An Awful Experience as a Buyer, Why Sellers Need to Make an Effort

[eoinfinnegan]

I am a seller here and spend a lot of time working on my gigs and the offers I make to Buyers.
When I recently needed some writers for a personal project I was absolutely shocked by how bad the experience was. I decided to turn the experience into something positive and write about my experience to hopefully be a wake up call to some of my fellow Sellers whose standards are too low or who have let their efforts slip recently.

It was a simple requirement - Write a weekly 500 word article about news in your own country and in your native language, $5 per article. I was looking for 10 writers.
Total budget of roughly $600.

I received approximately 50 responses.
Most were horribly written and either offering something I didn’t ask for or clearly had not even read the description.
Some offered to do an “amazing” job but had no samples of their work - even when I subsequently asked for them because they had not included them in their offer.
A couple provided samples that were awful, others were clearly computer generated.
Two offers were relatively decent when they eventually gave me the information I asked for.
One guy is still messaging me (6 times) asking me to hire him even though he has no understanding of what I am looking for.
THIS WAS FOR A 3 MONTH GIG WITH AT LEAST ONE $5 ORDER PER WEEK!

I cannot express to you how annoyed I am. I gave a clear description, a good price and regular work. I would kill for that kind of offer!! Had I not been familiar with Fiverr, I would have left and never come back. And that is an issue that needs to be resolved!

How many Buyers have been scared off or left the site in frustration at the lack of professionalism (or even just basic effort) of so many of the Sellers? How many more gigs could the good Sellers get if the standards were raised, even if it was just by a little bit?
This was not meant to be a rant but a serious article dealing with a serious issue and asking for people to raise their standards in the interest of all of us and of Fiverr.

In conclusion, let me offer some advice for both Sellers and Buyers.
Sellers - Please put some effort into the offers you make. It increases your chances of getting the gig and even if you don’t get it, at least Buyers won’t leave the site because of you. The more satisfied Buyers there are, the better it is for all Sellers.

Buyers - Please don’t be put off by the poor standards of some, Fiverr has a huge number of committed, professional and hard working Sellers who will do a fantastic job for you. Be prepared to go through the listings or the offers you get and remember that those who put effort into their offers will put even more effort into their gigs (and vice-versa).

I’d love to read your thoughts on comments on this,
Eoin.

[misscrystal]

Hello, there are some barely literate sellers offering writing gigs.
One needs to weed out carefully the bad from the good. There are a lot of excellent sellers of writing gigs. Sorry your experience was so bad. It seems like when someone throws out an offer to the general seller population you may not always get the great ones answering the call.

[kumarsingh]

Thank you for raising a new valuable discussion here, yes you are absolutely correct in your thought and experience but here a large number of highly skilled professionals are putting their good time and effort whatever they are offering and if a buyer really knows what he or she is looking to get done then it’s very easy for them to find a perfect seller who can handle their job nicely. In my opinion fiverr is one of the finest place in the internet world who offers surprisingly great services and it’s a perfect match of buyers and sellers. Fiverr engineers have worked really hard to invent some of the great tools which anyone can use easily to find whatever they are looking to get done, there are awesome filter option in left hand side from where you can filter whatever you are looking and in whatever budget or deadline you are looking to get done, there are tabs/ menu on top from where you can find highly rated sellers etc. As a buyer one have to invest their few minutes to find whatever they are looking and they can find it easily with just few clicks since great fiverr tools are there for you to help.
Someone can read the rating, sellers feedback, their work samples if there are live and so and you would get what you expect.

