Fiverr 4.0 - Some thoughts on the current state of things

[brand_new_art]

On 3/21/2023 at 1:50 AM, frank_d said:

 

I am apprehensive about what is going on.

[donnovan86]

Well, I have some news.. at least it's news for me because I didn't know it until now.

I talked with my success manager today and she said that Fiverr tracks the buyer satisfaction rate from 90 to 180 days. So if you're dealing with a slump, its origin might be months ago. I didn't know this, I thought Fiverr only tracks these things up to 90 days. Apparently not. 

[filipdevaere]

30 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

180 days

That is something new. We all thought it was 90 days. Suddenly it is a half year. 

 

[donnovan86]

Well some people said that the success manager info wasn't always accurate, so take that with a grain of salt. That being said, it might be the case I think, especially with the focus on new customers they have right now. Maybe others can ask too, and we can then compare answers. 

I think it's always been up to 180 days, but the first 90 days might be more relevant. But it's clear that any bad review will have a MAJOR impact on your business, and it can haunt for a long time. 

[bethanyvo]

2 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

But it's clear that any bad review will have a MAJOR impact on your business, and it can haunt for a long time. 

That’s why I every time I speak to my seller plus manager I campaign for somehow implementing a (quick and easy) mandatory private review system.  Most satisfied buyers simply don’t follow up with the private feedback- and your seller plus managers suggestion of contacting recent buyers and asking them to leave a private review is not a good solution. My manager’s most recent response was that they are constantly looking for ways to improve…so maybe there is hope they will come up with something that works better.

Edited May 10, 2023 by bethanyvo

[donnovan86]

32 minutes ago, bethanyvo said:

Most satisfied buyers simply don’t follow up with the private feedback- and your seller plus managers suggestion of contacting recent buyers and asking them to leave a private review is not a good solution.

Sure Bethany, but that can also be a double-edged sword. On one hand it can help us, but then again I also had someone leave me the worst possible stars and saying thank you for a good job, just because they wanted to get past the review proces and didn't even realize they rated me poorly. 

As far as I know the first private review appears right after the public one, but you can skip it. Yeah, we will see what they come up with in the future..

[saimii]

I guess the impact of Warnings, and Violations remains for 180 days which causes demotion, but Cancellations or private negative feedback remains for 90 days. 

 

[adetunjiademola]

Hey,

it’s been a while I’ve been here. I would love to catch up with what’s going on. I little summary would help.

🙏

[leannelrivers]

On 5/10/2023 at 10:10 AM, filipdevaere said:

Suddenly it is a half year. 

Half a year seems like a reasonable punishment. 😑

[donnovan86]

57 minutes ago, leannelrivers said:

Half a year seems like a reasonable punishment. 😑

Needless to say I was shocked upon seeing this, because I didn't expect anything over 90 days to be relevant. Although i can only imagine anything over 90 days will not be as important. But it can still "haunt" you. 

Edited May 12, 2023 by donnovan86

[leannelrivers]

19 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Needless to say I was shocked upon seeing this, because I didn't expect anything over 90 days to be relevant. Although i can only imagine anything over 90 days will not be as important. But it can still "haunt" you. 

I've let go of worrying about Fiverr stats and I'm focussing on doing my best for every client. In the real world, one review below 4.7 or a negative private review isn't enough to trash a business. 

[arnukas]

18 minutes ago, leannelrivers said:

one review below 4.7 or a negative private review isn't enough to trash a business. 

A business on Google Maps has 3.5 reviews and does just fine. On the other hand, we get punished by a single buyer when we refuse to offer free revisions.

 

I suppose they kept increasing the punishment period as seller size grew, and Fiverr thought that increasing the size would provide more accurate results, but they made such a mess. We had 60 days (the stats on our profile we can see to this day), then we received news that there are deeper stats with 90-day stats, and since even more sellers joined this platform, apparently, they decided to increase it to 120 days. I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed this to 1-year stats. Imagine being punished for 6-12 months just because you refused to do free work for the buyer.

[kendal1747]

1 hour ago, arnukas said:

Imagine being punished for 6-12 months just because you refused to do free work for the buyer.

This could have happened to a lot of us. Not sure, but something bad is going on. 

[terrygrantvo]

On 5/10/2023 at 7:00 AM, bethanyvo said:

That’s why I every time I speak to my seller plus manager I campaign for somehow implementing a (quick and easy) mandatory private review system.  Most satisfied buyers simply don’t follow up with the private feedback- and your seller plus managers suggestion of contacting recent buyers and asking them to leave a private review is not a good solution. My manager’s most recent response was that they are constantly looking for ways to improve…so maybe there is hope they will come up with something that works better.

