Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[vhskid]

16 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

And you don't know my level status either or my success score- you don't know where I stand. You're making an assumption based on my views of the new system.

So is your TRS in actual danger because of the new levels?

 

16 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

Yes they might, or they might not. That's been something I've constantly said. The fear doesn't help. We have to wait and see what the actual impact is.

It's easy to say "We shouldn't give into fear".

People have different life situations, different stresses that accumulate, different mental health states. 

 

 

Edited March 15 by vhskid

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, vhskid said:

I wonder about it myself - if these profiles are internally marked as agencies and not compared to regular freelancers or not.

 

Obviously everyone is treated as an "account", unless those people will choose to apply for an Agency. But it's clear that they compare accounts between each other, and if you're an agency or you outsource your work, obviously you obliterate the competition when it comes to volume. I am certainly faster than a lot of writers, but even I can't compete with someone that outsources to 10-15 other people. 

[vhskid]

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

Obviously everyone is treated as an "account"

What is obvious here? Regular accounts led by agencies could have been detected and marked internally as agencies and treated as such when it comes to comparing with other accounts.

 

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

But it's clear that they compare accounts between each other, and if you're an agency or you outsource your work, obviously you obliterate the competition when it comes to volume.

I have the same concern, but at the end of the day, we don't really know what exactly the sellers' comparison means.

 

This is a transcript fragment from one of the webinars:
 

Quote

And when we're referring, about, to, performance, we're talking about our satisfaction, responsiveness, cancellation rate, on time delivery, and also now, the way you perform compared to your, competition. And like Mikey mentioned, the competition is not all of the sellers that are operating in the marketplace. We segment you according to the people that are similar to you to make it more fair, and more fair competition.

 

So this "fair competition" would be to flag these "hidden" agencies (at least internally) and not compare them with regular freelancers. 

But we can't really tell what's going on there.

 

 

Edited March 15 by vhskid

[donnovan86]

36 minutes ago, vhskid said:

What is obvious here? Regular accounts led by agencies could have been detected and marked internally as agencies and treated as such when it comes to comparing with other accounts.

 

Fiverr uses AI to try and avoid hiring people for these tasks. And I doubt they even care who is an agency and who's not. Clearly as long as an account makes money for them, it's fine 🙂

I can tell you for a fact that there are writers who on YouTube and even on their LinkedIn say they outsource, some even have their own outsourcing business you can see clearly.. yet on Fiverr they say "I will write", I will do, etc. And obviously you are compared to those because they are a seller just like you.

I know Fiverr has the Agency feature coming soon, but do you really think these people will admit they outsource and apply for an agency spot? Unless they are offered major incentives, they are much better off misleading people and competing against solopreneurs like mine or you. It is what it is... but the fact that now the success score is lowered because someone is outsourcing and you get penalized for actually doing the work on your own.. that's a whole new level of being unfair. 

[fixxapp]

The strange thing is that if I go to my seller dashboard I'm level 0, but in my public gigs page i'm level 2 LOL 😄

[Alex.M]

3 minutes ago, fixxapp said:

The strange thing is that if I go to my seller dashboard I'm level 0, but in my public gigs page i'm level 2 LOL 😄

it might be a bug.. I see that you have no level 

[fixxapp]

14 hours ago, Alex.M said:

it might be a bug.. I see that you have no level 

yes I checked now again, it's a bug they are dong a mess 😄 btw I'm level 0 but I the third best selling gig to build an airbnb booking website LOL 

this new system is crazy 😄

[newsmike]

[goonin]

I've been selling on Fiverr for 5 years since I was 16 and now I am 21. I've made a good living on this platform and now it's going to be destroyed. I've completed over 4,500 orders and have a 4.9 star rating on my page. It's obviously IMPOSSIBLE to only have 5 star reviews and have 0 cancellation in the niche I work in and for how long I've been working because maybe some clients order by mistake or want something COMPLETELTY different. I always try to help my customers by giving them extra revisions, extra things in there delivery but all of that just to have a success score of 4 is mind blowing. My gigs aren't showing up in search anymore so I guess that's the end of it

 

Sad.

Edited March 16 by goonin

[vhskid]

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

Fiverr uses AI to try and avoid hiring people for these tasks. And I doubt they even care who is an agency and who's not. Clearly as long as an account makes money for them, it's fine 🙂

I can tell you for a fact that there are writers who on YouTube and even on their LinkedIn say they outsource, some even have their own outsourcing business you can see clearly.. yet on Fiverr they say "I will write", I will do, etc. And obviously you are compared to those because they are a seller just like you.