As a seller often i do get some gig orders or discussion by and with some of the new buyers who just join the site to get their job done and actually they don’t really know how to express their need that what they are looking to get done indeed. They know that what they want to get done but they fail to express their requirements in words here that what and how they want and after doing some discussion with them understanding their requirement i do let them know that what they are looking and how they are looking and how much that cost to them and it’s not magical it’s just simply a professional way to understand your buyer and provide them a world class service to bring smiles on their face.
Yes it’s little bit of time consuming to do communication with them but end of the day it gives satisfaction and you get a trusted valuable buyer. A good service brings good outcome for us and i have several buyers who come from the recommendation of their friends or people around them to hire my service.
For instance once i had a buyer who bought my gig for dollar 5 only and his job was complicated and was something which was about to consume around 3 hours to complete nicely, i simply made him aware about this and he was so bitter at once that if i am offering a dollar 5 service then whatever he need i must work for him and complete the job and he just does not care how much time and afford it gonna take but after responding him politely and convincing him he said that he want to cancel the order and that order was cancelled with mutual agreement and guess what that very same day he bought one of my gig for dollar 45 with extras and since then he was one of my finest and valuable buyer who bought gigs from me for quite few thousands dollar and not even he bought himself even he send quite few good buyers to me by his recommendation and he has became a very friendly and professional buyer and it was kind of a good relation with him. So this is kind of thing we experience each and everyday. This is kind of memory for me which made me learn and realized the value of being sweet, polite and professional. Fiverr is a great place and being honest and true to our profession we create a good relation and value with our buyers and they keep coming on regular basis for more with more.
Fiverr team is doing really great job and creating world class tools for both buyers and sellers and by investing just few minutes anyone can get what they are willing to get done and whatever they expect so there should not be any blame game, The entire world is full of good and bad people we just have to learn our good way to deal with all kind of people politely and in a meaningful way and fortune will be in our favor without any question for both buyer and sellers.

Thank you and sorry for my long text.

[eoinfinnegan]

Yes, for sure. I ended up going through a lot of listings to find people instead. I love Fiverr and the value and quality on offer is excellent, when you spend the time finding it. I get a lot of my work from the Buyer Request section and I can see why from my experience above.

[eoinfinnegan]

Thanks for your detailed response Kumar! What you say about the search options and filters is absolutely true and that is what I did in the end, manually searched through the listings. I am not questioning the value and professionalism of many people on here, just the ones who put no effort in. I am also worried that not all buyers are familiar with Fiverr’s search and filters and so they might just give up if they get 50 offers of rubbish for their request! I find the Buyers request section a great source of work for me and I am not sure what can be done to change what I am complaining about. Thats why I am trying the approach of “Let’s all put the effort in”.

[wiggywonka]

As a seller, I work very hard to make sure I know what is expected up front, and I try to under promise and over deliver. So far, I have had happy buyers.

Personally, I think one just needs to read a profile that is badly written (and there are many) to see that you may not be dealing with a good writer.

On the other hand, I have received messages that were very unclear and buyers who are not sure what they want.

Buyers should use the search filters, as that may lead them to find the best seller for their project.

There will always be rude people and haters. It is part of life. Just keep plugging away! Enjoy!

[emmaki]

As a writer, y’all need to use paragraphs and be more concise.

[eoinfinnegan]

😃

[Guest hawkkseo]

You should have focused on Top Rated sellers!

[rasmusb]

I put up a gig with a one sentence description. It was a writing gig. Most proposals I got was detailed, that’s great. However they were for developing software.

If you spend time sending proposals then why not read that one sentence/header of the gig first. Seems like such a waste of time to just spam completely irrelevant proposals. Either way it wastes my time as a buyer.

The solution as a buyer is to either screen people at high rate (like Tinder) or go for top-rated sellers.

[rasmusb]

Generally I wouldn’t bother but since this is a thread specifically about these problems and you chose to rant in it yourself. You put a massive 194 (!) words in a single sentence. In 4000+ characters you have only 14 sentences total.

I could read three pages in a book before I finished reading it. So I just didn’t do it. The texts lenght itself isn’t a problem but the readability of it is. If you put those 194 words into at least five sentences it might be easier to understand.

[eoinfinnegan]

I’m not a top rated seller myself but I know I can do quality work, I wanted to give people a chance in the same way that I have been helped by getting a chance by others!

