What happens when you publish a new gig? A Pro seller's guide!

[frank_d]

Hey everyone!

So after my latest Thread and Live Stream which can be found here:

I realized that it had been a while since I published a new gig.

Putting myself through the process all over again, plus a series of insightful questions by fellow members really showed me that things are a little different nowadays.

Fiverr treats new gigs a bit differently and it is now clear to me that we should approach gig creation with a few core principles in mind.

So I thought it would be helpful to create a sort of checklist before starting the gig creation process, to make sure you give your brand new gig a fighting chance on this saturated and highly competitive marketplace.

This is not going to be a top-10 list of generic "tricks", this is actionable advice, plus some good old insider information. 😉

Let's begin.

Preface

I am repeating myself on this forum, and I will keep doing so until it takes:

We should abolish the term "rank" when we talk about our gigs.

Ranking is no more. Fiverr is now indexing gigs when they are published and then it only serves them to buyers based on relevancy and performance.

A quick recap of what my "Fiver 3.0" thesis was about can be found here:

Do not be fooled by the publishing date, it is still current and for the most part it still stands true.

What happens when you hit "publish"?

When we publish a new gig, there's a brief window in time, where a lot of things happen in the background.

Your gig gets indexed essentially and then unless it gets taken down for breaking ToS, Fiverr needs to calculate how well your gig will perform, POTENTIALLY.

This is the tricky part: in order for Fiverr to do so, it needs to guesstimate the result, based on a highly complicated formula.

(👆Me when I check my brand new gig's analytics the next day☝️)

So what does that formula even look like?

No one outside Fiverr knows the answer to that 100%.

But any experienced seller can actually piece some of the pieces together, which is what I have been closely doing since 2019, when my research began.

So here's what I theorised so far:

• Fiverr checks to see how well the gig is completed on your end. (remember the "use all the features" advice? 😉 )

• It also checks the gig Title, Gig Tags and meta data. (in that order)

• Then it checks your gig's description. (simple crawl)

• Finally, it checks a bunch of things on your profile. (there's lots of speculation regarding this, but it will make sense in am minute)

That's phase 1.

For every one of those checks, your gig gets an individual value assigned to each attribute. Let's call it a "grade".

So if you want your gig to have a fighting chance, you must focus on the following:

1. Gig title 

A gig's title is like 90% of the SEO, belive it or not. It is the thing that impacts your gig's chances of appearing as a result, regardless of what is in the tags or description. You need to focus all your efforts into researching your market.

Use Fiverr as a buyer (just click the "switch to buying" link next to your profile image on the top right of your screen) and start searching for what you offer.

So for example:

Let's say you are looking to create an NFT gig. Search for the word "NFT". (no quotes)

 

Something interesting happens: Fiverr tries to guess what you (presumably a buyer) is looking for.

How does it guess? It has a database of past searches that is constantly updated.

So there is a good chance that whatever terms are auto-generated by Fiverr, those are actually trending ones.

But please be mindful of the fact that they are probably not refined, as these are probably being presented as they were fed to the system.

Not what you were looking to make? Was it an "NFT animation"? Just keep typing, see what comes up.

Or switch it up, look for "animated NFT". Hopefully you get the idea.

Here's another example:

What if I wanted to create a "minimal logo" design gig?

Here's what happens when I type in minimal: 

So these are some great suggestions, to help you guess what buyers are looking for, and create a gig that's specifically designed to catch a percentage of said searches.

Another tool at your disposal, if you are a Seller Plus member, is the "top keywords" tool, under your "analytics" tab.

So if you already have a similar gig published, or an already successful gig in the same vertical, you can actually look into under what keywords your gig appeared in search results, and which one of those got you clicks and sales.

So using this tool to guess even more accurately what keywords interest your target audience.

You can use an adjective to describe your offering, as I see many sellers do. But take note that the longer that word is, the more characters you are essentially throwing in the trash, as the adjective itself will not help your gig at all. It's only there to appeal to your audience, plus make the sentence a bit more tolerable to humans. So yes, you can say "I will create a professional/amazing/wonderful logo" but leaving that out when you have a long key phrase you want to focus on, may be a better approach.

2. Tags/keywords

These need to be complimentary ones, and not reusing the same keywords/phrase as in your title.

So here's where you want to niche down.

Say you created an "animated video ad" gig. Here's where you can add several complimentaty keywords that help capture more leads.

Words like "facebook" or "Instagram", or "promotional" and "commercial". Here's where you are looking for words -much like a guessing game- that would still work when used in the same sentence as your gig title's main key phrase. You are upping your chances by also guessing correctly about different things that buyers would be looking for. So once again, researching trends and what the global marketplace is doing, is key.

3. Description

This is not the place to use keywords. Using them organically in sentences that make sense, is OK, but Fiverr has already decided your relevance from steps 1+2. Adding keywords here won't change its mind.

