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I just received my first “brief”!


frank_d

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It’s the first time I see this feature in action.

Essentially you get a different type of notification, a “system” one -remember when they updated the app to split notification types?- and once you open it you are greeted with the “match”.

The buyer entered a budget and timeframe (as you can see in my case the buyer put in “flexible” which could also be $50 for all I know) and a short brief.

Then you get two options:

Decline and create custom offer.

That’s it. No message, no questions for clarification, establishing project fit, nothing.

You either take it, or leave it.

And Fiverr has some messaging urging you to send an offer to stay ahead of your competition.

This buyer can be a bad fit, and I wouldn’t know it.

Feels half-baked to be honest.

Plus allowing the buyer to just not put in a number and a date is ridiculous.


🤷‍♂️

3CE0A0EA-0BAA-4D31-9B5E-89080598D9C6.jpeg

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That's insane and a great way to do bad business. This truly half-baked concept--couldn't agree with you more, Frank--sounds just as sensible as the fact that when we request a standard and pre-agreed project timing extension, it shows up at the buyer's end as 'Annie opened a dispute'!

This is an example of Fiverr at its worst. I can only see a mass of confusion arising from this kind of 'match' in which all the salient points are MIA and there is no chance to talk through the details. That's not the way to professionally deliver anything other than the very simplest of products and services. Five-dollar services. But even then, there's so much scope for misunderstandings.

I think the only way to go is to create a custom offer and price it very high, with a number of mentions of 'clarification needed' and qualifiers, caveats, and so on. This would hopefully prompt the buyer to come and discuss it in depth. I feel that in many cases, the buyer will choose you and will elect to engage with you and take their time over it (presuming they can ask you questions and open a message thread even if you cannot do it pre-offer) simply because they trust Frank to deliver more than they trust anyone else.

In some instances, going back with doubts, queries and caveats (in the proposal and costing) will win the business since the buyers see we are approaching this in a professional manner, not just grasping at any bit of work that comes along.

But yes. Half-baked idea. Not sure this one even got as far as being put in the oven, to be truthful!

Edited by anniejenkinson
A word duplicate crept in! Sneaky damn thing...
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42 minutes ago, catwriter said:

Does the brief have the information you need?

So... What will it be? 😸

The brief was OK I guess, but without some questions on my end I feel completely at risk.

I quoted about 40% higher than what I would be OK with, as a inherited risk fee. 😉 

@anniejenkinson

This system supposedly only matches you if it considers you to be the right fit.

But it seems the criteria are very superficial: gig category, budget and time frame.

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11 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Happened to me as well. I disabled the feature, there's no point if I can't contact the client and if he is not 100% clear about what he needs, I can't send a proper offer.

We are on the same page.

An alternative is to up your rate to $50,000.

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4 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Yes, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the buyer being able to set a budget. This system just doesn't work.

Well in that case, if a buyer sets a budget $50k or higher then that’s the only match you’ll get.

Agreed: the system is definitely not at all working for any serious freelancer right now.

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I have already received it 3 times and in my opinion the main problem is that the briefing did not have enough information. So how could I give an offer without talk first to understand the buyer needs/scope of project?

Is a little similar to the buyer request... without enough information becames difficult to give an offer. 2 times the brief was relationed what I do, but is not what I really do... the good thing is that we can mark why we decline the brief.

If we receive the "brief" the system should require more details based in each kind of work

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39 minutes ago, frank_d said:

The brief was OK I guess, but without some questions on my end I feel completely at risk.

I quoted about 40% higher than what I would be OK with, as a inherited risk fee. 😉 

@anniejenkinson

This system supposedly only matches you if it considers you to be the right fit.

But it seems the criteria are very superficial: gig category, budget and time frame.

It sounds decidedly sketchy! 

Those criteria are nowhere near enough to say we are a fit. The costing process is quite involved for most TRS and Pro sellers, I'd imagine. And if the buyer omits their budget and timeframe, then the 'match' is solely gig category--which is awful! Yikes...

As you say, it feels risky. I think it shows that whoever came up with this idea believes that there are not many variables within a job, as if we are selling a tangible, a square blue cotton face flannel or a fridge magnet.

It's like those clients who come to me expecting my edit to be X price because they worked it all out based on the word count, based on my gig sample rates.

But what they don't appreciate is that within (say) a 100k-word edit, a client could have as low as 0.1% error rate or as high as 30% error rate, so the proposal and costing are dependent on the number of days required (as in any other profession) and on other factors such as any ghostwriting and rewrites needed at the same time as the deep edit.  There's no way I am rewriting and uplifting every line of a 100k-word novel in two or three days, ha, which is what my core rates are based on.

The 'fit' (for me anyway) is also about the client's attitude and their ability and willingness to communicate.

I'm a better fit with clients who communicate well and who show they understand my product--even if they have an off-the-scale error rate--than with someone who writes near-perfect books but who is arrogant and entitled. 🙂 Working for the latter type almost always proves to be a headache. Working for the former, even if I rewrite the whole damn thing, is usually a joy.

