Subscriptions might be the reason your Fiverr account is bleeding income

[patrikdr]

Hello!

My name is Patrik. I'm a long time reader, first time poster. I've been on Fiverr for about 2 years now, Level 2 Seller in the Audio category (Voice Acting).

I should note that this opinion piece is entirely based on my experience, as well as the experience of some of the lovely folks I've met who also use Fiverr as one of their sources of income.

From personal experience, my gigs have been sucessful for most of the 2 years. The start was slow, but picked up pace within 3 months. Since then, I've had at least one buyer weekly, and have been making $100-$300 monthly, which is okay based on my expectations. I've had between 2000 and 3000 impressions on my 2 most popular gigs. However, once I've decided to add the Subscription option and actually received my first subscription, this has changed.

Since Voice Work is very gig-dependant (not in the Fiverr sense of a gig, but rather as gig-work, work that is not guaranteed and one you need to constantly pitch yourself for), the subscription obviously took months to complete. Not due to my ineptitude or anything; far from it! I deliver within 24 hours of every single order, oftentimes even within 12. The buyer took their time with their creative work, so I managed to finish the subscription with them after 4-5 months of constant waiting with that "1-2 orders in queue."

Coincidentally, my impression numbers during that time didn't jsut drop - they plummeted.

Note that I have a 100% 5-star rating, delivery speed under 24 hours and a response rate of 1 hour. By Fiverr's standards, I should be a prized seller. Better yet, I keep climbing in the Voice Acting world as well, getting better and better roles outside of Fiverr, because they stopped promoting my gigs and shoveled them at the back of the list. So, what gives?

As would everyone in my situation, I opened a support ticket where I was met with the standard corpo speech of "we're sorry you're dealing with this" and "you should try improving your quality," yada yada yada. In reality, it's due to their algorithm that I was cut off. Why? Likely because it calculated that I do not finish the orders I get, because of that "1 Order in Queue" from the subscription. 

So, now that I'm at 500 impressions per week, down from 2000 a year ago, I have nothing left but to move on to another platform, or to completely quit freelance gig-work and join an agency (which, to be honest, is a better way to earn, but it's also more restrictive and complex rather than doing it all your way).

 

My question to my fellow sellers is - Have you experienced something similar?
I know of at least 7 other people who have/had the exact same situation as me.

Any my advice is - Until this is proven to be wrong (and backed with data), I highly suggest you stop offering subscriptions if you aren't in the line of work where they could be utilised on a day to day basis.

 

Thank you for reading. I will attempt to keep track of the thread and reply as much as I can.

 

P.S. I've also been wondering for what purpose is Fiverr's cut 20% if they don't even offer you the ability to be found by a buyer? I've found more buyers outside of Fiverr and pointed them to my Fiverr profile than Fiverr has pointed any organic on-site buyers to me. At least as of the last 5 months. Very, very bizarre.

[patrikdr]

Update:

3 months after taking down all my subscription options, my numbers are once again rising.

I hope that tells you everything you need to know about fiverr subscriptions.

[rosiee007]

Hello and thank  you for sharing your experience. How are things going for you now? I recently started with Fiverr Subscriptions and so far have not received any orders through Subscriptions. Will wait for a couple of days and maybe take them down as well.

[miiila]

Hi there. I've only seen this topic now, after your update, thanks for posting, that's interesting. If it is indeed as you concluded, that would very obviously be bad planning, application, or whatever, by Fiverr. 

I'm hoping that some other people who use and get subscriptions, will notice the thread and add their experience. Myself, I've added the subscription option to one but not my other Gigs, as I've had no good experience with the milestones feature, and thought that subscriptions might lead to the same issues. Nobody ordered a subscription Gig so far, however, so I can't really contribute my own data or conclusions.

[vickieito]

3 hours ago, miiila said:

I'm hoping that some other people who use and get subscriptions, will notice the thread and add their experience.

I'd be curious to see others' responses, too!

I've had milestone orders from the start and long course curriculum-building orders (with the longest taking 5 months to complete), so I've always had 1-3 orders in queue since I posted my first gig in Nov 2021. My business doesn't seem to be affected with the number of orders that I have in queue - I was able to switch to full-time freelancing in February 2022, and my monthly income has been pretty consistent since then. I turned on the subscription feature for all 7 of my gigs. I added it on all my new gigs that I added last month, so I currently have it turned on for all 10 of my gigs.

