What’s your WHY?

[emmaki]

3 minutes ago, priyank_mod said:

I would rather not have bosses

The problem with Fiverr is that it is acting like a boss of the worst sort, micromanaging everything to the smallest communication and refusing to listen to any criticism (constructive or otherwise) from employees who just want to get on with their in the way they know best.

It's always been a bit like that with gamification and awkward "hello, fellow kids!" attempts to look human on social media, but it just got like, a billionty times worse with AI. Now the humans behind Fiverr aren't even bothering anymore and instead foisting their lazy AI obsession onto sellers who don't want it and are worried about it stealing their jobs.

Not a story unique to Fiverr today, I know. But at least a human boss in an office leaves you alone if you get everything done and its OK. I'm not even going to deal with the complication of freelancing essentially being like having lots of mini-bosses to fight on the way to the big boss which has a totally unfair 1-shot kill and cheats by changing the rules all the time.

[emmaki]

Just now, visualstudios said:

Exactly - and here we can control very little. 

Case in point, I have just been lied to my face by CS, just like that. I have proof of it. Once the dust settles, I'll make a very interesting thread on the topic.

This platform keeps doing the inadmissible, because they don't face any consequence.

Why ya gotta wait and let the dust settle? I'm ready to be OUTRAGED for you!

[visualstudios]

It will take a while to explain the entire situation, but the gist is as follows:

Client asks to cancel order before any delivery is made, no justification.

I contact cs, say I don't want to be affected.

After a lot of back and forth (the first agent was a bot, as always with CS), they confirm both my cancelation rate and success score will not be affected in any way, and that CS can manually fix both.

I cancel. Cancelation rate is fixed, 100%.

Success Score of the gig in question starts showing "Cancelations" as strong negative impact, when it didn't before.

I contact CS asking wtf.

CS now says "the system just needs a little more time to update and shows this accurately, blablabla, success score is stable, won't affect you much, etc."

It's now about 7 days after the cancelation. Still showing as strong negative impact. It's the only cancelation we ever had on that gig.

Either they were lying before, or they lied now. Either they can fix it manually, which means it should go away, or they can't, they lied about it, and they are waiting for it to go away on its own.

Edited April 12 by visualstudios

[emmaki]

Another victory for transparent Fiverr!

[ch6k0r]

My why is, why did we have a grace period if it wasn't going to change our success score at all? I did my maximum and made sure everything is perfect with my clients yet all those orders did not improve my score at all.

[emmaki]

As I've said before, the best way to keep your success score high is to simply not work.

Sitting pretty here at 10 and completely work-free. 🙂

 

[Kesha]

On 4/11/2024 at 2:05 PM, meaviolet said:

I would really like to try myself as a freelancer and see where this can go - also I would really like to make a difference, and use my knowledge for helping people through my translations (and Hungarian is a very difficult language, let me tell you as a native speaker 😃). My second reason is money, to be honest, I'm currently a first time homeowner and I'm all about renovating and furnishing my little space from which I can proudly say that it's mine. It's a bit profound I know, but that's that. 😁

Welcome! Wishing you the best of luck! I hope your journey is full of making an impact and making LOTS of money while doing it. 💚

[Kesha]

23 hours ago, texvox said:

I primarily jumped into the world of voice-over specifically after being directed to do so in prayer. I'd never heard of this industry before or contemplated running a business before hearing the words "Voice Over" loud and clear when praying about my next career move about 6 years ago. Strange reason to many I am sure, but I've learned over many long years after asking many questions that I can trust God's direction on this sort of thing. It's been a wild ride. 

Long-term, my personal goal is to voice projects that impact the abused and voiceless in the world - giving a voice in particular to victims of human trafficking around the world, especially children. I have a handful of organizations that I have aimed to work with since day 1, and over the last 6 years I've been able to voice numerous projects impacting the issue. 

As far as the day-to-day, I'm first interested in honoring God through my best work ("Do everything as to the Lord" - if I wouldn't do my best for Him, what's the use in giving my work to anyone else?), and secondarily in providing for my wife and 4 kids. I also drive an outrageously large and thirsty truck; gotta' feed the tank. And I like to eat pie, and pay my bills. 

