Promoted by Fiverr : a blessing & a curse

[msrsimpkin]

Hi everyone,



So I created my fiverr account 2 months ago and was receiving steady work of around 1 to 4 order’s a day.

The amount was easily doable with a 4 day turn around with order’s being completed in hours or a couple of days, and not a single late order.



One afternoon around 4pm my gig went crazy with orders. We managed to track it down to a promotional e-mail sent out to fiverr accounts (see attachment).



I suddenly had 66 orders, with only 4 days delivery time…

I had gone from delivering an average of 3 orders a day, to my most recent of 12 orders a day.



Delivering 12 orders has involved me not sleeping, barely eating and avoiding seeing family & friends just to get the order’s out on time… but it’s finally caught up with me and the big red bars stating “ORDER LATE. DELIVER!” at the top of the pages and the notes state:

"THIS ORDER IS RIDICULOUSLY LATE. This has gone too far! Your buyer can now cancel the order."

What’s worse is I’ve still got 36 orders in queue.



It all feels very aggressive and very disheartening, and while many buyers are understanding and polite, it now looks like fiverr have sent an e-mail out to all the people whose orders are late telling them to contact me…



So while I’m drinking ridiculous amounts of coffee and working frantically on my laptop, I’m now being spammed with messages from people telling me fiverr told them to contact me… delaying me even further…



Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for the promotion, but it instantly turned something casual and fun into a complete nightmare.



Has anyone else experience this, and how did you deal with the overwhelming amount of orders?

[logogeeks]

Hello msrsimpkin,



What a Blessing from Fiverr. I’m very happy for you.



If only more of us we’re in on those emails and got a fraction of that load…

That kind of volume will boost you to the moon (metaphorically speaking.)



So with that being said… do what I would do… Recruit some help temporarily.



-Good Luck!

[alysmcdonough]

Have a look around the fiverr site, ask some other sellers who do good work, and have good feedback for help. Do tell them what has happened so they know what will be happening with their work. That would be suggestion number one.



Number two, email all your buyers explaining what has happened, including that you were put into a fiverr mailout - which of course is amazing BUT you had no forewarning of it. I would suggest asking if you could have more time to do their orders. You will find that MOST will understand. (not all).



Good luck 🙂

[thepromogirl]

Edit your Gigs (in the mean time) and extend your Gig delivery duration time, or set your vacation mode to “overbooked”. This will pause your Gigs for the time you set till you’re ready to take in more orders.



Best of luck to you!

[deanstokes]

As the others have said, you need to increase your delivery time whilst you clear those gigs. Set it to a couple of weeks or so.



Type up an apology message and go through your todo list to send it to all the buyers to explain the situation. Remind them that if they cancel it will effect your rating and give them something extra if you can.



You should always set your delivery times with bulk orders in mind. I sometimes struggle when I get 5 or 6 express orders in one day, so I double the express delivery time whilst I clear the queue.



It’s something you need to get into the habit of keeping an eye on.



I hope it all goes well and you don’t get any cancellations!

[dionisaras]

Stay strong ! Have a couple more coffees each day! Have small little brakes every now and then and try to have regular exercise each week!

[msrsimpkin]

Thanks for the replies, I’ve upped my delivery time and removed fast track for the time being.

I had already contacted people letting them know what’s happened and many of them are understanding.



Unfortunately many of my orders are by first time buyers on fiverr, so some people have placed an order, but it’s inactive and not on my to-do list because they wont send me any info.

One guy waited 9 days before contacting me moaning that I didn’t contact him because he couldn’t be bothered to reply to the initial order message.

After explaining to him how it works, and nudging the message he then cancels the order.



Other orders are from people not knowing what they want, and not telling me either or allowing me to have creative freedom to complete their order.



One guy even sent me a low resolution logo he uses and wanted it making hi-res…

So I did, it was identical but a high resolution vector… he didn’t like it, and decided he wanted to use his tiny pixelated low resolution jpg instead, but wanted me to put it on a business card (which is a completely different gig).



Despite these annoyances I’m always polite and happy to help them, but why people won’t just read and help themselves is beyond me.

Don’t get me wrong, there are loads of really nice people I’ve worked with, but unfortunately it’s the stupid, abusive and not so nice one’s that take up most of my time which should be spent completing order’s for the nice ones who actually know what they want and how the system works.



I’m sure I’m not alone with this…

[claudioa]

If you can’t deliver a order, or several ones, apologize, ask for mutual cancellation and then increase delivery time, pause the gig or increase the price.