Let's discuss the results of promoted gigs

[carineb]

I'd like to discuss promoted gigs. This program is often criticized, but few people talk about the actual numbers.

Initially, I followed Fiverr's recommendations for the CPC cap by setting my bids at $2 or $3 (which was completely crazy!), but I quickly lowered my CPC cap. I remember setting it at $0.02 per click at one point. Today, I bid between $0.05 and $0.10 per click, with a maximum daily budget of $1.

Although I don't have a very positive opinion about this program, I must admit that my results seem rather good, but I have no idea what is considered good or bad in the market!

For every dollar spent, I earn about $100.

Have you analyzed your ROI? How much do you earn for every dollar spent, and what is your CPC cap? 

[eclixo]

I think CPC depends on your gig category, I'm getting 0.35 to 0.04$ on auto settings for my gigs. I make 10$ for each 1$ I spent

[abdulrehmanlhr]

I'm not getting any impressions too now a days even using $3 highest cap

[nickj2013]

At the beginning promoted gigs proved to be quite useful. Now however, it has little to no value. You either get  a lot of impressions, and no clicks. Or clicks that don't lead to sales. I think this is because the quality of user on Fiverr now, compared to four years or so ago, has also dipped. 

[drorrozentraub]

I like the promoted gig overall. It helps me quite a lot. I set my cpc cap to auto (the cpc is 0.33$ each click)  and for every dollar spent I earn 13-14 usd on average. My daily budget is 1-3$ if I am very busy, otherwise I put it somewhere between 5 or more.

[fahadislamjuel]

23 hours ago, nickj2013 said:

You either get  a lot of impressions, and no clicks.

You don't get clicks despite having lots of impressions is because if your gig thumbnail is poorly designed or your service is not useful to the clients. Another reason is you may have listed your gig under a wrong category and your tags don't match. Changing these features should help.

Thank you.

[egaylord]

My issue with promotions is the way the system reflects. I have earnings from repeat buyers who I received through promotions literally years ago reflect in the sales amount data, which is not an accurate depiction of the ROI. In other words, every single sale from a buyer who you've received through promotions reflects as sales on the promoted gigs page, despite them being repeat buyers for YEARS. 

I've also had situations where repeat buyers happened to click on a promoted gig after buying from me multiple times, thus turning that buyer's sales into promoted sales. 

I should probably take the time to see how much I am actually earning from new sales from the promotions function, as looking at the stats the way Fiverr has depicted them is inherently flawed to make you think you are directly earning from the money you put into promotions each month, where that is really not the case. 

[carineb]

2 hours ago, egaylord said:

In other words, every single sale from a buyer who you've received through promotions reflects as sales on the promoted gigs page, despite them being repeat buyers for YEARS. 

I had never paid attention to that. I just checked for a few clients.

One client placed a "promoted" order in January 2024. He placed a second order in February 2024. The second order isn't "promoted".

Another client placed two orders in January and February 2023. Both appear as "promoted". He placed a third order in November 2023. The third order isn't "promoted".

It surely depends on how the clients reach out to us. Did they search through their old messages to contact us? Did they search for our service using the search bar and then click on our promoted gig?

[egaylord]

On 3/3/2024 at 4:49 PM, carineb said:

One client placed a "promoted" order in January 2024. He placed a second order in February 2024. The second order isn't "promoted".

Another client placed two orders in January and February 2023. Both appear as "promoted". He placed a third order in November 2023. The third order isn't "promoted".

Very possible... I haven't had a buyer convert to normal from being "promoted" but it could be an appearance error as my account is fraught with appearance bugs.

In any case, $100 for every $1 sounds pretty worthwhile. I was making maybe $5 for every $1 spent before I turned the caps waaay down. 

[carineb]

1 hour ago, egaylord said:

In any case, $100 for every $1 sounds pretty worthwhile. I was making maybe $5 for every $1 spent before I turned the caps waaay down. 

I'm in a very small niche. That's probably why the ROI is so high. It's probably not the same story in categories like logos, photo or video editing...

[emmaki]

I still have my $10 promo offer. Might spend it when they make the whole thing less awful. 

It's probably not going to fix my inbox problem (I am starting to get PTSD from "hi" "hello" and 👋 from people with a budget that is nowhere near my pricing). 

Also, from casual reports elsewhere, it looked like sometime early last  year the ROI took a steep nosedive. I couldn't say anything else about that due to a lack of XP, but maybe someone else can. 

