A personal milestone…

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, animie_video said:

Option to accept or decline an order placed without prior communication

The only problem with this is that it stands against what Fiverr does, they make it easy for a buyer to place an order. What if you want to buy something as a buyer and start paying, but the seller never replies? It leads to a lot of friction for Fiverr and it's not something that would work. We can, of course, talk about it with anyone from Fiverr, however as I said, that would make paying for an order a complete mess. 

[melanielm]

This post might put me in a bad light, but I hope not!

Re: bigger picture stuff

I'm not sure what that means, personally. I think there is a shift toward businesses offering services here, which frankly scares me a bit. I'm not a business, really. I'm just a woman earning a living from home. I'm successful at it, and I do business-y things all the time, but when I'm entrenched with the everyday work of writing, messaging people, and doing all my off-Fiverr stuff, I don't have much time for big pictures that don't relate directly to my micro-big picture. Does that make any sense?

All the day-to-day things like limiting/disallowing gig multiples, more control over pricing, actual revision limits, etc. are the things that affect us. Whether we work with a solopreneur with a small budget or one of these big brands looking for full-time outsourcing, those things will continue to affect us. This might be a case of disconnect between 'the people just working to make a living' and 'freelance businesses/teams chasing growth.' I'm pretty much one of the former. Maybe I just don't understand big pictures when it comes to things like this.

Frank, from what I've seen, you do more directly for other sellers than anyone actually at Fiverr ever does. I thank you for it.

[miiila]

10 hours ago, newsmike said:

17 hours ago, imagination7413 said:

EXTREMELY controversial: permitting any NSFW gigs.

Also needs to go if we want to be respected as a platform.

Do you mean Gig presentation with this, or "gigs" as "projects that deal with NSFW content"? If the latter, I disagree with "any", or maybe the "NSFW" definition needs some clarification. Real art, or a few pages of "NSFW content" in a 50k book, for example, why should that be an issue for being respected as a platform? Sure, there are books, movies that completely forego any NSFW content, but, you know. Clear and officially stated definitions of what is acceptable, less grey territory, sure. Also, if NSFW would be a general No, I'd suggest considering violence, too, or even more so.

[newsmike]

1 hour ago, miiila said:

Do you mean Gig presentation with this, or "gigs" as "projects that deal with NSFW content"? If the latter, I disagree with "any", or maybe the "NSFW" definition needs some clarification. Real art, or a few pages of "NSFW content" in a 50k book, for example, why should that be an issue for being respected as a platform? Sure, there are books, movies that completely forego any NSFW content, but, you know. Clear and officially stated definitions of what is acceptable, less grey territory, sure. Also, if NSFW would be a general No, I'd suggest considering violence, too, or even more so.

Just put "NSFW" in Fiverr's own search bar. I'm not judging the artistic quality of the work, just saying that it has no business on a professional freelance site that wishes to appeal to adults conducting actual business.  Similar to the psychics and fortune tellers.  They have every right to sell carnival attractions to gullible buyers, but that does not mean that Fiverr has to traffic in it. 

https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=nsfw&source=top-bar&acmpl=1&search_in=everywhere&search-autocomplete-original-term=nsfw&search-autocomplete-available=true&search-autocomplete-type=suggest&search-autocomplete-position=1

[miiila]

Ah, I didn't realize that "NSFW" seems to be kind of its own category.

[imagination7413]

Okay. I've thought of something.

The problem is that it's a confusing mess of interconnected issues, and can't really be easily summed up. (The following is a bit of a rambling mess, and there is more than three points, but I've already spent too much time on it and I have an order I need to work on.)

1) Fiverr holds payments much like escrow. Except that we've all seen repeatedly that "Fiverr cannot force buyers to accept an order". I get it. I understand it. Fiverr isn't actually a bank. But there really should be something in-contract for edge-cases. Both scammer-Sellers and scammer-Buyers exist, and that's it's own can-of-worms, but Fiverr's usual response from what I've read in various threads is to partially reimburse a Seller out-of-pocket IF their contract was correctly set up.

