Fiverr 4.0 - Some thoughts on the current state of things

[arnukas]

On 3/21/2023 at 9:36 PM, melanielm said:

I also requested cancellation for four Incomplete orders lingering on my dashboard. CS removed the cancellation percentage drop right away, but I wonder if that had some backend effect, too.

This is a dilemma for me as well. 

I have a complicated situation. Got a few "incomplete" orders, which were not submitted for months (a few of them are over a year old, just sitting in my dashboard). The same goes for "in progress" (bugged out, over time, but based on Fiverr algorithm, not late) and "late" deliveries due to buyers not responding. I had multiple confirmations by CS that a "late" order (not marked as complete) does not impact the account unless I deliver the late order and have it completed. Now, if I asked the CS to cancel any of these orders (even the orders without submitted requirements), it will likely impact my account negatively. So, over the past year, I have collected plenty of these types of orders and if it doesn't impact my account now, why would I bother canceling them? Canceling these orders without my fault would cause a slump and I will have an even harder time with my profile. Ugh.

[arnukas]

On 4/12/2023 at 6:15 PM, williambryan392 said:

Has anyone lowered prices, and if so by how much in the last few weeks or so to try and generate more orders?

I did, a few months ago. My SM recommended lowering the prices. Did it change anything? No, it probably made everything worse. It seems like editing the gig nowadays does nothing, therefore, nothing I can do to improve my discoverability.

Now I am worried to change prices. If I make the price even lower, I might stay in the same gig discovery position. If I make the price higher as it was before, it could tank my searches, too. I'm trapped.

Edited April 23, 2023 by arnukas

[arnukas]

On 4/18/2023 at 5:36 PM, markc1542 said:

There was something mentioned maybe a year or so ago that Fiverr didn't want to have $5 and $10

You are correct. I was testing out the brand-new AI category. I created a draft gig, and the minimum allowed gig price was $15!

This has both pros and cons. It may help control oversaturation, but $15 for any new seller, AI services is too expensive. It's probably easier just to purchase AI engine subscription and for the buyer to do art, prompts, or anything similar by themselves.

Edited April 23, 2023 by arnukas

[catwriter]

I know I'm late to the party with my slump experience, but in case it helps someone assess the situation better, here it is.

My slump started in November last year. My health was lousy since November, and I was absent a lot. Not for extended periods of time, it was more like being available for a few days, than being unavailable for a few days, and so on. And because of that, I didn't think much about only receiving a few orders. With availability like that, what else was I to expect?

But then December started. I was absent a bit less, but December and May tend to be the busiest months in my niche, so there should have been more orders. But there were not. So I remembered to check the analytics. I knew it wasn't about my performance/buyer satisfaction rate because I had Fiverr's Choice badge the entire time (I still have it, and my gig was on the first page the entire time when I wasn't in Out of Office mode, so Fiverr is definitely showing it to potential buyers), and the analytics confirmed my suspicions. My CTR and conversion rate were pretty high compared to the others in my niche. I checked some of my competitors, and they had considerably fewer gigs in queue than usual. Things were simply slow on Fiverr when they shouldn't have been, and considering my niche and prices (not the lowest on the site, but far from high), it was likely the combination of the economic crisis and the rise of ChatGPT.

The trend continued throughout January, February and March, though I should mention that I was out of commission during most of March because I got covid (and was on antibiotics because of it, and on a heart medication because of it...).

In April, it looked like things were starting to pick up. Then I had one cancellation and it got me demoted because there were so few orders during the last months. My gig still has Fiverr's Choice badge, though, it's right there on the first page, and while it's still early to say, it does look like things are really starting to pick up. Not by much, but better than it was.

If you're in a similar situation (writing niche, short texts) and you were in a slump, perhaps things will improve a bit for you, too.

[arnukas]

What if Fiverr automatically paused gigs if they hadn't received any orders in the past ~6 months or so? It would require the sellers to renew their gigs manually. There are way too many old gigs that never receive orders, which clutters the whole marketplace (and the algorithm may as well have difficulties placing popular gigs in pages).

