A few suggestions that need to be implemented in order for Fiverr to be a decent place to work

[mauropantin]

Hello!



I’ve been using Fiverr for almost a year now, but I have to say I’m not quite happy with it as a seller. I have a pretty good standing on other freelancing websites, the outlook is good in them. I also have a good rating here. However, here on Fiverr, I find it harder and harder to justify having a presence. There are just many ways in which sellers can get the shortest straw drawn for them. The model of business and the lack of tools sellers have to control their gigs in the website makes for an abusive combo for the people selling gigs.



The bottom line is Fiverr does not allow the freelancer to control much of his business. A few examples of what I mean:



1- Fiverr does not allow to set up scheduled days in which the freelancer is available, days in which the “extra fast” delivery is not available, etc. Control over when you are available for work, basically. If it’s Sunday and you were planning on spending the day with your family, too bad buddy! Looks like your kid is playing catch on his own this afternoon.



2- Fiverr does not allow to set a maximum number of purchases to have on queue at a gig at any given time. If you get 10 orders in the same day with extra fast delivery, then once again, too bad if you were planning on sleeping or if your schedule/other activities does not permit that kind of workload.



3- Fiverr does not allow to set up expiration dates for custom offers. Remember that offer you sent a 3 months ago when you had time for that big project? It just got accepted.



4- Fiverr does not control, or allow easy ways to report and/or block buyers who abuse the Request Modification button. People just pay a single gig for half hour of your time, you deliver it according to their request and then they realize that’s not really what they wanted. So they request a modification based on completely different parameters. This is abusive and unethical. Twice the work for the same pay, and sometimes it’s even worse. But people do it, because Fiverr just allows it and if the seller doesn’t deliver then it’s a bad review and that’s that. Abusing the modification button is not even of the reasons that show up in the drop down menu when you want to cancel a gig, and it’s so common it’s scary.



5- Fiverr does not enforce it’s Terms of Service. Buyers that are disrespectful do not get banned or reprimanded in any way.



These things are something that other freelancing websites with a different model do not need, on account on being based on having proposals and interviews before starting a job. Here, the customer buys and you have to deliver, no questions asked. Because of this, I believe Fiverr should give the seller more tools to guard himself from abuse and manage his business efficiently.



It is also not a small thing that Fiverr takes 20% of the sale, while most other freelancing websites take 10% of the fee. 20% would be absolutely fine if Fiverr allowed me to control my business in detail. On it’s current standing, I have to say I feel that this website does not value attention to detail, prompt deliveries and quality work at an inexpensive rate. As a seller that works that way I feel more and more inclined to just quit this website and go to another place where the platform does not thrive on buyers abusing the services I offer. I’m one bad experience away from doing that, really.

[emasonwrites]

I agree, I wish Fiverr came down harder on buyers that broke the rules. That said, your first three problems with Fiverr can easily be remedied by sellers taking a little initiative. If you don’t have time to do an extra-fast order today, turn off your extra-fast extra.

Pay attention to your orders as they come in and go on vacation mode or suspend your gigs or the offending extra when your queue is full. If this is a consistent problem, you can lengthen your gig’s overall duration. And if a buyer doesn’t accept a custom offer within a certain time period (for me, it’s three days), I withdraw it. Fiverr shows which threads have custom offers in your inbox.

I get your frustration, and there are a lot of frustrating things on Fiverr that could be remedied with a more flexible system, but there are also a lot of things that can be remedied by sellers being a little more proactive about monitoring their own queues and gigs.

[mauropantin]

Reply to @emasonwrites:

I understand what you’re saying, but I have a limited amount of time and Fiverr is a place to offer services at an inexpensive price. Less money means that I have less time to get the job done.

I understand and know that I can set vacation mode, modify the gigs every weekend to turn off extra-fast orders, etc. But I also understand that this kind of things could be automated, thus allowing me to offer those services at a competitive price on Fiverr without having to waste time on the back end doing repetitive edits on my gigs or answering messages from buyers over the weekend that are asking me why I am on vacation while they have pending orders.

Also, as I mentioned, Fiverr takes twice as much fee as most other freelancing platforms. And we are not getting twice as many features. I don’t mind paying twice as much, as long as I get my money’s worth.

[sincere18]

On number 1 and number 2, getting an order on Sunday or having a mximum number of purchases…that is up to you to determine your workflow. If you are getting lots of orders, then you should extend your days of delivery time, and pause your gig whenever you need to in order to catch up if your orders are queuing up to much. And you should always go out on Sunday with your kids, just don’t have any “extras” with a 24 hour delivery and make sure that your gig has a minimum of 2 day delivery. That way if you wake up to an order on Sunday morning but have plans that day, you do not have to worry and you can do it on Monday and then deliver it.

If you are getting a lot of orders 20% is really not that much. Let me ask you this…are you getting this many orders on other freelance sites? YOu seem to be saying you are getting so many orders that you want a cap on it, but yet, if the other freelance sites that only take 10% are really providing you with that many orders as well, then clearly you wouldn’t be continuing on Fiverr. So something leads me to believe that you are doing well here and getting more orders on Fiverr compared to some other freelancing sites…and that is what the extra 10% is for, marketing and stuff to get you those orders.

