 25 orders which makes a lot of sense. 

What I actually wanted to ask here is that, despite the fact that I'm a new seller on the marketplace, my buyers believe I always go above and beyond for them (got 5* review on each sales I made so far, some buyers however didn't bother to give me a review, plus tips from like more than 10 buyers out of my total 36 sales). 

Would the new feature, whatever that may be, affect my performance and rankings? 

[fiveroptic1]

13 hours ago, mariashtelle1 said:

There is a reason why sellers who has to get orders only in BR section never turn up in search results. Because most likely in 98% cases they are crap sellers. 

That'll be me then - again! 

[mariashtelle1]

7 hours ago, fiveroptic1 said:

That'll be me then - again! 

 Nope, that’s why I always leave a margin of 10-2% 😉 

I know TRS friends that check BR from time to time too 

[vinctosc]

Yes the search results have been varying significantly based on location, browser and users. I think from now on Fiverr is focusing into making a personalize experience to each client rather than showing the same results to all their clients.

PS. I know this is a bit off topic, but has anybody experience an issue recently with the rating score when browsing GIGs on Fiverr using incognito browser? For some reason the same GIGs of some sellers have different rating now depending on the browser, specially if you compare normal search with incognito mode, maybe is a glitch?

Thank you everybody for sharing your experience in here, is great to see a supportive community in the Fiverr space!

[gajuseidi]

Hi @frank_d, thank you for updating us.

On 12/8/2021 at 11:37 AM, frank_d said:

We will also see the gap between seller plus and non-members, grow considerably.

Not because the latter will be punished, but because the offering will expand so much, it will make 0 sense not to join.

This makes sense. For me personally, the seller+ program is not worth it just yet. Not because the benefits do not justify the price, but because I know I would not be able to use my success manager to full potential at this moment. I have gig videos and additional gigs in production and I think it makes sense to ask for guidance once I have a strong foundation.

However, if joining the program will separate me from fake sellers who shill reviews, falsify their identity and clutter the market with low-quality gigs from multiple accounts, I might consider joining.

[frank_d]

On 12/8/2021 at 1:10 PM, rabihumakhan said:

Also, I may not want to use them since I have been getting regular sales for the last one and a half month.

That's a reactive mindset. You may need to switch to a proactive one, if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

On 12/8/2021 at 1:10 PM, rabihumakhan said:

What I actually wanted to ask here is that, despite the fact that I'm a new seller on the marketplace, my buyers believe I always go above and beyond for them (got 5* review on each sales I made so far, some buyers however didn't bother to give me a review, plus tips from like more than 10 buyers out of my total 36 sales). 

Seems like you are doing great, however, you may be missing the bigger picture.

As it is posted on the forum time and time again, focusing on the reviews as a sole metric to ones success, is very limiting. 

And seems like Fiverr is looking at other things when deciding who should be served to what prospects.

Just make sure that you are trying to look at other factors, even beyond your control. That way, you can become more aware of how things work and what causes flunctuations.

 

On 12/8/2021 at 1:10 PM, rabihumakhan said:

Would the new feature, whatever that may be, affect my performance and rankings?

Short answer: probably not. But electing to not join the Plus program, may soon start limiting your growth/reach. This is just how I see it. 

It makes a lot more sense to do something BEFORE you need it, and not when you are faced with a slump in sales. Whether that's marketing, creating that new gig, or improving your offering. (or joining the plus program)

 

1 hour ago, vinctosc said:

I think from now on Fiverr is focusing into making a personalize experience to each client rather than showing the same results to all their clients.

You are on the right track. If you also ask yourself: "who is the client they will try to cater to first" then you have solved a big piece of the next fragmentation puzzle. 🙂

 

1 hour ago, vinctosc said:

Thank you everybody for sharing your experience in here, is great to see a supportive community in the Fiverr space!

This is a great change of pace for this forum! I am glad we were able to spark a meaningful and supportive conversation, among all the rants!

 

44 minutes ago, gajuseidi said:

This makes sense. For me personally, the seller+ program is not worth it just yet.

To each their own. However, do keep in mind what I mentioned above: the best time to try to try out that one thing that will benefit you, is when things are going well. Not when you are sbolutely desperate for a change. 

Also keep in mind that a lot of users can't join yet, as the feature is scaling up still. So joining before everyone can, is a competitive advantage. 🙂