One review, that occurs at the time of accepting the delivery and closing the order. A simple check box that allows you to make the review public if you want to. Regardless of which you choose, the review counts the same. If you don't close the order and it auto-completes, there is no review. Period.

 

That's it. No follow up surveys with dumb terms like 'perfect' in them. No vague multiple choice emails a week later. One review, your choice as to whether or not it's seen by the seller, and it counts the same either way... and the best part - no unnecessarily hounding buyers and punishing sellers for things they can't control.

 

[sunboatrecords]

180 days?

Maybe they made changes in how BSR is calculated as well.

Reading this thread makes me feel as if there is a war in a neighboring country. I am reading it in the news while sipping my coffee, wondering if it may ever affect me.

Fiverr's Choice for 5 months in a row here. And yes, I do what I must to remain so—you know what I mean.

Edited May 13, 2023 by sunboatrecords

[Guest aj_designstudio]

On 3/21/2023 at 1:50 AM, frank_d said:

Hey gang!

It's that time of year again when I stuff my face with cake and write down my personal thoughts on what's happening on Fiverr.

(me right before I started writing the post)

Before I get this show on the road, a much needed disclaimer:

Anything I share on this article, represents my own personal view. Any findings about how the platform works are my own, and I hold no insider/privileged information. 

I am not a Fiverr official, nor am I representing Fiverr in any capacity.

I am just a seller, like you. I just like to find out how things work and what makes a seller successful on the platform.

I do have a proven track record, but take everything I say with a grain of salt.

This topic is just to fire up a discussion amongst sellers and exchange opinions.

This is NOT an attempt to game the system or find any shortcuts.

Hint: There aren't any.

 

With all that out of the way, let's jump right in.

 

Fiverr 4.0: A necessary evolution

OK so this article is a continuation of my Fiverr 3.1 thesis.

Which in turn is a sequel of my original post called Fiverr 3.0.

It seems to me that Fiverr changed how things work back then, so it was a much more apparent shift, felt throughout the marketplace. So this new article will cover how Fiverr implemented a few more things and completed the shift started back then.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one, I will once again say that Fiverr is about matchmaking. 

If you need more proof, check out the new briefs feature, your new dashboard metrics and your shiny new profiles. (especially on Fiverr Business)

Why do I think it's a necessary evolution? Well because it makes A LOT of sense when you take into account Fiverr's KPIs.

So what is Fiverr all about? 

Well, user retention is important, so keeping buyers in the ecosystem. 

And how do you do that?

By keeping people happy.

 

I can't get no.... SATISFACTION!

Yes, this is something that will come up quite a bit in this article.

The Buyer Satisfaction Rate. So we'll call it BSR from here on out.

This metric was kept under wraps for about 2-3 years, when Fiverr started talking about it. Either through webinars or via our trusted Success Managers.

It's a secret formula that Fiverr uses to calculate how happy buyers are after an order is completed and therefore, how sellers perform in that regard. 

(Fiverr's secret BSR formula, apparently)

So Fiverr now takes into account the actual facilitation of the service and how good the experience was, and not just the end product. This was the biggest shift in how sellers perceived their performance on the platform, because Fiverr apparently increased the weight of this variable when calculating who is a good performer and who is a good match for buyers.

And since none of us knows how it works, and for good reason, things were weird for us sellers.

The forum was flooded with people asking why they get 0 sales after a streak of good months, while their dashboard had perfect metrics and their public reviews were close to perfect.

But the hidden BSR outweighs public reviews. By a lot.

 

The "get out of jail" card

So if the BSR is hidden, how can we learn from it, or at the very least avoid the search results limbo, when our gigs are underperforming?

Well this is complicated.

First of all: it's fairly simple to avoid any issues altogether.

Offer a great and seamless customer experience. The secret is to take lead and manage client expectations early on.

Offer solutions instead of questions when issues arise, and finally make sure you are acting in a professional yet friendly manner.

However, not everything is peachy. Things happen and even the most seasoned freelancer gets the cold shoulder from the algorithm that serves search results.

But it's now easier to bounce back if something happens to your account, all you have to do is wait it out, whilst trying to offer an amazing service to any orders you may get.

You see, Fiverr has a complicated but sensible way of calculating things.

So our Dashboard metrics get updated every 60 days. That's been well-known. 

But BSR seems to follow a different pattern. It is calculated every 90 AND every 30 days.

So while things seem to move abruptly from "I get new orders daily/weekly" to "I hear crickets and feel worthless", the true secret is time. You need to wait it out, there's nothing else you can do about it.

