Fiverr 4.0 - Some thoughts on the current state of things

[williambryan392]

8 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Anyway, was the tricky buyer a first time buyer? 

No, regular fiverr buyer, and someone that's purchased from me before

[donnovan86]

4 minutes ago, cre8iveartwork said:

hm I had a cancellation from a new buyer as well now that I think about it... a month ago however he wasn't really following what we initially discussed so I asked support to cancel the order and they did that without affecting my account, could still be the problem though. 

I am pretty sure this focus on "new buyers" is newly implemented and cancellations, but also bad reviews from them weigh in a lot more. My seller plus manager said that my buyer satisfaction rate is ok, instead the issue was with new buyers.. 

[frank_d]

16 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I am pretty sure this focus on "new buyers" is newly implemented and cancellations, but also bad reviews from them weigh in a lot more. My seller plus manager said that my buyer satisfaction rate is ok, instead the issue was with new buyers.. 

We have 2 different BSR it seems. And one outweighs the other. 🙂

[miiila]

Well, I can only hope the satisfaction rate of that first time "buyer" who actually was a seller, thinking they need to buy my Gig for me to give them an order, won't weigh as heavily on my BSR as their unrelenting post-cancellation messages of woe about needing their money back, did on my nerves.

Anyway, just in to say "Happy Birthday", though, Covid finally caught up with me 🤒 so I'll keep my incoherent thoughts to myself. I'm jealous of your cake eating, too, my sense of taste is completely gone. No fun being sick if any kind of tea tastes like just another cup of hot water. 

[donnovan86]

13 minutes ago, miiila said:

Anyway, just in to say "Happy Birthday", though, Covid finally caught up with me 🤒 so I'll keep my incoherent thoughts to myself. I'm jealous of your cake eating, too, my sense of taste is completely gone. No fun being sick if any kind of tea tastes like just another cup of hot water. 

That's said to hear @miiila, really hope you get better.

As for the cancellation, It might very well be. As I said above, my manager said it has to do with new customers for you, not people that are new to Fiverr.. 

[danno1950]

On 3/21/2023 at 3:59 AM, leannelrivers said:

I've been in a relative slump for a long time now, months, and I know some of my very talented and successful peers here are also getting far less orders than they've ever been used to. We can't all have lower buyer satisfaction at the same time. 

I'm glad to hear it's not just me. Business has been super slow for the last two months.

On 3/21/2023 at 6:57 AM, donnovan86 said:

I think AI has to do with our sales slump too. The same thing happens when it comes to writing.

I think you're right, Alex. It is my opinion that a LOT of people are trying to figure out how to work AI into their content creation process. I set up a gig to "edit AI generated content for AI." No orders yet, but the analytics are unlike anything I've ever seen - more impressions and clicks than my best performing gigs by over double. I think once people figure out how to work with AI, things may pick back up.

On 3/21/2023 at 8:18 AM, williambryan392 said:

Even though the OCR rate was corrected, I wonder if this still impacts behind the scenes?

I've wondered about this same thing. After a cancelled order, CS corrects so the profile doesn't reflect the OCR bump, but does that get corrected behind the scenes or still impacts us? 

[donnovan86]

Just now, danno1950 said:

I think once people figure out how to work with AI, things may pick back up.

Only time will tell. I am a writer myself and I had people saying that they think I do a great job, but using AI is cheaper and due to their very complex niche they need to edit anyway, so they have to go for a cheaper price. Mind you, I have some of the most affordable writing services on Fiverr so if people are leaving me, then I am sure more expensive writers deal with the same stuff. Of course that's not the norm, but just by checking other similar services within my niche I saw a severe lack of orders for everyone. So there's definitely something affecting everyone. And I doubt everyone had some bad first time buyers, I think AI is the main issue.

I was thinking about AI content editing myself, but as far as I saw there are few orders in that category and a LOT of competition. Do let me know how it works for you though, I am very curious. 

[donnovan86]

1 minute ago, danno1950 said:

but does that get corrected behind the scenes or still impacts us?