This is the place where you need to present your buyer with a sound positioning. 

They need to understand what you are offering, peek into what working with you might look like and what they can expect.

Anyone who talks about SEO and cramming keywords on the description, should just stop as this is not how this works.

4. Gig completion

I have covered this extensively here, no need to expand any further:

 

Performance Review

Phase 2, is performance review.

So essentially Fiverr needs to understand as soon as possible, if your shiny new gig is a diamond in the rough or a hot pile of garbage. 

How does it do that?

Simple.

If it serves your gig to relevant search results, it measures impressions plus the infamous Click Through Rate. (CTR)

That means that every time your gig shows up on a buyer's screen, via the search function, your impressions number goes up.

I see a lot of sellers coming here and asking "how to ge their impressions numbers up".

Which as a question it makes very little sense. Here's some advice if you are in that group of sellers:

Impressions will only go up, if your gig's title and tags are relevant to what buyers are looking for.

Write that on a post-it and stick it on your desk or computer monitor for daily reference.

Some people may ask: "But Frank, not all buyers search for gigs, many buyers visit the gig vertical and click on their preferred subcategory. What happens then?" 

Well, that is a different subject as it involves a lot more performance indicators when calculating dynamic positions, so I will leave this for another post.

Now, back to this guide.

If the buyer clicks on your gig, you can track that click via your analytics, but most importantly, Fiverr perceives that interaction as a positive one. That's your clicks in your gig's analytics.

So at this point, you get a new grade based on that metric.

Here's the important part:

Getting impressions, means your gig's titles and tags are somewhat working. (yaaay!)

Not getting clicks, while getting impressions, indicates that one of the following is not:

• gig image

• pricing

• trust signals, .a.k.a. reviews

So to all the sellers who come here and ask why while they get impressions, they get few clicks, if any, the answer is: look into the gig's thumbnail/video, your pricing when compared to other sellers and what you offer plus your reviews.

In case of a brand new gig, just ignore the "reviews" part.

If your clicks are decreasing or non-existent, then that tells Fiverr that your gig is an under-performer.

Very few gigs can survive that without editing and tweaking. It's just how this works.

But if it does gets clicks and does not get sales, that's even worse. 

It tells Fiverr that something is seriously wrong with your gig.

So here comes Pro tip #1:

Quote

 

When you publish a gig, monitor its performance closely via your analytics page every day. (they are only updated once a day so don't just click on it over and over again)

Assign a grace period in your mind. Let's say a week. Check the numbers. Click may take a while to appear, but when they do, look for signs that they are consistent. Once/if they reach a consistent average number, but you still don't convert, then when they start declining, that's when you should start editing.

And since we are talking about clicks, you know that it's your description/packages/FAQ that need revisiting.

Don't wait until clicks cease and impressions start falling off a cliff.

Learn how to listen to what Fiverr is telling you.

It is imperative that you get from a solit number of impressions to a smaller but consistent number of clicks to a single sale, as soon as possible. This is the only way that leads to lift-off.

It is a long game, so don't go deleting your gig or editing the crap out of it, just 3 days in. Look for indicators that it didn't perform or stopped performing based on the above.

 

So hopefully by now, you have a fairly basic guide of how to diagnose your gig, after it is published.

 

The Good Stuff

Now I know I mentioned some spicy insider's information, so here it comes.

All of the above performance indicators, are taken into consideration for a very brief window in time.

Which is why if your initially published gig, is failing any of the above check points, it will soon either stop being served as a result, or get de-indexed (is that a word?) altogether.

So this si why people see their gigs analytics reaching 0 at some point. That gig spanned its wings, hopped in the air for a hot minute and then crashed and burned.

My advice is as follows: don't be afraid. The current Fiverr engine is waaaaay more responsive than what we were working 2-3 years ago. Editing your gig, and trial and error will not hurt you in any way.

The only time you may need to dread editing your gig and failing, is when your gig is getting you lots fo sales or if you got one of Fiverr's special badges, like "Fiverr's choice". 

You don't change a winning team. So that's the only instance when you want to think twice about editing your stuff.

And here's where it gets "spicy":

If your gig gets an order, from a buyer who saw your gig, clicked on it, liked what they saw and bought it, your gig gets a brand new type of rating, because that series of actions will spike your conversion rate.

And before people start getting the wrong idea: you can't trick Fiverr by having your friends/family/alter ego click on or even worse, order your gig.

Fiverr knows when this is organic, or when it is suspicious in any way.

So some sellers on here, were met with success right off the bat, not because of a trick or hack.

Their gig was relevant, their positioning was sound and they were priced reasonably in regards to their value proposition/market.

So any organic orders and a high conversion rate, is one of those heavily weighted attributes on your gig's performance calculation formula.

And I recently discovered another one. But before I get into that...

