Stop being afraid.

[newsmike]

It seems literally every day I encourage a seller who is terrified to stand up to a scammer, bully or just a difficult customer by professionally defending their right to get paid for work done. This may be because some folks are just adverse to confrontation, while others are not confident with their skills, but I believe the biggest factor is that most sellers here still don't think of themselves as a business. Instead of thinking as yourself as a person who has to please every demand, think of fairness going both ways. If you delivered work which was either in line with your gig description, or your custom offer and someone tries to intimidate you into free work with the threat of a bad review, do not take the bait. Do not cancel. Tell them that if they do so, you will post their threat to blackmail you as the response to the bad review, and report them to CS as well. You must stand up for your worth. Just think of how it would go if someone said "I want my meal free or I'm giving you a bad review on Yelp to this guy:

 

Yes, you may get the occasional bad review, but you will retain their money, and your integrity, which is priceless. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by newsmike

[fastcopywriter]

What if the buyer keeps demanding a revision? What if CS closes the order for you?

I agree that we should get paid for the work we do, but a delivery won't close until the buyer issues a review or 3 days go by.  A buyer can keep using the modification button, it costs them nothing but time.   

Artists can protect themselves with watermarks, but writers have no such luck. 

That's why I don't see myself as a business.
A business sets the rules, on Fiverr, they set the rules.  

What I can control is what I do and for how much.  

 
 

[newsmike]

4 minutes ago, fastcopywriter said:

What if CS closes the order for you?

Obviously that is not in your control. My advice was for the people here trembling, ready to cancel without a fight at all. 

[fastcopywriter]

Just now, newsmike said:

Obviously that is not in your control. My advice was for the people here trembling, ready to cancel without a fight at all. 

I'll fight a little, but I'm done with the crazy fights I used to have in the past. Sometimes it's better to cut your losses, report and block the buyer.

Fiverr has been a joy since I stopped writing brand names. My stats are perfect in every area now. I do miss it, sometimes, and even get messages from old clients that want me to help them, but it's not worth the aggravation. 

[smashradio]

18 hours ago, newsmike said:

It seems literally every day I encourage a seller who is terrified to stand up to a scammer, bully or just a difficult customer by professionally defending their right to get paid for work done. This may be because some folks are just adverse to confrontation, while others are not confident with their skills, but I believe the biggest factor is that most sellers here still don't think of themselves as a business.

This right here, is gold. 

I'm a proponent of cancelling rather than getting negative reviews, but only if you're brand new. As soon as you have some reviews under your belt, it won't hurt as much. I highly recommend having worked up a few regular buyers that you enjoy working with, before you follow this advice. The reason being that negative private feedback is far more damaging than people think, and if you get it early on, without the chance to pull in orders from regulars, you're basically screwed. 

When all is said and done, I still think you should put up a fight if a buyer is bullying you. Report them to customer support if they violate the terms, and make sure you lay down the law when it comes to things like revisions, respect and requirements. Don't be afraid to tell your buyer that you're not going to work for free, no matter how much they yell at or bully you. Make it known that you're more than willing to stand up for yourself in the face of this type of behavior.

18 hours ago, fastcopywriter said:

I agree that we should get paid for the work we do, but a delivery won't close until the buyer issues a review or 3 days go by.  A buyer can keep using the modification button, it costs them nothing but time.   

That's true. I've had this happen to me. I stopped hitting the delivery button at one point and explained that I don't work for free. I then kept sending reminders for a few weeks in the style of "As I'm sure we're both eager to get this project completed to your new specifications, I would kindly like to remind you about the option to order this extra for changes to the order scope." 

When the buyer got tired after eight weeks or something like that, they stopped responding altogether. I kept sending the messages for a while (like once every two weeks), and after a year, I hit the delivery button a few days before Christmas. This was before Fiverr started offering buyers longer windows to ask for revisions. Anyway, the order auto-completed, and I got my money. Patience is a virtue. 

18 hours ago, fastcopywriter said:

Artists can protect themselves with watermarks, but writers have no such luck. 
That's why I don't see myself as a business.
A business sets the rules, on Fiverr, they set the rules.  

You can set the rules on Fiverr within the framework of the platform. You're allowed to refuse to work for free. You're expected to deliver what's in the gig description and/or custom offer. Set your rules there and make them clear to your buyers. 

How you can conclude that you're not a business because you work under someone else's framework is beyond me. 

If you run a shop at a mall, you must adhere to the mall's opening hours. You can't stand at your door with a loudspeaker to yell at passers-by.

You have to pay rent to the mall. You can't pull out a jackhammer in the middle of the day if you decide you want to tear down a wall in your shop. 

