Important Updates: Level System (now live!) and Ratings & Reviews (testing changes)

[catwriter]

My posting reached its limit yesterday, so I couldn't, err, keep contributing to the conversation...

Anyway.

Right now, my success score is 10 (yay?). Barely any sales, but hey, at least the success score is high. And gigs with more sales definitely have more weight, which is very easy to see in my case: out of 2 active gigs, one's score is 10 (the one with more sales), while the other's score is 8 (and yet, my total score is 10, not 9). The funny thing about that 8 is that it's negatively impacted by effective communication... The one stat I always get highly rated on. I guess that some people, at some point, weren't happy with what I've told them.

With the more clear TRS explanations, it's, well, clear that I'm not going to become a TRS. Not anytime soon, and possibly not ever, because my gigs are not in any of the in-demand categories. A useful thing to know.

Not a fan of the new system, and curious if it's a glitch that got all those people flagged for inconsistent location, or if there's some cleaning Fiverr is doing.

[lenasemenkova]

 

So what do we do with the gigs that are impossible to “improve”? Just get rid of them asap?

 

I got this one only because my success manager told me it’s always a great idea to have more gigs. 4 sales in 1.5 years, 3 5* reviews, and one buyer chose not to leave a rating. 

 

The same buyer forgot to mention a crucial piece of information about what they wanted me to do, then went straight for a cancelation after seeing the delivery. I talked them out of the cancelation and remade the entire piece for free, yay me and my conflict resolution skills. Also, my patience. Especially my patience. 

 

That alone deserves at least a 9*, yet it’s the only 8/10 gig I ended up having. I can’t promote it. Even if I could, the potential to turn it into a 7/10 gig with the tiniest wrong move is quite high. 

 

 

22 minutes ago, catwriter said:

and curious if it's a glitch that got all those people flagged for inconsistent location, or if there's some cleaning Fiverr is doing

Oh dear, what now.

[msw_77]

1 minute ago, lenasemenkova said:

Oh dear, what now.

Hundreds of freelancers got their account flagged for location inconsistencies and are unable to participate in the new level system 

[donnovan86]

So it seems that Level 2 sellers can only have 10 active gigs with this new update. It was 20 before this, but now it doesn't matter if we are level 1 or 2, we can have the same maximum number of gigs. While Top Rated Sellers can have 30 active gigs. That's a very odd decision. 

Attaching confirmation from Fiverr staff, so everyone can see this was confirmed. Very odd, strange decision that certainly doesn't benefit sellers. Wanted to share this here, maybe people interested can see it.

[lenasemenkova]

20 minutes ago, msw_77 said:

Hundreds of freelancers got their account flagged for location inconsistencies and are unable to participate in the new level system 

😞 I wish Fiverr would just chill for a sec. I wish we could go back to 2017 for a day. “What would you like us to improve to make your experience better? Give us the username of that buyer who's harassing you, we’ll get rid of them..." The simpler times.

[smork]

@Kesha @Lyndsey_Fiverr

As someone who has been selling on Fiverr for nearly a decade and has held Top Rated Seller status since 2015, I urge the relevant team to reconsider this update, which seems nothing short of a disaster. The overwhelming negativity, confusion and disappointment in the fifteen pages of comments here and numerous other posts across the forum should be evidence enough.

This update is not only harmful and derogatory but also further punishes hard-working sellers who are the backbone of Fiverr - We are just as important as buyers. Once again, it's clear that Fiverr isn't listening to its sellers. This update demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of what it is to be a freelancer and how to create an environment that is balanced and fair for both sides, sellers and buyers. Surely, if even one freelancer were involved in the decision-making process, they could have provided countless reasons why this doesn't make sense.

While I understand the need to weed out low-quality sellers, Fiverr is unquestionably harming a significant number of reputable sellers in the process.

The Fiverr team seems to be continuing on a disappointing path of grinding down its sellers for no apparent reason - Hassling buyers to leave private reviews?  The seller not knowing what has been said or how that impacts them? The clearly huge amount of weight you've assigned to these tattletale style private reviews and not disclosing it to your sellers? You are playing with people's livelihoods as if it's some sort of game, and that is incredibly disappointing.

Regarding the previous post I made in this thread, I received an 8/10 score with no clear explanation or means to address it. The offending statistic was "Client Satisfaction." In my almost ten years on Fiverr, with nearly 6000 completed orders and a 5-star review score, I have only received three negative reviews, and none of them are accurate; two were left by mistake.