2) Fiverr charges fees per transaction. It doesn't matter how big or small the order is, if it's a milestone order, or (if I've read correctly) if it's paid with a balance already on a user's account. I get it. I understand it. Fiverr isn't a bank, and they have to cover processing fees too. But I've seen enough threads pop up over my few years on here mentioning willingness to 'pre-load' their account with funds. 

3) Partial refunds/order modifications. While the later is indeed something that can be worked out between a buyer and seller, this is really difficult to work around. If someone orders a king-sized recycled-denim quilt but says they meant to buy the twin-sized...
I get it. Fiverr's not a bank. Currency handling and contract managing is expensive.

Fiverr is a business. Did you know that Fiverr International Ltd. does NOT have a proper mission statement NOR vision statement? How can Fiverr, as a company, have any sort of focus, when it doesn't know what it does? It's 'thing' is facilitating the 'meeting of wants to talent', but there's no clear method. Fiverr has it's own contract to somewhat cover that, but puts the burden of contract-drafting on the Sellers. This is, again, fine. I get it. I understand it. Fiverr isn't a bank.  But a company is often judged on it's ability to 'make it right', be it day-to-day operations or when problems occur. With a vague 'how' and a nonexistent 'why', it's rather a wonder it's doing as well as it is.

If I had one request for the long-term for Mr. Kaufman: Fix your Mission Statement. Find your focus. Make your 'one thing' your actual 'one thing'. Get your whole team onboard, everyone from finance to marketing to data and technology to customer care to legal. Know why you do what you do, and make sure everyone knows it. 

---

Zed) Fiverr doesn't permit seeing a gig's mandatory requirements before an order is placed. We've all read threads of cancellations reasons being 'I placed order by mistake'. I'm not saying that this is specifically the case, but I strongly suspect at lest some of those are due to not knowing what a Seller's requirements are before purchasing. (YouTube videos-made-for-luls exist, including Fiverr purchases, and 'oh, I need to provide this thing?' pops up frequently enough.) Yes, usually it's individuals that purchase from Fiverr, but business finances are more complicated, and dealing with refunds and allocations of funds and reimbursements is a PAIN, especially for a small business. (I've seen 'justified purchases' just because someone didn't want to deal with the hassle of paperwork or the additional labor hours for a bad purchase, when they really didn't have the funds to be doing so.) Cancellations probably look bad on Fiverr's financial reports too.
I get that it's suppose to reduce friction in the purchasing process, that a person might decide not to buy at all rather than gather the necessary requirements before hand, and that human behavior indicates that 'well, I already bought/started it, so I gotta finish' as a sunk-cost fallacy works, but it's also a borderline predatory practice that can put people off, especially when the $ is higher.

---

P.S. Did you know that Target does have a bank?

[anniejenkinson]

On 3/18/2022 at 8:19 PM, vickiespencer said:

Tell them that proofreaders and writers would like the same ability as voice over sellers to automatically add days to the delivery when a buyer placed a direct order. 
 

@donnovan86 may be able to explain this better.

Hear, hear! 

As this trip will be under much time pressure, I'm sure there's not much time for flagging up our issues but here are my bugbears if anyone has time to listen!

:

*BYOB*
If Fiverr management wish us to bring our own buyers in (which I keep trying to do), then they need to allow us at least the same project durations as we're offered for Fiverr buyers. It makes no sense that I get the chance to book 90 days ahead when it's a Fiverr buyer--but if I bring my own clients to the platform, then I get a measly 30 days maximum. I never sell projects on a 30-day term these days and clients don't expect it. Since these are private clients I've had for years, too, then I ought to be able to define my own project timings and not be nannied.

The fact sellers DO have great private clients kind of shows that we know how to manage them; I would not introduce them just so I get unreasonable expectations heaped on the projects.

Plus, this means i'd have to sideline the prior 90-days' bookings from Fiverr's clients and shove these to the back of the queue to service my introduced buyers to 30-day terms, preferentially. 

My jobs are almost all on a 90-day turnaround now, and private clients are expecting that. Yet the system prevents me from offering these.