If a disgruntled client complains about you to the local consumer rights organizations or authorities, they might require you to follow their guidelines. In certain countries, the authorities actually have separate departments for this stuff. If you're an unhappy customer in Spain, for instance, you can demand to get a "hojas de reclamaciones" (complaint form). The government requires all businesses to have it, and they might impose sanctions on businesses due to those complaints. 

Are you saying that all companies in Spain are "not businesses" because they can't just make up their own rules all the time? 

There are always someone else's rules in force. It doesn't matter where you are or what type of business you run. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by smashradio

[newsmike]

1 hour ago, smashradio said:

I'm a proponent of cancelling rather than getting negative reviews, but only if you're brand new.

I have to disagree with you. Imagine, if you will, you take Mrs. Smash out for a nice dinner, make it your anniversary dinner, and you see a great restaurant on Yelp. You go and discover that the service is slow, the wait staff rude, the drinks watered down, and the shrimp, obviously frozen. You don't make a scene, you pay the bill and vow never to return. Mrs. Smash wonders why you picked such a skeevy truck stop for her anniversary. You sleep on the couch that night. The next day you tell your neighbor who just happens to know the bartender there and therefore knows that this restaurant has a policy of refunding anyone who threatens a bad review, so naturally Yelp is all praise and 5 stars, even though the quality is bad. How do you feel? Cheated, lied to? You bet. And that's what happens when we encourage noobs to cancel in order to sanitize their legitimate bad reviews. Yes, they get to hide their mistakes and grow their talents, but the next buyers who deserve to know the actual track record of the sellers they are considering, are prevented from knowing the true quality of what they are about to purchase. Instead, they get some sanitized version as they click the buy button. I maintain that it is dishonest if the bad review was deserved, but erased simply by handing someone cash. In fact, it is a form of blackmail and bribery, which disadvantages the buyer expecting an honest transaction.  

Not every seller is a 5 star seller, and paying buyers off in order to make it appear so is clearly dishonest, and not good for the platform.

This is why Amazon let's you return an item and then leave a review, as I did recently here:

 

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by newsmike

[smashradio]

38 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Cheated, lied to? You bet.

Actually, I would feel like the company have tried to make it up to me by offering me a refund. If I'm not happy with a product after I purchase it and I get a refund, that's fine. If they only give the refund if you leave a positive review or no review at all, that's a different story. The Fiverr system isn't perfect here: should they let buyers who got a refund review the seller anyway? That might be a solution. But then again, they would be reviewing something they didn't pay for. With that said, I'm open to it being an option. 

The thing is - the Fiverr system works fine for us established sellers. We have a ton of reviews, most of them positive. A single negative review or private feedback won't break our business in half before it even had a chance to get off the ground. For a new seller, that's the perdicament they find themselves in. If the client was unreasonable and a bully, the buyer has a single defence mechanism against that negative private feedback: cancelation. If they opt for the bad review, they most likely will get a buyer satisfaction close to 0%, and never get another order. 

Without the private feedback, Fiverr has no honest way of measuring the quality. With it, a single bad buyer can break their business in the beginning. 

That's why disagree. I think new sellers would be smart to run and hide from bad feedback in the beginning. If they deserve the negative review because of low-quality services, they won't make it very far anyway. I'm looking at this purely as a seller, not as a buyer. As a buyer, the current system should clearly allow me to review a seller even if the order gets canceled. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by smashradio

[smashradio]

P.S. I made sure to find me a wife who's afraid of the dark. That way, I never have to sleep on the couch. 😁

[newsmike]

1 hour ago, smashradio said:

As a buyer, the current system should clearly allow me to review a seller even if the order gets canceled. 

Yes, if it is about wanting to return the money because they could not perform the service properly, then that can be a legitimate act of good will, but the buyer who has lost time and been inconvenienced should be able to still review that experience honestly.  That's all I am asking for is an honest system.

[vickieito]

22 hours ago, newsmike said:

It seems literally every day I encourage a seller who is terrified to stand up

Thanks @newsmike! I'm one of the many people who you've told to stand up professionally for my business.

I tend to imagine the worst-case scenarios, and I find out that it's always worse in my mind than in real life. In real life, buyers almost always respect me when I give them reason to.

So if I've raised my prices, I don't need to apologize. If they want to rush the order or change the order requirements, I don't need to feel bad about charging them an extra fee. If they exceed my revision limit, I'm more than happy to add on a revision as a gig extra. And if they yell at me, I can just respond with my @newsmike QR's so that they know I'm not someone to mess around with. 😊

Since I've started standing up for myself, my ASP has increased, my order cancelations have decreased, and my communication with my buyers has improved. There's no reason to fear when I'm delivering quality work and I clearly communicate expectations to my buyers. It also helps to have a Success Manager fighting for me when things go wrong due to buyer error. My Success Manager has gotten me my money back in those cases.

