Incredible experience with Fiverr, but not the good kind (gig denied, seller profile disapproved in 1 minute, support unable to help)

[quantivo]

Hey all!

I feel like I must write about my experience here for two reasons, to get a proper answer since I did not get one from customer support and to help others avoid the same outcome. I recently created my Fiverr profile and set up my gig. My gig was offering custom Tradingview (platform for viewing financial market charts) indicators, in other words scripts. I made it clear in my gig that I'm offering programming services, a custom tailored code as customer wants it or any modifications to existing scripts customer may have. There are currently a lot of sellers on Fiverr offering these services (see attachment 1). My gig title and description was largely similar to what's seen here, of course still being my own text, but the services offered are 100% identical.

It took about 1 minute for my gig to get taken down after publishing. An algorithm with high sensitivity, fine, I'll just contact customer support and get it solved. So I opened a ticket. Here's the conversation:
 

•  
  quantivoThursday at 15:22

  Hey!

  My gig for Pinescript programming (Programming language for Tradingview indicators/strategies) services was denied. I wonder why this happened? There are a lot of Pinescript freelancers on your platform so this shouldn't violate any rules.

•  
  SantoshYesterday at 06:42

  Hi Quantivo,
   
  Santosh here, Hope you are doing well!
   
  I understand you would like to know why your Gig was denied. Please allow me to explain. 
   
  I have checked your account and your Gig and found that we had to remove your Gig as the service you are offering is prohibited by our Community Standards. This decision was made after careful consideration and cannot be undone. 
   
  Due to this, your Gig was denied and we will not be able to restore it. You are still welcome to create a new Gig that is in line with our guidelines, which you can find in our Community Standards. If you are not sure if a service is allowed, you can reach out to us and we will check it for you.
   
  For more information please read our Prohibited Services policy in Fiverr’s Community Standards.
   
  I hope I was able to clarify this and if you have any further questions, I am here.
   
  All the best,
•  
  quantivoYesterday at 13:08

  Hey,

  It is quite odd that it is prohibited as per your community standards since there are many pages of freelancers offering _the same_ services that was offered in my gig that got denied.

  Could you explain to me which community standards were broken and how is it possible that others can offer the services without breaking community standards? I have attached a screenshot to demonstrate this. Again I would like to emphasize that there are over 100 sellers offering these services

•  
  SantoshYesterday at 13:25

  Hi, again Quantivo.
   
  Thank you for providing the information.
   
  I understand that your Gig has been denied and you want this to be restored. 
   
  In order to look into this further, I went ahead and forwarded your inquiry to the relevant team for review. As soon as there is an update, we will be updating you about it this ticket 8397113. 
   
  Your patience is much appreciated!
   
  Kind regards, 
•  
  SantoshYesterday at 14:57

  Hi, again Quantivo.
   
  I have received an update from our relevant team. 
   
  I would like to confirm here that your Gig was denied due to the service you are offering being prohibited by our Community Standards. This decision was made after careful consideration and cannot be undone. Please note, once the Gig is denied It can not be restored. 
   
  You are still welcome to create a new Gig that is in line with our guidelines, which you can find in our Community Standards. If you are not sure if a service is allowed, you can reach out to us and we will check it for you.
   
  I would request you please review Fiverr’s Community Standards for more information.
   
  Please let me know if you have any further questions that I can help you with. 
   
  Kind regards, 
•  
  quantivoYesterday at 15:56

  Hey.

  For some reason I can't go to my gigs anymore. When I click "Gigs" I'm forwarded to the front page saying "This page is available only to approved Fiverr sellers.". All other seller features and pages work.

  Any idea

•  
  quantivoYesterday at 16:04

  Also, if I make a new gig offering same services, will it be denied again? I still don't think I got an answer to my question which is this:

  If offering tradingview indicators is prohibited by community standards, why are so many sellers allowed to do this?