If Fiverr wants to be "professional", it would be a great solution. Good, but small niche gigs would mostly receive at least a single order throughout that period, so I wouldn't worry much about it.

[mario_rdz]

On 4/22/2023 at 9:27 PM, siridhata said:

How long was the bad phase and did your impressions rise again?

It lasted 8 days. Yes, in the last 2 days, I have been having more impressions than ever. 

[siridhata]

8 hours ago, mario_rdz said:

It lasted 8 days. Yes, in the last 2 days, I have been having more impressions than ever. 

That's fantastic! Were you still getting orders from repeat buyers in those 8 days? Maybe that could be a factor that help your gig rise again?

[donnovan86]

4 hours ago, siridhata said:

That's fantastic! Were you still getting orders from repeat buyers in those 8 days? Maybe that could be a factor that help your gig rise again?

It's 100% why that happened, the same thing was happening to me, but I know from my success manager from seller plus that it had to do with bad private reviews from new clients. Fiverr started to focus more and more on that the last few months, and if you had one or more private review that was less than stellar from a new buyer, it can become a problem. It will put you in the doghouse for a few weeks, if not months. 

Repeat clients will keep you alive and kicking, and if they leave reviews, it's even better since you will eventually recover.

[siridhata]

I think it had happened to me before, in the latter half of last year but back then I didn't know about private reviews yet so I just thought something else must've happened. Then January started picking back up for me until March. And this month it's been happening again. The difference is, last time it happened I was getting some orders from repeat buyers. This time even less, close to none.

So I still wonder what would happen if there were no orders at all including from repeat buyers. Would the problematic gig recover at all?

[dayothefuture]

16 hours ago, siridhata said:

I think it had happened to me before, in the latter half of last year but back then I didn't know about private reviews yet so I just thought something else must've happened. Then January started picking back up for me until March. And this month it's been happening again. The difference is, last time it happened I was getting some orders from repeat buyers. This time even less, close to none.

So I still wonder what would happen if there were no orders at all including from repeat buyers. Would the problematic gig recover at all?

I am experiencing the same thing mine started around October last, I noticed I have 0 impressions, clicks or views so I check if my gigs where searchable but noticed they not visible on a pages even with the index, all my stats are 100% except my response rate which says N/A and response rate is 0. I have contacted CS several times but I get the same, “Gigs may also be removed from our Search feature due to poor performance.You can continue working with your existing buyers”.Even with the few repeat buyers I have gotten nothing as changed.

[donnovan86]

I am reviving this for a bit, just to ask everyone how they are doing, if the sales slump is over or not.

For me things are in a weird state, because for the past 2-3 weeks I started receiving orders and more messages, but also had some stupid cancellations. And by stupid I mean 1 self-cancellation, 1 person ordered thinking they will get paid and the last one was Fiverr canceling an old order from 2018 that was stuck in a loop, delivered of course, and I got penalized for that, it didn't even appear in my cancellations, but the mobile app showed I had one more cancellation than usual. 

So yeah, after 3 cancellations out of which none was my fault, I am back to having no orders and / or messages. I don't understand how cancellations that aren't really your fault can penalize an account so much. Hopefully things will get better.. Because this year it was excruciating to deal with these issues. Well I hope you guys are better. 

[kendal1747]

2 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

Well I hope you guys are better. 

I have a buyer that keeps wanting me to do pro-bono/free work. 🤪

[ahmedlone112]

All 20 of my gigs got a huge drop in impression at the same time, I waited hoping they'd go back to normal but it's been a week and I have gotten a few more orders as well but nothing seems to help. CS gave me the same copy-paste replies, I am sharing a graph of my most popular gig here for reference. As for my stats, I haven't gotten any bad public reviews, I am a level 2 seller and most of my on-time stats are 100% except delivery which has been at 92-92 for the past few weeks (even before this dump). It's my second year on Fiverr and seeing this is really discouraging given that any day all my gigs can just go to the bottom of the barrel and Fiverr's CS team would consider that normal without any explanation.

 

[donnovan86]

2 hours ago, ahmedlone112 said:

on-time stats are 100% except delivery which has been at 92-92 for the past few weeks (even before this dump).

