Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[sabbirthedealer]

 The new leveling system on Fiverr has sparked a lot of discussion, and understandably so. Change can be daunting, especially for a platform as diverse and dynamic as Fiverr. However, it's worth considering the potential benefits this system might bring. With clearer criteria for leveling up, there's a chance for greater transparency and fairness in how sellers are evaluated. This could lead to more opportunities for those who excel in delivering quality work and outstanding customer service. While adjustments may be necessary based on community feedback, embracing this change with an open mind could ultimately contribute to a more robust and equitable Fiverr marketplace for everyone involved.

[cucinavivace]

38 minutes ago, sabbirthedealer said:

 The new leveling system on Fiverr has sparked a lot of discussion, and understandably so. Change can be daunting, especially for a platform as diverse and dynamic as Fiverr. However, it's worth considering the potential benefits this system might bring. With clearer criteria for leveling up, there's a chance for greater transparency and fairness in how sellers are evaluated. This could lead to more opportunities for those who excel in delivering quality work and outstanding customer service. While adjustments may be necessary based on community feedback, embracing this change with an open mind could ultimately contribute to a more robust and equitable Fiverr marketplace for everyone involved.

Sorry, is this a quote from Fiverr or did you write this?

[catwriter]

4 hours ago, cucinavivace said:

Sorry, is this a quote from Fiverr or did you write this?

At least they don't claim to be fluent in English...

Zero sales so far, of course.

[priyank_mod]

4 minutes ago, catwriter said:

At least they don't claim to be fluent in English...

Zero sales so far, of course.

And pretty much all of them quit within 3-4 months, when they realise that they can't achieve overnight success and the windfall promised by the external expart!! 

[smartdezigns]

5 minutes ago, priyank_mod said:

And pretty much all of them quit within 3-4 months

No No.. They have not quit.. Instead of quitting, they are blabbering here on the Forum!  

[rudyabel]

Future promises are hollow when a good business suddenly dies.

If this is all for the benefit of some future fiverr, does that include me?

I'm not an "aspiring" anything. I'm a full time working voice actor that has gotten whatever I was able scrape by with on fiverr yanked from under me. You're going to give me, and the legions of people in the same boat, platitudes? Really? 

Edited May 6 by rudyabel

[misscrystal]

I have an outstanding gig with the negative aspect saying it was due to cancellations but in the last year there was one cancellation which happened right after the client ordered, and then said "sorry I ordered by mistake." 

Also my already low rate of impressions is now basically almost none since I slightly modified my oldest gig.  Now nothing, no sales.  I miss my work here!  Funny, I thought I was very successful, what a surprise. 

[ummay_toma]

Very bad updating the new level system 

[dponzio]

Fiverr is a small part of my business and, despite having been here for a few years, I haven't made many sales for several reasons: my client-vetting policy, my choice of selling boutique and niche services at fair prices, not having a great visibility on the platform, and getting only a handful of serious and realistic enquiries.

I stick to my policy as it has benefited me in the overall across all my revenue streams.

Following this transition, since April I am receiving enquiries more often, some from motivated buyers who actually order, and got a few more orders concentrated in one month. I do not know exactly why, but is it a coincidence worth exploring? 

Having said that, I share many of the perplexities on the new system, the role of AI in judging us and the weird consequences on "effective communication". I am unsure about my score as it went from 8 to 7 and just one of my gigs shows its rating details, due to my low number of orders so far. But I thought useful to share my bit of positive coincidence. Is it possible that this new system will benefit some sellers in the medium-long term? What do you think?

[dereck_s]

12 minutes ago, dponzio said:

Fiverr is a small part of my business and, despite having been here for a few years, I haven't made many sales for several reasons: my client-vetting policy, my choice of selling boutique and niche services at fair prices, not having a great visibility on the platform, and getting only a handful of serious and realistic enquiries.

I stick to my policy as it has benefited me in the overall across all my revenue streams.

Following this transition, since April I am receiving enquiries more often, some from motivated buyers who actually order, and got a few more orders concentrated in one month. I do not know exactly why, but is it a coincidence worth exploring? 

Having said that, I share many of the perplexities on the new system, the role of AI in judging us and the weird consequences on "effective communication". I am unsure about my score as it went from 8 to 7 and just one of my gigs shows its rating details, due to my low number of orders so far. But I thought useful to share my bit of positive coincidence. Is it possible that this new system will benefit some sellers in the medium-long term? What do you think?

It didn't seem to hurt the Pro / TRS sellers at all. I think the new system is to thin the herd and remove a lot of the sellers that aren't Pro or TRS.

[priyank_mod]

1 hour ago, dponzio said:

Is it possible that this new system will benefit some sellers in the medium-long term? What do you think?

Keeping the personal grievances aside (which each of us have with the new system) - system will inevitably benefit a lot of sellers in the long term. Primarily because of the incredibly high number of people operating in the system.