 

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On 2/23/2022 at 9:52 PM, anniejenkinson said:

The 'fit' (for me anyway) is also about the client's attitude and their ability and willingness to communicate.

I had a 2 hour discussion with the team behind the whole business feature where I talked about how establishing potential fit is near impossible with the current implementation and tried to steer the discussion towards budget/scope in general.

They were more focused on me responding to the UI and not that specific underlying issue.

The minute I started talking about pricing and friction, is when they politely nudged me to stay “on track”.

Which is understandable I guess. That wasn't what the call was about.

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I got one of these a while back and it was completely unrelated to what I write (some sort of medical eBook thing?) I do think I still have the eBook / ghostwriting on my profile but no gigs that advertise any of that so I was a tad confused. 

Not sure I like the feature as it is either though - it doesn't feel much more advanced that BR to me at the moment (which I thought it would to be honest.) 

 

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I got a brief a while back, and it was not a good fit at all with my skillset. I think I will watch a bit more, but I agree with above comments - felt half baked and not a matching service I'd choose to rely on.

On 2/23/2022 at 3:08 PM, frank_d said:

I had a 2 hour discussion with the team behind the whole business feature where I insisted on how establishing potential fit is near impossible with the current implementation.

They were more focused on me responding to the UI and not the underlying issue.

The minute I started talking about pricing and friction, is when they politely nudged me to stay “on track”.

Yikes! What a condescending response. Sounds like they are not at all open to input, but have decided what they want to do. I would be interested to find out if any member of this "team" has any experience working as a freelancer. They sound pretty out of touch.

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2 minutes ago, danno1950 said:

Yikes! What a condescending response. Sounds like they are not at all open to input, but have decided what they want to do. I would be interested to find out if any member of this "team" has any experience working as a freelancer. They sound pretty out of touch.

Well to be honest, they presented us with the feature a week before launch.

So essentially everything was set in stone.

Imagine if you are hearing from beta testers (well more like a focus group really) that the product you had been building for months not only doesn’t solve the problem it sets out to solve, it is also created on a very faulty assumption.

So they did have to state what kind of feedback they were looking for so we can stay on point.

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You know, @frank_d, one time I was in a focus group as a user with a team of software programmers, and ran into this same thing. They didn't really want input or feedback - they just wanted endorsement. When I tried to give feedback, I got a similar response to the one you got.

1 minute ago, frank_d said:

So essentially everything was set in stone.

If the "team" had already decided what they are going to do, why even bother with having a support session to discuss the product? Why waste the user's time, just to try to elicit an "attaboy."

5 minutes ago, frank_d said:

the product you had been building for months not only doesn’t solve the problem it sets out to solve, it is also created on a very faulty assumption.

They didn't want to hear that "the emperor has no clothes." Unfortunate. I had high hopes about the new Business Marketplace, but my hopes are diminished when I hear this type of response.

Thanks for keeping us updated, Frank!

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2 minutes ago, danno1950 said:

If the "team" had already decided what they are going to do, why even bother with having a support session to discuss the product? Why waste the user's time, just to try to elicit an "attaboy."

It felt like they were looking for ideas for future features or quality of life improvements.

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1 hour ago, frank_d said:

It felt like they were looking for ideas for future features or quality of life improvements.

It would have been nice if they had stated that as their intention for the meeting.

But I've seen that with programmers before. They want to invent the next exciting widget, rather than the less exciting work of testing and reevaluating to ensure that the current features work correctly for the end user.

Edited by danno1950
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10 hours ago, frank_d said:

Then you get two options:

Decline and create custom offer.

That’s it. No message, no questions for clarification, establishing project fit, nothing.

I have received 3 briefs so far and had to decline all of them simply because I did not have enough information. The lack of the ability to communicate with a potential client is plain foolish. Everyone knows it should be there, seems to me like a conscious choice not to include this option for whatever reason. I guess if you'd want to get any value from this feature, you would have to encourage the client not to accept your offer and to discuss the project further. 🤦‍♂️

In BRs you are also unable to directly message the clients, but at least the descriptions of their requests are more elaborate for the most part.

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2 hours ago, gajuseidi said:

The lack of the ability to communicate with a potential client is plain foolish. Everyone knows it should be there, seems to me like a conscious choice not to include this option for whatever reason.

The reason might be an attempt at implementing the old browse-buy-done idea...which, in this case, is highly unlikely to work.

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Second brief received just now.

 

once again the buyer marked both budget and timeframe as “flexible”.

in their description however they stated that my quote should be “very reasonable because this will be an ongoing project”.

So that’s strike 2 for me.

When you reject the brief you also need to give a reason for why you do so, maybe this will help fiverr gather data.

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9 minutes ago, miiila said:

"Very reasonable" doesn't sound good in any case. "Reasonable" should be enough. But that's besides the point.

On point:

image.jpeg.fe36ad0fc46d12531867ba5f30314db0.jpeg

"very reasonable" roughly translates to "I'm basing my purchasing decision based on who can underquote me. I don't really care who does the work, as long as someone does it and I don't have to overpay by my standards".

 

giphy-downsized-large.gif

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