Use the downtime to edit gigs, freshen up that portfolio of yours and make sure that anyone who messages you when things are quiet, get 110% from you in terms of responsiveness and help they may need.

You see, your BSR score, much like any other metric, averages out. Which means that while a dip in your score may hurt your profile's standing, it averages out every time the clock resets. And on any given day, depending on when was the last time you got a bad private review, your overall score changes.

So it is fairly simple: ride it out, and improve performance. 

But wait, why are there two cycles? 

Well my working theory is that there are two separate BSR metrics. One is for new buyers and one is for existing buyers.

There is some kind of threshold where Fiverr stops treating buyers as new accounts, and right before that cut off, their private exit surveys may weigh considerably more than those of existing accounts.

You can see it in Fiverr's indicators. (remember how I am always talking about indicators and no-one listens?)

Fiverr is not saying things out in the open, but it does try to clue us in.

You get a special message when a buyer purchases your gig and it's their first time buying anything on the platform.

You also get the buyer insights feature, if you are a member of Seller Plus, so you can see if they are new members of the platform or not.

And lately, you get an email when your BSR for new buyers, drops. So at least there's no more guessing when things get a little too quiet for us sellers.

 So First Time Buyers are important to Fiverr. Because that first experience is what will make them stay on Fiverr and maybe even start spending more. Makes sense right?

However, that means that it is upon us sellers to educate buyers on most things Fiverr. It is required from us that we not only guide them through our process, but also through Fiverr's UI/UX and myriad of buttons.

Which leads me to a tasty new theory:

What if the new algorithm, the one who does all this merry matchmaking, is specifically designed to favor senior seller accounts with a proven track record, with First Time Buyers.

Makes sense doesn't it?

Now I am not saying it cancels out every other aspect of the matchmaking process, like relevancy, performance etc.

But what if that's the case? It definitely makes sense if Fiverr is trying to make people go from total noobs to loyal customers from a single order.

So whenever I see a new buyer talking to me, or placing an order with me, I consider this a great opportunity to offer the best possible experience to them. 

OK so what gets you a spot in search results?

That's hard to say. I don't think anyone has an answer.

However I know a few factors that come into play:

Relevance is key. You need to offer something relevant to what buyers are looking for, for sure.

Performance is heavily favored. Key metrics and BSR maintenance are imperative.

But then we have more complicated attributes, like Buyer Behavior models, and Average Selling Price.

Buyer behaviors are -and this is me guessing on a cool Monday night- equally important when the platform is trying to get a successful match going on. 

Some attributes are: account age, average spend, number and frequency of orders, type of account (business, select, buyer/seller).

I also think that Fiverr uses buyer behavior to weed out and punish sellers who use like farms or "friends and family" to buy their gigs. So sellers who do that, you have been warned.

If you also take into account Promoted Gigs and some -almost- definite A.I. involvement for the platform to figure out relevancy, then you can see it gets overtly complicated.

I am not going to pretend I know everything, as I am getting older I realize I do not. 

That's why I will end this segment here, and not share any of my crazier theories on what makes Fiverr tick. 🙂

Things to come...

If we take my assumption that Fiverr is now fighting for customer retention to be true, then I could definitely see more features geared towards personal connection and relationships.

For instance we have different profiles on Fiverr Business, focused on us vs our gigs.

We just now got to write our real names even on the Regular Fiverr Profiles.

We now have the ability to record a video of us, so that buyers can watch and get a sense of who we are.

So I can definitely see more tools like that coming along, where sellers can create more meaningful interactions with buyers and even create a following of loyal customers.

OK that's all I had for now. I need to attend my Bday dinner and have some more cake, not necessarily in that order.

This year's post was made shorter and maybe seemingly not as juicy as past years.

But this was by design. I don't want to be mistaken for someone who is in the inside track.

I want people to understand that I am trying to figure this out, just like everyone else, and I am merely looking to recognize indicators and patterns on the platform that will help sellers succeed.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Off to have some cake.

I'd love to answer any questions or hear your thoughts about what I shared! 

 

 

I read your 3.0 almost 2 years ago, my vision and experience changed a lot. Thinking about this report, nothing i found to compare. What a genius person you are, epic....

[miiila]

On 5/12/2023 at 12:10 PM, leannelrivers said:

Half a year seems like a reasonable punishment. 😑

Also, it's a really great way to support sellers improve whatever some buyer may have been less than happy with, as it's so much easier to guess who or what may have caused the bad private feedback over a period of half a year versus "only" three months, with nothing at all as a pointer. If you happen to only have had one order within the past half year, that's easier, only that if you just had one order, and that one got a bad private feedback, you're probably done for, irredeemably, anyway... good neo-Kafka plot. Hey, ChatGPT, write me a novel...