While all of us have been debating the pros and cons from last 3 months - many people would have turned TRS in the last few months too or a lot of brand new sellers who would have become at least level 1. 

i.e. a parallel example can be the change in structure and format of an exam for higher education (likes of GMAT/GRE). Careers of so many people depend on it (much like our livelihoods on Fiverr). Alot of people will not be able to perform due to the change but results will still have people acing the exam and clocking perfect/near perfect scores!!  

 

PS At an individual level, we are not even cogs in a large system (corporate jobs or freelancing). Maybe we are akin to small screws. Temporarily needed and mildly important but can always be replaced, discarded or upgraded easily.  

Edited May 10 by priyank_mod

[visualstudios]

10 minutes ago, priyank_mod said:

many people would have turned TRS in the last few months too

Eh, TRS is a manual pick, so that's not necessarily true...

[rudyabel]

7 hours ago, dereck_s said:

It didn't seem to hurt the Pro / TRS sellers at all. I think the new system is to thin the herd and remove a lot of the sellers that aren't Pro or TRS.

I'm TRS and in the crapper.
It's something that you'll have to accept. You may have all your ducks in a row. But that's only 20% of the formula.
The other 80% is whatever the forces at play, be it human or machine, LET you be. Some people don't have to worry at all since they are already in the preferred group. At Fiverr, you're either in that small preferred group, or not. 
Another thing you have to keep in mind is as to how much business is actually coming in. Because it's obvious that all business is diverted to the preferred list when things are slow. 

I'm wondering why they even bothered making me a TRS? 

My gig hasn't rebounded at all in 7 months. 
 

Edited May 10 by rudyabel

[rudyabel]

6 hours ago, priyank_mod said:

PS At an individual level, we are not even cogs in a large system (corporate jobs or freelancing). Maybe we are akin to small screws. Temporarily needed and mildly important but can always be replaced, discarded or upgraded easily.  

This is an entire system totally based on tiny cogs, are you serious? Collectively, we are the blood, not the stool of this company. 

Edited May 10 by rudyabel

[dponzio]

In the meantime.... my score went down today. 😅 I am not aware of any issues caused and, on the contrary, as mentioned I had more enquiries and orders than in the past, as I read it is the case of others here 

[terrygrantvo]

On 5/10/2024 at 6:46 AM, dereck_s said:

It didn't seem to hurt the Pro / TRS sellers at all. 

Trust me when I say this - Yes. Yes it did.

[donnovan86]

On 5/10/2024 at 2:46 PM, dereck_s said:

It didn't seem to hurt the Pro / TRS sellers at all. I think the new system is to thin the herd and remove a lot of the sellers that aren't Pro or TRS.

It hurt everyone. Not equally, mainly because TRS and Pro sellers still need manual checks even if their score is lower, they won't lose their level automatically. But everyone else does...

[rudyabel]

3 hours ago, terrygrantvo said:

Trust me when I say this - Yes. Yes it did.

Even you, Terry?

[jassmin57]

I face this problem and I am level 0 now and my score is 4 if you take a look at my profile you will find 1,533 reviews for this seller 4,9 I completed 2000 orders, I contacted them many times and they answered very basic answers with no logic after that they send my request to the department above and their reply is " we are using a secret algorithm we can not tell you about it " it's a weird thing it's like someone passes 6 exams and he got 19/20 in all exams and the final score must be 19/20, but with this new rate on Fiverr you will get 4/20 and when you ask why I have 19/20 in all exams they will tell you " we are using a secret algorithm we can not tell you about it " I can not find a fair logic on this, I can not get any new orders, I am without work since that.

[donnovan86]

17 minutes ago, jassmin57 said:

I can not find a fair logic on this, I can not get any new orders, I am without work since that.

Well a lot of the success score relies on hidden info. And it's hidden for a reason, if people know exactly what it is, they would try to manipulate it, because that's what a lot of sellers do, it's human nature. 

In your case, you have quite a few 3 star reviews that might also be accompanied by some bad, private reviews. Even a single bad private review can be a problem, more of those are definitely an issue. Remember that not everyone leaves private reviews, so those bad private reviews have even more power than expected. In most cases, that's the explanation behind the low success scores. That, along with other metrics like cancellations, etc. Doesn't Fiverr say for each gig what has a bad impact, what's ok, etc? It should. Check that, it might help improve the situation.

[cucinavivace]

2 hours ago, jassmin57 said:

I can not find a fair logic on this

I'm convinced, as mentioned above, the private ratings actually have more influence than public ones. I did the math on a pretty thorough review of all my orders, and in my case there is no way more than 3% of my buyers had any reason to leave anything truly negative in a private rating. And so I think reasonably far fewer than that actually did. In those cases, I think they were folks who didn't like what I told them about the tax code itself, not how I personally performed (people get pretty irate when you tell them they're breaking the law), and in one case a communication issue because his English was horrible and I don't speak Romanian (at all).