Here comes Pro tip #2:

Quote

 

Take note of how you want to price your gig.

Then when first publishing it, reduce that price by a small percentage.

Think of this as grease to help the funnel work for you faster.

If you assume your SEO research is correct and your positioning is sound, then reducing the price just a tad initially may be what helps you get that first conversion in fast, within the timed window I talked about.

Remember when other sellers talked about how "when you get your first reviews in, everything seems to pick up and things start to go well"?

Well that was only half right. It was a faulty correlation.

It wasn;t the reviews they got that served as a boost. I will repeat this once again: public reviews are close to meaningless now.

What actually got them a boost was a fast conversion when the gig was first published.

So lowering that price a bit, gives you a stronger chance to get that first win, and it's all smooth sailing from there on. 🙂

 

The "Even Better" Stuff

There's a metric that follows your average price. (again remeber how most of my findings on Fiverr 3.0 was me just checking what numbers Fiverr shares with us?)

So here's how that attribute works.

If a buyer looks for a "logo design" gig, and I am just as relevant as another seller, we both get presented to the buyer as search results.

Let's say for argument's sake, that our reviews are fairly similar. Or better yet, the other seller has 2,000 reviews more than me. (crazy, right?)

IF I have a higher average price than my competitor, I will out-perform them and therefore appear higher up in the search results page.

So if my competitor is selling their gig at an average of $55 and I am making $65 a pop, then I win.

Just to clarify: this is NOT the actual price of the gig, but the average sales price, either via packages+extras or custom offers.

So it doesn't matter what the price tag is. Someone might be selling at $5/$10/$15 packages, but for whatever reason their average price goes up to $100 via extras and custom offers. That's one more thing you don't know about other sellers but you know for yourself.

Conclusion

I need to wrap this up, as it started as a mini-article, and I think I need to look an epub  publisher for this. 🙂 

The first half of this post was meant to be a guide to all the sellers who come here on a daily basis, asking about their impressions and clicks. I also hope this sheds some light into what that checklist should be before you even consider to publish a new gig.

The second half of the post is just to briefly touch upon how dynamic and complex this whole "performance" thing is.

I havent's even mentioned profile performance indicators, buyer behaviour, promoted gigs and Business profiles, and already this post became too complicated and too long to read and digest in one sitting.

 

So let's keep the conversation going, and share this post to any sellers who ask questions about "ranking" and impressions, etc.

Feel free to share your experience, questions and success or failures with your gigs when you first published them.

Maybe we can help each other by exchanging points of view.

Edit 1: Not 5 seconds passed and I already got a private message about someone’s gigs being “deranked” and how I can help them with “SERP”. Which reminded me something important I forgot to include: the above post treats this one gig creation as if in a vacuum. Meaning if you have several gigs that all of them are extremely similar (a big No-No) or have been reported or break ToS, no new gig will ever perform well as your account is shadow-banned, for lack of a better term.

 

 

 

 

 

[faiyaznoor]

Wow, a lot of things to learn for the newcomers. Very informative. Thank you so much for sharing. Going to save it in my learning collection. God bless you. 

[frank_d]

Thank you @faiyaznoor

I hope this helps you and your progress on the platform.

Yes bookmarking and diving back in when needed is a solid approach, as it’s difficult to assimilate in one sitting.

[uk1000]

2 hours ago, frank_d said:

Description

This is not the place to use keywords. Using them organically in sentences that make sense, is OK, but Fiverr has already decided your relevance from steps 1+2. Adding keywords here won't change its mind.

Though if keywords in the gig description don't make Fiverr change it's mind about relevance, why does Fiverr show my gig on the first and only page of search results if I search using a 4 word phrase from the gig description, where none of those 4 words are currently in the gig title or search tags (nor are there synonyms of those in the title/search tags)?

Quote

2. Tags/keywords

These need to be complimentary ones, and not reusing the same keywords/phrase as in your title.

I think that might be related to this:

https://www.fiverr.com/support/articles/360011094958-SEO-tricks-for-Gig-titles?segment=seller

Quote

Keywords

• Create a short simple title—without repetitive terms.
  Remember: Repetition does not affect Gig visibility.
• Use search terms once (either in your Gig Title or Tags) to maximize the limited space

Where they say "Repetition does not affect Gig visibility." above they might also be meaning just don't have the same words twice or more in the title.

Have you been told by Fiverr themselves that no extra weight is given to words/phrases occurring in search tags and titles compared to the word/phrases just appearing in titles?

It seems like recent top selling gigs (eg. created on after the about time of Fiverr 3.0, eg. those with hundreds of reviews) usually seem to have at least 1 of their search tags in their title. Surely that probably wouldn't be the case if having a search tag in the gig title negatively affects things (eg. the chance of being found as easily).