As a Top Rated Seller, you've always said that we are periodically reviewed to ensure we a maintaining the level of service required to be a TRS. So, Fiverr knows I uphold my end of the bargain. If some disgruntled buyers have unfairly criticized me in private reviews, Fiverr should present that information to me so I can defend myself, rather than blindly siding with them and damaging my business.

Your support team seems clueless about the situation, providing nonsensical copy-paste responses when asked for clarification.

@Kesha  I hope you'll relay this feedback to your team. They have reached out to me in the past via email asking if I'd come and contribute to the forum, I've had s***e chats for feedback on new features that were in testing, interviews for blog posts, and asking me to look into starting up Fiverr workshops. I've had a seller success manager before they started charging for the feature, and he frequently sought my opinions to relay back to the team. I am pretty sure that I speak on behalf of many when I say that Fiverr needs to listen to its core sellers instead of throwing them under the bus.

Today I can see the Success Score has received another threatening update for me to enjoy

How am I meant to get back on track when I don't know what the problem is in the first place or what I can do to fix it?  How can I get back on track when I don't believe I've done anything wrong and you apparently only give me 30 days to fix something that is the result of you drawing from 2 years of data to punish me for?

Do better please.

Edited February 15 by smork

[egaylord]

12 hours ago, carineb said:

What I find incredible is that CS tells me it's 100% when I see 97%.

That's almost every experience I've ever had with CS in a nutshell.

[Alex.M]

1 minute ago, zeecreations said:

Fiverr team is on another level of incompetency, sadly.

either that or they simply don't care 

there are so many things wrong with the current rating system, not to mention the value for money part that is dragging down all of the gigs.

some of the buyers even complain for 5$ gigs ... imagine what they do for the 200$ 

[eclixo]

@Kesha

I am a level 2 seller with over 3 years of experience and have been eligible for top rated status for the past year. I have no issues with the new system as it encourages high-quality sellers. However, I have noticed in the forums that many sellers are experiencing negative impacts on their gigs due to cancellation and late delivery rates that are over a year old.
My last late delivery was 3 months ago, and my late delivery score is now 100%. Despite this, it still shows a negative impact on my gig. I believe it would be more accurate and fair to calculate cancellation and late delivery rates for the last three months only, as this would better reflect my current performance.
I have taken steps to improve my gig, including consulting with top rated sellers, creating a professional thumbnail, and adding an amazing portfolio. My success score is currently 9, and I am eager to become top rated and enjoy the benefits that come with it.
I am looking forward to seeing how you can help me become top rated, as I have been active in the forums and community and have received positive feedback from many top rated sellers. However, when I asked CS about why I hadn't become top rated yet, they simply told me that I need to be more active in the forums and community, despite being one of the best in my industry. I find this response to be unclear and unhelpful.
I hope you can provide me with more transparency and guidance on what I can do to improve my status. Thank you for your time and assistance

[maerodir]

I'm a level 2 seller, but after the update I'm down to level 0.

The only metric that's causing this is the Gig score. My two biggest gigs now have a low rating and a warning for communication and conflict-free orders despite both of them having a 5 star rating across the board (including communication), without a single conflict or dispute.

I have glowing reviews with clients complimenting me on pretty much every metric that's supposed to be taken into consideration, yet I'm being punished with no information given as to why.

How does this make any sense?

[mashas_studio]

So the customer support said that this is still a testing phase and it will be so for the next 2 weeks and the statistics may vary, but still this is so far the most ridiculous change ever, it's like spitting in your face for doing a good job and giving them salary. Great way to thank us.

[usamarehman99]

31 minutes ago, zeecreations said:

> Takes 2 years of data to calculate the "Score".

> Gives you 1 month to improve it. 

Fiverr team is on another level of incompetency, sadly.

Exactly, What kind of business decision is this? Its a disaster for sellers who were devoted to Fiverr & the ones making the decisions have never provided services to clients they do not know ground realities or what problems the seller would face. Utter disaster, maybe its time to part ways with such an unreliable company. 

[voicedbyken]

If they go forward with this as it is, we are all screwed.

Just reread the Success Score page and from what I can gather [without it being explicitly stated] is that they are using a Grammarly-style ai to monitor and review communications, gig descriptions, etc... to determine the mood, context, and other factors in both the seller and buyers communications. This is why many of us who are borderline over-communicative are seeing strikes in our success rating for communication issues. The algorithm does not understand human speech in the same way actual humans do, so it makes a generic interpretation that does not align with what is actually going on.  

