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Update: Addressing new level system questions and feedback


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Just now, leannelrivers said:

It appears to be more than a storm in a teacup for the people who say they are literally ruined by this release but for Fiverr? Yeah. Who cares? Even if every top seller left the platform and took their quality clients with them, the company would still make millions from $5 sales alone. Do shareholders really care about the hows of profit? I contribute to the care of some horses near where I live, and we shovel a lot of s**t. That massive pile of s**t is worth money. The farmers buying it don't care if it's happy, top-rated s**t.

Exactly. Despite all Fiverr's listening and lack of talking, this is the loud and clear message that its lips send us. 

I liked the horse poo story. When I was 4 years old, my father had a massive truck load of finest horse manure delivered to our home. I was delighted when a whole load of manure was plopped into a pile in the garden and immediately ran to play on "the mountain" - well, tried to, since my mother was bigger and faster and scooped me out of the way and into the house to calm down. 

Anyway, there's a photo of a very young me somewhere looking ecstatic and  very small next to a mountain of poop. (or an average sized pile of poop if you are an adult)

Fiverr incredible manure output has never made me feel as happy as this 😞

 

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I've been told by customer support that they can't help me because the metric is based on an "exact science" that has always existed. Establishing a metric that favors sales volume over quality. This becomes evident when exploring my category, graphic design, with many sellers registered as individual freelancers, but in reality, they are teams capable of handling a large number of orders per day. Most of these jobs are of poor quality, as can be easily inferred from the sample images in the Gigs or the numerous negative public reviews. However, the high sales volume only has a positive impact on their status on the platform. In this case, not only does an unfair competition logic emerge, but buyers themselves are deceived by this system. Fiverr's industrial logic is a "quantity-focused approach," yet they continue to advise me to offer high-quality services. I wonder when the antitrust will start moving

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3 minutes ago, carminesannino said:

they are teams capable of handling a large number of orders per day.

yes and no 🙂 I handled 30-40 orders back in the day when the only price was 5$ , this was 9-10 years ago though but yes sometimes this resulted in a lot of negative reviews not to mention that I was only sleeping for 4-5 hours each day , overall it was not worth it

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4 minutes ago, Alex.M said:

yes and no 🙂 I handled 30-40 orders back in the day when the only price was 5$ , this was 9-10 years ago though but yes sometimes this resulted in a lot of negative reviews not to mention that I was only sleeping for 4-5 hours each day , overall it was not worth it

I also handled a high number of orders per day, as many as 30, they were not $5, but 30$, 60$ and 100$. I didn't sleep at night, and when I couldn't do it, I would put my status unavailable. These vendors, however, have been handling 60 orders a day, every day, for years. We all know what happens, we know how it works, I can't write it down.

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Remember when the analytics page used to tell you how many orders you had delivered that day? It's gone now - they removed it about 5 years ago.

Anyway - another example of gamification - I got a little OCD about that and would be quite miffed if I didn't complete exactly the same amount of orders every day so there was a "straight line" across the week. 

Which is a bit weird really. At least it wasn't tied up to any metrics though....

The thing I'm talking about is just under the 100% positive rating (lol) below. 

Wow, just look at how much more positive the overall language is there. This is super old though... maybe 2015?

Fiverr Updates Its Task-Based Marketplace With Slicker Look & More  Buyer/Seller Tools | TechCrunch

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5 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Remember when the analytics page used to tell you how many orders you had delivered that day? It's gone now - they removed it about 5 years ago.

Anyway - another example of gamification - I got a little OCD about that and would be quite miffed if I didn't complete exactly the same amount of orders every day so there was a "straight line" across the week. 

Which is a bit weird really. At least it wasn't tied up to any metrics though....

The thing I'm talking about is just under the 100% positive rating (lol) below. 

Wow, just look at how much more positive the overall language is there. This is super old though... maybe 2015?

Fiverr Updates Its Task-Based Marketplace With Slicker Look & More  Buyer/Seller Tools | TechCrunch

This data is partially present in the app. I can't find them on the website. But they will also be changing the app interface soon....