 

Edited January 20, 2022 by uk1000

[frank_d]

1 minute ago, uk1000 said:

Though if keywords in the gig description don't make Fiverr change it's mind about relevance, why does Fiverr show my gig on the first and only page of search results if I search using a 4 word phrase from the gig description, where none of those 4 words are currently in the gig title or search tags (nor are there synonyms of those in the title/search tags)?

That sounds very specific and frankly if that is experienced by you, searching for your keywords, I’m not sure you are getting an accurate result.

Though the fact that there is only one results page is intriguing.

Is it because of the uniqueness of the combination of keywords?

3 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

Where they say "Repetition does not affect Gig visibility." above they might also be meaning just don't have the same words twice or more in the title.

Repeating keywords doesn’t bury your gig, it is also not helping. It’s just you essentially wasting valuable space.

4 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

Have you been told by Fiverr themselves that no extra weight is given to words/phrases occurring in search tags and titles compared to the word just appearing in titles?

 

What my Fiverr liaison told me was that if you use the right set of keywords in your title that’s 90% of the job done.

Fiverr doesn’t ignore tags, but again according to them, it’s best if you shoot for complimentary tags to widen the net you cast.

That’s where I got that tip and how I am now experimenting with 3 of my main gigs’ SEO.

 

[frank_d]

8 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

recent top selling gigs (eg. created on after the about time of Fiverr 3.0, eg. those with hundreds of reviews) usually seem to have at least 1 of their search tags in their title. Surely that probably wouldn't be the case if having a search tag in the gig title negatively affects things (eg. the chance of being found easily).

Again for clarification: My contact didn’t say this negatively affects your gig. They said it isn’t efficient in terms of potential targeting.

Fiverr doesn’t ignore tags.

You could be on to something or this may be simple correlation.

I am now going to edit a fourth gig, maybe that’s something I should test: adding my main key phrase as a tag.

It should be interesting to compare analytics after about a week.

Thank you @uk1000 for your comments, they are helpful!

[uk1000]

3 minutes ago, frank_d said:

Is it because of the uniqueness of the combination of keywords?

It could be. If I search for the entire 7 word phrase/line (none of which are in the title/current search tags) it puts me at the top of the 1 page search result.

That suggests it can find and recommend gigs just based on the gig description - or maybe gig descriptoin+package descriptions (ie when the words in the search phrase aren't in the title/search tags).

[frank_d]

@uk1000 which one of your gigs is it?

I’d like to test this out for myself!

 

[uk1000]

The compositing one. Search "Basic Rotoscoping of short clips (see FAQ)" in the Fiverr search box without quotes. None of those words are in the title/current search tags.

Or just "of short clips (see faq)" without quotes shows my gig somewhere on the only results page (again where they're not in the title/tags).

Edited January 20, 2022 by uk1000

[frank_d]

21 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

The compositing one. Search "Basic Rotoscoping of short clips (see FAQ)" in the Fiverr search box without quotes. None of those words are in the title/current search tags.

Or just "of short clips (see faq)" without quotes shows my gig somewhere on the only results page (again where they're not in the title/tags).

That is fascinating!

I tried isolating other sentences from your description and it doesn’t seem to yield the same results though.

I need to look i to the other results that come up, and then also try to see if I can replicate this on any of my gigs.

Seems like I may have misjudged how Fiverr crawls and indexes descriptions.

It seems like this is proof that there is more to it than what I have been told. 🙂

[uk1000]

49 minutes ago, frank_d said:

how Fiverr crawls and indexes descriptions.

It could be related to this:

The text on the board is in English even though the audio isn't.

Around 9:18 it talks about text2gig (Contextual Recommendation) where it's a version of doc2vec that is trained on gig titles and descriptions. Before that it talks about words to vectors (word2vec) so maybe it could find words that are close in vector space (to find synonyms etc.).

Maybe it's using that or a similar function to find search phrases used by buyers eg. by returning gigs with a similarity score close to 1. Assuming what's shown in the video wasn't just a test/demo by Fiverr and that they do use something similar now (since the video is a few years old now).

Though that totally explain properly why certain other phrases aren't found. Maybe the phrases have to have a minimum number of gigs using them and it can ignore really common words (like the most common words in English) or phrases.

They've previously said they use ElasticSearch and Solr search so one of those could also be related to how they index descriptions.

Edited January 20, 2022 by uk1000

[maryamstudios]

15 hours ago, frank_d said:

Thank you @faiyaznoor

I hope this helps you and your progress on the platform.

Yes bookmarking and diving back in when needed is a solid approach, as it’s difficult to assimilate in one sitting.

 

12 hours ago, uk1000 said:

It could be related to this:

The text on the board is in English even though the audio isn't.

Around 9:18 it talks about text2gig (Contextual Recommendation) where it's a version of doc2vec that is trained on gig titles and descriptions. Before that it talks about words to vectors (word2vec) so maybe it could find words that are close in vector space (to find synonyms etc.).

