Fiverr 4.0 - Some thoughts on the current state of things

[visualstudios]

Just now, leannelrivers said:

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. 

If you bring them to the platform, you do get the 20% back under the affiliate program. The thing is, even then, it's not worth it. Why would I subject myself to a review that can potentially jeopardise my business, be exploited with endless revisions, and wait a month for the affiliate commission, when I can get paid upfront, and do business on my own terms?

[leannelrivers]

Just now, visualstudios said:

you do get the 20% back under the affiliate program

Do you get it back on every order they make with you? And it is much easier to stand your ground with private clients when the threat of a bad review tanking your business isn't hanging in the air. But I haven't had a single bad experience with my own private clients. No haggling, threatening, taking the mick with revisions...

[newsmike]

5 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

The thing is, even then, it's not worth it

Plus Fiverr promotes your competitors. Bad mojo. I just went to Leane's #1 gig, and there on the bottom: 

Edited March 21, 2023 by newsmike

[visualstudios]

2 minutes ago, leannelrivers said:

And it is much easier to stand your ground with private clients when the threat of a bad review tanking your business isn't hanging in the air.

Yep, that's the key. It's not worth it because of that. Direct clients outside the platform pay upfront, and if they aren't reasonable, that's it, I get paid either way - I did spend my time and effort. I obviously try my best to make them happy, but if they aren't happy, they aren't happy. That's life, you pay for things you end up not liking, some times. It is what it is.

On Fiverr, it's always up to the client if you get paid, no matter what you do. Not to mention a disgruntled buyer outside the platform can b*tch all they want, if they are rare it doesn't matter, won't affect my business at all. On Fiverr? A single crazy buyer can tank you. That's not ideal.

Edited March 21, 2023 by visualstudios

[newsmike]

Conspiracy theory time. At the same time they are choking off impressions of successful sellers, they are saying "Hey, spend up to $3 per click on promoted gigs." Drying up the free (yet earned) impressions could push the demand for paid ones. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by newsmike

[visualstudios]

2 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Conspiracy theory time. At the same time they are choking off impressions of successful sellers, they are saying "Hey, spend up to $3 per click on promoted gigs." Drying up the free impressions could push the demand for paid ones. 

That would make some sense if the pay per click actually worked. If I'm paying per click and get spam, people asking for work, and people requesting things I clearly state I don't do, I ain't paying per click no more. I don't want (or need) thousands of impressions and clicks per month. I need 5-10 impressions and clicks per month. The right ones. Unqualified leads are nearly worthless.

Edited March 21, 2023 by visualstudios

[leannelrivers]

16 minutes ago, newsmike said:

I just went to Leane's #1 gig,

Haha! Oh boy... Comforting! 

[danno1950]

29 minutes ago, leannelrivers said:

why on earth would I give up a client I've acquired myself, pay 20% and possibly lose them in the ocean of sellers. 

That makes perfect sense. I think "the ocean of sellers" is how Fiverr is clogging up their own system. @newsmike predicted a while back that this was how they would work against themselves. I didn't see it at the time, and now it's coming true. Fiverr Business for instance was supposed to be for the 'cream of the crop" sellers, and it got just as flooded as the regular platform.

[newsmike]

15 minutes ago, leannelrivers said:

Haha! Oh boy... Comforting! 

So, imagine you just paid $3 for a click, then while the buyer is looking at your gig offering, they are promoting others right there, enciting the buyer to click away from you after they charged you $3 for the click. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by newsmike

[leannelrivers]

Just now, newsmike said:

So, imagine you just paid $3 for a click

This is one of the reasons I have a very strict daily spend limit on the one gig I can promote. I have had worthwhile conversions in the past, but not recently. 

[danno1950]

1 hour ago, newsmike said:

Curious if there was an adjustment to algo that whacked us all at the same time.

I think that might have happened, and we're back to unintended consequences. I used to work with software programmers who would tinker with the system, and make changes. We then had to monitor to see what impact their changes had on the rest of the system, the unintended consequences of their actions. 

I think that sometimes happens on Fiverr, where the developers change something and don't sufficiently monitor the impact. Then we are all left with the results, like the slump that many seem to be experiencing right now.

[leannelrivers]

1 hour ago, visualstudios said:

Jesus to sing you happy birthday for 10 bucks.

5 bucks plus broadcast rights. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by leannelrivers

[sunboatrecords]

Hello everyone!

This thread is quite depressing.