We will never know that most likely. But I can only assume it affects us. I had around 5 cancellations that were either made via customer support due to abuse or self-made by people ordering the wrong stuff. I canceled one of those old, inactive orders myself and it shouldn't affect me if it's more than 10 days old, right? But it did, I went to customer support just to ask and they clearly said it matters, even if the 10-day rule should be in effect. They corrected the issue for me but still, something to keep in mind. Any type of cancellation can be problematic, and I guess it's even worse if it end up being a first time buyer. Yet another reason to use that Request to Order feature, so you can avoid any cancellations from random people that don't know what they are doing.

[danno1950]

1 minute ago, donnovan86 said:

I was thinking about AI content editing myself, but as far as I saw there are few orders in that category and a LOT of competition. Do let me know how it works for you though, I am very curious. 

I'll keep you posted, Alex! Yes, there's a lot of competition in that category, but no one is getting orders. That's why I differentiated myself by specifying "business." My best gig is editing business content, so I'm hoping that will help.

[catwriter]

33 minutes ago, miiila said:

Covid finally caught up with me 🤒

Ouch. Get well soon, Mila. I'm still on antibiotics because of covid, and it's no fun.

Happy birthday, Frank, and thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[leannelrivers]

39 minutes ago, danno1950 said:

a LOT of people are trying to figure out how to work AI into their content creation process.

I have a new gig pending offering AI, sci-fi style voice-over. It's something I've done before for artists and filmmakers before AI REALLY got rolling. My selling point is basically "Hey, do you need an AI voice BUT enjoy working with humans?" Bonkers that being flesh and blood has become a sales strategy. Let's see what happens. I need things to pick up across the board. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by leannelrivers

[newsmike]

4 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

I also refunded a first time buyer due to her not ordering something I cover, and even if I tried to do 2 different versions, she was constantly asking for more work. I just had to tap out and refund.

So the unintended consequence of trying to elevate the weight of first time buyer reviews may be that experienced sellers stop working with them all together, relegating them to the meksells. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by newsmike

[smashradio]

6 minutes ago, newsmike said:

So the unintended consequence of trying to elevate the weight of first time buyer reviews maybe that we experienced sellers stop working with them all together, relegating them to the meksells. 

If the risk of working with first time buyers is getting bad reviews that count more because of them being noobs, experienced sellers will surely shy away from new buyers in many cases. Onboarding for new buyers was actually a subject in a roundtable discussion with Fiverr I joined in on today. Let's hope they do it, because it can perhaps avoid some of the growing pains new buyers clearly have. 

[danno1950]

1 hour ago, leannelrivers said:

Bonkers that being flesh and blood has become a sales strategy. Let's see what happens. I need things to pick up across the board. 

That's an "are you kidding?" concept, but very true. I need things to pick up as well!

[visualstudios]

4 minutes ago, smashradio said:

Onboarding for new buyers was actually a subject in a roundtable discussion with Fiverr I joined in on today.

Now at least they can't claim they don't know what the issues are, not only with that, but with a lot of systems on Fiverr. Pretty much all the pain points referred to by everyone were unanimous. If they'll do anything about it is a different story. I'm not holding my breath.

[newsmike]

8 minutes ago, danno1950 said:

I need things to pick up as well!

It seems that a good number of us are experiencing the same slump. Out of curiosity, what was the approximate date you fell off the cliff?  Curious if there was an adjustment to algo that whacked us all at the same time. I was hit between Jan 30th-Feb 6th, when my daily impressions dropped from 5,000 to 100.  Been crap ever since and SM has no real answers or help. Anyone else on the same timeline?  Like @leannelrivers said, thankfully, Fiverr is a small part of my business.

Edited March 21, 2023 by newsmike

[visualstudios]

I can't easily classify "slumps", because I'm a low volume seller. I can have a great month with 2 orders, if I happen to land 2 big ones. It's much harder for high price low volume sellers to know if it's a market thing or just luck. I've had great months with low impressions, because I landed a couple big deals, and bad months with a ton of impressions, because it was all low value stuff.