Maybe it's using that or a similar function to find search phrases used by buyers eg. by returning gigs with a similarity score close to 1. Assuming what's shown in the video wasn't just a test/demo by Fiverr and that they do use something similar now (since the video is a few years old now).

Though that totally explain properly why certain other phrases aren't found. Maybe the phrases have to have a minimum number of gigs using them and it can ignore really common words (like the most common words in English) or phrases.

They've previously said they use ElasticSearch and Solr search so one of those could also be related to how they index descriptions.

It is really informative , but one thing as you stated 90% seo or ranking depends upon title , Should we repeat title keywords in the tag? If yes then how much?

[frank_d]

3 minutes ago, maryamstudios said:

 

It is really informative , but one thing as you stated 90% seo or ranking depends upon title , Should we repeat title keywords in the tag? If yes then how much?

I also covered this in my article. The suggestion I got from a Fiverr representative was to not use the same keywords present in the title as tags.

But as I understand it, it's not a matter of penaltization or actual performance.

It's a matter of optimizing so that you can -hopefully- broaden your reach.

When I asked specifically if doing so would hurt, or count as a negative value in any way, they said that was not the case, but that "it would be a waste of valuable key words".

You are free to experiment if you'd like.

[maryamstudios]

1 minute ago, frank_d said:

I also covered this in my article. The suggestion I got from a Fiverr representative was to not use the same keywords present in the title as tags.

But as I understand it, it's not a matter of penaltization or actual performance.

It's a matter of optimizing so that you can -hopefully- broaden your reach.

When I asked specifically if doing so would hurt, or count as a negative value in any way, they said that was not the case, but that "it would be a waste of valuable key words".

You are free to experiment if you'd like.

Thank you so much , Can we use high competition keyword with wealthy volume , with some low competitive  keywords? and how much maximum keywords should one target?

[maryamstudios]

Why with the promotion disability your gigs are thrown back in SERP? even when you are getting 5 star rating, tips, good conversion rate and awesome feedback?

What is the solution of this?

[frank_d]

4 minutes ago, maryamstudios said:

Thank you so much , Can we use high competition keyword with wealthy volume , with some low competitive  keywords? and how much maximum keywords should one target?

I don't understand the question about maximum keywords. On the title? On tags?

You are not vieweing this from the right angle. This is not a hack. You should use this "keywords" guide as a way to research and find how your target audience will find you faster by figuring out their search term. 

 

This guide is all about figuring out how to correctly phrase your title when creating a gig, to increase your chances of being relative.

 

  

3 minutes ago, maryamstudios said:

Why with the promotion disability your gigs are thrown back in SERP? even when you are getting 5 star rating, tips, good conversion rate and awesome feedback?

If your gig is no longer eligible for promotion, then one of the above is NOT true. Lack of performance and consistency usually ends up in you not being able to promote a gig.

 

Which is why brand new gigs can't be promoted: Fiverr doesn't have any actual IRL performance data, which it can only understand in terms of conversion rate, average price and buyer's exit surveys. (to name the biggest factors)

[miiila]

12 hours ago, uk1000 said:

Maybe the phrases have to have a minimum number of gigs using them and it can ignore really common words (like the most common words in English) or phrases.

It would make a lot of sense to make search smarter that way, for two reasons, I think. For one, you always got heaps of totally irrelevant results, just because they had a word of your search term, only in a totally irrelevant way for you, and also because there will be search phrases that many non-expert users will use, while the gig titles may often only contain concise and precise phrases. In the description, obviously, there's more space for variations and to consider what people who don't know the industry slang will put in.

That might be a good use of BRs for the "BRs aren't worth reading" crowd, by the way, depending on your niche, it might give you ideas for additional search phrases that laypeople users use (or even for new gigs). Of course, on the other hand, some won't want to have to do with buyers who'd not input exactly what they wrote in their Gig title, but in any case, might be an idea for some.

Edited January 21, 2022 by miiila
typing on phone...

[maryamstudios]

Let me clarify my statement or query!!

I am saying while writing description " we need to repeat title"?

we need to repeat tags in description?

As you stated no , I also consult with my success manager she said same things But when I searched my competitors and I studied them , most of the ranking competitors are using title in the description and using tags without sentence like this" tags # logo ,logo design , professional, modern etc"

And they are ranking on top of the SERP? What is the logic behind it then?

 

 

[frank_d]

5 minutes ago, miiila said:

t would make a lot of sense to make search smarter that way, for two reasons, I think. For one, you always got heaps of totally irrelevant results, just because they had a word of your search term, only in a totally irrelevant way for you, and also because there will be search phrases that many non-expert users will use, while the gig titles may often only contain concise and precise phrases. In the description, obviously, there's more space for variations and to consider what people who don't know the industry slang will put in.

That's a great way to put it @miiila

We also need to remember: I left A LOT of stuff out, in order to simplify this article.

