Improvements to our availability feature

[grillo_infinity]

Buyers often reach out in the inbox from different time zones, in my case, I live in Europe and get frequent requests at night. This spoils my response time, and can consequently impact also my seller level.

-> You should implement availability hours rather than dates.

Sincerely,

FG

[filipdevaere]

31 minutes ago, grillo_infinity said:

Buyers often reach out in the inbox from different time zones, in my case, I live in Europe and get frequent requests at night. This spoils my response time, and can consequently impact also my seller level.

-> You should implement availability hours rather than dates.

Sincerely,

FG

I live in China. Most of my buyers are from the Netherlands (Europe), Canada, and the USA.

These are all different time zones. And yet my average response time is 1 hour.

I don’t see the problem here.  

 

[calsolaroart]

I was always told by customer support, even in my recent vacation a few months ago, that using the availability option when going on vacation would not affect my ranking. It did and took a few months to recover.

[minhsonkts94]

 

I have been with Fiverr for 4 years, thanks to it I have had a stable life, always and sincerely thank the fiverr team until now, thank you very much for creating this great platform, and just hope sellers like us will get more support, i love you FV!

[creativ01]

I haven't been visible on this platform for over two years even though I never at any point indicated that I was going on vacation. I feel bad that after spending over 8 years on Fiverr, my gigs can remain completely invisible and without any single enquiries from customers. The only jobs I have worked on in over a year are from my past clients. It also seems hopeless that in spite of the issue, nothing has been done and nothing tangible has even been proposed. I feel this isn't the best way to encourage honest and hard working freelancers who have spent time building a reputation on this platform. I see the situation as a hopeless one that cannot be remedied but I just feel better expressing my annoyance with the Fiverr platform. Ultimately, serious minded freelancers will leave (many that I know have left) the platform and eventually, things will fall apart as they will also leave with their clients.

The Fiverr platform is as it were dead to old and experienced freelancers and perhaps new and inexperienced ones with the money are enjoying it now. All the best to Fiverr anyways!!!

[threestar07]

5 hours ago, grillo_infinity said:

Buyers often reach out in the inbox from different time zones, in my case, I live in Europe and get frequent requests at night. This spoils my response time, and can consequently impact also my seller level.

-> You should implement availability hours rather than dates.

Sincerely,

FG

you can make auto reply this will help you

[ageuroconsultin]

On 9/21/2023 at 2:50 PM, Noam.Arik said:

Based on valuable feedback from our community, we have made several fixes and improvements to our availability feature. We want you to take vacations, and want them to be stress-free! These updates will ensure that changing  your availability status does not negatively impact your business or compromise your services and visibility on Fiverr. Read more here.

According to the FAQs, it says the following: "Based on the new improvements, the unavailability feature will not necessarily have an impact on your Gig ranking. However, if the unavailability period runs over 30 days within a timeframe of 120 days, the Gig ranking might be affected."

Based on what's written here, this means that if I go into "out of office/unavailable" mode for more than 30 days within a 120-day period, even if not consecutively, I risk losing my gig ranking. Does this also apply if, for example, I'm unavailable for an average of 2-3 days within a 7-day period because I'm managing numerous jobs, say 15 at a time? Projecting those 7 days over 120 days, I believe I would exceed the 30 day limit. So far, I've been working as described, setting myself as unavailable about one day every three days on average to avoid receiving new messages from new clients and to manage all the orders I have in the queue. However, using this calculation, I would accumulate more than 40 days of unavailability in about 120 days. Could this affect my gig ranking?

[law_legacy]

I have been working on Fiverr since 2017. Initially, I was able to understand the metrics of getting your account raked and getting more orders. However, since 2021, the whole algorithm has been a confusing one, to the extent that you dear not take sometime off. Meanwhile, currently no matter how I try to search my gigs from the buyer's dashboard, they don't show on search. So I feel gigs l are demoted or promoted at will. No matter the effect you put. If any could help me so that my gigs can start showing on the search. 

[milos_siena]

@dmseoservices Please create a new topic about your problem. Post deleted, unrelated to the topic.

[vivify]

This is still listed as a feature of the Availability setting:

"Buyers will not be able to place a new order when you are marked as out of the office."

Sorry if this has been addressed previously, but one thing that I personally would find REALLY useful would be the option to set Out Of Office mode, yet STILL be able to send out Custom Offers for existing clients, or potential clients you are in talks with via the messaging system. Say, for example, if you're busy on long projects outside of Fiverr (or even on Fiverr), but would still be able to do certain shorter jobs while the OOO mode is set. 