[leannelrivers]

Just now, newsmike said:

Anyone else on the same timeline?

I don't feel I've reached the same peak since the Ukraine war began, I have no idea why. But definitely the last 2-3 months have been the absolute pits in terms of impressions and new queries. I have had some orders, but nothing compared to what I'm used to. There's always more advice about what do, whether it be a new gigs, updating tags, price changes, etc. I've just increased my prices slightly again after being told lowering might help. It didn't, so what the hell. 

[leannelrivers]

6 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Fiverr is a small part of my business.

I started from the bottom on Fiverr so it's been my biggest earner for a while, which is now unfortunate. Other things come and pay very well, but I'm anxious to expand and find more reliable opportunities. Once I'm in that position I won't sweat the Fiverr black holes. 

[newsmike]

10 minutes ago, leannelrivers said:

but I'm anxious to expand and find more reliable opportunities

This could be a problem for Fiverr en masse, should they continue to starve their best sellers. 

[visualstudios]

2 minutes ago, newsmike said:

This could be a problem for Fiverr en masse, should they continue to starve their best sellers. 

This was also talked about in the roundtable. Upw... has a 10% fixed commission now. Not to mention options for hourly rates, retainers, removing selected reviews periodically, etc.

Fiverr needs to step up their game, specially for people selling for higher prices, otherwise they'll just bleed top talent. It already has a pretty bad name in the industry, as a low value, exploitative platform. They should do whatever they can to move away from that, otherwise they may well go back to being the place where you hire Jesus to sing you happy birthday for 10 bucks.

Edited March 21, 2023 by visualstudios

[danno1950]

20 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Out of curiosity, what was the approximate date you fell off the cliff?  Curious if there was an adjustment to algo that whacked us all at the same time. I was hit between Jan 30th-Feb 6th, when my daily impressions dropped from 5,000 to 100.  Been crap ever since and SM has no real answers or help. Anyone else on the same timeline?

Wow, that's the same time that my traffic dropped off.

If a number of sellers are struggling at the same time, you do have to wonder about algo adjustment. 

1 minute ago, newsmike said:

This could be a problem for Fiverr en masse, should they continue to starve their best sellers. 

Yes, this could be a big deal. Of course, the fact that so many sellers are struggling means that Fiverr is earning less - which is their biggest motivation to actually do something to resolve the issue.

[newsmike]

1 minute ago, visualstudios said:

otherwise they may well go back to being the place where you hire Jesus to sing you happy birthday for 10 bucks.

Bravo. Very true and funny. 

[leannelrivers]

1 minute ago, newsmike said:

This could be a problem for Fiverr en masse

I completed a survey recently asking general questions about freelancing and Fiverr. One was along the line of would I or do I bring buyers onto the platform from outside. Er, nope! I certainly don't break the rules and take them off the platform, but why on earth would I give up a client I've acquired myself, pay 20% and possibly lose them in the ocean of sellers. 

[breals]

15 minutes ago, newsmike said:

It seems that a good number of us are experiencing the same slump. Out of curiosity, what was the approximate date you fell off the cliff?  Curious if there was an adjustment to algo that whacked us all at the same time. I was hit between Jan 30th-Feb 6th,

I was hit a bit later, I had an amazing January and February, but the slump has hit me throughout March.  I wonder if this is now the effect of AI driven gig descriptions? 

 Lets say that as a best case scenario that 1 in 10 sellers had gig descriptions were illiterate and poorly described. (We know it's probably a lot more)  If these have now been corrected by chatGPT, that's 100,000 sellers who have now had at least one gig re-indexed in a better format than it was before! 

Now think that a lot of sellers are adamant on creating 7 or more gigs in their account, that's a frightening amount of gigs that have been resubmitted for the Fiverr algorithm to process. This is clearly having an affect on our established businesses on a huge scale, and I question weather the algorithm can cope with such volatility?