I think that Fiverr is very invested in good buyer-seller matchmaking (subjective, yes) and making deals. Also, the "hidden" agency accounts might skew the algorithm too much, even for Fiverr. 

Significantly above-the-average delivery frequency and income size indicators (for the category / industry) could be used for automatic or semi-automatic detection of these agencies.

 

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

I know Fiverr has the Agency feature coming soon

I'm talking about 2 different things, but the 2nd could only happen if the 1st works:

• Internal detection of these agencies posing as freelancers and internally treating them as agencies by scoring and gig-serving algorithms
• Official Agency feature and forcing the "posers" to convert accounts

The Agency feature has been present for a few years now and it's re-released again or refreshed(?). I don't know what they are changing with this. 

 

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

do you really think these people will admit they outsource and apply for an agency spot?

I think that Fiverr doesn't care if these people want to admit that or not, and can force them to convert their accounts, so the agency's searching buyers have a better selection and less confusion.

The servers constantly grinding the algorithms could also generate less cost.

 

 

Edited March 16 by vhskid

[visualstudios]

4 hours ago, levinewman said:

Significantly decreased since Fiverr's adoption of AI.

Yeah, but in that case the culprit is probably AI itself, not necessarily Fiverr.

I'm not defending Fiverr, btw, you know I've been very critical of several decisions. But it's a fact that AI disrupted a lot of verticals. Translation, for example, is something I truly believe will not simply decrease - it will go to zero. Literally. Regardless of what Fiverr does or doesn't do, it will happen.

It's unfortunate, but it's true. Sooner or later, everything will be replaced with AI, and some verticals will be affected sooner than others. Writing and illustration are particularly vulnerable right now, the effect is being felt across the entire industry, it's not just a Fiverr thing. For now, it seems there's a chance to keep working as a specialist with AI help, or prompt engineer, etc. But in the long run, even that won't be necessary.

Edited March 16 by visualstudios

[greggidneyvo]

.  .  .

Nothing solved.

A buyer that wants to be a jerk, can lie to your face with a 5-star review, then turn around and give you a bad review.

It's a poor system, and the sellers are forced to take it.  Especially when it's evident by the overall Stars where they ALREADY have the option to express their experience. 

It's a needless part of the system and needs to go.

[levinewman]

17 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Yeah, but in that case the culprit is probably AI itself, not necessarily Fiverr.

I'm not defending Fiverr, btw, you know I've been very critical of several decisions. But it's a fact that AI disrupted a lot of verticals. Translation, for example, is something I truly believe will not simply decrease - it will go to zero. Literally. Regardless of what Fiverr does or doesn't do, it will happen.

It's unfortunate, but it's true. Sooner or later, everything will be replaced with AI, and some verticals will be affected sooner than others. Writing and illustration are particularly vulnerable right now, the effect is being felt across the entire industry, it's not just a Fiverr thing. For now, it seems there's a chance to keep working as a specialist with AI help, or prompt engineer, etc. But in the long run, even that won't be necessary.

You're right, I was just using one example. I think we could all point to a dozen other changes or current implements that have negatively affected things. Still, Fiverr adopting it rushed many people out the door and it had to impact their bottom line.

My approach, for what it's worth, would have been to lean into, I don't know, the people making me money. Because AI is about to ruin the entire site by replacing creative verticals in every industry. I would have made people a priority so they keep making me money instead of throwing them in the trash.

[visualstudios]

I still have some hope that this change will clean the platform of a lot of meksells, and push clientele towards the upper end. From what I've seen, most Pro / TRS sellers that are serious and well known (you included, but many more) got great scores, which should mean more business for them. I hope.

Of course this doesn't excuse what they did with the new review system (unfair and unbalanced), lack of transparency, and a lot of other bad decisions. But it's not certain that business will drop for good sellers, the opposite can actually happen.

[newsmike]

22 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Translation, for example, is something I truly believe will not simply decrease - it will go to zero. Literally. Regardless of what Fiverr does or doesn't do, it will happen.

Wondering, if AI on Fiverr is going to kill translation, why then didn't Google Translate kill it over the last 5 years, especially when it is free?

[visualstudios]

4 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Wondering, if AI on Fiverr is going to kill translation, why then didn't Google Translate kill it over the last 5 years, especially when it is free?

It's not AI on Fiverr, it's AI period. Fiverr is irrelevant for that discussion, actually - Fiverr won't be needed, and won't get any of that business lol.

