Fiverr PRO 2.0

[vickieito]

3 minutes ago, newsmike said:

I hope we don't see a day where we have PRO sellers at $5 like we have some TRS sellers now.

 I experimented with pricing all of my gigs above $100 earlier this year and came to the conclusion that it doesn't work with certain gigs, such as my proofreading gig. I think @vickiespencer can confirm. I'd love to see @vickiespencer as a Pro. 

I do think that a Pro is serious enough with their business to price themselves right. I would think Fiverr's team would take that into consideration when vetting a seller for Pro. If the seller's pricing seems off for the services provided, that would be a flag that would prevent that seller from becoming a Pro or maintaining that status.

[newsmike]

5 minutes ago, vickieito said:

I would think Fiverr's team would take that into consideration when vetting a seller for Pro.

I would hope so, but apparently they are not vetting any longer.  There was a review of clients of note, an interview, you had to provide a video and more. Now if they give it to people who didn't even want or apply for it, the PRO badge becomes meaningless. Race to the bottom, just like when they launched Fiverr Business with a pay wall, then caved on that immediately, and now how many posts have we seen where absolute scammers carry the "Fiverr Business" badge? 

Edited July 6, 2023 by newsmike

[smashradio]

Just now, newsmike said:

I would hope soo, but apparently they are not vetting any longer.  There was a review of clients of note, an interview, you had to provide a video and more. Now if they give it to people who didn't even want or apply for it it becomes meaningless. Race to the bottom, just like when they launched Fiverr Business with a pay wall, then caved on that immediately, and now how many posts have we seen where absolute scammers carry the "Fiverr Business" badge? 

It's just a theory, but I believe the vetting process for Pro is changing to be more like the TRS vetting, which is also a manual process. So I'm not too worried about Pro sellers not being vetted. Will Pro become less exclusive? Sure. If more sellers become pro, that makes the value of the pro badge itself less valuable. But if Fiverr also starts pushing TRS/Pro exclusively to a lot of buyers, it's a step in the direction we've spoken about before and part of "the purge" of low-quality gigs we've asked for. I'm merely speculating, of course, but Fiverr wants to attract more complex projects and higher budgets, so rebranding sellers into the "Pro" category might be a part of that. It would raise the Fiverr bar but lower the Pro bar. 

[filipdevaere]

32 minutes ago, newsmike said:

but apparently they are not vetting any longer.  There was a review of clients of note, an interview, you had to provide a video and more.

I was asked last year (February 24, 2022) by Fiverr to apply for PRO. But I needed to follow the procedures (application form, the video, examples, …..).

[newsmike]

6 minutes ago, filipdevaere said:

I was asked last year (February 24, 2022) by Fiverr to apply for PRO. But I needed to follow the procedures (application form, the video, examples, …..).

Yes, now it is just as meaningless as the "Fiverr's Choice" badge. People with hundreds and hundreds of poor reviews for shoddy and incomplete work being given PRO is not a good look. Amazing reading the complaints on some of these newly minted "PROS."  It makes my point that they have lowered the bar.

Edited July 6, 2023 by newsmike

[tme2012]

It would definitely be disheartening if the update was lowering the standards of the Pro program to people who haven't even applied for it. it took several months for me to get vetted for it back in 2018 and my earnings on Fiverr from 2019 to the present have been a enormous factor in achieving several financial goals including purchasing a new home. I apparently don't have the mental capacity to understand how including more people into the program would increase the amount of customer traffic I receive. My clicks and orders have dropped precipitously over the last few months like a lot of people's, and Fiverr has gone from accounting from about 80% of my monthly income to maybe 25%. I hope the 2.0 rollout is actually an improvement for freelancers, but recent history does not have my hopes up.

[donnovan86]

13 minutes ago, tme2012 said:

I apparently don't have the mental capacity to understand how including more people into the program would increase the amount of customer traffic

They will give more exposure to Pro sellers and also show there are a lot of options in the Pro field. Now in the case of writing, you don't have way too many pages with Pro writers, but if they accept more writers, slowly that will become the norm. And that's the thing, they want to show Fiverr is a place where Pro level sellers are, while still allowing access to less expensive options. Fiverr also makes more money from a Pro sale when compared to a regular one, so there's also that. 