•  
  EdwinToday at 10:58

  Hi, again Quantivo,
   
  My name is Edwin, I am here to help you today.
  
  Thank you for reaching out to us about this issue.
   
  Firstly providing trading signals, and indicators and telling users what to trade is against our guidelines that being said you can teach a user how to trade.
  
  I also checked your Seller profile on Fiverr was not approved.
   
  Unfortunately, I can't change this decision.
  Your seller profile wasn’t approved, but you are welcome to continue using Fiverr as a buyer.
   
  Also, if you feel other sellers are providing the same services your gig was denied for you can report a Gig using the "Flag" feature available on the Gig page (see image). This actually helps our team to review reports more quickly and efficiently.
   
  
   
•  
  quantivoToday at 14:13

  Hey, thanks for chiming in.

  I'm still very confused. I understand the trading signals part, telling users what to trade, but indicators? There are a lot of sellers providing custom tailored indicators as customer requests it, which is what I was intending to do as well. This can be verified by simply searching "tradingview indicator". There are a lot of people offering these services.

  It's very odd that my gig was denied when my title and description were very similar too. I'm making it very clear that I'm offering programming services and that these services can be any custom indicator, strategy as customer wants it, modifications to existing scripts and so on. If you guys can still see my denied gig, you'll be able to verify this too.

  Is there any particular reason I'm not approved? I thought I was since I was able to make a gig in the first place. Can I get approved somehow?

  Thanks.

•  
  EdwinToday at 14:44

  Hi, there again,
   
  Thank you for your reply.
   
  As I mentioned above if you fell other sellers are providing the services your gig was denied for you can report a Gig using the "Flag" feature available on the Gig page (see image). This actually helps our team to review reports more quickly and efficiently.
  
  I checked with my relevant team and the profile will not be restored and the decision is final.
   
  Unfortunately, I can't change this decision.
  Your seller profile wasn’t approved, but you are welcome to continue using Fiverr as a buyer.
  
  This process was created to meet the growing demand for high-quality services on fiverr.com from trustworthy freelancers.
  
  All the best for your future endeavors!

I was left with bad taste right away when my questions were not answered. It's also a bit funny to claim the decision was made after careful consideration, oh well. After Edwin stepped in, I finally started getting answers. So as per community standards offering trading signals and trading advice is forbidden. Very reasonable, but indicators? If indicators are forbidden, how can there be literally over 100 sellers offering these services and some that have done so for years? I was told to flag these sellers if I feel like they're offering forbidden services. After the last message ticket was market as "solved". 

Is this really the state of Fiverr? Anyone can verify that this service is and has been offered in Fiverr for a long time by many sellers, but in my case it's no bueno, gig denied and seller status taken away. Customer support gives me half baked answers and tells me to flag services that I feel are violating ToS and marks the ticket as solved. Hardly solved if you ask me. Since making two accounts is forbidden, what can I realistically do here but find another platform? Is this how Fiverr wants to be perceived among freelancing platforms? I don't think I can do anything else unless someone from Fiverr sees the error in assessment. I think many of you here will.

My suggestion for anyone offering these kind of services to be very careful in choice of words when making a gig to avoid Fiverr algo flagging you right away as this will put you through the limbo I'm in right now. Clearly these services are not really against community standards or there are some weird double standards applied at Fiverr, but this is how it is as of now. 

[vickieito]

@quantivo, I'm sorry to hear of your negative experience! 😟

1 hour ago, quantivo said:

Is this really the state of Fiverr?

Yes, it seems like 2-3 months ago, we started to see a lot of would-be-sellers coming onto the forum saying that their new seller accounts were denied (or their gigs were denied). About that same time we also started to see existing sellers who have been on the platform for years, saying they were shut down.

This is part of Fiverr's initiative to "increase the quality of services on Fiver." That's really all the information that we have, and we can make assumptions on what exactly that is based on what gigs are getting approved/denied as well as new changes that are being rolled out by Fiverr.

