Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[visualstudios]

2 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

My experience with the Promoted Gig feature is that when it claims to be working it's lying and when it is working my competition is also promoting so I still don't seem to place any better.

I've gotten 1 or 2 buyers from them. I've also gotten tens of spammers and scammers, that I was paying for, and Fiverr refused to refund what I paid for those clicks. So no, thanks.

[williambryan392]

Thanks for this @frank_d, haven't seen you around much recently and it's good to get your insight!

 

21 hours ago, emmaki said:

read somewhere that the drop from 20 to 10 gigs on lvl 2 might be because Fiverr is expecting a lot of ping-ponging between these levels, and it would be annoying to have to constantly deal with that. I think they're letting people keep their 20 existing gigs though.

I can't remember who said any of this or whether it was from Fiverr or a seller.

 

I said it, but maybe someone else did too (both of us purely guessing as I haven't seen anything official).

[karlaofficial]

Has anyone from Fiverr answered the following question anywhere? If your gigs are not showing up the search results, and you are level 4 in the success score (0), how are you expected to be able to increase your success score? 

[nanasmitht]

Hi, I received a flagged notification other days and currently I tried to withdraw fund but not able. It showed up a notification for me to contact CS. Does this happen because my account was flagged and now I couldn't even withdraw fund? 

[newsmike]

1 hour ago, visualstudios said:

I just recently ordered 2 voice overs. I didn't rate them, as I didn't want to hurt the sellers, but also didn't want to lie.

They were what I needed and wanted. I was happy with them. 5 stars for me is just that - I got what I was promised and needed, I'm happy, done.

But that's not what 5 stars are in the new system. 5 stars is "exceptional". And the sellers i bought from were definitely not exceptional. They can't exceed expectations if I have the correct expectations, which I had, because I had worked with them before. 1/100 orders are exceptional, for me. It just doesn't happen often - if it did, it wouldn't be "exceptional". Words have meanings.

The problem is the scale used. If 5 stars was "very good", all would be fine. Calling it exceptional makes 5 star reviews impossible to get 99% of the time - unless the buyer is an idiot that is impressed by anything, or knows the system and is basically lying about what "exceptional" means.

 

Now, all of this would still not be a problem (even if unfair, since the review scale is not balanced), if having a 3.5 or 4 average score was seen as good. But when you need 4.7 to qualify for TRS, and 4.4 to qualify for a measly level 1, when the scale calls 4.0 "very good", this is a major problem, obviously.

 

Also, I know it's frowned upon to mention nationalities here, but from now on I'll just refuse to work with german and french clients, because they are notorious for having a culture of "nothing is quite perfect", so forget about ever getting a 5 star from there with this system, and expect quite a few 3 stars. Very good is already amazing, exceptional? From a german or french? Keep dreaming. Americans are much nicer.

A pet peeve of mine is also the very few people who realize that "Words, do indeed, mean things."  However, I just ordered a VO as well, but even though I got a perfect delivery, exactly within my expectations as I've used this seller before, I still gave the highest possible review.  I would rather play the game and not punish someone who gave me great work because Fiverr does not understand that "words mean things."  Just sayin'

Funny how we get different results.  German buyers are among the easiest and most generous for me, right on par with US buyers.

Edited February 23 by newsmike

[ahunyady]

On 2/22/2024 at 12:40 PM, edc_lab said:

 

Hello @frank_d, I'm a new seller and I'm trying to learn as much as I can about this platform so thanks for opening this necessary topic.
Here's my take on the last message made by @Kesha.
Let's try to make things a bit more clear all together.

 

Why does Kesha use the word "direct"? Can we impact the Success Score indirectly?
Probably yes, the reference could be the new rating system with all these checkboxes.

 

How do they understand that?
Is this a reference to the new rating system where buyers can select, through a checklist, the level of communication?

 

About these three elements:
Expectation: if buyers don't like the outcome you need to do your best to please them. Working more and providing more solutions could be the way to go. If you fail, they can ask for a refund and you can say goodbye to your money.
Deadline: revisions and extensions could impact your score, so apparently, if you want to be safe, just avoid using it.
Delivery: They take into account many statistics, one of which includes "how long it takes you to deliver the final product and how that compares to other sellers in your niche".

Let's wrap it up.
I need to set a realistic delivery time, but this delivery time needs to be similar to my niche delivery time. If mine is 7 days and the niche one has an average of 4 days, what should I do? Is it better to match the niche average delivery time or not?
Will a forced gig extension made because of the unresponsiveness of a buyer be considered neutral or will it be considered negative?
If the buyer is happy and satisfied, even if I used extensions and/or revisions, will the final score be extremely positive?
Is it better to deliver on time and receive a "very good" review or is it better to deliver with extensions and/or revisions and receive an "exceptional" rating?