Consequently, Fiverr has missed out on me introducing eight private clients who spend over £100k a year with me on rolling programs and who would most likely start to look at other services here. We've all given up on them coming in. The upside for me if I could get them into the platform would be the simpler dovetailing of timelines since it's preferable to have everyone on one platform for good schedule management.

*EXTENSIONS*
And I dearly wish Fiverr's automated system would stop trying to cause havoc between me and my happy clients with its daft 'one size fits all' auto messaging.

In other words, I wish that it'd stop saying 'Annie opened a dispute' each time I and the buyer mutually and harmoniously agree on a timing extension to a project! This one really ups my blood pressure--and the buyers'.

What on earth has a timing extension got to do with a dispute? Nothing! The problem is, many sellers may not even know that the simple act of adding on a day or two by mutual agreement causes a big 'seller opened a dispute' message for the buyer's inbox. So much for client relations, ha. One way to mess up years of hard work, potentially, especially if a seller does not know it has this message attached.


*REVISIONS*
A last one (general bugbears) is: don't allow buyers to 'request a revision' just to buy extra time so they can be lazy in assessing the delivery. They are presently able to delay, delay, delay... without ever passing revisions across. One of mine just said, 'I will let you know in a few weeks' and did not want to look at the work.

Oh, you will, will you? I won't eat for a few weeks then... 🙂 I soon put a stop to that but many new sellers may feel cornered by this bad behavior.

The people who engage in this practice are also generally quite rude about it. They could keep a seller dangling forever and we have to be very 'pointed' in how we address this so that buyers get the message, when Fiverr's systems should make it very much clearer that this is not what the Revision is for. 

Those are my major bugbears.

FRANK: regarding big picture stuff:

A) The name Fiverr is still a gross embarrassment to me in branding terms! God only knows why this brand was selected from the plethora of better-fitting names--as an ex strategic consultant working for blue chips, I cannot for the life of me think of why this 'pile it high, sell it cheap' brand name was ever thought to be a good direction and it still gives the impression of 'cheap'. I would hope the platform has advanced way beyond that. It needs bringing up to date.

(And no, please do not rebrand it 'Tenner'! Oh please... spare us).

This is a name that makes many clients initially flinch when I say I freelance here--despite the fact it brings top dollar for me and an array of bestselling writers as clients. 

B) Weed out the people who do not deserve to be here, instead of giving out this 'buyer is always right' message no matter how seedy and unseemly the buyers. The same for sellers. Get the bad ones out so the rest can flourish. What's the point in growing a fantastic garden and then sowing dandelions that are allowed to take over?

C) Fiverr--please ADHERE to your own Terms of Service. For example, allow us to decline to edit, write or rewrite a really unpleasant book with under-age se*ual content and exploitation without penalty when a sneaky buyer places an order without discussing. I don't want to hear from Customer Support, ever again, that I should do the edit. I mean, really? This was early days stuff from two years back but it left me with a bad and lasting message. I'll never forget that experience.

D) Do not penalise sellers and buyers based on very scant and superficial countries' information when there are so many deep-dive tests you can do to see nationalities instead of 'this is your location'.



 

[uk1000]

Maybe ask about where they see Fiverr going in the future (how they see it changing etc.), ie. things you can share.

In the past they used to ask things I think more openly (our opinions about what we wanted - the whole Fiverr community, eg. with polls on the forum), now it seems they're a lot less open. Maybe on the forum they could give more info on where they're heading and ask more about what users would like.

* Maybe they could share their list of the types of services that are/are not in the "business direction" or whatever it's called. ie. people have had gigs removed as those services aren't in their business direction but they are not shown as being against any policy page/TOS so people don't really know about it.

* Isn't the withdrawal method on Fiverr a bit limited? Isn't it either PayPal or through Payoneer (even to go to a bank account). Why aren't there more methods to reduce risk of their being a problem with one or more (if not globally then for certain users)? Why not allow withdrawals directly to bank accounts without going through Payoneer (unless I've got that wrong)?