[newsmike]

12 minutes ago, tme2012 said:

I apparently don't have the mental capacity to understand how including more people into the program would increase the amount of customer traffic I receive.

Yeah, that is highly questionable. The fact that they are awarding to people who didn't even have an interest in it and have volumes of poor reviews is certainly concerning. That's why "real PRO's" may have to note that in their descriptions. 

[newsmike]

12 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

And that's the thing, they want to show Fiverr is a place where Pro level sellers are, while still allowing access to less expensive options.

So your theory is that rather than raising the bar and recruiting more actual PRO sellers, promote a lot of people who yesterday were not qualified or interested in order to make it appear that they have lots of PRO sellers?  Wrong direction, but who is surprised? 

Taking bets on whether the newly minted "PROS" will be the loudest as if they had earned it and been properly vetted, despite the fact that it is nothing more than window dressing.

Edited July 6, 2023 by newsmike

[tme2012]

It would be nice if the main search page had a much more prominent "hire a pro" feature other than the small slider.  

[vickiespencer]

2 hours ago, vickieito said:

There's still a stigma around Fiverr's image of only being a place for side hustles and $5 gigs. I have buyers who don't want to leave reviews (or add their deliveries to my galleries) because they don't want people to know that they are coming to Fiverr for services. I would love for people's perception of Fiverr to change.

I have buyers who tell me they do not leave reviews since seller reviews began to show on the buyers' profiles. They value their privacy and do not want anyone to know what services they purchase or from whom. I also have users who work for large companies, and their English could be better, so I am asked to copyedit and proofread their communication within their companies. This type of buyer never leaves reviews. 

 

[vickiespencer]

1 hour ago, vickieito said:

I experimented with pricing all of my gigs above $100 earlier this year and came to the conclusion that it doesn't work with certain gigs, such as my proofreading gig. I think @vickiespencer can confirm.

I checked several PROs that have $100 gigs. All of them have word counts that start between 1000 to 2000 words. One even had 20,000 words for $100. After finding this out, I plan on experimenting with one of my gigs to have it start at $100.

 

2 hours ago, vickieito said:

I'd love to see @vickiespencer as a Pro. 

Thank you.

I would not turn the Pro badge down. However, many of the PROs seem to have a 4.9 overall rating, and it makes me think that when buyers book those services, their expectations may be a good deal higher, and I rather like having a 5-star overall rating.   

  

[melanielm]

Well... I received the 'You're a Pro now!' email. I never applied. There's nothing about changing my prices. I haven't worked for many massive, global brands. I have under 5000 ratings... and I even have some negative ones.

Perhaps I'm bringing things down and cheapening the 'Pro' label.

At this point, I'm not sure what this will do to/for me or the site. Just adding some data to the conversation.

[vickiespencer]

@melanielm are you planning on upping your prices? 

 

[smashradio]

41 minutes ago, melanielm said:

Well... I received the 'You're a Pro now!' email. I never applied. There's nothing about changing my prices. I haven't worked for many massive, global brands. I have under 5000 ratings... and I even have some negative ones.

Perhaps I'm bringing things down and cheapening the 'Pro' label.

At this point, I'm not sure what this will do to/for me or the site. Just adding some data to the conversation.

The Pro badge's value isn't diminished by a handful of negative reviews or less than 5000 ratings. It's the unchecked influx of new people receiving it that's concerning, especially if there's no vetting process behind it. I believe there is some form of internal vetting, though, much like for TRS sellers.

That said, I suspect this could be a part of a larger rebranding and restructuring strategy that won't affect just Pro. I'm not going to bash their effort before we know what's going on, but I'm sure as hell not going to celebrate it either.