 

[newsmike]

20 minutes ago, vickieito said:

I'm one of the many people who you've told to stand up professionally for my business.

I'm really thrilled to hear that. There is nothing better than being confident in yourself, and pricing your services accordingly. Bravo!

[fastcopywriter]

5 hours ago, smashradio said:

I stopped hitting the delivery button at one point

Wouldn't your order be marked late and thus the buyer is allowed to cancel with a click? 

 

4 hours ago, smashradio said:

Without the private feedback, Fiverr has no honest way of measuring the quality. With it, a single bad buyer can break their business in the beginning. 

 

I think sellers should have access to private feedback, maybe an e-mail from Fiverr. How can we improve without that information? 

 

4 hours ago, newsmike said:

This is why Amazon let's you return an item and then leave a review, as I did recently here:

 

Amazon banned me from leaving reviews, even for products I purchased and kept. Other readers didn't like my reviews, they kept reporting me. Book readers are too protective of their favorite authors. This doesn't help buyers make educated choices. 

[newsmike]

1 hour ago, fastcopywriter said:

Book readers are too protective of their favorite authors.

You must have been wishing that their women would become barren and their farmland salted so nothing would grow there for 200 years. I literally scorched an "author" from Australia who was the latest to move to Italy and, as is the custom with the "expat girl moves to Italy" genre, 3 weeks later start blogging as an Italian food authority, when she was just guilty of cultural appropriation by rewriting Artusi's recipes. Those reviews remained, although her sister wrote some fake defense posts of her. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by newsmike

[fastcopywriter]

1 hour ago, newsmike said:

You must have been wishing that their women would become barren and their farmland salted so nothing would grow there for 200 years. I literally scorched an "author" from Australia who was the latest to move to Italy and, as is the custom with the "expat girl moves to Italy" genre, 3 weeks later start blogging as an Italian food authority, when she was just guilty of cultural appropriation by rewriting Artusi's recipes. Those reviews remained, although her sister wrote some fake defense posts of her. 

Love the Carthage reference. I admit some of my reviews were petty, I once complained that an author kept using the imperial and metric system which made his sentences much longer than they needed to be. I attacked a fiction author because his main character had too many girlfriends, which wasn't necessary in a sci-fi book about an interstellar soldier that never dies (Undying Mercenaries series).  My other mistake was getting into arguments with other reviewers. Suffice to say, Amazon muzzled me, yet every time I finish a book on Kindle, they ask me to review it!

I'm in favor of cultural appropriation when you make something different. Fusion cuisine is very popular nowadays. "Authentic" is overrated.   

[newsmike]

21 minutes ago, fastcopywriter said:

"Authentic" is overrated.   

I guess I'm gonna have to choose that as the hill to die on, as there is a pastificio with my family's name on it in Gragnano, which has been in continuous operation since 1848, still cranking out pasta. But fusion is good, as long as we don't start with the pineapple on pizza thing again. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by newsmike

[newsmike]

1 hour ago, bandarapradeepa said:

My FLYER DISING oder please bro

If you are having a stroke call 911 immediately. 

[smashradio]

13 hours ago, newsmike said:

Yes, if it is about wanting to return the money because they could not perform the service properly, then that can be a legitimate act of good will, but the buyer who has lost time and been inconvenienced should be able to still review that experience honestly.  That's all I am asking for is an honest system.

I can agree with you on that. But if so, I think it should only be a public review and not something to affect your buyer satisfaction rate. Because that has little to do with honestly, and we're already getting punished for the cancellation. The few cancellations I've had have usually been for reasons like that (i.e., me getting sick and unable to record voiceovers, equipment failure, etc.) If I fear a cancellation will happen, I prefer to be as quick about it as possible instead of taking a chance and hurting the client even more. 

10 hours ago, fastcopywriter said:

Wouldn't your order be marked late and thus the buyer is allowed to cancel with a click? 

Yes, but they didn't want to cancel. They wanted me to work for free. It became a tug of war, and I won. 

10 hours ago, fastcopywriter said:

I think sellers should have access to private feedback, maybe an e-mail from Fiverr. How can we improve without that information? 

Then it wouldn't be private, and the whole point would be gone. The idea is that the buyer knows they are anonymous, and we will never see their rating. It's the only incentive to be 100% honest. 

If you have Seller Plus, your success manager can tell you which areas of your service you should focus on improving.
My success manager advised me to increase my delivery time right after my son was born because my world turned upside down, causing some delays that affected my buyer satisfaction rate.

