3 million gigs and rising ~ what can Fiverr/we do about plagiarism?

[Guest qloudpress]

My business seemed to just stop, and then I found the reason.



Two of my best selling gigs had been ripped of by a guy in Pakistan.



And when I say “ripped off” I mean he copied the images I created, the text word-for-word, and even the gig extras exactly as on both my gigs. They were both exact duplicates except for one word.



He managed to get 22 customers with the gigs he stole from me before I caught him. And I happen to know he is totally incompetent, so I can’t imagine what he sold them.



What can Fiverr do better to protect our customers from idiots like this?



What on earth can we do to protect ourselves better from people who steal our business from us?

[Guest qloudpress]

Yes, I did that thanks, but closing the door after the horse has bolted is not really the point I was trying to get at.



I was thinking more of what active steps we could take to try and avoid it altogether, maybe with Fiverr’s help or at least acquiescence, even with some kind of anti-plagiarism technology.



It ought to be possible within a closed environment like Fiverr.

[johanna2353]

The same exact thing has just happened to me by some guy from “Bangladesh”. I have reported this to CS two days ago, but have not received a response. This is a total bummer. Sorry to hear about your situation.

[freelancemm]

Honestly, they like the big numbers of gigs. It makes it look as though Fiverr has many more sellers than it actually does in reality. This helps to continually attract new sellers and with it, new buyers believing in a big selection of sellers. I mean, it is a big selection for a freelancing website, but old & inactive or unreliable gigs stay on despite terrible ratings. Some even rank well in some keywords they really shouldn’t. All you can do with an open freelancing platform is report their gigs and move on. There really isn’t much you can do beyond that point.

[emeraldawnn]

Yep… I had one guy from Bangladesh steal my gig WORD for WORD including the special I added to my gig. I’ve already written to CS about it but I doubt they’ll take action before the end of the weekend. No matter what CS does, it won’t stop thieves from stealing orders from legit sellers… Sad but true!

[inkpetal]

How have you all found these doppelganger gigs? Just general search?

[Guest qloudpress]

Guys and gals. Can’t we do better than simply bitch about it. That ain’t going to help anyone.



What positive steps can we take to stop this kind of thing happening?



One thing I just thought of ~ wouldn’t using a video instead of an image help?

[johanna2353]

Reply to @inkpetal: copy and paste your gig title in the search section and you will see if someone has plagiarized your gig. You can also check the new gigs in your category to see if someones has copied your gig.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @inkpetal: A couple of my previous customers pointed them out and asked me if I knew he was doing it. What really hacks me off is he’s been doing it for weeks. In fact he still is.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @johanna2353: Thanks. Either they think we are fair game for observing ‘niceties’ like copyright and patents etc. or they’re taking us for chumps who can’t do anything to protect ourselves. So the question has to be ~ can we?

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @emeraldawnn: Just accept it as part of the cost of doing business? I think we can do better than that.

[zeus777]

I’ll hop in here,

Using a video won’t always help since I have seen a seller who had her video/title/description get stolen. Not sure how the video got stolen, but it did happen.

I copy/paste my gig title once a week ( or in my free time) to see if anyone has copied my gig because it has happened a few times before. I don’t think we can prevent it from happening, we just need to check it ourselves every now and then.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @zeus777: Thanks you gave me an idea. Each time you create a new gig go here ~ https://www.google.com/alerts ~ and create a Google Alert with a significant part of the headline or gig content. Then when somebody rips you off you will get an alert. Then the problem becomes what to do about it. But at least you will know.

[arty182925]

why dont you try to change images and add watermark to it. They will not stole images than with your name in it. (I guess they wouldnt)



Worst thing when they “steal” your gig is that they do bad job, and next time that person who ordered gig from them sees your gig, he/she will think that you are same person and will not order from you. Thats why my suggestion is to add something on pictures that cant be stolen.

[thecreativeguys]

It seems that a lot of this copying happens to top rated sellers. These people are either jealous or bored.

[omanbux]

hi, same thing happen to me. one Indian lady completely copied my main gig & she offer 5 times more. i mean my gig offer two fillable PDF page for one gig & she offer 10 fillable page to 1 gig. then what fiverr do is they add that gig to first page. i have informed this to fiverr cs but they didn’t reply to me. now she has changed some text in her gig description & now it’s not 100% matching with gig description but still 80% it’s matching with gig description…finally that copy cat gig still in first page & she’s getting more orders because she’s offer more than me… 😦

[emeraldawnn]

Reply to @qloudpress: I never said accept it but like everyone else, myself included, I check my gigs out at least once a week. It makes me angry when people do it to me, trying to say they’re the best just to get clients. If they need to go off the backbones of other sellers, then obviously they’re no good!



I’m just saying that, as it stands, there’s no real way to stop them from doing what they do and trying to come across as legitimate sellers. The best thing we can do is turn them in into CS and hope they do something about it… And, come across as being the best and most legitimate in our respective fields.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @arty182925: That’s a good idea. I am going to do that with all my existing images, either that or upload videos (with a watermark) instead.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @thecreativeguys: I don’t think its jealousy or boredom, they just hear so may “gurus” telling them ~ here’s my swipe file ~ in the end they think its alright to swipe anything in the Internuts. Their only interest is to make money. These talentless dishonest people just see you doing well, and in their minds its easier for them just to copy what you do.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @arnevb: Yes, that’s obviously what to do, once it happens, but what I am trying to do here is to get to think more positively what they can do to avoid the issue altogether.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @emeraldawnn: I agree with most of that but what I don’t agree with is that there’s nothing we can do about it. There has to be some basics that we should do / could do ~ to make it more difficult for these losers to rip us off.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @freelancemm: I just did some quick math and if you say, there’s up to 20 gigs per user, and maybe half of the gigs are dormant or so old nobody buys from them, that leaves about 750,000 which is still a big number, but probably closer to the truth.

[Guest qloudpress]

Reply to @johanna2353: Its not only that it happens with Fiverr gigs off Fiverr too. Google has just sent me a Google Alert for a site that’s offering my gig image and complete text for $90!!! Nice eh?

[Guest qloudpress]

I started a new thread [ ] just for the best ideas ~ not moaning or motherhood and apple pie ~ we can come up with to prevent this on Fiverr.

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[freelancemm]

Reply to @qloudpress: I’m honestly convinced it may even be lower than that. Thinking even so low as to say under 50,000 active and selling gigs(Most under a volume of 10 sales a month.). Now they might get higher on occasion with new sellers joining every day, but at the same time most have a pretty high quit ratio as they think you can just post up a gig and get lucky. While in some cases that happens, in most it won’t without putting in a serious effort to set up your gigs right or use Fiverr’s Algorithm to your advantage.