 

This was beautiful! Thanks for sharing. Excited that Fiverr can be that vehicle to help you walk in purpose... and eat pie and pay your bills of course!

[melissaharlowvo]

Fiverr has been a launch pad for so many personal reasons. The platform is so tight with TOS that it has literally made me an incredible business person. I feel like I have gone to Montessori school and when I go to kindergarten and compare my skills and business savvy to my peers, I almost feel light years ahead. 
 

The personal connections I have made on Fiverr, both on platform and behind the scenes, have helped me through some dry patches of loneliness. But it all takes such a valiant effort to do well on Fiverr.  It’s also been the hardest career role I have ever taken on. Fiverr is not a get rich quick platform. It simply has the tightest “best practices” I have ever seen and is superior to any freelance website.  
 

How about this? Those who spend hours and days sending out auditions and proposals without even a nibble are making less money. In my voice over beginning, I belonged to a paid audition platform. I was sending about 5-10 auditions per day. If I did get a job, and averaged out the time it took to give my work away in proposals and auditions, verses what I got in return, I was making about $2 an hour!! It didn’t make sense to me and still doesn’t. I should diversify, but now I have acquired the skills to be successful, but do I go back to the low ROI just because? Not sure. What do you guys think? 
 

If things stayed the same and we weren’t challenged and pushed to be better, then how would we grow? However, sometimes I don’t respond well to being pushed but I do respond well to a challenge…as long as it’s on my terms. Fiverr is always pushing the boundaries and lucky for us!

[rsxxiil]

What You Mean By WHY ?

 

[melissaharlowvo]

8 minutes ago, rsxxiil said:

What You Mean By WHY ?

 

They are referring to an expression and asking WHY are you a freelancer? What is your WHY?

[emmaki]

You should always diversify; Fiverr can and will kill off your profile for no reason, including spurious ones such as "you can't have a Pro gig and a regular gig in the same category". When pointed out that other sellers are doing just that, there's nothing we can about that (which is kind of illogical, since they did something about me). No amount of business skills will save anyone from arbitrary decisionmaking by Fiverr - and that's only increasing as AI takes over the running of the platform. 

Anyway, it's OK. I may have no work, but I do have a success score of 10 and acres of interested buyers who either ask me do to TOS-violating stuff, want me to do steep discounts, or are just angry with other sellers for declining to work with them. Sadly, that doesn't pay the bills.

30 minutes ago, melissaharlowvo said:

If things stayed the same and we weren’t challenged and pushed to be better, then how would we grow?

It very much depends on the nature of the pushing. Fiverr is always pushing some sellers up, but it will, eventually, push them down, regardless of the skills or development of the sellers.

So, best to diversify. Because when Fiverr decides to do something that doesn't support you in any way and hinders everything you try to do to improve it, you won't have anything on your terms: you'll just hear a lot of sorry we can't do anythings. 

Just ask voiceoverpete - dumped overnight at the height of his Fiverr success. Ignoring his naivety for a moment, he was encouraged to continue making those videos and told it wasn't a problem by staff. How's that for "best practices" - along with allowing many platform users to sell AI work without disclosure? I know for a fact that one of the top VOA on this platform is using AI (it's nobody on the forum) - because they said as much elsewhere (they cloned their voice). A $2m seller who "writes articles" and has made over $2MM on the platform.... uses AI. 

The only real challenge on Fiverr is, well, Fiverr.  I was doing quite well until a bunch of sorry there's nothing we can do about things that they clearly could happened. And, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that matters to the company now is cutting costs while driving up profits at the expense of the sellers and buyers who use the platform.

Yet Fiverr has absolutely nothing to say when asked questions about these practices, or its damaging use of gamification in the wholly inappropriate environment of a professional platform. Fiverr can't even answer the simple question of "does Fiverr Enterprise still charge platform sellers 20%? Is the 0% fees only for off-platform sellers?" 

The last question in particular doesn't seem particularly difficult to answer (I can understand the need for a veil of corporate "discretion" on the others). And yes, Fiverr's a business, it can run how it wants; it just makes all the talk of ethics a bit galling.