That's the thing then. You have late deliveries and these slowdowns don't appear right away. It will take a bit for them to show their effect. I am in a similar situation, I had a week and a half or 2 weeks when things went back to normal and this week I didn't receive any new messages aside from spammers or people asking me for work. I've been here for 10 years almost and I've never had such issues. 

[basma_khaled]

I am also suffering from a sudden drop in impressions, actually it started last December, and it took me exactly 3 month to recover, but I know it was due to my order response rate as it reached 50% then. after that it started to increase rapidly, and once again a sudden drop , 2 weeks ago... moving from 2nd page to 10th page. but this time I can't find the reason. my clients were tipping me and some of them ordered again, so how can it be a bad private review. This is my 3rd year on fiverr, and it is my first time to witness this huge drop twice in a short time

[ntrxmusic]

The same thing happened to me, it had lasted about 2 weeks without having a good amount of order, and for some reason every weekend, Thursday or Friday, I have many orders, but the 2 times this has happened to me, some customer cancels the order. order when it's not my fault and I stop getting messages, it was on the rise until the customer canceled one of his orders

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, ntrxmusic said:

order when it's not my fault and I stop getting messages, it was on the rise until the customer canceled one of his orders

So there is a pattern, cancellations might hurt the account. I am almost 100% positive that there were no bad private reviews or anything (hard to know 100% obviously), but as soon as these cancellations started appearing, they really messed things up for me to the point I have way way less clicks and impressions, no messages or orders from new people. 

It's very sad to see this happen, especially when it's not our fault. I mean, how am I at fault that a person bought my gig thinking that it will pay them affiliate money? Or someone self-canceled without me even being involved? Or that an order (delivered by the way) was stuck in a loop and never ended up complete? I went to Fiverr support and they made sure my completion rate is not affected, but it's clear to me that something did happen to my account, and it started happening as soon as the last 2 cancellations took place. Even if Fiverr adjusted things, it seems multiple cancellations in a row will indeed hurt your account..

[schreibmaschine]

On 5/5/2023 at 6:12 PM, donnovan86 said:

I am reviving this for a bit, just to ask everyone how they are doing, if the sales slump is over or not.

For me things are in a weird state, because for the past 2-3 weeks I started receiving orders and more messages, but also had some stupid cancellations. And by stupid I mean 1 self-cancellation, 1 person ordered thinking they will get paid and the last one was Fiverr canceling an old order from 2018 that was stuck in a loop, delivered of course, and I got penalized for that, it didn't even appear in my cancellations, but the mobile app showed I had one more cancellation than usual. 

So yeah, after 3 cancellations out of which none was my fault, I am back to having no orders and / or messages. I don't understand how cancellations that aren't really your fault can penalize an account so much. Hopefully things will get better.. Because this year it was excruciating to deal with these issues. Well I hope you guys are better. 

Hey that's interesting.

Almost exactly the same for me.

Past 2–3 weeks I got very busy! Now its no orders and no messages again. I didn't have any cancellations!

[donnovan86]

2 hours ago, schreibmaschine said:

Past 2–3 weeks I got very busy! Now its no orders and no messages again. I didn't have any cancellations!

Well I send an email to my seller plus manager and she said my buyer satisfaction rate is lowered. I don't get why, because the past 2 weeks I had a lot of impressions and as soon as I had the cancellations it dropped significantly.. It is what it is I guess, the advice I got was to talk with previous clients so they can leave a review and to promote all my gigs.. 

[copythatengages]

On 3/21/2023 at 10:47 PM, leannelrivers said:

but why on earth would I give up a client I've acquired myself, pay 20% and possibly lose them

They are talking about gig marketing. You bring in only those clients who need a secure platform for their work. If you have an old client or someone who is comfortable working outside, then it is not necessary to bring them here. However, when you are marketing your gig then those new clients will want to work through a platform because they don't know you personally.

Thank you.

[katakatica]

On 5/5/2023 at 12:12 PM, donnovan86 said:

I am reviving this for a bit, just to ask everyone how they are doing, if the sales slump is over or not.