[mauropantin]

Reply to @sincere18: I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken. This is simple math, 20% is always 20%, regardless of the amount of orders. It’s 20% of the gross earn, and the amount of orders does not alter how that percentage impacts your income. Also, that fee is for… what? The platform. The tools offered by it. Which seem insufficient and the fee is not competitive.

Regarding my standing on other freelancing websites, you can look up my profile and judge for yourself, I have no reason to lie on this. Either way, I’m not here to choose a freelancing website and work exclusively on it. I’m here is to expand my business. This is a place for inexpensive services. There are services that I would not offer here, because the complexity of the tasks is just to high to be able to offer some portion of it for $5. Those services are offered on those other freelancing websites, and in that regard, I do much better in terms of my hourly rate and billable hours than here. Volume is not a problem. I do not need 10 or 20 orders a week on those sites to have a good income. One or two will do just fine, because of the pricing difference. I only offer simple tasks here that do not take much time. But if I have to spend time on non-billable stuff, as the one I mentioned in the original post, then it’s not convenient. And again, volume is not a variable I consider for me. My hourly rate is the same whether I have work to do or not, it does not drop to zero.

And as I stated, I’m considering not moving forward here, so the thing about continuing on Fiverr is yet to be determined. If you browse back, you’ll find posts as old as 2013 asking for Fiverr to take care of abusive clients and/or allow to block their orders. Doesn’t give me much hope.

[shlomi84]

hi guys
where can i get a good suggestion for vectors to a basic gig?

thanks 🙂

[sincere18]

Reply to @mauropantin: Ok, but I think you are not understanding what I was saying…if you are working on another freelance site and they only take 10%, so let’s say you make $200 there, so you get $180 profit, but if on Fiverr there is much more traffic and you can sell $500 in the same amount of time, and you get $400 of profit, $400 is much more than $180.

NOw if you are doing other type of work on the other freelance sites than that is different, but that is also then why you can’t compare it’s not apples to apples, so coming on here saying the percentage is too high doesn’t make sense in that case.

So if you can make the same amount of money or more on the other freelance site, then why wouldn’t you want to just use the other site, sell $500 and earn $450, of course that makes sense, you should stick with growing that. If you cannot grow that, then that is why you have to consider that 20% may net you more in the long run. .

I do not understand why volume is not a problem, and why you only want 1 or 2 orders.

[emasonwrites]

Reply to @mauropantin: I get what you’re saying, I’m just saying that I don’t agree. I don’t know if we’re paying for the features as much as we are paying for the traffic and advertising. If you don’t think 20% is worth that, then don’t offer your services here. Or, lower what you offer, so it is worth the 80% that you actually make off of an order. You have total control over your pricing and un-checking the box next to an extra or turning on vacation mode doesn’t take that much time.

[missusdarcy]

Reply to @emasonwrites: we lose 20% of our gigs for this “service” and have no customer support. At the very least we should have some features that help us manage clients successfully. I had someone order 20 gigs at once time to be due in 3 days overnight and by the time I woke up I lose 11 hours. When I said I can’t do it in this time, he cancelled and the money came out of what I was going to use that day (not from the backend) for groceries.

I would rather not have to cancel but prevent it. Putting in my gig description what I won’t do doesn’t matter because they violate it and then cancel or get nasty.

[missusdarcy]

Reply to @sincere18: because no one can write 20 articles in a day that aren’t crap. The “extra fast” applies to every gig in that order. There needs to be a way to limit that because our buyers seem to be clueless as to human efforts.

[sincere18]

Reply to @missusdarcy: agreed, but then you just build up a queue and people wait for good work. Also, get rid of the extra fast extra if it’s too much. BUt if you are getting orders and you are doig good work and have good reviews extend your delivery time frame to handle it and charge more in general for your writing.

[emasonwrites]

Reply to @missusdarcy: I don’t think we “lose” 20% of our gigs. Fiverr doesn’t “steal” it. We agreed to this commission when we signed up to offer our services here. If you’re offering services that you think are worth $5, you’re going to be upset when you only get $4, even if you knew that going in.

This is just my opinion, and not everyone has to operate this way, but I have my gigs set up so that if someone does order the maximum of what they can order, I have plenty of time to do it, and so that I’m happy with the amount of work I get and the amount I actually get paid to do that work. Every seller has to find that balance for themselves. What worked when I started out definitely wouldn’t work now.

How did the money come out of what you were going to use for groceries that day? If you hadn’t completed the order yet, you wouldn’t have actually had the money.

[sincere18]

Reply to @missusdarcy: But that should not be the case, if you cannot do a job then the money gets refunded, by them or you should offer a mutual cancellation because you cannot commplete the gigs in the time they requested it.

That you were planing to use the money from last night to the next day to buy groceries has nothing to do with Fiverr, that’s your own personal cash flow issue. Plus money from a gig takes 14 days to clear once the job is done anyway, so that money was not really even there the next day to begin with, so I am not sure what you mean by that.

And there will always be the possibility that someone can come along and order multiple gigs. 20 gigs seems like it’s not the normal thing that happens, right? Or is this happening to you all the time and you are having to consistently cancel the orders?

[sincere18]

Reply to @missusdarcy: and maybe you should get rid of your extra to do it in 24 hours. That way you always have 3 days.

[misscrystal]

Reply to @shlomi84: Not in this forum.