[icocosoftware]

where can search newest project requirement ? 

 

confuse the page feature, seem no way ? 

[johananyousha]

On 9/22/2023 at 9:19 PM, priyank_mod said:

How will you work & deliver the order if you're literally unavailable?? 

Then we really need to stay up if we don't want to lose a business. Its simple you stay active and get the work done. 
i believe that every opportunity is worth working. I personally would not leave a chance to miss an order just because I am unavailable. 

[johananyousha]

On 9/22/2023 at 9:19 PM, priyank_mod said:

How will you work & deliver the order if you're literally unavailable?? 

Yes however, it is a good initiative but not for people like us who are workaholic and cannot give up an order just because for my ease. 

[jennifer4jobs]

I am glad to see this feature improvement, as I have responded to messages from mountaintops because I did not want to lose my gig ranking or have my response time impacted even when on vacation hiking in remote areas.

Fiverr can go one step further to better support its sellers by offering an extended window of unavailability for sellers who take parental leave. I took parental leave and spent nearly a year working hard to try to get my gig ranking back up to what it was before I went on leave. Fiverr's current practice of downranking gigs when sellers are unavailable for more than a short period of time disproportionately impacts women, but it also has a negative impact on men who choose to take parental leave.

Most people who need to take parental leave take more than 30 days, and that is a crucial time for them to be fully engaged with their newborn babies. If Fiverr allowed even a once-in-a-seller's-lifetime exception to the impact on gig rankings for people who attested to being unavailable because they were taking parental leave, it would go a long way to ensuring that parents do not bear disproportionate impacts from caring for their children at the most critical time of their lives. 

A change in policy of this nature would also help foster diversity and inclusion of people who are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and life circumstances that prevent them from being able to hire full-time childcare. Sellers could provide proof that they are taking parental leave by uploading a copy of their child's birth certificate.

Fiverr could go even further to offer a one-time exception as well to sellers facing extraordinary life circumstances, such as needing to undergo cancer treatment. These are the times in sellers lives when being able to care for health and have income through their Fiverr sales is more important than ever. This is the right step for businesses and society to support sellers as people, and one that is within Fiverr's power to take.

[bgimbelvo]

Visibility can't be impacted if it's already at ZERO. You'd think being a TRS and PRO Vetted would net me some benefits, but I still believe the disagreement I had with a CRS rep over a missed message has sent me to purgatory forever.

[muhammad_khalil]

YOU SHOULD NOT BLOCK THE ACCOUNT IF THE CLIENT GIVES SAME REVIEWS.

if the unavailability period runs over 30 days within a timeframe of 120 days, the Gig ranking might be affected." so I'm guessing that's what they mean? So basically, you won't be affected UNLESS you are away for over 30 days in 120 days? Still strangely worded, though. 
(and does it also imply that before it affected us? If yes... that's a bit weird because people get sick, need to leave for whatever reasons, etc. A week off shouldn't destroy one's account. 

[astonsouth1984]

One thing I'm finding interesting is that since this was changed, I am all of a sudden getting brief request. I have spent  a year and a bit querying the issue of a lack of work coming in and all of a sudden it's fixed last 24 hours I have received 2 briefs...

This is a positive but clearly it's not just me who was / is having issues.

[chatcosmique]

On 9/22/2023 at 9:57 AM, visualstudios said:

We can't know for sure, that's the issue. It may just be coincidence, it may just be that using out of office harms your positioning. That's the real problem with a lot of the systems in place - people can't know exactly how they work, so all we can do is speculate. If everything was clear and transparent ("do x, y will happen"), we could make much more informed decisions.

Btw, as for clients ordering without contact, just use request to order.

Thanks for the response ans sorry on the late reply. Definitely Fiverr should be more transparent and clear about this. By the way the "Request to order" option is not available for me at the time ;(

[samus_x]

On 9/21/2023 at 3:39 PM, visualstudios said:

this is the type of thing that makes users not trust the platform. Either it will be or it won't - this is a career for many people, so they need absolutes, not maybes. I never activated that feature, and I still won't, there's no reason to risk it. Even if they claimed "it won't", I don't know if it can be trusted or not. We need transparent systems, with transparent metrics, otherwise we can't know what affects us and what doesn't, regardless of what's said.

When I want to take some time off, I just need to keep replying to messages once a day, with request to order on. 