From what we've seen on-site since yesterday, they're shifting to a "Pro first" model. This will devalue the Pro brand, no doubt about it. Fiverr used to be really top-heavy when TRS was a more automated process. I hope they won't make the same mistake again. 

While this change will devalue the Pro badge, it might boost the overall Fiverr brand if they're going to be a Pro-first platform.  I'm just not very comfortable with Fiverr's ability to separate the wheat from the chaff on this one, going by some of the latest developments. Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if that's the route they're taking.

Yes, it's a bit worrying to see random sellers flaunting Pro badges without apparently going through the rigorous application process we're used to. But Fiverr has gone down that road for a while now. When I applied for Pro, they didn't require a social media presence, nor did they require a video. They had already lowered the bar then, and I'm not surprised that they're doing it again. 

I think this is just a shift in Fiverr's strategy. We've gotten through the shift to using BSR as a main ranking factor, we've gotten through one algorithm change after the other, and we've seen Fiverr go from a five-dollar platform to one with an average spend way above that. We've seen it go from weird people singing folk songs with their goat for five dollars to a professional business platform (partially). 

On the upside, this might enhance the overall Fiverr brand and potentially drive more clients with bigger budgets to the platform. On the downside, the system in place has worked out well for a lot of us, so we're probably not going to love change. 

Let's give it some time to see how it pans out. We can't expect Fiverr to stay in one place. They need to test, learn, and adjust to find the sweet spot. I still believe that being an actual professional, serving our clients well, and staying up to date with changes like this, is what will give us an advantage. At the end of the day, badges didn't get us here. We got ourselves here. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by smashradio

[miiila]

My gigs all got the Pro badge too. The basic package of all three of them has been $100 for quite a while, so they weren't cheaper than the "PRO"'s gigs. My guess was that it mainly has to do with having happy business customers, high customer satisfaction, maybe vetted "Top Clients", and other "behind the scenes data/knowledge" that Fiverr has.

[melanielm]

18 hours ago, vickiespencer said:

@melanielm are you planning on upping your prices? 

Not sure yet. I'm considering a complete overhaul to my Fiverr business, to be honest.

18 hours ago, smashradio said:

Yes, it's a bit worrying to see random sellers flaunting Pro badges without apparently going through the rigorous application process we're used to.

I agree. Not to sound egotistical, but I know I'm professional and deliver quality work, so I'm not a problem, but I am nowhere near meeting the original requirements of Pro Verified. Those things weren't on my radar in the past (SM presence, $100 min, etc.)

Curious how this will all shift in the future. Anything that helps Fiverr's reputation is a big plus in my book.

[smashradio]

54 minutes ago, melanielm said:

Not sure yet. I'm considering a complete overhaul to my Fiverr business, to be honest.

I agree. Not to sound egotistical, but I know I'm professional and deliver quality work, so I'm not a problem, but I am nowhere near meeting the original requirements of Pro Verified. Those things weren't on my radar in the past (SM presence, $100 min, etc.)

Curious how this will all shift in the future. Anything that helps Fiverr's reputation is a big plus in my book.

Yeah, we'll just have to wait and see. They didn't exactly impress a lot of sellers with their previous idea (cancellation reviews) even though I was actually positive on that one. But the way they did it shows us that seller feedback is more important when it comes to UI/UX and flows than how they manage sellers and levels. If it can help remove some of that five-dollar stain it would be nice, though. 

I became a Pro while they still asked for social media, but I flat-out refused and just told them off for expecting industry professionals to waste their time on social media when some of us got real work to do. Politely, of course. That did the trick. And it was true. I quit social media for anything but the required professional presence, like having a Facebook and Instagram page for my newspaper and the occasional comment on Youtube. Even wrote a rant about social media on the forum. I guess you could call this forum social media, though, so I'm not entirely cured. 

Edited July 7, 2023 by smashradio

[dylesto]

On 7/6/2023 at 5:03 PM, filipdevaere said:

I was asked last year (February 24, 2022) by Fiverr to apply for PRO. But I needed to follow the procedures (application form, the video, examples, …..).

