Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, dponzio said:

One example for all: the obligation of fulfilling an online order without previous consultation and mutual acceptance, unless you pay for it via a subscription.

I mean you are accepting the terms of service of the platform when you use it. So they are legally covered here. It's not something forced upon you after reading the terms, it's in the terms... 

[dponzio]

9 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I mean you are accepting the terms of service of the platform when you use it. So they are legally covered here. It's not something forced upon you after reading the terms, it's in the terms... 

I am not 100% sure that this is sufficient, compliant with legislation and enforceable - for instance here, if you sign any contract with illegal clauses, any court would deem it as void. https://www.freelanceinformer.com/news/what-will-determine-worker-status-under-new-eu-freelancer-rules/

Edited June 12 by dponzio
adding an informative link

[donnovan86]

31 minutes ago, dponzio said:

I am not 100% sure that this is sufficient, compliant with legislation and enforceable - for instance here, if you sign any contract with illegal clauses, any court would deem it as void. 

I am sure Fiverr has their legal team all over this, trying to find loopholes and ways to keep enforcing their terms. So yeah, I personally don't feel like I am working for Fiverr as an employee, and I don't see this changing anytime soon. If the EU forces Fiverr and other platforms to do certain things, I am sure they will find ways to get around those 🙂 

[dponzio]

If I had a cent for any multinational operation that reassures that their legal team is on top of all legislations but eventually gets in trouble I would be rich! I saw a few myself  😉

[donnovan86]

52 minutes ago, dponzio said:

that their legal team is on top of all legislations but eventually gets in trouble I would be rich! I saw a few myself  😉

On top of it all for their own benefit, I thought that was obvious. I would definitely focus on doing that instead of dealing with costly problems down the line. Regardless, until proven otherwise, we are not employees, and I don't see these companies, including Fiverr, making any changes to that unless they are forced. And even then, they can find loopholes. That's what I meant. For now, any freelancer that considers themselves a Fiverr employee and asks for benefits makes me laugh. Can that become real in a few years? Maybe. 

[dponzio]

13 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

On top of it all for their own benefit, I thought that was obvious. I would definitely focus on doing that instead of dealing with costly problems down the line. Regardless, until proven otherwise, we are not employees, and I don't see these companies, including Fiverr, making any changes to that unless they are forced. And even then, they can find loopholes. That's what I meant. For now, any freelancer that considers themselves a Fiverr employee and asks for benefits makes me laugh. Can that become real in a few years? Maybe. 

Being employees is not my point. My point is that as freelencers we still have rights that must be respected. Freelancers do have legal rights. 

[rudyabel]

Oh sure, "you're free to quit". Wow...

Yes, Quiet firing, none of this talk amounts to a hill of beans when you're being hung out to dry. 
Frankly, I couldn't care less about splitting minutiae about our status as employees. Good luck with all this BS. 

"You're free to quit" is absolutely shameful. Thank you for making it pointedly more front and center. 
 

[donnovan86]

11 hours ago, rudyabel said:

"You're free to quit" is absolutely shameful. Thank you for making it pointedly more front and center. 

Who are you replying to, though? Quite confused here. Regardless, if you are talking to me, even if I've been here for 10+ years, I always treated Fiverr as a platform. I am working on a multitude of platforms because as a freelancer, I don't think it's wise to rely on a single place. If it runs into the ground or they randomly ban you/change the rules, you are hung out dry as you said. So it's never wise to just focus on a single platform, at least in my opinion. 

I just replied to your message about quiet firing because I wanted to state we are not Fiverr employees, so how can you fire someone you never hired in the first place. While legal status might differ from one country to the next, clearly we are not hired by Fiverr, they are not paying our taxes, they are not providing any benefits, etc. They have their own employees. That's all. So.. how can they fire us when they didn't employ us in the first place. 