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5 minutes ago, karlaofficial said:

Are there sellers delivering subpar work, leading to necessary revisions? Yes, that's a reality. However, not all revisions stem from inadequate initial deliveries. Some buyers may request revisions excessively or for minor changes, even when the work meets the agreed-upon standards. Therefore if there is a blanket rule that revisions will count against you in regards to the success score, not taking the differences described above into consideration, is really unfair to sellers. 

I had a customer who requested 8 revisions because each time he only mentioned one point that he would have liked to have revised, which could have been summarized in one revision. I found it a bit annoying, but I didn't care. Until I found out that Fiverr penalizes this kind of thing. In future, I will probably have to tell customers that they need to check EVERYTHING completely and only then submit a revision, as Fiverr enforces this. Then sellers and customers will have to suffer and adapt to the inferior algorithms if that's what the intelligent decision-makers at Fiverr want. 

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On 2/15/2024 at 6:57 PM, chronos_1 said:

I have score of 10 but here is my input: 

1) Remove or change value for money:

- I set a price which I feel is justified for the experience and expertise I bring. Buyer is unknown about the work that gets put behind the curtains nor has expertise on how it is done.

- If the buyer thinks that price for the service required is high then he/ she should not start the order itself.

- I think this forces seller to reduce the prices as we get directly compared to other gigs with lower prices and provide same services. However, prices are based on final quality that you would receive which cannot be quantified without asking 2 sellers to do exact same work. 

 

2) Success score to remain TRS which is 9 is high in my opinion and it should be 8. Same goes for rating, since the new rating system has come into effect it seems 4.7* is the new 5*. To remain TRS we need to have 4.7* which I think is not good.

Thats True.

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26 minutes ago, alexonjourney said:

I had a customer who requested 8 revisions because each time he only mentioned one point that he would have liked to have revised, which could have been summarized in one revision.

My favorite buyer along those lines was like, in 2014 or something. I wrote a press release for their ecom store or something for $5 or so. Anyway, I've always put the logo in the PRs at the top even at $5 because I thought it looked nice. The vast, vast majority of clients do not pass any comment on this since it doesn't matter.

But not this dude. This dude put me through like 20 revisions to "adjust the size of the logo". This was in a word document, so I just made it a lil bigger, a lil smaller, a lil bigger again. Eventually he was satisfied. I thought it was all very amusing, but how could this person have not realized how much of his time he was wasting to type out the vague instructions when he could have resized it perfectly himself. And that even after all that, none of this would matter after he uploaded it online anyway

I got my thumbs up though. That's how long ago it was.

He didn't come back.

Today, I expect that this would mean the end of my Fiverr career due to my woeful incompetence or something. 

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1 hour ago, emmaki said:

This is Fiverr's listening style: 

I've noticed two interesting things. 

By introducing these updates, they did two things:

1. They've finally brought some action to this forum, and it really looks like a community (I think it's the first time I see a lot of traction here since the moment when they killed the good old forum (Where's misscrystal?! 😄). Then it took almost a year to make it work (even now, it logs me out once a while with no reason). All previous attempts to "hire" sellers to write long (and boring) articles failed (I remember at least three of them). 

2. This moment could be used to finally establish a connection with sellers (look at other communities, where you can always talk to a representative of the company). Talk to them, even by accepting that nothing will change and providing information. Instead of that, they hunker down and leave sellers on their own 🧐.

Edited by vovkaslovesnyy
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1 hour ago, karlaofficial said:

not all revisions stem from inadequate initial deliveries.

Creative jobs require at least one revision in most cases. Many of my VO clients are happy with my voiceover, but they request a revision because the script has been changed slightly. I charge them again for certain things, but it still generates a revision request. Sometimes, they're dissatisfied with my voiceover and request a complete revision. Both are usual occurrences in the creative field, so punishing sellers again for revisions is a nice juicy cherry on top. When I was hired as a freelance coach by Heineken, I got some insight into their collaborations with creative agencies. Campaign revisions were plentiful and expected. It's par for the course. 

Edited by leannelrivers
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1 hour ago, carminesannino said:

This becomes evident when exploring my category, graphic design, with many sellers registered as individual freelancers, but in reality, they are teams capable of handling a large number of orders per day.

The problem exists in all verticals. That's why the Agency feature should actually be forced upon sellers that are clearly not an individual seller. There are writers who clearly say they have a team anywhere online if you search their name. Yet on Fiverr they pose as a solo writer, even if they have dozens of orders at once. However not every buyer looks for that, they trust the person, especially if Fiverr also gave them one of those rarer badges.