* Isn't the search system and Fiverr system a bit fixed/static? eg. no matter how high res desktop someone has the system is still limited to showing the same amount of gigs per page (normally 48). Lets say someone wants a voice over or research doing or an article written - in the search page they can specify their budget etc. but they can't specify the number of words they want (eg. no. of words in the script for the voice over, no. of words for the seller to write in the research/article). Wouldn't it be better to allow the user to specify that (maybe they don't as it may not apply to every category but it should be useful where it does apply). Maybe a more complex search system could allow preferences for how the user wants the screen to look.

* Maybe if Fiverr had some open API user interfaces for things like the gig search could be more complex/customizable and allow more options (like the number of words search or allow searching on any other fields that Fiverr doesn't support now (or searching and displaying things in different ways).

* Things like adding better search options - like the one given above eg. for no. of words (or the API option maybe) should allow buyers to find the best services for them more easily.

* Maybe they could change the way gig deletion/gig pausing works. eg. some people have deleted a gig and then there's no way to undelete it. Something could happen to a gig and then there's no way to go back to a previous version of it. So maybe there could be 1) an undelete option for gigs and 2) a way to go back to a previous version of a gig. Maybe people could pause gigs if they might want to restore it later but I think (at least on the lower levels) it still counts paused gigs (as well as draft ones) towards the level limits (when I don't think it should, especially as they mention active gigs in the help). 

* People have said how there's no way to easily re-order certain things in the gig set-up (eg. requirements, FAQ questions). So they could create options to re-order things like gig requirements but they could also have an option to export the gig to a file (with an import option too) that you could edit on your device (maybe in XML format) so that you could re-order things more easily even if Fiverr doesn't add the code to re-order things on the site. This would also give you a back-up of the gig as it was that you could re-import later if necessary.

* Maybe sellers could have the ability to have auto-replies set-up for when they are not available (this has been mentioned on the forum previously).

* Maybe "available times"/opening hours could be added. eg. if someone wanted every weekend off there should be a better way to do that than now.

* Maybe they could change how the "max orders in queue" works (or have ways of automatically increasing delivery times of gigs, since "max orders in queue" for a gig doesn't take into account the number of orders in the queue for other gigs. eg. if someone was fine having 10 of just gig A in the queue and set max orders in queue for gig A to 10, they might have a problem if there was also 10 of gig B in the queue at the same time, so maybe there could be a way for gig limits to take into account all the orders of different gigs that are in the queue (maybe it could also take into account the specific package that was ordered, where applicable).

[tatjanamitevska]

Hi @frank_d did the meeting happened already? 

I am late to the party but I have some big picture suggestions: 

1. as a Pro seller I would like to be able to focus on bigger and more quality clients, structured projects, clients that have a real budget and are able to pay at a market price. I hope Fiverr Business will do that. 

2. Structured access: many sellers have entire agencies and team working on and outside Fiverr. Being able to have a multilevel access (like Facebook business manager or any other software) so my associates can access the profile without me needing to share my personal access. Maybe limit functionalities per type of access. This way sellers can scale much easier 

3. Ability to schedule a meeting. Being able to have a zoom call with potential and existing clients is great but a calendar functionality will make 1000 times easier. Right now I need to make agreements in the chat and remember the time and date (old school). 

4. Raise limits for Level 1 and Level 2. I understand when the platform was 5$ that making 2000$ was a big milestone and get you a promotion but the platform has changed and the levels needs to reflect this. Also TRS requirement of 100 orders damage PRO sellers mostly because 100 order per 1000$ is much more difficult to achieve than 100 order per 5$. 

5. Offer a guarantee. I would love to offer a 5k and 10k all marketing services from strategy to execution and there are clients that often ask me for this type of services and have budget but I always reject this request because since the payment is at the end of the project, there is a slight possibility that after a month or two of work I will not get payed. I understand that there are rules in place but many sellers (me included) have experience some form of chargeback and not being payed after huge work for some reason that the CS decided is good enough to reimbursed the buyer.  This instability is what prevents many seller to actually scale there services to even a 7 figures business at Fiverr. Outside Fiverr there is a contract in place and if the client doesn't pay there is a legal consequence, companies are protected. On Fiverr not always.