As for being free to quit.. I am sure you saw a lot of older sellers either fully quitting or threatening to quit Fiverr. It's your choice to continue working on the platform or moving on to other things. Just like a regular job, it's not like it will last forever, priorities and life change. Obviously if someone wants to move on from Fiverr, they will 🙂 And it's their choice. I don't see myself fully leaving, because it would still be another source of income, if I decide to pursue other things. Plus, I already invested a ton of effort and many years into my profile. But as I said, the smart thing to do is to create a freelancing business and expand it beyond just Fiverr or freelancing platforms. Because they can easily switch their own rules, and even if the EU or certain countries make legal changes, I am sure these platforms will find ways to impose their own rules and ideas anyway, while still abiding the EU regulators. 

I think we went off-topic enough. I respect your opinions, just wanted to share my own as well 🙂 

[akshay_sihag]

Selling on fiverr since 2018. My gigs were always on front page of fiverr search results because of my good work. In 2 years of time in 2020 i became TRS. In 2024 i had earned over $123,600+ on fiverr and i was doing really great. 

Then all of a sudden New Level System got announced, that got implemented in March and i got demoted to a Level 1 seller. Wow! (4 years being a TRS and got suddenly demoted to a Level 1). 

All my gigs went from 1st page to 6th or 7th page, even now. Earnings dropped from a whopping $3000-$3500/month to just $600-$800/month. 

Stopped getting all sorts of organic client messages. My only source of leads is now Promoted gigs and that's it.

I have a success score of 6, when this all began. Now almost 4 months later it is still 6. 

In 4 months i have only completed 24 orders (95% came from promoted gigs), with an average score of 4.9 rating in these 24 orders. Never once i delivered a late order because i had so much time completing less number of orders. Communication was always 100%, even buyers gave me good feedbacks and tips on level of communication and fast delivery.

Now what have i done to deserve this @Kesha ?

I contacted fiverr support multiple times to check my account, there is something wrong with it. I can't be a level 1 seller. I can't be making $800 a month.

Being frustrated at this, i joined Upwork. In just these 4 months i became a Top Rated Seller on Upwork. Brilliant! 

Which means it's not that i have lost my talent or i am bad at what i do or that i am incompetent.
 

What good happened ?

Well at least i am slowly slowly getting back to monthly earnings (thanks to Upwork for saving me). 

I absolutely hate the new levelling system, i don't understand why fiverr is so proud about this new level system when it's clearly not working for most of the people on fiverr. 

These past 4 months were the worst months of my entire career as a freelancer on fiverr. 

Edited June 14 by akshay_sihag

[donnovan86]

10 minutes ago, akshay_sihag said:

These past 4 months were the worst months of my entire career as a freelancer on fiverr. 

Clearly Fiverr started to rethink how people are ranked and we are also compared to others within our niche. Not sure why you got demoted from TRS, or maybe I missed that in your post. But regardless, it seems Fiverr wants people to have consistent performance, and the new system highlights that. If your performance is not that great and competitors surpass you, and you also had bad private reviews, that will obviously hurt your account. Stuff like this happened in the past too, for example I was a TRS for years and I ended up losing it one month due to surgery-related cancellations and stuff like that. 

 

12 minutes ago, akshay_sihag said:

Being frustrated at this, i joined Upwork. In just these 4 months i became a Top Rated Seller on Upwork. Brilliant! 

 

You shouldn't rely on a single platform, especially these days. There's a lot of focus on AI these days and there are fewer buyers on the platform too. Combine that with the number of sellers doubling or tripling in some categories over the past few years, and you can see why Fiverr had to thin the herd. 

What I am not ok with is that buyers tend to have the ultimate control, and that opens the doors for abuse from the buyer's side. Thankfully, at least in my case, that rarely happens, but it is a problem and no one is safe, regardless of their price. 

15 minutes ago, akshay_sihag said:

I have a success score of 6, when this all began. Now almost 4 months later it is still 6. 

In 4 months i have only completed 24 orders (95% came from promoted gigs), with an average score of 4.9 rating in these 24 orders.

That's what you see publicly, privately your score might be way worse, which would explain the success score of 6. I can't see your dashboard and what they say is negative there. However, they did mention that the success score tends to stay rather stable for quite some time, I will say that mine has been the same since this whole thing started and it didn't really change at all. 