I would like to add that I did not see a decrease in impressions or volume of orders in the past few months. On the contrary, January and February were fantastic months. Although, I did have a few slow days recently, but it was because of extraordinary circumstances. I received 18 bad inquiries in the space of 5 days. This has never happened before.

I also noticed something else.

Since Fiverr implemented the inbox placement for promoted gigs, the cost of the service has almost doubled. I suspect it is because of trash clicks from buyers that are checking out what this fancy message is - out of curiosity.

Also, thank you, @frank_d for sharing your thoughts.

And @miiila: I hope that you feel better soon!

Edited March 21, 2023 by sunboatrecords

[williambryan392]

Just want to throw out another thought… 

Over the last 6 weeks or so some m have been noticing a slump. In the same period SVB collapsed, lots of tech investments got pulled, banking weaknesses have started to show, and more will crumble. 

Fiverr still depends on investment as we know, this investment brings new buyers to the platform along with everything else.

Most tech companies are laying people off now, reducing spend etc. Fiverr reduced their work force by 8% last July.

Maybe Fiverr and those that use Fiverr are tightening the purse strings, spending less, and that’s contributing in some way to what’s going on. 
 

Thoughts?

[leannelrivers]

6 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

Maybe Fiverr and those that use Fiverr are tightening the purse strings, spending less, and that’s contributing in some way to what’s going on. 

Could be. There's so much instability and uncertainty globally at the moment, not to mention the potential savings that switching to AI generated services could provide, that any number of things could be contributing to the overall situation.

[vovkaslovesnyy]

I will only add that according to my SPM, less than 10% of my customers leave private reviews (I won't share numbers, and I don't say that it's a general trend, but I have what I have). 
At the same time, around 50% of them leave public ones. 

So, it turns out that even one unhappy customer can ruin your sales. I had two orders from one person, and his unhappiness affected my sales for almost 90 days. And yes, it was a new customer (I mean that we never worked together before), who ordered 200 (100 and 100) words in total. 

I have a lot of returning customers (50-70% depending on the month), and I understand that they don't want to fill out all those surveys. As I understand, now I have to ask them to do that to stay afloat.

Edited March 21, 2023 by vovkaslovesnyy

[danno1950]

46 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

Over the last 6 weeks or so some m have been noticing a slump. In the same period SVB collapsed, lots of tech investments got pulled, banking weaknesses have started to show, and more will crumble. 

Great points! I think those are all valid factors, and along with the explosion of the AI issue, could be impacting Fiverr orders. However, those are more global events, and the impact on Fiverr might be more of a trickle down effect.

I'm still curious about the fact that some of us have experienced the same dropoff in traffic and orders at almost the exact same time - Jan 30th to Feb 6th - which could point to an additional event, like an algo adjustment.

I don't think any of these issues are mutually exclusive, so we could be getting hit on multiple fronts in a number of ways.

Edited March 21, 2023 by danno1950

[smashradio]

2 hours ago, visualstudios said:

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.

Indeed. I think we got a lot of importaint points across, but it is true what was said: these things have been on our agenda for years. It just hasn't been on theirs. I hope things change and I like that they're working with us. But you're right: I'm not holding my breath, either. 

 

2 hours ago, newsmike said:

It seems that a good number of us are experiencing the same slump. 

I've had a slump in terms of new clients in february. But I blame that on me being less active on the platform due to other projects. Perhaps you just got a very negative private review? I'm sure you've already considered this and ruled it out as unlikely, but I just wanted to mention it. I had a slump last year, and I had a gut feeling about this one buyer and it turned out to be true. I fired that buyer and things slowly started improving again. 

But if it is like @frank_d said in his Fiverr 4.0 post, people just have to wait it out. That's not a way to treat your best and most talented sellers, in my opinion, which is why I've called for more transparancy, as @visualstudios so eloquently pointed out before me (I had a speech prepared but so did you and yours was better - haha). 

2 hours ago, visualstudios said:

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.

The Up argument is a good one, simply because it's not that difficult to move or prioritize. I haven't bothered with it because I prefer the way Fiverr works, but 10% is a better deal for sure. If they want to keep their best people, they have to adjust certain things to remain competitive. I think Fiverr has forgotten that they're not just competing for the buyers, but sellers as well. Maybe they've realized that something is about to happen now, given that people from the retention-team was present during our discussion. 

  

57 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

Most tech companies are laying people off now, reducing spend etc. Fiverr reduced their work force by 8% last July.

Maybe Fiverr and those that use Fiverr are tightening the purse strings, spending less, and that’s contributing in some way to what’s going on. 
 