 

On 9/21/2023 at 3:53 PM, katakatica said:

They said this: "However, if the unavailability period runs over 30 days within a timeframe of 120 days, the Gig ranking might be affected." (source is through the link above, right after what you said) so I'm guessing that's what they mean? So basically, you won't be affected UNLESS you are away for over 30 days in 120 days? Still strangely worded, though. 

I'm still suffering from taking vacation out in July (had my best month in June, and everything just plummeted; that's the only reason why I can think other than everyone else being away), but I'd use the feature next time as well if I knew it was fixed/had guarantee it doesn't affect me. The explanation is a touch too vague for me

(and does it also imply that before it affected us? If yes... that's a bit weird because people get sick, need to leave for whatever reasons, etc. A week off shouldn't destroy one's account. 

 

On 9/22/2023 at 3:58 PM, melanielm said:

I'm still not sure what is actually new about this. We could always set availability, have our gigs hidden, a notification on the gig, a message to potential buyers, and decide whether we could get contacted or not. None of that is new. Is the 'it won't necessarily impact you' new? That doesn't sound new at all either. It did absolutely impact us before, but it still really sounds like it might.

WHAT is new about this? There are tons of people saying that it's such a great change, so someone must understand. 

 

I agree with all of you but I also believe that this update could be a significant breakthrough for individuals like me (and you) who have consistently used Fiverr without taking a break since starting (I did take a 5-day break once, but immediately regretted it).

However, there's a noticeable inconsistency in Fiverr's history when it comes to their representation of stats and metrics versus their actual application. Additionally, using phrases like "your visibility will not necessarily be negatively impacted" in the description of this new feature inevitably raises concerns for sellers, and their red flags/alarms collectively light up like it's the Fourth of July.

That said, I'm not implying that the new feature is inadequate, detrimental, or deceptive. I'd genuinely like to celebrate this feature and take a long-overdue break from the (years-long) constant notifications and urgency. But having been misled before, I'm sure I won't use the unavailability feature.

What I'm suggesting is perhaps before Fiverr introduces ambitious features, AI tools, or revamps the marketplace with additional marketplaces for Pro/business/extraterrestrial beings, they should prioritize strengthening and "healing" the trust relationship with their sellers.

While I can't confirm if this approach would boost their revenue, I'm confident that in the long run, it would cultivate a healthier and, consequently, more appealing platform for all users.

[katakatica]

7 hours ago, samus_x said:

I agree with all of you but I also believe that this update could be a significant breakthrough for individuals like me (and you) who have consistently used Fiverr without taking a break since starting (I did take a 5-day break once, but immediately regretted it).

 

The biggest issue I have is that this update should have happened years ago IF they were aware that the feature was buggy (or just not working the way it was intended.) If it was NORMAL for it to put people at the back of the catalogue when they came back, I think we should have been informed. Sure, I always expect a small period of silence when I'm back, which is totally understandable, but... for Fiverr to admit something was off all this time is pretty big.

I do agree with you; it's a good thing in general if it's true. But when you're told 2-3 times that 'nah, you're fine, x won't affect you' (by CS), and it does, you start to lose trust (like you did.) 

I think... communication is a pretty serious issue on the site. (I'd be happy to talk to someone about it, even.) I'm not always amazing at communicating myself, but I try my darndest. However, I don't always feel the same from the service I (as a seller and a buyer) also pay for. 

I think I've noticed some positive changes, but they are often followed with doubt still. I had the weirdest experience with promoted gigs this month (I spent a lot, and had a lot of clicks but NO orders at ALL until three days ago when I suddenly made back 3x what I spent... I had lots of spam messages as well through promotions so perhaps that's why as well, but yeah...)

Rant aside, I agree with you: it could be better to focus on the issues/bugs/whatever you want to call them (from this to us basically paying for spam through promotions to inbox issues, etc.). I do understand the revamp from a business standpoint, but if you scare away your best sellers (or make them ill due to not daring to take time off/etc.) it's not quite going to work. 

(sorry for the rant, I'm over-exhausted but the motivation to write this is very real.)

[sander_music]

This is good news either way. Glad to hear we can take a break from time to time.

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but previously when I turned on the “unavailable mode” but checked the “buyers can write to me” checkbox, I still could not receive messages (unless it was a new buyer), but at the same time it was available with mobile app.

Could you please clarify what the status of the chat is now if I turn on “buyers can contact me”. Can everyone write to me or only new ones?

[moriyum_mim]

I suggest  fiverr give option of live chat with seller

[aminul_design]

This is a very much needed update for the sellers. We go through a hectic process to rank up our profile, and the vacation inactivity takes it all away.

Thanks to fiverr.