It's definitely not an isolated incident. But I doubt Fiverr will actually force them to disclose how they work, after all, these agencies/groups/teams generate revenue so.. 

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I'm Fiverr's seller since 2014 which makes 10 years now, level 2 most of the time (even level 3 episode 2018-2019), around 95% of my reviews are 5*stars... And soon I'll be down to level ZERO.

XDDDD

I just have to say that Fiverr is becoming more and more like some hell-corpo and is less and less about FREElancing. It's really time for me to quit this toxin, I can't put off this decision any longer : /

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29 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

It's definitely not an isolated incident. But I doubt Fiverr will actually force them to disclose how they work, after all, these agencies/groups/teams generate revenue so.. 

It's an ethical as well as a regulatory concern. There is no seriousness, no fairness, and not even respect for the seller and the buyer. Such an unfair system cannot in any way enhance the quality of the service. So for this reason, I feel deeply misled.

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To summarize this, the new rating system is bugs on bugs. 

  • Conflict-free orders - penalizes revisions which are absolutely normal and necessary part of creative work. Also penalizes when we reach out to CS regarding certain orders
  • Order cancellations - penalizes ALL cancelled orders, even those made by buyer's mistake 
  • Client satisfaction - values secret reviews over public ones, and I feel like it penalizes automatically completed orders and orders without any rating 
  • Value for money - is ridiculous and not fair criteria, most buyers don't choose "over satisfied" when giving a rating to our work, they choose "very good" which is 4 stars
  • Effective communication - freelancers don't have any understanding of this, but it looks like it penalizes their own review requirements bug
  • Delivery time - penalizes extension requests which a lot of times are caused by buyer's unresponsiveness
Edited by katherinasim
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2 minutes ago, katherinasim said:

To summarize this, the new rating system is bugs on bugs. 

  • Conflict-free orders - penalizes revisions which are absolutely normal and necessary part of creative work
  • Order cancellations - penalizes ALL cancelled orders, even those made by buyer's mistake 
  • Client satisfaction - values secret reviews over public ones, and I feel like it penalizes automatically completed orders and orders without any rating 
  • Value for money - is ridiculous and not fair criteria, most buyers don't choose "over satisfied" when giving a rating to our work, they choose "very good" which is 4 stars
  • Effective communication - freelancers don't have any understanding of this, but it looks like it penalizes their own review requirements bug
  • Delivery time - the only criteria which looks ok ?

Conflict-free order: does it also penalise if you extend the delivery time? 

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45 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

The problem exists in all verticals. That's why the Agency feature should actually be forced upon sellers that are clearly not an individual seller. There are writers who clearly say they have a team anywhere online if you search their name. Yet on Fiverr they pose as a solo writer, even if they have dozens of orders at once. However not every buyer looks for that, they trust the person, especially if Fiverr also gave them one of those rarer badges.

It's definitely not an isolated incident. But I doubt Fiverr will actually force them to disclose how they work, after all, these agencies/groups/teams generate revenue so.. 

There's one specific one I'm thinking about, we might have the same in mind, but at least this one's gigs are all on hold right now. Not sure since when it's like that but maybe it has to do with the update as well, who knows. 

But I do agree, that's the perfect scenario for the agency feature as for a buyer it looks like you're buying from that one person. I mean until now no one said anything against it so was a great time for this seller to create several income streams.

Edited by almostfauxreal
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8 minutes ago, katherinasim said:

To summarize this, the new rating system is bugs on bugs. 

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It's all stuff they have always been doing and tracking in the background. So it's not like they have anything new here. They are just showing more of the background data. Which clearly shows one thing, we are tracked for every little metric. No wonder I was not getting any messages when I had an extension or revision active. 

 

10 minutes ago, katherinasim said:
  • Value for money - is ridiculous and not fair criteria, most buyers don't choose "over satisfied" when giving a rating to our work, they choose "very good" which is 4 stars
  •  

That's the point, so not everyone has 5 stars anymore. The system does its job, I saw various sellers with lower gig score average, so if that's what Fiverr wanted, it certainly works. 

 

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