I didn't watch the webinar but based on what I read so far they give huge importance to metrics, statistics, and whatever is analyzed by their fAIver software rather than humans' real feedback, that's crazy.
I want to remember that these graphs that the Fiverr team is analyzing are footprints made by humans so I think they shouldn't ignore the source of that data.

Nobody's looking at your gig’s extensions and revisions manually, so don't expect them to differentiate between positive and negative delivery extensions and revisions. If they attempt to do this, it’s going to be AI assessing your messages which will be a disaster.

If your score is well above the cutoff for where you want to be, most likely you can just keep doing what you’re doing. If your score is lower than you like or on the border, you should reduce revisions and especially extensions. If that means setting longer delivery times up front, even if it risks turning away buyers, do it. I’ve learned that the best clients are the ones who plan ahead and are easygoing—not the “I NEED IT IN 6 HOURS!!!” ones. Of course there’s a balance but depending on the type of projects, shorter delivery time does not necessarily mean you’ll get a larger number of clients. But too long and you’ll definitely reduce buyer satisfaction and/or they won’t return. For some categories 3 days might be too long. For others, 2 weeks is no problem at all.

The best thing you can do is communicate with buyers about timing issues. Get a sense for how desperate they are to get it back within a certain time. Let them know when you’ll actually be starting their project then give them delivery updates periodically esp. if they’re a new client and it’s a bit of a long delivery. If they spend 2 weeks freaking out that you’ve forgotten about their project, they’re not going to appreciate that, so send them an update when you start working on their project and reconfirm whether that going to make the deadline. Some buyers do expect to have all revisions done by the “delivery date” but others understand revisions can go on longer, so you want to specify this up front.

Personally, I’ll be setting slightly longer delivery times and encouraging buyers when applicable to process revisions through chat rather than the revision system. Previously, I’ve always pushed them toward using the revision button as it puts their revision into my queue where I won’t forget it. That said, I can’t say that revisions are having a strong negative effect, probably because everyone else in my category, copyediting & proofreading, has to use them often as well. I’d estimate about 30-40% of my orders get revisions (I may be way off on this number as I’ve never thought about it before and not done a tally), but virtually all of these revisions extend into the “late” zone as I almost always deliver right before the delivery deadline (I’ve never had a late delivery, though I’ve had to extend delivery date on ~1.5% of orders usually due to buyer issues). I used to deliver early, then I discovered this is a great way to give false expectations to repeat buyers. Now I always deliver an hour or two before the deadline unless I know they need it ASAP. For my main gigs, I don’t have any delivery time issues noted in the success score breakdown. Other categories might be stricter with revisions.

Edited February 24 by ahunyady

[katherinasim]

All my clients lately choose NOT to leave any review. They send me a message "thank you so much I absolutely love it" and just click complete the order. This never happened before, and it only means the review questionnaire is too complicated.

And I don't ask them, better no review than 4.3 🥴

[budaart]

36 minutes ago, karlaofficial said:

Has anyone from Fiverr answered the following question anywhere? If your gigs are not showing up the search results, and you are level 4 in the success score (0), how are you expected to be able to increase your success score? 

Promote I guess😅 Maybe it's all calculated plan to indirectly charge sellers after all like on Etsy or any P2W game.

[emmaki]

Welp, I just bagged me another 5 stars, so my angry rant has had to be delayed again. 

Maybe it's my time to make a new Fiverr Guru course: How to get 5 star reviews on Fiverr the easy slightly more painful than it was before way

Title needs work, I know. 

 

Edited February 23 by emmaki
No tip though. Perhaps that's the secret.

[amiddleton7]

Hi there, 

I just found this forum. So discouraged by the new system - and that the other forum was closed (even though Fiverr says they want to work together and value our feedback....) 

I have been a Top Rated Seller for since 2021 and I'm now at risk of losing my status as my success score is an 8. Seems I've had a similar experience as other people. Support is copy and pasting answers that are general and not helpful.

