Fiverr needs to do better (my personal ramblings)

[katakatica]

I've thought a lot about writing this post in the past few months. I'm a sensitive person, after all (and so, my experience might not reflect everyone's.) However, the more things change on here, the more I see that I'm not alone.

(warning: some of this might be pretty triggering if you have anxiety so read with that in mind)

Almost a year ago, right around my birthday, I had a cancellation that sent me into a breakdown. It wasn't the cute 'sniff-sniff, this is bad' kind of breakdown, but a full-on 'shouting-crying-hating myself for existing' one. 

I pour my heart and soul into what I do. Writing has been my LIFELINE for close to 15 years now.  So, 'naturally', when I faced 3-4 rough orders one after the other (none of them 'affected' me in the end, but I never got the money back, of course), I broke.

I've been asked a lot since then (and even before) why I don't just run my own site and just pay for ads. My answer has always been 'well, Fiverr is my safety net. If something goes wrong, they'll help...'

But.. they don't.

They didn't help when the buyer said 'I needed to lie to her that I like the product' or 'the product might have been good if she didn't delay it (meanwhile they were late answering to me several times. I was 1-2 days 'late' after the order's scope was doubled (it was supposed to be a sample) a few days before the deadline because they wanted something else.

Anyway, I don't hold the buyer at fault anymore because I was (am) the pushover. I should have been firmer (and tried to communicate better.) For all I know, they genuinely didn't know what they wanted and that's okay.. (to some extent.)

But I still broke down then.

And then in September, too, because someone purchased something that they didn't actually want and got mad because they didn't understand how paying per word count works...

Fiverr CS, as always, said 'ah, we're sorry, we'll make sure those orders don't affect you'... but they do (and they probably always have.)

You might be wondering where I'm going with this, but...

Fiverr keeps saying that they understand that mental health matters. That we are important... and then they allow 2-3 cancellations to WRECK accounts for 6-7 months. 

Fiverr doesn't seem to understand that we're all humans: both us and our customers are. This means that if someone is in a bad mood (or they are just a cranky person) they can easily RUIN a seller. Heck, they can ruin us on PURPOSE.

I'm reaching a point where Fiverr being my safety net just isn't justified at this point because it's NOT. There's no steady stream of orders if you mess up once, there's no support if things go poorly...

Heck, it took CS and my SM nearly a month of constant back-and-forth and waiting to tell me (for the 5th time) to go to my tax advisor with my valid TIN because it's invalid. (it's not. My tax advisor gave it to me...)

I'm not leaving (yet) but I'm not sure what the future holds for me on here...

(my rant is over now.) 

tldr.: I'm not sure I feel safe on Fiverr anymore. 

[emmaki]

Fiverr is basically an abusive relationship at the moment. I have no idea why leadership thinks it is OK to treat its sellers like they do, but their greed and incompetence will hurt them in the long run - they'll run all the sellers that care off the platform, leaving exactly the kind of userbase they claim they want to get rid of behind.

As far as I feel at the moment, that would just be a reflection of the leadership at the moment. They spend plenty of time curating the impression of caring, but the reality of the vast majority of the platform's users is as clear as day. Then they have the temerity to tell us that they are listening and our voice matters.

As for your mental health, it is quite clear from the deliberate failure to answer any questions concerning the psychological impact of its gamification systems that they have no interest in it. It doesn't matter if a few people get sick - more healthy young things can take over and repeat the cycle. You only have to look at the forum to see that - and notice that the more skilled new arrivals are starting to leave almost as quickly as they come, realizing how bad the platform is.

[katakatica]

34 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Fiverr is basically an abusive relationship at the moment. I have no idea why leadership thinks it is OK to treat its sellers like they do, but their greed and incompetence will hurt them in the long run - they'll run all the sellers that care off the platform, leaving exactly the kind of userbase they claim they want to get rid of behind.

 

I honestly don't know who thought all of this was a good idea. Change is FINE (for the most part) but I feel like we are being gaslit into thinking that we're just 'scared of change'. I honestly don't care about what the level badges look like (though they aren't cute enough to be my style :P) but I care about knowing WHY I have orders (or why I don't.)