She didn't say "Your last three buyers have left negative feedback because of delays" (because she's not allowed to do that), but she said something akin to "Looking at your satisfaction rate, it has decreased somewhat, and I wouldn't want to see it drop further. I see you have a 24-hour delivery time. You might increase that a bit if you're having trouble delivering quickly enough at the moment". 

The last time we spoke, I asked about my satisfaction rate, and she said it had increased. 

So you will get hints and subtle "nudges" from the SM about things like that (if they are any good). 

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by smashradio

[fastcopywriter]

5 hours ago, smashradio said:

If you have Seller Plus, your success manager can tell you which areas of your service you should focus on improving.

I think Seller Plus is only available for Top Rated Sellers. I agree with your success manager, I don't offer 24-hour delivery because Fiverr isn't a full-time job for me.  

[smashradio]

28 minutes ago, fastcopywriter said:

I think Seller Plus is only available for Top Rated Sellers. I agree with your success manager, I don't offer 24-hour delivery because Fiverr isn't a full-time job for me.  

No, seller plus is also available to other sellers, as far as I know. 

I offer 24-hour delivery again now (on my voice-over gig), and I manage to deliver super fast. But right after our son was born, I'm sure you can imagine how that went with 20 diaper changes and constant stuff to do every day.

I own a company on the side, but I'm mostly managing it from a distance these days, and I let my employees handle the day-to-day operations. My full-time job is as a freelancer, even though only 50% of my income is made this way. 

I do this because I love helping clients reach their goals and working hands-on with them on projects, be it VO, content writing, or translations. I couldn't do that if I started an agency, so I've chosen to remain a freelancer. 

To me, every aspect that involves spending or earning money is business. I run it like a business, and that's why it's successful. 
If you just view it as a hobby or side-gig to get some extra cash, then sure, I get it. But even then, I would consider it a business venture. 

I'm an investor on the side. In many ways, it's my hobby. I do it because I think it's fun (and I don't mind the passive income). But if I didn't treat my investments as a business, I would probably look at passive losses, not gains. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by smashradio

[donnovan86]

On 7/12/2022 at 4:58 PM, smashradio said:

The Fiverr system isn't perfect here: should they let buyers who got a refund review the seller anyway? That might be a solution.

You realize how many competitors would just order and cancel just to destroy someone's account? That's a terrible idea. The system is not perfect now, but adding that idea would become a nightmare, especially if you are an established seller. You would become a target for people trying to bring you down so they can get fake reviews and grow.. So yeah, at least in my opinion this would be detrimental for the platform.

On 7/13/2022 at 1:56 PM, fastcopywriter said:

think Seller Plus is only available for Top Rated Sellers.

No, it's for Level 2 sellers too. I am level 2 and I had SP since the beginning, I am one of the 200 people that got the $19 price. 

[smashradio]

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

No, it's for Level 2 sellers too. I am level 2 and I had SP since the beginning, I am one of the 200 people that got the $19 price. 

I want it for 19, too! Fiverr is not fair. Mr. Donnovan – we have to do something about this! If someone else gets it, I must get it too! Noooow. 😭

[donnovan86]

5 minutes ago, smashradio said:

Noooow. 

I think I was one of the last people to grab that deal.. To be honest I don't really use every feature, and rarely speak with the success manager, if at all. I keep it for the other perks, like faster withdrawal times, advanced analytics, etc. 

[smashradio]

Just now, donnovan86 said:

I think I was one of the last people to grab that deal.. To be honest I don't really use every feature, and rarely speak with the success manager, if at all. I keep it for the other perks, like faster withdrawal times, advanced analytics, etc. 

I check in with my SM every now and then (used her as a sounding board for new gig thumbnails and to check in on my buyer satisfaction from time to time). To save her the time it takes to set up a zoom call, I usually just do it on e-mail. Also, I hate meetings. 

I already have fast withdrawal since I'm a TRS. The advanced analytics are nice, though. A part of me also want Fiverr to see that this stuff works and that they should charge sellers just for being here. So I want to be part of it for that reason, as well. 

[fastcopywriter]

5 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

No, it's for Level 2 sellers too. I am level 2 and I had SP since the beginning, I am one of the 200 people that got the $19 price. 

How did you get a success manager? Did you write CS or did they find you? I had an SM many years ago, when I was a TRS.  Do you pay $19 a month for your SM? 

[donnovan86]

3 hours ago, fastcopywriter said:

Do you pay $19 a month for your SM? 

Yes. I don't really work with them though, I already figure out myself when I receive a bad private review and work hard to prevent that. And generally I don't have problem getting orders. I mostly got into the program for other features, like faster withdrawal. I had a SM years ago too, when I was a TRS as well, it's similar.