1 hour ago, quantivo said:

Clearly these services are not really against community standards

Some of those sellers weren't violating Fiverr's ToS or Community Standards - but it did seem like their gig and category didn't seem to align with the new direction that Fiverr seems to be moving in right now. I think that might be the case for you and your category.

1 hour ago, quantivo said:

Anyone can verify that this service is and has been offered in Fiverr for a long time by many sellers, but in my case it's no bueno, gig denied and seller status taken away.

Only 150 gigs were pulled up when you typed in the search term "tradingview indicator." That is really a small amount when compared with the rest of the platform. In a lot of the categories on Fiverr, there are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of gigs that are pulled up with one search term.

It could possibly be that Fiverr is now denying new sellers in you category to limit the number of sellers offering this service because of the low volume it pulls in (and because the service doesn't align with the direction that they're moving in). But only Fiverr knows that direction.

1 hour ago, quantivo said:

Customer support gives me half baked answers and tells me to flag services that I feel are violating ToS

I don't think Customer Service has the bandwidth to take down all of the existing accounts that are currently violating ToS. Some are getting caught by Fiverr's team, but a lot are getting flagged by the automatic system when these sellers are making updates or by sellers or buyers who notice that the gigs violate Fiverr's ToS. There's still a lot of gigs on Fiverr that are in violation of Fiverr's ToS that haven't been taken down yet, but Fiverr is trying to clean up the platform.

1 hour ago, quantivo said:

Is this how Fiverr wants to be perceived among freelancing platforms?

I think Fiverr is trying to shake the image of $5 cheap freelancers and they're trying to show buyers that they will have a higher calibre of sellers on the platform by screening new accounts and gigs, and restricting/denying the gigs and categories that don't really align with their movement in that direction.

Fiverr usually doesn't provide much information other than referring to the Community Standards, their quality standards, and ToS. I'm surprised that they corresponded/communicated with you as much as they have. Most of the people coming to the forum with the same problem didn't get much feedback from Fiverr CS.

1 hour ago, quantivo said:

but in my case it's no bueno, gig denied and seller status taken away.

This is really harsh. You're not allowed to sell. All you can do is buy on this platform. And customer service says, "All the best for your future endeavors!" (a little too brightly and optimistically)

I joined Fiverr without any idea of what I wanted to do. It took me 2.5 years to decide on my first gig, and from there, I branched out with 6 more gigs in completely different categories. I'm really grateful that I had that time to to explore and figure out what I wanted to to sell on this platform. I'm pretty sure I would be denied if I were to approach the platform in the same way that I did 3.5 years ago. I was denied on other freelancing platforms because they didn't need the services that I was offering. I was lucky enough that Fiverr was lenient back then. It's much stricter now!

1 hour ago, quantivo said:

what can I realistically do here but find another platform? ...I don't think I can do anything else

I did see other sellers-to-be on the forum who were told to "try again later." This seems to be a kinder option. Was that offered to you?

Edited October 15, 2022 by vickieito

[quantivo]

4 hours ago, vickieito said:

@quantivo, I'm sorry to hear of your negative experience! 😟

Yes, it seems like 2-3 months ago, we started to see a lot of would-be-sellers coming onto the forum saying that their new seller accounts were denied (or their gigs were denied). About that same time we also started to see existing sellers who have been on the platform for years, saying they were shut down.

This is part of Fiverr's initiative to "increase the quality of services on Fiver." That's really all the information that we have, and we can make assumptions on what exactly that is based on what gigs are getting approved/denied as well as new changes that are being rolled out by Fiverr.

Some of those sellers weren't violating Fiverr's ToS or Community Standards - but it did seem like their gig and category didn't seem to align with the new direction that Fiverr seems to be moving in right now. I think that might be the case for you and your category.

Only 150 gigs were pulled up when you typed in the search term "tradingview indicator." That is really a small amount when compared with the rest of the platform. In a lot of the categories on Fiverr, there are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of gigs that are pulled up with one search term.

