$301,000 earned and now banned (with images including Fiverr HQ visit)

[louisestalla]

Hey readers, 

I am posting this about my business partner who's account has since been banned. He can no longer access the forum. It is a worthy story shining light on the highs and lows of Fiverr. I share this so all fellow freelancers know how unstable the FIverr platform can be and to think twice before you pursue a career on Fiverr full time. 

Background:

• Joined Fiverr in October 2020 as a UK seller selling high-ticket services on Fiverr in the business consultancy category. 
• Top Rated Seller in March 2022.
• Left full-time employment in September 2022 to pursue Fiverr. 
• $300,000 earned October 2020 -December 2022
• February 2023 was invited to Tel Aviv Fiverr HQ in Isreal (Pictured). Met Success Manager team in person at the office and had coffee with them.
• Fiverr PRO Application prepared February 2023.
• Monthly income average $30,000 in 2023. 
• Over 1k 5 star reviews. 

March 2023:

• Mobile App was logged-out and upon logging back in I received "Your account has been temporarily suspended" notification.
• Sent a What's App and Email to my Customer Success Manager asking what is going on. 
• CSM informs me she will review and get back to me ASAP. 
• Automated notification from Fiverr Customer Support that my account has been permanently suspended. No reason given. 
• CSM responds with a robotic reply saying that there has been a breach of Fiverr Terms and that I am banned. 
• All future e-mails to Fiverr have been ignored. What's App blocked by Fiverr CSM. 
• Total earnings at time of ban was approx $360,000 ($300,000 was the last I had pictured).

Clearly the impact on me, my wife and our family has been huge. To go from $30,000 per month to $0 with no warning, no violation demotion and no explanation has been extremely difficult and impacted me emotionally and financially.  What I find most difficult, is just a month before the account was removed I was laughing and talking over coffee with Fiverr employees in the HQ who I assumed were friends and now they do not reply and did not even give me an explanation or opportunity for appeal.

Needless to say - I do not know what Fiverr term I was in breach of. I have thoroughly reviewed them and cannot tell that I did anything wrong. I was not doing anything differently to the previous 3 years on the platform.  I have a strong suspicion that a competitor has found a way to remove other sellers, as a number of other successful sellers offering a similar service were removed around the same time.  There are now only 2 sellers offering the service in the market. 

I have finally reached a position emotionally where I can write this post without driving myself crazy, but I thought it was a story worth sharing. Yes Fiverr can be a way to make a huge amount of money, but the platform is incredibly unstable and very unreliable.  Some of my key findings and what I would like others to take away are as follows:

• Fiverr systems and platforms are nowhere near as robust or sophisticated as the likes of Amazon, which opens them up for manipulation and you can be removed with no chance of appeal. 
• Any kind of relationship or trust you have with your success manager does not help. Even if you meet them in person. 
• I would strongly consider you think again before deciding to leave a full-time career to focus on Fiverr. At least until you have built up another revenue stream that is not on Fiverr. 
• When you are earning on Fiverr make sure you save a sizeable sum every month to protect yourself should a similar thing happen. I am fortunate that I was able to save most of my earnings, which I am using to fund new business ventures.

I hope you're able to take something from my story. It could be reassurance that high earnings are possible and achievable on the platform. It could also be that operating on the platform can be risky. There are many lessons here for current and future sellers. 

I wish you all the best! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bold_design]

Which category you were in?

[newsmike]

From the photos you shared it appears that you never made it inside the building. Your theory of a competitor taking you out only makes sense if the good friends you have inside Fiverr were also in on it.  I think there's more to the story.  Plus the formatting error in this screenshot appears to have been manipulated in developer's tools. 

[newsmike]

2 hours ago, louisestalla said:

I am posting this about my business partner who's account has since been banned. He can no longer access the forum

First, it is about a "business partner" who you refer to in the 3rd person, then...

2 hours ago, louisestalla said:

I do not know what Fiverr term I was in breach of.

You forgot you were pretending that it happened to someone else, and reveal that it was you, or your 2nd account most likely.  Sloppy. 

Edited May 31, 2023 by newsmike

[louisestalla]

I am a little surprised by the responses above. 

I understand the story is crazy, so you are right to question me but here goes-

- Please see e-mail thread showing Fiverr CSM set up multiple meetings with me and different members of Fiverr staff. I do not have a picture inside the office as I was attending a business meeting, but I have all meetings detailed and the specific invite. 

- There is no format error. It is a picture taken from my iPhone back when the account was live.  I have attached another one I have from March 2022 showing $170,000 back then. 