Google translate didn't kill it over the last few years because it was garbage. For the longest time, "google translated it" was a joke, a synonym of "badly translated". But recently with true AI models (chat gpt and the like), translation has gotten very very close to the quality you could expect from a human, and it will get there shortly. For many applications it's already there.

Edited March 16 by visualstudios

[newsmike]

4 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

It's not AI on Fiverr, it's AI period. Fiverr is irrelevant for that discussion, actually. 

Google translate didn't kill it over the last few years because it was garbage. For the longest time, "google translated it" was a joke, a synonym of "badly translated". But recently with true AI models (chat gpt and the like), translation has gotten very very close to the quality you could expect from a human, and it will get there shortly.

Sounds like it is time for freelancers to call Vinnie in Jersey and start talks about unions in many different sectors.  There is a union for supermarket checkers, so maybe this is the only way to prevent AI rapidly replacing everyone.  That sure is a nice website you got there, be a shame if something happened to it. 

Edited March 16 by newsmike

[arianelaurent]

3 minutes ago, newsmike said:

Wondering, if AI on Fiverr is going to kill translation, why then didn't Google Translate kill it over the last 5 years, especially when it is free?

The AI translation tools that are currently available are a million times better than five years ago (same as transcription), though they still need to be checked by humans for now (tone issues, nuances, tenses, style, etc.)

[visualstudios]

It's like when we used to see gigs selling "I'll remove a background from your image for $5". Then it became "I'll remove the background from 100 images for $5". 

And now is... any phone will do it, natively, and instantaneously at the click of a button, using AI. So those gigs are irrelevant, and dead.

[levinewman]

3 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

It's not AI on Fiverr, it's AI period. Fiverr is irrelevant for that discussion, actually - Fiverr won't be needed, and won't get any of that business lol.

Google translate didn't kill it over the last few years because it was garbage. For the longest time, "google translated it" was a joke, a synonym of "badly translated". But recently with true AI models (chat gpt and the like), translation has gotten very very close to the quality you could expect from a human, and it will get there shortly. For many applications it's already there.

Again, I don't know their Financials, but I can read a stock chart to know their decisions are having an impact. 

That begs the question then, what's the end game? Are we all going to be replaced by AI so Fiverr is non existent since AI is basically free? Would that be the goal here? Because that doesn't seem like a smart plan for us or Fiverr or anyone else, but we're sure happy to do it to ourselves. 

[visualstudios]

1 minute ago, levinewman said:

Are we all going to be replaced by AI so Fiverr is non existent since AI is basically free? Would that be the goal here? Because that doesn't seem like a smart plan for us or Fiverr or anyone else, but we're sure happy to do it to ourselves. 

That's a very hard question to answer, and indeed it can be an existential threat to Fiverr, yes. I think they can survive by focusing on verticals / services that can't be replaced by AI, or that need a human touch. They can also try to pivot into an AI company themselves, I suppose, and offer the AI services directly, but i'm not very confident in their capability to do so (specially compared to AI juggernauts like openAI, etc.).

But I bet that they are as scared of it as sellers are. But they can't just ignore it - if they chose to do that, and go with "human services only", if AI really takes off, nobody would ever want to buy what they can get for basically free from a machine. They would go under regardless.

Edited March 16 by visualstudios

[arianelaurent]

Just now, visualstudios said:

That's a very hard question to answer, and indeed it can be an existential threat to Fiverr, yes. I think they can survive by focusing on verticals / services that can't be replaced by AI, or that need a human touch. They can also try to pivot into an AI company themselves, I suppose, and offer the AI services directly, but i'm not very confident in their capability to do so (specially compared to AI juggernauts like openAI, etc.).

In my meeting with my SM, it felt like they really want to push the new-ish AI section for writing/editing.... (which is not my cup of tea)

[newsmike]

[visualstudios]

Pretty much, yes. But that's the good ending, and for a minority. For the majority, the outcome can be far, far worse.

Edited March 16 by visualstudios

[levinewman]

Just now, visualstudios said:

That's a very hard question to answer, and indeed it can be an existential threat to Fiverr, yes. I think they can survive by focusing on verticals / services that can't be replaced by AI, or that need a human touch. They can also try to pivot into an AI company themselves, I suppose, and offer the AI services directly, but i'm not very confident in their capability to do so (specially compared to AI juggernauts like openAI, etc.).

Then take it a step further. AI has now replaced us all on Fiverr, and now out in the world, and none of us have jobs and the world is in chaos. But AI is awesome, right? This is an extremely slippery slope.