I did see a slight increase in impressions for all my gigs. However, I don't think it significantly impacted my business (good or bad) mostly because I only got subscription orders on my slower curriculum-building gig. Each subscription order ended up being extended up to three months (typical of a curriculum order). 

@patrikdr - what has impacted my business is the quick-turnaround orders. I did accept an expedited course-build order for a 26-lesson course within 7 days, which have tripled my impressions on that gig once I closed that order. I've never done a course build that quick - normally it's a minimum of 2 weeks and can stretch for months at a time, so your theory might have some truth to it. That might mean that my other gigs (which give me regular, quick-turning orders) have bigger influence on my profile and the rest of my gigs than the less frequent, slow orders that I get through my course-building gig. I'm going to be incorporating shorter, quick-turnaround orders into my course-building gig to see if the positive trend in impressions continues.

Edited February 3, 2023 by vickieito

[ajommahmud]

I think, subscription options is helpful for me. 

[patrikdr]

On 2/3/2023 at 4:13 AM, rosiee007 said:

How are things going for you now?

My account has pretty much recovered to the activity from before getting my first subscription. Getting 1-3 orders ever 2 or so weeks is what I've usually had doing voiceover work.

On 2/3/2023 at 2:53 PM, vickieito said:

 

@patrikdr - what has impacted my business is the quick-turnaround orders. I did accept an expedited course-build order for a 26-lesson course within 7 days, which have tripled my impressions on that gig once I closed that order. I've never done a course build that quick - normally it's a minimum of 2 weeks and can stretch for months at a time, so your theory might have some truth to it. That might mean that my other gigs (which give me regular, quick-turning orders) have bigger influence on my profile and the rest of my gigs than the less frequent, slow orders that I get through my course-building gig. I'm going to be incorporating shorter, quick-turnaround orders into my course-building gig to see if the positive trend in impressions continues.

I've always had a 1-3 day turnaround on all of my orders/gigs, so I can't really tell if it matters as much, but given there are even profile pins, such as "This seller responds quickly to messages," and some such, I wouldn't rule it out of the equation. The general rule is, the quicker you can do something without the quality dropping, the better overall impressions will be regardless of the website on which you're offering your services.

While this isn't possible for all services on fiverr, I'd say being able to finish things such as voiceovers within a minimal time period (3 days) is sure to get buyers coming back.

 

As for the general impression after turning off subscriptions, I've had a lot more impressions, clicks and orders. Note that it isn't the subscription being turned on in itself that causes the problem, it's likely the difference between your usual order completion rate/queue and the subscription (which often stays unfulfilled for weeks and months on end, which was the case for my subscription). Tread carefully when it comes to subscriptions, but even just the prospect of them isn't worth the trouble in my opinion. You can offer discounts without the use of the system, and there's way more demerits both for the seller and the buyer.

Sometimes I even wonder who at Fiverr comes up with these services, and more importantly, why? A lot of features they've been coming up with lately are just sidegrades or straight up downgrades to the system they've had. Instead of focusing on cutting costs and offering a better split for sellers (20% is awful, which is why they're losing a lot of talent), they're chasing trends from other websites which then just get silently turned off and replaced by a new fad. I just don't get their 'ideas.'

[patrikdr]

On 2/4/2023 at 5:26 AM, ajommahmud said:

I think, subscription options is helpful for me. 

Glad it's working out for you. I believe it's heavily dependant on what the service you're offerin is, and on how much it would actually affect your usual delivery time and the orders in queue.

[masud7115]

Hi

[omniks]

I have never used this option, maybe because it is not entirely appropriate in my category, but there was a desire to try. But a couple of days ago this option just disappeared from my profile 😁

[rosiee007]

I've sent a few subscription orders to my existing customers but they haven't used/accepted the offer so far. The thing I don't like about Subscriptions is that they are confirmed for 2 or more months which IMO buyers are not very comfortable with.

[entrecon]

Have they changed how subscriptions work? I added the subscription option to one of my Gigs and have had three or four people order with it. When I have completed the first part of it, I don't see them again until the next month and then it looks like they drop into an "Incomplete" status waiting for the buyer's response. Are you suggesting these "incomplete" could hurt ranking? I actually have a non-subscription order that has been sitting that way for a couple of weeks now.

Honestly, I have been thinking about turning the feature off because it doesn't work the way I need it to. I would like to have more control over the subscription terms. It would be nice if I could set the quantity and the frequency. So instead of offering 1 per month, I could offer 2/month, 1/week, or even 3/week. Yes, I could set milestones, but you can't for jobs that don't meet the $50 threshold.