[akshay_sihag]

2 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Clearly Fiverr started to rethink how people are ranked and we are also compared to others within our niche. Not sure why you got demoted from TRS, or maybe I missed that in your post. But regardless, it seems Fiverr wants people to have consistent performance, and the new system highlights that. If your performance is not that great and competitors surpass you, and you also had bad private reviews, that will obviously hurt your account. Stuff like this happened in the past too, for example I was a TRS for years and I ended up losing it one month due to surgery-related cancellations and stuff like that. 

 

You shouldn't rely on a single platform, especially these days. There's a lot of focus on AI these days and there are fewer buyers on the platform too. Combine that with the number of sellers doubling or tripling in some categories over the past few years, and you can see why Fiverr had to thin the herd. 

What I am not ok with is that buyers tend to have the ultimate control, and that opens the doors for abuse from the buyer's side. Thankfully, at least in my case, that rarely happens, but it is a problem and no one is safe, regardless of their price. 

That's what you see publicly, privately your score might be way worse, which would explain the success score of 6. I can't see your dashboard and what they say is negative there. However, they did mention that the success score tends to stay rather stable for quite some time, I will say that mine has been the same since this whole thing started and it didn't really change at all. 

Privately as in what fiverr sees ? Because no matter what i do, or how many 5 star reviews i get. The gig score is hardly affected. If it's gonna take 100 orders to increase the score (thinking of a random number) in let's say 4 months of time. Then that is completely impossible for me because according to my current situation i only got 24 orders in past 4 months. So if i won't get any orders how can i even rank up ? 

I think for sellers who have crossed a certain threshold of orders, it's very hard for them to rank. For sellers with less number of orders it is very easy for them to rank up especially the new sellers who have just joined recently.

I think by changing two key things in this new levelling system can fix the situation for old sellers

1. Only consider past 30 or 60 days of orders to evaluate the gig score just like it was before.

2. Don't compare sellers performance with other sellers.

Fixing these two key things might might be able to help old freelancers like us to again gain that TRS level back.

Although they say that new orders hold more weightage than older ones. But so far i haven't seen that affecting my success score.

[donnovan86]

3 hours ago, akshay_sihag said:

Privately as in what fiverr sees

People can leave private reviews. And some might not leave, only those that are unhappy or who have time to leave private reviews.  There are private metrics we don't see, so even if we all have only 5 stars publicly, private feedback is more valuable for Fiverr and if only a few people complete it and some of them have negative/bad things to say there... it affects your gig. 

3 hours ago, akshay_sihag said:

I think for sellers who have crossed a certain threshold of orders, it's very hard for them to rank. For sellers with less number of orders it is very easy for them to rank up especially the new sellers who have just joined recently.

 

I think I am a prime example of that not being a thing. I think people just want stuff fast, so if they see more than an order or a few more in queue, they think you are busy and go for someone else. Plus, there are those buyers that are very cheap, and so on. 

[maia_videos]

Guys, do you think there is a possibility for fiverr to make changes to this new level system? Or is he really here to stay? I was also very hurt by this

[maia_videos]

5 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

You shouldn't rely on a single platform, especially these days.

I totally agree with you, but the Upwork system doesn't really please me, you need to keep sending proposals and competing with other sellers who sends the cheapest proposal.
What other platforms do you think would be good options? I would be grateful for your advice

[filipdevaere]

48 minutes ago, maia_videos said:

What other platforms do you think would be good options?

KWORK is similar to Fiverr. But it has "a lot less" buyers. 

You don't need to bid for projects on KWORK. 

I don't say that it will be a good option for you, but if you don't like the bidding, then it can be an alternative. 