34 minutes ago, emmaki said:

As for your mental health, it is quite clear from the deliberate failure to answer any questions concerning the psychological impact of its gamification systems that they have no interest i

I think the biggest issue is that on paper, gamification seems to work. There are always new sellers joining the site and a lot of us are still sticking around despite it. The whole level system/the way reviews work/etc. looks like it's inspiring sellers to do better... but in reality, it's hurting us.

Games are AWESOME (I know I'm partial as a game dev but still) but there are things in life that shouldn't be overtaken by fancy badges and weird metrics. 

Edited April 2 by katakatica
reached the limit of posts I can make today apparently, so I might not reply here if anyone else writes..

[emmaki]

I mean, I still play quite a few games (single player, ideally more story-based and cinematic - the stuff I dreamed of playing in the late 1980s) and gamification can be fun in the right setting and done well. But in a business marketplace for professional work, I think it's completely inappropriate. It's also not a substitute for proper regulation of the marketplace.

I do appreciate that Fiverr is taking steps toward solving the issue of scammers on the platform (buyer/seller) and that it's probably a difficult issue to fix with so many millions of people, but the ramping up of the use of AI and automation to govern the marketplace while decreasing human contact is not serving the userbase. I know Fiverr claims all of its staff have to sign up as sellers and idk, sell a bit so they "understand" but I don't think that process is nearly as in-depth as they would have us believe due to the almost complete lack of empathy in marketplace changes.

How many of Fiverr's employees really understand that their gamification and scoring systems have a detrimental impact on our lives? Not just when things go wrong, but also when they're going well; if you're a successful seller, you will easily have to deal with 20, 30+ messages a day and  you will have to respond to them, even if you're busy with 10+ orders from actual paying customers.

It's not hard to see why so many sellers have fallen back to secret agencies and AI to pick up the slack - or just started as they meant to continue. Fiverr staff don't seem to understand that underneath all the bluster, the platform is actually rewarding the kinds of sellers that it says it wants to get rid of. How long would any Fiverr staff last if all their jobs were subject to the same day-to-day instability as ours? And you know, for all the success that a person can have at one moment in time in their Fiverr career, eventually something will fell them. It might be bad advice. Might be sickness, might just be the algo breaking down. But once that happens, you're on your own - and getting back is not easy. Even if you do manage to, you're just repeating a toxic little cycle that will replay in the future.

It's like an endless loop of gameplay but in real life where you kinda need time, energy, and money to pay for stuff and you can't just turn it off or buy a power-up (note to Fiverr HQ: that's not a bright new idea).

How can anyone at Fiverr advocate for seller needs? It's clear from sellers who speak to Fiverr (myself included) that they're not really listening and it's all a box-checking exercise where a lot of effort is made to appear to listen. Or, more likely they are listening, but some gremlin up top is saying no.

Maybe I should log off and pick up a game...

[andywarburton]

I feel your pain, at the start of March I had a run of nightmare customers who just made my life hell. I wrapped up all my active orders and put myself on vacation mode for three weeks to get away from it all. I'm lucky that Fiverr is just a nice to have side-hustle for me that helps put some money in my pocket to fund my hobbies so I can always just take a break (I took a 12 month break last year!).

I think the issue is that no matter what Fiverr does, this relationship will always have a negative power imbalance because we as sellers are beholdent to the platform and the buyers for our income. It's not like we can just go on strike and refuse to work because there are millions of people willing to take it up in our place.

[emmaki]

Except buyers are starting to leave the platform, too. No buyers = no sellers. And as the quality sellers leave or stop selling, all that's left is the "millions of people" and AI. 

Fiverr has one very important job: to provide, govern, and regulate a marketplace. It's not easy, no, but what they are doing now is actively destroying the trust of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people. In the long run, that will create problems. But who am I kidding - Fiverr has always been the low quality marketplace to the outside world. It won't escape that rep if it continues on its current trajectory. Like I said elsewhere, it's one thing to be scammed by a seller for $5, quite another for $400 from a "vetted" seller. 