Thoughts?

Inflation, reduced spend and the banking crisis is surely affecting us all, some more than others. If you have a lot of clients in the tech sector, you're going to feel the pain in the coming months if you haven't already. 

I also think more companies are focusing on getting through this, hopefully turning a profit, while growth is taking a back seat for now. I'm no expert, but that's what I've gathered from all the tech giant layoffs. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by smashradio

[donnovan86]

2 hours ago, visualstudios said:

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.

 

You do realize Fiverr brings customers to you, on UPW you have to bid and most likely you will lose the bid and thus lose money since those bids are paid. Here the 20% you pay back per gig includes advertising and many other benefits that Fiverr provides, and on UPW you don't have. Sure, you may have 10% on their side, but you also pay them for connects, and who knows if that customer chooses you from dozens of bids. Here Fiverr promotes you, puts you at the top of their list basically. So yeah, there's no comparison because UPW has a bid system, whereas Fiverr doesn't and they do it all for you. 

[visualstudios]

6 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

You do realize Fiverr brings customers to you, on UPW you have to bid and most likely you will lose the bid and thus lose money since those bids are paid.

This is not totally accurate. That's one of the cases, yes, and was the only option... before. UPW also has profiles and clients contacting you directly, just like Fiverr. They also have retainers (so, keep getting paid on a fixed schedule, so the bid argument is way less relevant, since it's recurring revenue once you land them), etc.

They keep introducing new features. Competition doesn't exist only among sellers. It also exists among platforms. You can't simply put a fixed % commission because it's competitive at a certain point, and expect that to last forever.

Edited March 21, 2023 by visualstudios

[visualstudios]

13 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

You do realize Fiverr brings customers to you, on UPW you have to bid and most likely you will lose the bid and thus lose money since those bids are paid.

Oh, so it's just like promoted gigs, just better (since you won't spend money on spam)? Interesting.

Edited March 21, 2023 by visualstudios

[smashradio]

12 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

You do realize Fiverr brings customers to you, on UPW you have to bid and most likely you will lose the bid and thus lose money since those bids are paid. Here the 20% you pay back per gig includes advertising and many other benefits that Fiverr provides, and on UPW you don't have. Sure, you may have 10% on their side, but you also pay them for connects, and who knows if that customer chooses you from dozens of bids. Here Fiverr promotes you, puts you at the top of their list basically. So yeah, there's no comparison because UPW has a bid system, whereas Fiverr doesn't and they do it all for you. 

You do sort of "bid" on Fiverr as well. It's automated, but you're competing with your gig/profile in search results all the time, and most of the time, you're not going to get picked. 

The platform now also has "gigs" If I remember correctly, they even offered a "direct import of your Fiverr gig" before they launched it – description and all – so they're taking the best from Fiverr and leaving the rest behind. Dirty tactics? Maybe, but it's competition time. 

With that said, I don't like working on there, because I don't want to spend time bidding, and most of the Norwegian projects relevant to me are from lowballing TTS companies in China. 

But, for a lot of freelancers, I can see it making more sense to pay for connects and if they have the bidding process nailed down, they can save on connects too. You also get free connects for completing contracts if I remember correctly. 

 

Edited March 21, 2023 by smashradio

[melanielm]

3 hours 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,

I'm experiencing the same thing from around that point. However, other factors are at play. I initially had a slow-down due (I assumed) to taking a few weeks off around the holidays. It always takes a while for things to pick up again after Out of Office. 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.

My data trends haven't rebounded to 2022 'normal' yet.

[catwriter]

6 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Oh, so it's just like promoted gigs, then? Interesting.

No, bidding is like sending offers to BR.

[visualstudios]

6 minutes ago, catwriter said:

No, bidding is like sending offers to BR.

I know, but that wasn't my point. On UPW, you pay for bids that may not convert. Now, on Fiverr, you pay for promoted gigs that may also not convert. It's the same principle. The fact that someone clicks on your gig doesn't mean they'll buy it, you'll also have to "bid" in a way. You have to chat with them, and they may not go with you. The fact that is the costumer initiating instead of you doesn't change the fact that you need to "bid" on every project. At least I do - I do not do direct sales from my pages. I don't even allow it. A conversation always takes place first. A conversation where I have to sell, and usually with people who are also having that conversation with other vendors. So it's in effect also a bid, just by another name.

Sure, if you want people to go to your page and order straight from there, without asking you questions, comparing you to other quotes, etc., then it's different. No high ticket sales work like that. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by visualstudios