 

 

[newsmike]

Redacted emails prove nothing, and what about you switching form "a friend" 3rd person to "my account" within a few sentences?  How would a friend's actions cause your account to be disabled? 

Edited May 31, 2023 by newsmike

[louisestalla]

Remove post

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by louisestalla
Remove post

[louisestalla]

1 hour ago, bold_design said:

Which category you were in?

Business services - Sold various higher priced services, such as RFP response writing, company registrations, trademark applications, accounting and sales closing. There are lots of opportunities in Business, but the clients can be extremely demanding bordering on unfair (much more so than clients I work with on UpWork) and it's a lot of work. Clearly the flip side is the revenue potential is much higher than in other categories. 

[mabelma]

Whether the story is particularly true or not, I don't think it matters that much. Of course, the Fiverr platform is unreliable and risky as most of the internet is, and in the end, the famous phrase of not putting all your eggs in one basket applies here perfectly. I am sorry to hear that you lost your access to Fiverr, however, I am happy to hear that you were able to save most of your earnings and are using them to create new business ventures. Perhaps a good lesson would be to invest a portion of profits into creating more income streams that we as freelancers and business owners can have more control of. Fiverr for sure is a great way to generate a good sizable income, but we also have to think about the future and not think that because we are riding high on the wave things will stay like that forever. Whilst I have not made nearly as much money as the OP, I too was hit with the devasting reality that success on Fiverr can change in an instant after a Hurricane hit my island and I couldn't work for several months. I lost all my TOS privileges and looking back at it, it was good because it allowed me to pivot and create deeper connections with local clients that allow me to bounce back between my Fiverr clients and the rest of my business. All in all, sometimes there is some good that comes from the bad. Thanks for sharing this story with us, and I hope more freelancers are able to fortify themselves with knowledge in order to create stable businesses that don't fully depend on other people making their decisions for them.

[louisestalla]

@mabelmaI think your message contains some wise suggestions for everyone on the platform plus business generally, and I'm sorry to hear about what happened on your Island. 

[maitasun]

3 hours ago, louisestalla said:

March 2023:

• Mobile App was logged-out and upon logging back in I received "Your account has been temporarily suspended" notification.
• Sent a What's App and Email to my Customer Success Manager asking what is going on. 
• CSM informs me she will review and get back to me ASAP. 
• Automated notification from Fiverr Customer Support that my account has been permanently suspended. No reason given. 

 

3 hours ago, louisestalla said:

Clearly the impact on me, my wife and our family has been huge.

 

3 hours ago, louisestalla said:

Needless to say - I do not know what Fiverr term I was in breach of. I have thoroughly reviewed them and cannot tell that I did anything wrong.

 

3 hours ago, louisestalla said:

I have finally reached a position emotionally where I can write this post without driving myself crazy, but I thought it was a story worth sharing.

 

3 hours ago, louisestalla said:

I wish you all the best!

 

40 minutes ago, louisestalla said:

- Please see e-mail thread showing Fiverr CSM set up multiple meetings with me and different members of Fiverr staff. I do not have a picture inside the office as I was attending a business meeting, but I have all meetings detailed and the specific invite. 

- There is no format error. It is a picture taken from my iPhone back when the account was live.  I have attached another one I have from March 2022 showing $170,000 back then. 

So, you say "[you're] posting this about [your] business partner who's (sic) account has since been banned.", nonetheless you speak in the first person. Let's get this straight. 👇

[maitasun]

So much for

4 hours ago, louisestalla said:

Background:

• Joined Fiverr in October 2020 as a UK seller selling high-ticket services on Fiverr in the business consultancy category. 
• Top Rated Seller in March 2022.
• Left full-time employment in September 2022 to pursue Fiverr. 
• $300,000 earned October 2020 -December 2022
• February 2023 was invited to Tel Aviv Fiverr HQ in Isreal (Pictured). Met Success Manager team in person at the office and had coffee with them.
• Fiverr PRO Application prepared February 2023.
• Monthly income average $30,000 in 2023. 
• Over 1k 5 star reviews. 

This is your account that got banned. Just 2 reviews 👇 Notice the date of Google's cache: 8 Apr 2023 09:03:08 GMT.

[maitasun]

By the way, you were rightfully banned, @louisestalla 😡

[uk1000]

So is the reason for the ban because you (the OP) bought services from a member of your own company on Fiverr? Don't you both work for StartPal? So might Fiverr have thought it was review manipulation? Or was it/might Fiverr have thought it was actually the same person using 2 different accounts to get more reviews?