This is just a small portion of the issues as most of us are aware that the entire system is being turned upside down as will many of our livelihoods in the long term once this goes into full effect.

Decisions are being made by experimental ai and not being reviewed by real people. The more I read the more scared I get.

[usamarehman99]

Just now, voicedbyken said:

If they go forward with this as it is, we are all screwed.

Just reread the Success Score page and from what I can gather [without it being explicitly stated] is that they are using a Grammarly-style ai to monitor and review communications, gig descriptions, etc... to determine the mood, context, and other factors in both the seller and buyers communications. This is why many of us who are borderline over-communicative are seeing strikes in our success rating for communication issues. The algorithm does not understand human speech in the same way actual humans do, so it makes a generic interpretation that does not align with what is actually going on.  

This is just a small portion of the issues as most of us are aware that the entire system is being turned upside down as will many of our livelihoods in the long term once this goes into full effect.

Decisions are being made by experimental ai and not being reviewed by real people. The more I read the more scared I get.

Using AI to put the seller market at stake. GG Business strategy

[emmaki]

4 minutes ago, voicedbyken said:

Just reread the Success Score page and from what I can gather [without it being explicitly stated] is that they are using a Grammarly-style ai to monitor and review communications, gig descriptions, etc... to determine the mood, context, and other factors in both the seller and buyers communications.

You mean this bit?

Perhaps we should all start using those ChatGPT templates that are being thrown at us by Fiverr staff to help us communicate like a ninja rockstar? However, this does come with the potentially erroneous assumption that the templates have been crafted with explicit reference to the internal criteria of the AI, rather than just being generated to meet a content production schedule. In which case those templates are not optimized and potentially dangerous for seller profiles.

I mean, Fiverr does have a track record introducing things as wonderful which are in fact nightmares on steroids, so my personal weighting of the situation is that the templates are likely to hinder rather than help. Not least because buyers have already noticed roboseller speak. 

I think sellers would benefit from buying ChatGPT Plus to create a GPT assistant that is an expert in their business, feeding it with the entirety of the Fiverr TOS, Help Center, and other bits and bobs and also a whole library on NLP and semantic texts. It would also be a good idea to test ChatGPT output on Neo, since I would assume that Neo's inner workings tie in with the AI algorithms.

We can ignore the buyer and human communication/connection of course. This is completely irrelevant to our  primary task of staying on top of Fiverr's demanding systems so we can attract more buyers. However, smarter people will also make sure to add a human touch (to avoid the roboseller impression) without destroying the semantic structures. Google has a useful free tool for that. 

Such a pity Fiverr won't just let us leave our whole account to robots, really. It brings to mind a familiar phrase:

"Do as I say, not as I do..."

As for the elephant standing behind me, I call him Little Hypocrisy because he's so huge, just like Little John, and it's a very funny joke. I don't know why he's called hypocrisy though. It's probably just a weird foreign name.  

[Alex.M]

20 minutes ago, mashas_studio said:

So the customer support said that this is still a testing phase and it will be so for the next 2 weeks and the statistics may vary

sure, if you want to believe that 🙂 

[voicedbyken]

There is no transparency on how often the data used to determine the score will be evaluated.

"How often can my success score change?
The success score is intentionally designed to remain relatively stable. It does not fluctuate too often, as it considers the history of your orders over time, rather than focusing on individual transactions. Therefore, any changes to your success score take some time to reflect, ensuring a more comprehensive evaluation of your overall performance."

 

So making changes to gig descriptions, or any other so-called fixes will not be reflected in a manner for us to know whether we made the correct changes or made the wrong choice driving our score down further before the next automatic ai evaluation.

I have a feeling we won't see any changes to the current scores until it's too late

[emmaki]

Nothing is going to happen - a few minor tweaks will be made to the system to reflect "listening to the community", primary issues will be left unloved, ignored, and unaddressed, and the world will continue.

The real solution to this is for the vast majority of sellers to down tools and close their profile for 1, 2, 3 months. 

That will never happen, so this will. Simple math and the biggest issue with the gig economy exposed: the complete and utter lack of worker unionization, stakeholder...ing?, or protections. Fiverr also notes that this becoming a thing is a threat to their business model in their investing things, btw. 