 

I had a slump for about 2-3 weeks (April and the first few days of May if that matters). No messages, no nothing but a LOT of spammers (think 2-3 times the amount of what is 'normal' in one day. I was away for a bit and then very sick, so my assumption is that extending some orders and not delivering them might have had an effect on things. (of course, it could have also had lower private ratings, but... I'm not sure how many people actually bother with those at this point, and save for one person, all of the clients whom I needed to ask for more time from have either re-ordered or asked to schedule a new order later! 

Things picked up all of a sudden, I think mid-last week/the weekend of so, and they are going quite well now. 

I'm mostly just putting my musings here in case that might help figure some things out since this seems to happen for me (no long slumps, just a few weeks of radio silence at a time, but never going down to 0 orders.) 

April revenue-wise was OK due to having a good amount of return clients, but some of those orders count for May (at least on the earning page), so I'm very curious to see how May will be. 

For the record, I haven't had a cancellation since October or so last year, but I still had ups and downs, but not as drastic as some people seem to have...

[donnovan86]

2 hours ago, katakatica said:

April revenue-wise was OK due to having a good amount of return clients, but some of those orders count for May (at least on the earning page), so I'm very curious to see how May will be. 

 

I think April was the worst I ever had on Fiverr aside from the first couple of months of 2014 when I started. I talked with my success manager and she said my buyer satisfaction rate is low, but I really have no idea why honestly. The only order that might have a bad private review is one from last month when a person forced me to write about a topic and then left 3 stars, but other than that I just had a couple of orders without review, they just marked as complete. Although I asked them if everything was ok and most of them said yes, all good. So I highly doubt there would be a bad review there.

I do have way less orders than usual so I can only assume that a bad review affects things more. And yes, that person was a first time buyer, the 3 star dude 🙂. So that might be the problem. I did have a good mid-April to the end of April, but ever since I had 3 cancellations (none my fault and all adjusted automatically or manually by customer support to not affect my ratings), things dropped. I highly doubt that it has to do just with the buyer satisfaction rate, the fact that things dropped right when I had 2 cancellations in less than a day (one was a self-cancellation from a person, and the other one was customer support canceling an order from 2018 that was still on the Earnings page).

It's hard to know, but it's clear that situations are different for each person here. I never had such a massive slump during my entire lifespan on Fiverr. But if this shows me anything, it's that I need to make some changes to my gigs..

[miiila]

On 5/5/2023 at 12:12 PM, donnovan86 said:

I am reviving this for a bit, just to ask everyone how they are doing, if the sales slump is over or not.

Mostly regular customers. My response rate went down, due to spam (always due to spam when it happens...), and keeps falling.

I'm guessing because replies to regular customers don't count in your favour (while spam counts against you, ironically), and not sure if replies to spam that you, after replying first (to not endanger your response rate even further, because "this won't count against your response rate" often isn't true), then mark as spam count in your favour, and all those spam messages that clog your inbox that you even can't react to anymore, as Fiverr already booted the accounts... well, I have the feeling that they might even count against you, because - even though I can't react to them in any way - they stick around, together with a red clock symbol... I used to have great experiences with support helping with my response rate when it got affected by a spam message, but last time not, so it might influence things now, and I can only hope my rate won't drop low enough to lose my current level, which probably would make things worse. The spam situation really annoys me no end (it's not okay at all to not just have to endure all the spam; wasting so much time on it is bad enough, but on top of it getting penalised because of *spam*...). In short, if it's not going to look up, I'd stick around for my regular customers but might have to invest more of my time elsewhere, instead of into obsessively trying to win an apparently not winnable uphill battle against spam.

[mohd_bilal]

As all of you here are way much experienced then me kindly let me know what needs to be done when your gig is removed from search results? I have 5 star ratings/reviews with 4.9-5 overall on all my gigs.

[donnovan86]

3 hours ago, miiila said:

In short, if it's not going to look up, I'd stick around for my regular customers but might have to invest more of my time elsewhere, instead of into obsessively trying to win an apparently not winnable uphill battle against spam.

I am sad to hear that. For me the private reviews seem to be the main issue. 

Try to say Hi to any message that seems spammy, and then just mark as Spam. It always works for me.