[carineb]

21 hours ago, emmaki said:

I still have my $10 promo offer.

Keep the $10 until many sellers can no longer use promotions due to their drop to level 0. This will lead to less competition for ads!

I watched a YouTube video featuring a seller who earned $62,800 and spent $12,265.  His CPC is between $0.48 and $0.64.

The earnings finally amount to:
$38,000 for the seller (60%)
$24,800 for Fiverr (40%) 🤑

I'm not sure what the best strategy is, but I'm not keen on giving Fiverr 40% of my earnings!
I'll keep my bids at ridiculously low prices. I was at $0.04 or $0.05, I just switched to $0.02. 

[emmaki]

I was thinking of waiting until spam clicks etc stopped being paid for and there was more granular choices (like choosing audience demos). 

There was a post on r/fiverr last year (about this time, I think) from a seller who wanted to make the most of their $10, so they picked the lowest possible bid. 2c or something like that. They had good results. I don't remember if they shared their vertical though. But that $10 lasted a looooong time! 

Yesterday I got 4 "hi" messages and 1 message that looks good to convert. I'm not spending money on hellos.

[carineb]

22 minutes ago, emmaki said:

I was thinking of waiting until spam clicks etc stopped being paid for and there was more granular choices (like choosing audience demos). 

About 4 months ago, I was receiving between 10 and 20 spams (Hello, Hi...) per day on one of my gigs. I was a bit scared that I might have to pay to receive spams, but no spam appeared with the "promoted" tag in my inbox.

I'm not sure if Fiverr has any plans to roll out targeted audience or keywords we can set, but it would definitely be a fantastic idea.

[visualstudios]

1 hour ago, carineb said:

I just switched to $0.02. 

I turn them on and off, but when I have them on I have it always set at $0.02. Honestly, given the lead quality, it's already overpriced at 2 cents.

[emmaki]

10 minutes ago, visualstudios said:

Honestly, given the lead quality, it's already overpriced at 2 cents.

👋 Hi Virtual S.! 

gib jobs?

[visualstudios]

3 minutes ago, emmaki said:

👋 Hi Virtual S.! 

gib jobs?

Got a promoted spammer asking for me to give them work just yesterday.

I love paying for garbage.

[emmaki]

So do you get a little "promoted" next to their message or something?

Either way, if you could set the demo, you could probably get rid of 99% of all these spam messages. But then again, Fiverr wouldn't be able to tell investors about 80% increase in (PG-related) revenue if it did that. 

Who knew that hapless spam could be so valuable?

Edited March 6, 2024 by emmaki

[carineb]

8 minutes ago, emmaki said:

So do you get a little "promoted" next to their message or something?

I feel like I'm a bit lucky compared to others!

I've checked the spam received over the past 3 weeks. 25 spams. None of them have the "promoted" tag.
I've had 1 message that was for a service prohibited on Fiverr (buying fake reviews for Amazon). 

[emmaki]

My French is a bit rusty, but is that basically saying you also have to buy the product (for the verified review) as well as tell the world what an amazing product it is? 

I often wonder what people like say UGC creators do with the mountains of random 💩 that they promote. Give it away? Double down on income by reselling on eBay? Having a room filled with plastic rubbish? 

I'm also getting a bit tired of the foreign language spam. It would be one thing if I did e.g. graphic design, but I'm a writer. No, I can't write your French/German/Spanish/Italian/Greek thing! I can try, but a 2-year-old native speaker would deliver superior results! CIAO.

[visualstudios]

Total garbage.

[visualstudios]

And another one. THIS COSTS ME MONEY. I'll just deactivate it again, this is ridiculous.

[carineb]

Just now, visualstudios said:

And another one. THIS COSTS ME MONEY. I'll just deactivate it again, this is ridiculous.

Did you ask a refund to Fiverr?

[visualstudios]

1 minute ago, carineb said:

Did you ask a refund to Fiverr?

They don't give out refunds for spam clicks. I've mentioned it to my SM multiple times, he just goes "oh well, it's the way it is".

[emmaki]

Just now, visualstudios said:

"oh well, it's the way it is".

I'm dazzled by the astounding levels of dynamism and proactivity. 

I wonder how much of the revenue from PG is spam. It's a powerful argument for there's nothing we can do about it, such a shame.