Here's a synopsis of what I've been experiencing: 

• Impact of previous cancellations on success score:
  • Support hasn't been able to indicate which cancelled orders are having this negative impact. 
  • For all previous cancellations I've had during my years on Fiverr, I have manually reached out to customer service to ensure the cancellations were indeed not impacting my ranking or statistics. With each case, I received reassurance that my ratings we're not impacted (and in most cases they manually corrected my Order Completion rating as they could see that the buyer and I mutually decided to cancel the order). 
  • It is incredibly disheartening that Fiverr would provide confidence over the years and then (overnight) develop a new rating system that contradicts their previous guidelines, and worse, becomes detrimental to committed sellers and Top Sellers.
• Risk of losing status:
  • Because of this new success score, I am now at risk of losing my Top Rated status. To maintain my Top Rated status, my rating needs to be at or above 9. Because of the unexpected and inconsistent criteria, I now have a 8.
• Request to order feature: 
  • Support suggested the 'request to order' feature as a tip to improve impact of cancellations. However, this feature is exclusive to Seller Plus Premium members only. It is elitist to offer a feature only to a specific group of people, yet have it as an adjacent key area in the overall rating system. 

I've heard people talking about a 60 day grace period. However, my success page says I have until Mar. 16th to 'get on track'. Any updates anyone has on how to defer this?! 

Edited February 23 by amiddleton7

[kingpirux]

trying to understand the new system i noticed something else, your rank is in risk according to how long have you been in fiver, more than 6 years will be heavy punished, new commers will have more presence because it average the time, not the experience or results. just an hipótesis, Looks like anyone from 2020 or 2021 is an 8... if you ask me, this is because the holistic is just crappy averaging by time over average stars, and not quantity by sum of scores, that explains the famous room for improvement that doesn't change unless you are perfect, also the strongly negative (because only one 4 is needed in 2 years to give you 6, if you are older this impact is higher but if you are new it will change from one day to the other)... and also explains the sudden flags on very old or very new freelancers, as expected, all this magical fantasy over explained, vaguely supported and with total absence of facts and examples, is common when you use ChatGPT asking or building anything, because that's AI, a simple averager with a few random noise so it doesn't look repetitive, but ask any real developper or data analyst and will tell you that is would be very very dumb if they used it as a real base for their new system, i mean, even OpenAI is not using their most powerful AI this way because they know the basics behind it... but is just an hipótesis...

 

oh i can write again 🙂 there is like a limit of posts i think because they flaged me with negative points in the forum, they didn't answer any questions but they are angry that i posted memes.

[emmaki]

12 minutes ago, kingpirux said:

your rank is in risk according to how long have you been in fiver, more than 6 years will be heavy punished

Yeah but I keep getting 5 star reviews and my thingy looks like this: 

 

Either I'm a much better seller than 99% of people on this post or Fiverr is broken. 

Both work for me and my ego, which will be cruelly shattered by some monster of a buyer sooner or later 🙂

P.S. There's a forum glitch that is affecting some people that means they can only post 10x day. They're working on it.... trust me, I did a memes thread and Fiverr still lets me barf my brainhole all over the place. 

[kingpirux]

48 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Yeah but I keep getting 5 star reviews and my thingy looks like this: 

 

Either I'm a much better seller than 99% of people on this post or Fiverr is broken. 

Both work for me and my ego, which will be cruelly shattered by some monster of a buyer sooner or later 🙂

P.S. There's a forum glitch that is affecting some people that means they can only post 10x day. They're working on it.... trust me, I did a memes thread and Fiverr still lets me barf my brainhole all over the place. 

lol your profile may be the glitch in the matrix. but how many years have you been working on Fiverr, working not necessarily registered.

[visualstudios]

2 hours ago, newsmike said:

However, I just ordered a VO as well, but even though I got a perfect delivery, exactly within my expectations as I've used this seller before, I still gave the highest possible review.  I would rather play the game and not punish someone who gave me great work because Fiverr does not understand that "words mean things."  Just sayin'

Oh, I get that. I'm not punishing anyone either - not leaving a review is not "punishing", imo. Hell, I'd much rather not get reviews now, given the way the system works. But having to click "exceeded expectations", when it didn't, doesn't sit right with me either. Nor does rating people with emojis. The system is just broken and unfair.

Besides, If Fiverr sees that the rate of orders with reviews drops precipitously with this new system, maybe they'll wake up to the need to change it. I mean, what's the point of making a review system like this if nobody uses it? That would be even more useful than a "strike" imo.

Edited February 23 by visualstudios

[emmaki]

9 minutes ago, kingpirux said:

lol your profile may be the glitch in the matrix. but how many years have you been working on Fiverr, working not necessarily registered.

It'll be 11 years, this year. 

I remember what it was like to be young and carefree. Only just... 