 

Same for me, had to shoot a video of myself, carefully list my top project and explain everything and after being accepted, the call of course. Would be a pity if Fiverr stopped the 1% get vetted program and instead randomly choose profiles that look good. Would barely be any difference between TRS and PRO...

[dylesto]

"The short of it is that we are doubling down on Fiverr Pro" It's funny that people are getting accepted to the program without vetting while the mail stated that they are doubling down, I'm now pretty interested in the update.

[donnovan86]

41 minutes ago, dylesto said:

Would barely be any difference between TRS and PRO.

I think they might even remove TRS and shift those profiles to Pro. 

For example, how is a person that barely has 100 reviews a top rated seller? Yet those with thousands of reviews are not a TRS. So yeah, It would make sense for them to add the current TRS to Pro. Because both of them were handpicked. We will see, I have no idea what they will do, but clearly they want more Pro sellers on the platform since a lot of people are randomly becoming PRO sellers.

Edited July 9, 2023 by donnovan86

[miiila]

23 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

For example, how is a person that barely has 100 reviews a top rated seller? Yet those with thousands of reviews are not a TRS.

I've always taken the "Top" as not (just) meaning at the top of the herd in number of feedbacks, but "awesomest" (meanwhile, both public and private) feedback.

As such, I think it can well make sense to give someone with "just" 100 reviews the TRS badge, provided it's not all $5 1-day orders, both public and private reviews were all raving, and other criteria, like repeat customers, customer service, and whatever other public and private TRS criteria are met.

But you have a point, the pro/not pro moniker might be easier to understand than TRS/not TRS, especially when there are loads of sellers with loads of great feedback, even as low on the level ladder as level 0 (if that's still called "new sellers", I hope someone has on their To Do list to take care of that confusing thing, too).

[donnovan86]

3 hours ago, miiila said:

I've always taken the "Top" as not (just) meaning at the top of the herd in number of feedbacks, but "awesomest" (meanwhile, both public and private) feedback.

 

Well that's Pro, right? What's the meaning of a top rated seller then, if not someone that generates a lot of sales and also keeps buyers happy as well.

Anyway, I know that unless I increase my prices by a lot, I will never be taken into account for any of those levels. So for me this change for Pro.. it doesn't affect me unless the non-pro sellers get burried in search, that would be game over for a lot of sellers. Then again, they did say they are doubling down on Pro, so I am very curious and frightful about what changes they are going to make. 

[tme2012]

It is troubling but pretty par for the course that Fiverr's marketing emails make us all fear what the heck they're going to do next and go on deep dives of what the heck fairly normal phrases like "doubling down" mean.  I just had my first big order in almost 6 weeks after being stuck in algorithm hell. My inner worrier wonders if my fortunes are turning around just in time for them to come out with some bizarre scheme that jumbles it all up. 🤐

[miiila]

15 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

Well that's Pro, right? What's the meaning of a top rated seller then, if not someone that generates a lot of sales and also keeps buyers happy as well.

Our definitions aren't the same, it seems. I take the "top rated" a tad more literally, as it's not named "top selling". While the number of sales surely has and should have its part, those two terms aren't congruent to me, so a TRS with just a few hundred, or even a hundred vs thousands of feedbacks, "that don't surprise me much" (wasn't that a song...). I take the top rated more as an indication of quality rather than quantity of feedbacks.

While "Pro", to me, = professional, nothing to do with number of sales, and a seller/gig with very few feedbacks or even none, and a seller of any level, can be professional. In Fiverr's former definition, it meant "did apply for and get PRO status" (as defined by them), and now, they seem to have changed their definition or criteria, perhaps because they wanted "more pros", as some people suggested, perhaps in reaction to what people here on the forum sometimes wrote about PRO gigs they saw, perhaps because they wanted to give sellers that fit their definitions of "pro" but don't apply, that status. 

In short, if it was named "Top Selling Seller", I'd agree with your take, but as it's named "Top Rated Seller", not quite.