Among other interesting bits.

 

[visualstudios]

1 hour ago, Alex.M said:

some of the buyers even complain for 5$ gigs ... imagine what they do for the 200$ 

The $200 buyers will complain less. But still more than the $2000 buyers. Ideally we should be aiming at the $20k buyers, though. 

Bigger the budget = more reasonable the client. 99% of times, it works every time.

[crawford_copy]

2 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

So it seems that Level 2 sellers can only have 10 active gigs with this new update. It was 20 before this, but now it doesn't matter if we are level 1 or 2, we can have the same maximum number of gigs. While Top Rated Sellers can have 30 active gigs. That's a very odd decision. 

Attaching confirmation from Fiverr staff, so everyone can see this was confirmed. Very odd, strange decision that certainly doesn't benefit sellers. Wanted to share this here, maybe people interested can see it.

It's a very strange decision. L2 should be allowed more active gigs than L1.

It used to be: 7, 15, 20, 30

But now it's: 4, 10, 10, 30

This means sellers at every level except TR will be forced to delete gigs, with L2 hit the worst.

 

 

[dusuacangmon]

I wonder why Fiverr open a "Fiverr feedback" category, but none of the feedback go live?

[visualstudios]

14 minutes ago, crawford_copy said:

This means sellers at every level except TR will be forced to delete gigs, with L2 hit the worst.

Only if they have a ton of gigs. I can have up to 30, have 9 at the moment, and honestly I could do with fewer. 

Since you can't have different gigs offering the same service, to offer 20 gigs you need to be able to do 20 different services. I always suspect anyone who claims to be able to do 20 different things professionally.

I've seen a lot of profiles offering the same thing 10 times, with slight title variations. I've seen people offering every service under the sun  - I'll do logo design, websites, translations, horoscopes, video, music, nutrition plans. Makes your profile look like a flea market.

Edited February 15 by visualstudios

[emmaki]

I think the gig thing is easy to explain

• Eliminate low quality gigs
• Amplify TRS gig presence
• "Elevate" overall marketplace
• Make Fiverr look more "high quality" without addressing actual mass marketplace issues

It's just been implemented in the lazy, shoddy, and thoughtless way that the rest of the changes have. 

[eduardoquiles]

14 hours ago, emmaki said:

Oh, your value for money problem is easy to solve. Your target market is basically kids.

Kids don't have a lot of money and don't like spending it. They may also be able to get the fortnite character drawn for free by some AI or another. Your service won't make them money.

I wouldn't expect to be made TRS with the Fortnite stuff either. That's dancing on the borders of copyright/IP violation...

Fiverr reviews are subjective. Help yourself to win half the battle by not targeting a broke and selfish audience that resents spending money. (in general). Oh, their parents buy it? Pester power...



That's also a young and broke audience, and there's no "may" about the lying about age. Your service is a luxury, a treat. What are you doing to make it feel like a luxury treat? Probably not enough, because your price point is too low to waste time on delivering the gold standard service that the new review system demands.

OTOH, I can drop $100 off the price of my gig and dial up my service to 1000% without blinking an eye (but I will moan about it, of course; I'm British) - knowing that I will help my client to make money and that the temporary loss is future profit from a return customer.

There's plenty to of things Fiverr is doing wrong, but we should also be careful to look at where our own strategies are failing. Mostly because the new system will absolutely destroy anyone who fails to take stock and adapt.

My new strategy is simply to lock my door and pick my clients (among other things).

Assumptions over assumptions, very professional! 👏👏👏👏
You should add fortune tellin on your services too...

Thanks Fiverr disguised agent... lol

[palmreader37]

This latest change for the lack of a better words is a ridiculous step. 

I am on Fiverr since 2013, I have been contacted by support team since 2015 on advice how to improve my sales, I guess long before success managers were a thing. 

I was a top rated seller from 2016 until June 2023 when without any real explanation (besides the mysterious hidden metrics) I become level two despite having thousands five star reviews, 100 % response rate, and 100 % completion rate and one hour response time. 

Now to top it of I am level 0! with all other fields being perfect except for my Success score being 4!.

One of my gigs even shows negative impact from cancellations despite me HAVING NO CANCELATIONS on that gig what so ever and this shows in my gig stats 

I don't know whether this will change until 14-th of March but if not...in all seriousness I offer a FREE palm reading for each person on the fiverr team as they seem truly lost with this latest change and in need of some serious guidance.