When we speak of "relevance" it's not just matching answers to questions.

Fiverr tries to also match seller performance to buyer behaviour.

For example: if I average sales at $250 and a buyer is averaging purchases around that price point, we are a good, frictionless match.

If I have a high buyer satisfaction ratio, maybe that counts a bit more than getting the key words in the absolute right order.

And a lot more AI stuff than we can imagine.

 

4 minutes ago, maryamstudios said:

I am saying while writing description " we need to repeat title"?

we need to repeat tags in description?

Again something I cover in my article. As long as you do so organically in a sentence that makes sense to humans, sure go for it.

It's not something that will give you a boost though, most probably.

You keep using the term SERP tells me you are not grasping the relativity concept.

SERP is not dynamic. Whatever Fiverr is using, is completely dynamic and works differently.

Maybe you need to wrap your head around the concept before being able to absorb the suggestions/tips of this article.

[melanielm]

This type of post deserves a new 'Like' emoji that transcends the up arrow or heart.

Thank you for continuously sharing gold with us. Extremely informative.

One thing I struggle with is optimizing a higher average price against what I want to earn and how much work I want to do here. Trial and error, to a point, I guess!

Total aside, but I wonder if Fiverr will make a Seller Plus members' only part of the forum ever. 

[frank_d]

12 minutes ago, melanielm said:

This type of post deserves a new 'Like' emoji that transcends the up arrow or heart.

Thank you for continuously sharing gold with us. Extremely informative.

One thing I struggle with is optimizing a higher average price against what I want to earn and how much work I want to do here. Trial and error, to a point, I guess!

Total aside, but I wonder if Fiverr will make a Seller Plus members' only part of the forum ever. 

Thank you so much for your kind words.

I am happy to give back to the community and share what I know.

Raising your price is tricky, as it may alienate part of the existing client base, plus it does take time to find a new audience.

There is definitely a sweet spot for everyone so keep trying until you find yours!

[syedkhizarhayat]

22 hours ago, frank_d said:

Hey everyone!

So after my latest Thread and Live Stream which can be found here:

I realized that it had been a while since I published a new gig.

Putting myself through the process all over again, plus a series of insightful questions by fellow members really showed me that things are a little different nowadays.

Fiverr treats new gigs a bit differently and it is now clear to me that we should approach gig creation with a few core principles in mind.

So I thought it would be helpful to create a sort of checklist before starting the gig creation process, to make sure you give your brand new gig a fighting chance on this saturated and highly competitive marketplace.

This is not going to be a top-10 list of generic "tricks", this is actionable advice, plus some good old insider information. 😉

Let's begin.

Preface

I am repeating myself on this forum, and I will keep doing so until it takes:

We should abolish the term "rank" when we talk about our gigs.

Ranking is no more. Fiverr is now indexing gigs when they are published and then it only serves them to buyers based on relevancy and performance.

A quick recap of what my "Fiver 3.0" thesis was about can be found here:

Do not be fooled by the publishing date, it is still current and for the most part it still stands true.

What happens when you hit "publish"?

When we publish a new gig, there's a brief window in time, where a lot of things happen in the background.

Your gig gets indexed essentially and then unless it gets taken down for breaking ToS, Fiverr needs to calculate how well your gig will perform, POTENTIALLY.

This is the tricky part: in order for Fiverr to do so, it needs to guesstimate the result, based on a highly complicated formula.

(👆Me when I check my brand new gig's analytics the next day☝️)

So what does that formula even look like?

No one outside Fiverr knows the answer to that 100%.

But any experienced seller can actually piece some of the pieces together, which is what I have been closely doing since 2019, when my research began.

So here's what I theorised so far:

• Fiverr checks to see how well the gig is completed on your end. (remember the "use all the features" advice? 😉 )

• It also checks the gig Title, Gig Tags and meta data. (in that order)

• Then it checks your gig's description. (simple crawl)

• Finally, it checks a bunch of things on your profile. (there's lots of speculation regarding this, but it will make sense in am minute)

That's phase 1.

For every one of those checks, your gig gets an individual value assigned to each attribute. Let's call it a "grade".

So if you want your gig to have a fighting chance, you must focus on the following:

1. Gig title 

A gig's title is like 90% of the SEO, belive it or not. It is the thing that impacts your gig's chances of appearing as a result, regardless of what is in the tags or description. You need to focus all your efforts into researching your market.

Use Fiverr as a buyer (just click the "switch to buying" link next to your profile image on the top right of your screen) and start searching for what you offer.

So for example:

Let's say you are looking to create an NFT gig. Search for the word "NFT". (no quotes)

 

Something interesting happens: Fiverr tries to guess what you (presumably a buyer) is looking for.

How does it guess? It has a database of past searches that is constantly updated.

So there is a good chance that whatever terms are auto-generated by Fiverr, those are actually trending ones.