[catwriter]

2 hours ago, kingpirux said:

trying to understand the new system i noticed something else, your rank is in risk according to how long have you been in fiver, more than 6 years will be heavy punished, new commers will have more presence because it average the time, not the experience or results. just an hipótesis, Looks like anyone from 2020 or 2021 is an 8...

I'm from 2014, and my score is 10.

[frank_d]

3 hours ago, kingpirux said:

trying to understand the new system i noticed something else, your rank is in risk according to how long have you been in fiver, more than 6 years will be heavy punished, new commers will have more presence because it average the time, not the experience or results. just an hipótesis, Looks like anyone from 2020 or 2021 is an 8... if you ask me, this is because the holistic is just crappy averaging by time over average stars, and not quantity by sum of scores, that explains the famous room for improvement that doesn't change unless you are perfect, also the strongly negative (because only one 4 is needed in 2 years to give you 6, if you are older this impact is higher but if you are new it will change from one day to the other)... and also explains the sudden flags on very old or very new freelancers, as expected, all this magical fantasy over explained, vaguely supported and with total absence of facts and examples, is common when you use ChatGPT asking or building anything, because that's AI, a simple averager with a few random noise so it doesn't look repetitive, but ask any real developper or data analyst and will tell you that is would be very very dumb if they used it as a real base for their new system, i mean, even OpenAI is not using their most powerful AI this way because they know the basics behind it... but is just an hipótesis...

 

oh i can write again 🙂 there is like a limit of posts i think because they flaged me with negative points in the forum, they didn't answer any questions but they are angry that i posted memes.

 

I’m a seller since 2013 and my Success Score is 10.

[rahulmarketingg]

Hey,
Thank you for the great insights. Could you please share if fiverr counts data for the past 2 months?

 

[ssj1236]

Ever since the review system got revamped, buyers have been rating way fewer orders for me. I'm currently going through my longest no-review streak. 😐

The review system needs to be simplified not made into more of a chore with every update. 

[ssj1236]

4 hours ago, kingpirux said:

lol your profile may be the glitch in the matrix. but how many years have you been working on Fiverr, working not necessarily registered.

Bud, any seller that's been on Fiverr for almost a decade pretty much has a 9-10 success score. There's a reason why most of these sellers have lasted this long. 

[vhskid]

Among the recent big (and bad) changes, we have a full look only at the new reviews system. 

Given that we don't have to speculate and guess about this, I went ahead, broke it into pieces, and assembled it again in the form of a UX audit and redesign.

 

 

I wrote a separate post, so it won't get lost between the memes:

[ UX audit + redesign ] New Rating & Review System

 

Ideally, we'll have separate threads for every gig rating metric, because these subjects are just too big to discuss them all at once.

Edited February 24 by vhskid

[priyank_mod]

3 hours ago, ssj1236 said:

Bud, any seller that's been on Fiverr for almost a decade pretty much has a 9-10 success score. There's a reason why most of these sellers have lasted this long. 

There must be something in common among them, purely in terms of 'skill + work ethic' which helped them excel for long and ace the current system too!! 🙌

[vickiespencer]

23 hours ago, kingpirux said:

trying to understand the new system i noticed something else, your rank is in risk according to how long have you been in fiver, more than 6 years will be heavy punished,

 

23 hours ago, emmaki said:

Yeah but I keep getting 5 star reviews and my thingy looks like this: 

I have not gotten all 5-star reviews, but I have been here for over six years, and my "thingy" still looks good, too.

23 hours ago, kingpirux said:

new commers will have more presence because it average the time, not the experience or results. just an hipótesis,

I thought I read somewhere that the scores are based on the last two years. 🤔 
 

Edited February 24 by vickiespencer

[petercover]

Honestly, the new leveling system is very bad and complicated.

I wish Fiverr could go back to the way it was the first day.

[visualstudios]

1 hour ago, vhskid said:

I wrote a separate post, so it won't get lost between the memes:

[ UX audit + redesign ] New Rating & Review System

 

Ideally, we'll have separate threads for every gig rating metric, because these subjects are just too big to discuss them all at once.

This is a truly excellent post, one of the best i've seen in these forums. Fiverr should take notes, that is a very fair proposal, that would refresh the rating system while keeping it accurate, truthful and, above all, easy to understand for both buyers and sellers. I see absolutely no drawbacks in your proposed solution. The only reason not to implement it, exactly as stated in your post, is if by design Fiverr wants lower ratings, on purpose, even if that is not how buyers feel.

Edited February 24 by visualstudios