Still, my perfect 5.0 and 100% on all metrics public score translated to a Success Score of 4 and dropped me from level 2 to level 0 when the new system kicked in. I have since graduated to level 1 (whoopee) with a Success Score of 6, but I'm guessing I'll be waiting at least until next tax season when the volume is better to get up to a 7.

In short, I'm convinced one bad private rating probably drags down as many as 50 public ones.

[dereck_s]

2 hours ago, cucinavivace said:

I'm convinced, as mentioned above, the private ratings actually have more influence than public ones. I did the math on a pretty thorough review of all my orders, and in my case there is no way more than 3% of my buyers had any reason to leave anything truly negative in a private rating. And so I think reasonably far fewer than that actually did. In those cases, I think they were folks who didn't like what I told them about the tax code itself, not how I personally performed (people get pretty irate when you tell them they're breaking the law), and in one case a communication issue because his English was horrible and I don't speak Romanian (at all).

Still, my perfect 5.0 and 100% on all metrics public score translated to a Success Score of 4 and dropped me from level 2 to level 0 when the new system kicked in. I have since graduated to level 1 (whoopee) with a Success Score of 6, but I'm guessing I'll be waiting at least until next tax season when the volume is better to get up to a 7.

In short, I'm convinced one bad private rating probably drags down as many as 50 public ones.

So I know that private reviews exist but I'm skeptical about them. A lot of times when my account tanks I assume I got one but I never really know. It could just be some dumb glitch or error on fiverr's part that they blame on private metrics. I think there's a lazy team and / or automated systems that no one has any real idea how to work or if it's working correctly which is why there is so much shady private info that the person themselves can't even get access to.

[donnovan86]

18 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

why there is so much shady private info that the person themselves can't even get access to.

If everyone would have access to all the info, ranking could be easily manipulated. Because that's human nature, some people will take advantage of things to surpass others. There are Facebook groups where people exchange reviews, people that create multiple accounts trying to game the system and boost their exposure, etc. 

I know for a fact that private reviews are different than public reviews sometimes because my success manager told me that firsthand. I had only excellent reviews publicly, yet my buyer satisfaction rate was low because people most likely didn't rate me privately a lot, and those that did... they did it randomly. So yeah, I was hit by this issue last year in particular, and it was not great, it took a long time to recover. Raising prices helps, but it still doesn't deter people from either buying your gig without consent or leaving a random review because they are in a rush...

[dereck_s]

13 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

If everyone would have access to all the info, ranking could be easily manipulated. Because that's human nature, some people will take advantage of things to surpass others. There are Facebook groups where people exchange reviews, people that create multiple accounts trying to game the system and boost their exposure, etc. 

I know for a fact that private reviews are different than public reviews sometimes because my success manager told me that firsthand. I had only excellent reviews publicly, yet my buyer satisfaction rate was low because people most likely didn't rate me privately a lot, and those that did... they did it randomly. So yeah, I was hit by this issue last year in particular, and it was not great, it took a long time to recover. Raising prices helps, but it still doesn't deter people from either buying your gig without consent or leaving a random review because they are in a rush...

So I went a little tin hat yesterday but honestly some people trying to manipulate their ratings sounds like a pretty good trade off to me for transparency as the lack of transparency has done nothing to prevent the people who would manipulate from finding ways to do so anyway. Those people will always exist and it will always be something Fiverr needs to be on the lookout for transparency or not.

Not having any transparency or really any options at all if you get a bad remark does nothing to help the seller or the platform.

[donnovan86]

2 hours ago, dereck_s said:

some people trying to manipulate their ratings sounds like a pretty good trade off to me for transparency

Let's put it this way, I've seen lots of sellers with thousands upon thousands of reviews being removed by Fiverr. Pretty sure they manipulated something or did bad things, if they were removed by the platform. 

There is transparency, and you can see what affects your account, which wasn't here before. I know you are asking about complete transparency, but that is not going to happen as long as Fiverr continues to ask for private reviews. Because it clearly says in that private feedback window that "your feedback will not be shared with anyone", whenever they ask buyers to leave private feedback. So I don't see them miraculously changing their mind and offering all that info for free.

Pretty sure that in their minds, Fiverr believes they already are more transparent than they were. Remember that until the new success score system, you had no idea how Fiverr saw your gigs and why they would rank the way they do. Now you know the reason, the success score is low, and some gigs have low performance. It also shows why there is low performance, be it due to cancellations, bad reviews from clients, etc. I prefer this when compared to no info at all and seeing my gig bounce around like a ping pong ball not knowing the issue. 

Plus, I am pretty sure they were using the same things in the past to rank us, now they only made some of the stuff public. I do agree that the system should be more transparent, but between them promising buyers to not disclose info and Fiverr wanting to avoid manipulation (clearly the fact they introduced reviews for canceled orders shows that Fiverr is against sellers manipulating things), I don't see this system changing soon. But hey, if we continue talking about it and let the team know what to improve, hopefully they listen. 

I do think that the new system is better than the old one, just because we have more info about our gigs and how Fiverr sees them.