But please be mindful of the fact that they are probably not refined, as these are probably being presented as they were fed to the system.

Not what you were looking to make? Was it an "NFT animation"? Just keep typing, see what comes up.

Or switch it up, look for "animated NFT". Hopefully you get the idea.

Here's another example:

What if I wanted to create a "minimal logo" design gig?

Here's what happens when I type in minimal: 

So these are some great suggestions, to help you guess what buyers are looking for, and create a gig that's specifically designed to catch a percentage of said searches.

Another tool at your disposal, if you are a Seller Plus member, is the "top keywords" tool, under your "analytics" tab.

So if you already have a similar gig published, or an already successful gig in the same vertical, you can actually look into under what keywords your gig appeared in search results, and which one of those got you clicks and sales.

So using this tool to guess even more accurately what keywords interest your target audience.

You can use an adjective to describe your offering, as I see many sellers do. But take note that the longer that word is, the more characters you are essentially throwing in the trash, as the adjective itself will not help your gig at all. It's only there to appeal to your audience, plus make the sentence a bit more tolerable to humans. So yes, you can say "I will create a professional/amazing/wonderful logo" but leaving that out when you have a long key phrase you want to focus on, may be a better approach.

2. Tags/keywords

These need to be complimentary ones, and not reusing the same keywords/phrase as in your title.

So here's where you want to niche down.

Say you created an "animated video ad" gig. Here's where you can add several complimentaty keywords that help capture more leads.

Words like "facebook" or "Instagram", or "promotional" and "commercial". Here's where you are looking for words -much like a guessing game- that would still work when used in the same sentence as your gig title's main key phrase. You are upping your chances by also guessing correctly about different things that buyers would be looking for. So once again, researching trends and what the global marketplace is doing, is key.

3. Description

This is not the place to use keywords. Using them organically in sentences that make sense, is OK, but Fiverr has already decided your relevance from steps 1+2. Adding keywords here won't change its mind.

This is the place where you need to present your buyer with a sound positioning. 

They need to understand what you are offering, peek into what working with you might look like and what they can expect.

Anyone who talks about SEO and cramming keywords on the description, should just stop as this is not how this works.

4. Gig completion

I have covered this extensively here, no need to expand any further:

 

Performance Review

Phase 2, is performance review.

So essentially Fiverr needs to understand as soon as possible, if your shiny new gig is a diamond in the rough or a hot pile of garbage. 

How does it do that?

Simple.

If it serves your gig to relevant search results, it measures impressions plus the infamous Click Through Rate. (CTR)

That means that every time your gig shows up on a buyer's screen, via the search function, your impressions number goes up.

I see a lot of sellers coming here and asking "how to ge their impressions numbers up".

Which as a question it makes very little sense. Here's some advice if you are in that group of sellers:

Impressions will only go up, if your gig's title and tags are relevant to what buyers are looking for.

Write that on a post-it and stick it on your desk or computer monitor for daily reference.

Some people may ask: "But Frank, not all buyers search for gigs, many buyers visit the gig vertical and click on their preferred subcategory. What happens then?" 

Well, that is a different subject as it involves a lot more performance indicators when calculating dynamic positions, so I will leave this for another post.

Now, back to this guide.

If the buyer clicks on your gig, you can track that click via your analytics, but most importantly, Fiverr perceives that interaction as a positive one. That's your clicks in your gig's analytics.

So at this point, you get a new grade based on that metric.

Here's the important part:

Getting impressions, means your gig's titles and tags are somewhat working. (yaaay!)

Not getting clicks, while getting impressions, indicates that one of the following is not:

• gig image

• pricing

• trust signals, .a.k.a. reviews

So to all the sellers who come here and ask why while they get impressions, they get few clicks, if any, the answer is: look into the gig's thumbnail/video, your pricing when compared to other sellers and what you offer plus your reviews.

In case of a brand new gig, just ignore the "reviews" part.

If your clicks are decreasing or non-existent, then that tells Fiverr that your gig is an under-performer.

Very few gigs can survive that without editing and tweaking. It's just how this works.

But if it does gets clicks and does not get sales, that's even worse. 

It tells Fiverr that something is seriously wrong with your gig.

So here comes Pro tip #1:

So hopefully by now, you have a fairly basic guide of how to diagnose your gig, after it is published.

 

The Good Stuff

Now I know I mentioned some spicy insider's information, so here it comes.

All of the above performance indicators, are taken into consideration for a very brief window in time.

Which is why if your initially published gig, is failing any of the above check points, it will soon either stop being served as a result, or get de-indexed (is that a word?) altogether.

So this si why people see their gigs analytics reaching 0 at some point. That gig spanned its wings, hopped in the air for a hot minute and then crashed and burned.