It could possibly be that Fiverr is now denying new sellers in you category to limit the number of sellers offering this service because of the low volume it pulls in (and because the service doesn't align with the direction that they're moving in). But only Fiverr knows that direction.

I don't think Customer Service has the bandwidth to take down all of the existing accounts that are currently violating ToS. Some are getting caught by Fiverr's team, but a lot are getting flagged by the automatic system when these sellers are making updates or by sellers or buyers who notice that the gigs violate Fiverr's ToS. There's still a lot of gigs on Fiverr that are in violation of Fiverr's ToS that haven't been taken down yet, but Fiverr is trying to clean up the platform.

I think Fiverr is trying to shake the image of $5 cheap freelancers and they're trying to show buyers that they will have a higher calibre of sellers on the platform by screening new accounts and gigs, and restricting/denying the gigs and categories that don't really align with their movement in that direction.

Fiverr usually doesn't provide much information other than referring to the Community Standards, their quality standards, and ToS. I'm surprised that they corresponded/communicated with you as much as they have. Most of the people coming to the forum with the same problem didn't get much feedback from Fiverr CS.

This is really harsh. You're not allowed to sell. All you can do is buy on this platform. And customer service says, "All the best for your future endeavors!" (a little too brightly and optimistically)

I joined Fiverr without any idea of what I wanted to do. It took me 2.5 years to decide on my first gig, and from there, I branched out with 6 more gigs in completely different categories. I'm really grateful that I had that time to to explore and figure out what I wanted to to sell on this platform. I'm pretty sure I would be denied if I were to approach the platform in the same way that I did 3.5 years ago. I was denied on other freelancing platforms because they didn't need the services that I was offering. I was lucky enough that Fiverr was lenient back then. It's much stricter now!

I did see other sellers-to-be on the forum who were told to "try again later." This seems to be a kinder option. Was that offered to you?

I understand and this is definitely not a bad decision from Fiverr, but it feels like their method is shotgun banning anything that overlaps a questionable service like "trading signals" in some way. The term indicator is associated with it, but it's a very different thing to sell "an indicator that gives you 100$ profit a day guaranteed" vs. a script for a financial markets platform the way customer wants it. Typical indicators are programs that make it easier for you to spot the things you look for in financial markets or alert you when an event that fits your criteria has happened. Their purpose is to ease your work and help you digest information in a much lighter format than simply eyeballing the chart .

 

Fundamentally the problem here is a lack of proper understanding of what's being offered with "indicators", I think. They are indicators, scripts, algorithms, programs, whatever you want to call them. It makes total sense to separate the wheat from the chaff and this is a net benefit, but arguably there are more efficient ways to carry out such strategy than blanket banning anything related to the term "indicator".

 

There's always a trade-off when filtering content on a platform, it's just that they seem to have tighten the screw a bit too tight, a bit too hastily and this apparently only applies to new sellers. There are sellers that have been on the platform for years, doing business as usual and rightfully so. I think putting programming services in the same category as quick 5$ photoshop gigs is quite a stretch for many reasons. Many of the sellers are offering 100's of dollars worth service packages and are doing so successfully. Some have 1k+ orders booked, as the attachment shows. I also know from experience that it's not uncommon for a more complex project to cost 1k+$ in some platforms. 

 

It's surely a niche, but it's not a tiny niche. This particular platform (Tradingview) has 30 million monthly active users and a 3b$ valuation, to give a ballpark idea of their popularity. Source here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-14/tradingview-s-3-billion-valuation-fed-by-retail-investing-boom. It's doubtful Fiverr is of the opinion that custom made code for such platform is against their community standards and them allowing sellers run their related operations to this day also speaks for it.

 

Well, it is what it is. We'll see if Fiverr ever takes a more detailed look into this in the future. Thanks for the kind reply.