Another thing that I wondered about is in the original screenshots it showed the earnings to date as US$301,905.66

unless the earnings were also from something other than gigs wouldn't it not be possible to earn something that isn't a whole number of dollars on Fiverr?

edit: is what's in this thread the reason for the ban?:

where it said:

Quote

Users may only create and use one active account to purchase or offer services at any given point in time. Please refer to our Community Standards for additional information.

Could that be more reasons that they thought the OP's account and the account in that other thread were the same account maybe?

Edited May 31, 2023 by uk1000

[newsmike]

10 minutes ago, maitasun said:

By the way, you were rightfully banned, @louisestalla 😡

Yes, it is so obvious. OP stopped responding when I pointed out that they were confusing "My friend" and "Me" when telling the story. 

[maitasun]

2 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Yes, it is so obvious. OP stopped responding when I pointed out that they were confusing "My friend" and "Me" when telling the story. 

I'm so tired of seeing people coming here trying to fool us. I really don't understand what's their goal. The only thing they achieve is making a fool of themselves... 🤦‍♀️

[smashradio]

It's sad that people have to play detective on here, because obviously, nothing can be trusted. 

[miiila]

22 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

unless the earnings were also from something other than gigs wouldn't it not be possible to earn something that isn't a whole number of dollars on Fiverr?

My earnings page does show cents for "earned to date", "expenses to date"... I don't remember if that's new or not, maybe something to do with them changing what counts as "earned this month", or with all those $0.01 that mysteriously remain sometimes in our balance when we withdraw? With the 20% respectively 5.5%? Promoted gigs payments, or such? 🤔Too hot to think this through atm... 

The "my friend and I" may be bad choice of wording/language barrier, OP may have shared text not "about" but "on behalf of" their friend, written by the friend, but, yeah, this kind of story is a hard sell to forum regulars. Good luck to everyone, if two or one, in any case.

Edited May 31, 2023 by miiila

[uk1000]

Yes in theory it's possible that if they were 2 different people that one the one that got banned could have given the other one an account of what happened and the OP then pasted it into the post or document as an account of what happened to their partner - if that was true.

Though if it was true then Fiverr still may not have wanted their partner in the same company to buying the gig (ie. that it could be review manipulation in their eyes). So if they were really 2 people Fiverr could have detected them using the same IP address (and if same devices, the same cookies).

But the OP could try showing proof to CS if that they were 2 different people using the different accounts (if they were different people) and saying to CS that they were valid orders (not just done for reviews) if that was the case.

[uk1000]

Another reason for the fractional dollars is because I forgot to take into account that 20% off that Fiver takes 😬 so while orders need to be a whole number of dollars, when Fiver takes their 20% off our earnings from them might not be (eg. $6 order - 20%=$4.8 earnings).

Edited May 31, 2023 by uk1000

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, uk1000 said:

Another reason for the fractional dollars is because I forgot to take into account that 20% off that Fiver takes

Fractional dollars are normal when it comes to earnings. Promoted Gigs will always charge a random amount too, so I think that alone is going to bring random numbers.

[maitasun]

1 hour ago, uk1000 said:

Though if it was true then Fiverr still may not have wanted their partner in the same company to buying the gig (ie. that it could be review manipulation in their eyes). So if they were really 2 people Fiverr could have detected them using the same IP address (and if same devices, the same cookies).

But the OP could try showing proof to CS if that they were 2 different people using the different accounts (if they were different people) and saying to CS that they were valid orders (not just done for reviews) if that was the case.

Would you please stop playing devil's advocate? You know the OP lied. Everything is a lie! It's a complete scam!!

And, by the way, not only jackmarksy is related to the OP. Jordanhall40 as well, although the account is no longer active. He, too, claimed to be a TRS with more than 300 reviews and 500 completed orders by 2021, and to have made $257k on Fiverr by 2022. 

Here are the screenshots of at least one of his gigs (I don't know how many he had) and of his photo taken from the website of the "company".

 

[maitasun]

This is another gig jordanhall40 had. 

 

[catwriter]

2 hours ago, miiila said:

The "my friend and I" may be bad choice of wording/language barrier

I'd expect a senior business consultant from the UK not to struggle when expressing themselves.

Edited May 31, 2023 by catwriter

[miiila]

27 minutes ago, catwriter said:

I'd expect a senior business consultant from the UK not to struggle when expressing themselves.

Well, expectations and reality... but, mea culpa, when I come to the forum, I am usually too tired to

2 hours ago, smashradio said:

play detective on here, because obviously, nothing can be trusted. 

Yes, it's sad.