[gary513]

7 hours ago, akshay_sihag said:

These past 4 months were the worst months of my entire career as a freelancer on fiverr.

exactly feel the same way here. Im getting more stress and afraid i would lose Fiverr as my main income 😞

[akshay_sihag]

On 6/14/2024 at 3:49 PM, donnovan86 said:

I think I am a prime example of that not being a thing. I think people just want stuff fast, so if they see more than an order or a few more in queue, they think you are busy and go for someone else. Plus, there are those buyers that are very cheap, and so on. 

That's not true. I have Zero orders in queue right now and i have seen people on fiverr front pages who have 50+ orders in queue in the same category. 

This has nothing to do with how many orders in queue, if that were to be true nobody would have 50+ orders in queue for a website development gig when there are so many other sellers out there. I have seen at least 10+ orders normally on front page gigs. 

While people like me are dependent only on promoted gigs. So unfair 😞

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, akshay_sihag said:

have 50+ orders in queue in the same category. 

They might just be regulars. You shouldn't care about what others have, just focus on your stuff. While it's great to study the market, it can also be unhealthy. I know for a fact that there are way less buyers on the platform, and the number has been dropping quite a bit. 

So, while some people benefit from exposure based on their performance, that doesn't mean it will last forever. And also it depends what those people offer. I doubt people have 50 orders for very complex websites with a short deadline. Most likely those orders have a long deadline. I would much prefer 20 orders with a deadline in 10 days in total instead of 50 that will most likely get finished in 3-4 months. 

Or, in the case of websites, they might be using templates and just change them a bit, that would explain the 20+ orders. Plus, private feedback and the performance of others in your niche will affect your success score, so there are a lot of things that might cause your lack of orders. Good luck though, hopefully things get back on track.

 

[filipdevaere]

3 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I know for a fact that there are way less buyers on the platform, and the number has been dropping quite a bit. 

@akshay_sihag I can confirm that Donnovan96 is right. This has also been confirmed by my success manager.

I still make the same money as last year, but receive 50% fewer orders. Last year I usually had orders for 2-3 months. Now I have work for 1-1.5 months.

[dponzio]

Why did buyers drop in your view? 

[filipdevaere]

32 minutes ago, dponzio said:

Why did buyers drop in your view? 

I have no idea.

[donnovan86]

5 hours ago, dponzio said:

Why did buyers drop in your view? 

No one knows for sure. I do have a few opinions:

• Lots of unqualified people offering services, people got scammed or received low quality work and decided to go somewhere else.
• Fees... some people are ok with them, but I know for a fact that a lot of buyers try to add fees into the deal, so that might deter them.
• AI is also a problem, a lot of people also started using AI for certain tasks and hire human talent only from time to time. 

These would be some of the main issues, in my opinion. Plus, the various site changes might also end up confusing some buyers, but I doubt they would just go away due to that. So there can be a lot of reasons here..

[dponzio]

Thanks! What do we know of the marketing and content used by Fiverr to advertise to buyers? 

[dponzio]

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

• Fees... some people are ok with them, but I know for a fact that a lot of buyers try to add fees into the deal, so that might deter them.
• AI is also a problem, a lot of people also started using AI for certain tasks and hire human talent only from time to time. 

1) Resellers of services: some of these people publicly claim to get plenty of money without having any skills, they call it "passive income"..... toxic culture. I would not nurture them for sure. I keep my fair pricing. 

2) AI: I am testing it in my service segment and verified that it does not yet produce quality results comparable with my manual and customised work. On the opposite, it can be highly misleading. Let them try! 😉 

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, dponzio said:

1) Resellers of services: some of these people publicly claim to get plenty of money without having any skills, they call it "passive income"..... toxic culture. I would not nurture them for sure. I keep my fair pricing. 

 

Yes, and as a buyer when you see such people on the platform, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. 

AI.. it depends because even if it's bad in most niches, a lot of people will go for that because it's cheaper. Non-business clients tend to choose AI over regular freelancers a lot more often than usual, I can say that for a fact from my experience, I had people tell me this exact thing. I had customers complain that other freelancers gave low quality work and I had to revise it or they used AI and wanted me to revise it. That's why I listed those points. Whether we like it or not, AI made a huge dent, in some niches more than others obviously.