How Fiverr fails to see this I don't know. 

[uk1000]

4 hours ago, andywarburton said:

It's not like we can just go on strike and refuse to work because there are millions of people willing to take it up in our place.

It doesn't seem to be millions though. Fiverr haven't said there are millions of active sellers/sellers with an active gig. There are millions of buyers.

In February 22, 2023 for their Q4 2022 Earnings call Fiverr said:

Quote

With hundreds of thousands of sellers and millions of service listings, we must deliver world-class search and discovery technology to surface exactly the right breadth and depth of inventory tailored to each buyer

This page: https://www.marketingscoop.com/small-business/fiverr-statistics/ (from November 2023 so there's probably more now but not that much more - and they're probably talking about sellers with at least one gig):. They might have got that number from one of Fiverr's IPO documents - they said something about it there (but they talked about active sellers and their definition of it was something like those who have been active/sold something in the last year).

says:

Quote

Fiverr, with over 4 million buyers and 380,000 sellers globally...

Edited April 2 by uk1000

[emmaki]

It's probably less than that now with the bans, flounces, and new seller approvals in place. 

[uk1000]

22 minutes ago, emmaki said:

It's probably less than that now with the bans, flounces, and new seller approvals in place

Maybe. Or a few more. Maybe there could be a sitemap type thing that could be counted to give a total of active ones (since it would probably need to make the search engines know about those). If that was allowed.

[smashradio]

Fiverr has consistently emphasized our "value" to them and the importance of "transparency", while paradoxically increasing our stress through over-gamification under the guise of alleviating pressure from "sellers like you". They claim to care, but they don't. And, frankly, that's even worse than pure indifference.

I've said for a long time that Fiverr needs to humanize their communication, but they haven't listened to me or anyone else. 

Anyway.. It takes courage to speak out. I'm sorry to hear about your issues.

And I completely agree: I used to feel safe on Fiverr, to an extent. Now, I almost expect to be level 0 and wake up to the news of Fiverr taking 90% of our income every time I log in, or some new idea on how they can gamify us and charge us more money to avoid it. 

 

 

[katakatica]

20 hours ago, andywarburton said:

I'm lucky that Fiverr is just a nice to have side-hustle for me that helps put some money in my pocket to fund my hobbies so I can always just take a break (I took a 12 month break last year!).

This is what I'm working on as well. The issue is, I technically often have enough work to be a full-time job, but... it's just not  worth it at the expense of my mental (and honestly, physical health...)

21 hours ago, emmaki said:

But once that happens, you're on your own - and getting back is not easy. Even if you do manage to, you're just repeating a toxic little cycle that will replay in the future.

I was on my own for like, 6-7 months? I genuinely had done very little wrong other than have some cancellations (one truly valid, one just plain weird and one, well... the one I freaked out about above...) I understand that performance matters and that doing your best is important, but there's a limit to what humans can do.

I've been trying to formulate this thought for a while now (might post about it one day) but I'm not sure Fiverr knows how to tackle creative projects flexibly. There's so much that can go wrong even just when two people have different opinions in what they want, and uh, people aren't very good at knowing what they want either? 

13 hours ago, smashradio said:

I've said for a long time that Fiverr needs to humanize their communication, but they haven't listened to me or anyone else. 

 

From what I've seen as a buyer, it's similarly 'empty' as well. NEO is shiny and all but if something goes wrong, AI might not be able to help efficiently (and support, while they side with buyers mostly, don't seem to understand what's going on half the time.) I just wish something changed but.. that seems unlikely at this point. 

[meldawn9]

I'm just waiting for some funds to clear from PP to my bank, then I'll be pausing my last gig (article writing) on here. I haven't gotten many orders since Covid started. I also feel your pain with what I call the scammers. I've had a few bad reviews and some cancellations this past year too. Fiverr does not have our backs on that, especially when I get a low star rating or a cancellation, and the buyer still uses my work word-for-word on their website. Sure, it's that bad eh? I will be saying goodbye to one of my longterm clients later this week. Anyway, if anyone wants to find me after that, you know where to look.