My advice is as follows: don't be afraid. The current Fiverr engine is waaaaay more responsive than what we were working 2-3 years ago. Editing your gig, and trial and error will not hurt you in any way.

The only time you may need to dread editing your gig and failing, is when your gig is getting you lots fo sales or if you got one of Fiverr's special badges, like "Fiverr's choice". 

You don't change a winning team. So that's the only instance when you want to think twice about editing your stuff.

And here's where it gets "spicy":

If your gig gets an order, from a buyer who saw your gig, clicked on it, liked what they saw and bought it, your gig gets a brand new type of rating, because that series of actions will spike your conversion rate.

And before people start getting the wrong idea: you can't trick Fiverr by having your friends/family/alter ego click on or even worse, order your gig.

Fiverr knows when this is organic, or when it is suspicious in any way.

So some sellers on here, were met with success right off the bat, not because of a trick or hack.

Their gig was relevant, their positioning was sound and they were priced reasonably in regards to their value proposition/market.

So any organic orders and a high conversion rate, is one of those heavily weighted attributes on your gig's performance calculation formula.

And I recently discovered another one. But before I get into that...

Here comes Pro tip #2:

The "Even Better" Stuff

There's a metric that follows your average price. (again remeber how most of my findings on Fiverr 3.0 was me just checking what numbers Fiverr shares with us?)

So here's how that attribute works.

If a buyer looks for a "logo design" gig, and I am just as relevant as another seller, we both get presented to the buyer as search results.

Let's say for argument's sake, that our reviews are fairly similar. Or better yet, the other seller has 2,000 reviews more than me. (crazy, right?)

IF I have a higher average price than my competitor, I will out-perform them and therefore appear higher up in the search results page.

So if my competitor is selling their gig at an average of $55 and I am making $65 a pop, then I win.

Just to clarify: this is NOT the actual price of the gig, but the average sales price, either via packages+extras or custom offers.

So it doesn't matter what the price tag is. Someone might be selling at $5/$10/$15 packages, but for whatever reason their average price goes up to $100 via extras and custom offers. That's one more thing you don't know about other sellers but you know for yourself.

Conclusion

I need to wrap this up, as it started as a mini-article, and I think I need to look an epub  publisher for this. 🙂 

The first half of this post was meant to be a guide to all the sellers who come here on a daily basis, asking about their impressions and clicks. I also hope this sheds some light into what that checklist should be before you even consider to publish a new gig.

The second half of the post is just to briefly touch upon how dynamic and complex this whole "performance" thing is.

I havent's even mentioned profile performance indicators, buyer behaviour, promoted gigs and Business profiles, and already this post became too complicated and too long to read and digest in one sitting.

 

So let's keep the conversation going, and share this post to any sellers who ask questions about "ranking" and impressions, etc.

Feel free to share your experience, questions and success or failures with your gigs when you first published them.

Maybe we can help each other by exchanging points of view.

Edit 1: Not 5 seconds passed and I already got a private message about someone’s gigs being “deranked” and how I can help them with “SERP”. Which reminded me something important I forgot to include: the above post treats this one gig creation as if in a vacuum. Meaning if you have several gigs that all of them are extremely similar (a big No-No) or have been reported or break ToS, no new gig will ever perform well as your account is shadow-banned, for lack of a better term.

 

 

 

 

 

Learned a lot from you.

[frank_d]

Just now, syedkhizarhayat said:

Learned a lot from you.

Glad to hear! 
 

Don’t stop there: apply what you have learned, you’ve got this!

[frank_d]

1 hour ago, digtecknik said:

Thanks for this valuable piece...

I have a question.

I become a level 1 seller 2 months ago and since then all My Gigs have been deranked please is there any reason for that? 

 

Thank I will appreciate a reasonable answer

How do you perceive that your gigs have been “deranked”?

Did you have a steady stream of orders and then it stopped?

As I talk about in my post extensively, talking about “ranking” is not exactly accurate.

That being said, when you get promoted the metrics Fiverr uses to judge one’s performance and efficiency change drastically.

So if you don’t adjust your gigs every time you are promoted, the chances they are considered irrelevant are higher.

Edit: just to expand upon that theory.

I think that when a “new seller” gets promoted to “level 1”, Fiverr starts looking for higher numbers when it comes to conversion, buyer satisfaction, and average selling price, to name a few.

Many sellers report a huge drop in sales once promoted. My theory is that when you get promoted you can no longer get away with a so-so offering. You need to upgrade your gig and clarify your positioning if you are to survive.

Another important point: if any seller -not you in particular- has anything shady going on, like had friends order their gigs in order to meet the criteria for promotion, then the drop is even more dramatic.

[rabihumakhan]

This is a great post, I would opine. 

@frank_d, someone two days back approached me through one of my gigs (that deals in drafting business contracts) and asked me if I could help them. 

However, I sent them  a custom offer using another gig that I wanted to rank. Is that something may be counted against me?