[mazzama]

There is another point that I would like to raise concerning private feedback.

It can be used intentionally to target and destroy someone's career on Fiverr, either by competitors or people who know the freelancer personally and wish him ill.

(Sadly, I think this is my case, as I think some family members are trying to manipulate the system. I am not bringing personal drama to the platform; I am merely stating how the system can be manipulated.)

I think Fiverr should not give first-time buyers, or buyers in general, too much power to destroy loyal freelancers who actually have better motives to build a career on the platform.

Feedback should be made public so that if a freelancer believes a bad rating is unfair, he or she can’t change it, but will be aware of it and will not continue to work with that client.

Truly, it makes no sense to give me a bad review, destroy my career, and keep coming back to me?

[mazzama]

Additionally, I heard that other competitor platforms have reduced their commission fees; I wonder if Fiverr is considering doing the same.

[tme2012]

Is there any way to curb the occasional flood of people, typically from Pakistan, although I know a lot of great freelancers from Pakistan, so I am not trying to offend, who sign up for Fiverr, contact freelancers, and send messages that say things like "give me work" and then demand to know our whats app number because they want to call us? I've gotten roughly 30-35 messages of this type in the past 5 days. It's always so exciting when the app beeps because I think I have a lead on a new client, but it's actually just another person who created their profile an hour ago and think my gig is an ad for a job because they didn't bother to read the directions. Is anyone else experience this? Should I just report them all as spam or what's the proper protocol?

Edited June 2, 2023 by tme2012

[donnovan86]

34 minutes ago, tme2012 said:

Should I just report them all as spam or what's the proper protocol?

Mark as Spam. If a lot of people mark them as spam, then they won't be able to send any message or in some cases their account gets removed.

[will998]

fwiw, do not send inbox ads.  they are just annoying to a buyer.  I tried one time and was not happy with the result (yes, ok not a great sample, but still ..) .  Make your profile FINDABLE by searches.   Way more valuable.  A buyer has something or other in mind as key for the buy: make sure your profile has that something or other available for search! 

[donnovan86]

3 hours ago, will998 said:

fwiw, do not send inbox ads.  they are just annoying to a buyer.

You mean self-promote randomly to buyers or even sellers? Yes, that's against the rules and it can lead to a ban among other issues.

[kellystrategy]

On 5/30/2023 at 1:50 PM, mazzama said:

Additionally, I heard that other competitor platforms have reduced their commission fees; I wonder if Fiverr is considering doing the same.

 

Upwork has changed their take to 10% across the board (that's a reduction on low-end jobs, but an increase on large jobs, and no change in the middle).

 

They've also QUADRUPLED the cost of simply applying to a job, in just a couple of months.

 

Here, you have no charge because buyers come to you. There, if you want to be considered, you pay to play.

 

So "reducing" their fees is only a very, very partial telling of the tale. They've massively increased what freelancers pay even to be considered, and they've made it so that getting a job is very, very unlikely by allowing the user base to go up by 500% in just one year, according to stats I've read—no more test to get in, like there is here, so no quality control at all.

 

Their income is now from fleecing freelancers for the privilege of applying, not from that 10% across the board. It's a whole different "business" model. (I won't go into huge detail, but I've been self-employed for decades, and once I decided I liked having a middleman, I made a modest and growing income there. It has (had...) it's advantages for high-end work. But for myself and many other long-time pros I know there, it's become an ever-more expensive, zero-income disaster since last year.)

 

 

If I were Fiverr, I wouldn't consider anything Upwork does as a blueprint. The law of unintended consequences is tattooed on the C-suite over there...

 

... unless they *intended* to have their share price collapse from over 50 to around 8 in just a couple of years and also destroy the site as a place to find work... in which case I guess that's the law of self-destruction.

 

I haven't made an inroad on Fiverr yet, so I have no cred built up here—but I still wouldn't want anyone here to think that *other* place is a model for growing this site. The folks in the office have to eat and pay the bills to keep the lights on. If 20% from actual work being done pays the bills, be careful when wishing for changes... This way, the brass has a stake in freelancers doing well.

 

The other way, they couldn't care at all whether you ever work, because it's not the 10% that keeps their lights on, and your lights no longer matter.

[visualstudios]

6 hours ago, kellystrategy said:

... unless they *intended* to have their share price collapse from over 50 to around 8 in just a couple of years

Fiverr went from $320+ to $23, wanna talk about that?