[eoinfinnegan]

It does amaze me that some people seem to just not even look at what a buyer has written! Again, Fiverr will lose a lot if everyone only ever buys from top rated sellers. Top rated sellers were not always top rated sellers!

[sameerthewriter]

I used to be a buyer myself on Fiverr long ago and I experienced the same thing. I ordered one guy and he copied and pasted my own website’s page and sent it to me.

[rasmusb]

Well a Top Rated Seller might be stellar at one task, like designing favicons and pixel art. But horrible at doing logos or banners. Or has very poor communication skills but it wasn’t required for whatever task he/she was performing in other gigs. In short you need the right person for the right job, not just a high rating. But it still gives a good indication.

About the Fiverr will lose out I am not sure. If 5000 gigs in a year goes to one person and that person delivers the orders I believe Fiverr is content. More than having those 5000 gigs go to 5000 different newbie sellers where there will be more problems. Less hassle and they will still earn their $1000.

I’m not an expert at Fiverrs ranking but I believe that the most important thing to keeping a high score is to never get a cancalled due to failing to deliver on time as it results in a 0 star rating in all categories. Better with a poor job delivered with low rating or rather a mutual cancellation.

[rasmusb]

What was the gig?

[fastcopywriter]

I don’t think the criticism is on the writing style. People aren’t criticized because they’re not following the AP Style, because they’re writing in third person instead of first, but because they claim they are writers when they’re really not.

A lot of people think they can write articles just because they send text messages and post updates on Facebook, but those skills don’t translate to article writing.

The solution is to read reviews, and keep hiring writers until you find a good one. The same applies to all other gigs.

[punstress]

I’m dealing with that right now, as a buyer. I made some very basic requests for a logo design (e.g., white letters) and all of them were ignored. Moreover, the seller refused to revise his shoddy work.

It’s always “You get what you pay for,” but of course designers often do work on spec or low pay to gain customers. If the seller offers to make a logo for $5 and shows a decent looking sample, well, I don’t think I’m wrong to expect a decent looking logo for $5.

I was expecting to tweak it in Illustrator myself but I assumed it would meet the basics of my request. I didn’t even get the right file type! If he couldn’t do it, he should cancel.

It reflects very poorly on fiverr because now I am much less likely to just take a chance on someone, although most of my experiences have been positive.

[eoinfinnegan]

I completely agree Punstress, the work you should expect should be as the description and samples suggest. Anything less is false advertising in my view. “You get what you pay for” works both ways. If someone says I will give you an eye-catching logo or a top quality article or whatever else for $5, then that is what you should get. PS. I had a great, responsive and helpful logo designer do some work for me, cant commend her highly enough. PM me if you want her details.

[eoinfinnegan]

That is ridiculous! 😃

[eoinfinnegan]

I’m not picking on people?
Yes, it certainly encouraged me to put even more effort into my offers.
Thanks for your comment 🙂

[sameerthewriter]

It was from some seller from the Pakistan.

[fonthaunt]

I understand your disappointment very well. I see so many gigs by people who claim to do “keyword rich” or “SEO” articles and cannot write at a High School level in their native languages.

I may be different from average on this other aspect, but I’m going to mention it in case there are others. I tend to shy away fast from buyer requests asking for bulk right up front. There are two reasons I don’t respond to these. The first is that I never know if a new buyer and I will “click” and I’m sure they don’t either. No one writing style at any quality is a good match for everyone.

I like to commit to one article first, usually at relatively low word count and $20 max. $5 as a good sample order is even better. If the buyer loves the work but I just don’t feel the job is right for me after that, I can opt out easily. If the buyer isn’t a big fan for whatever reason even if I thought it went well, they will generally give me a good review and pay me a low price just for decent writing. They may not hire me to continue, though, which is fine. So, people who talk about long term work too early are (for me) like people who want to know about how many kids you want during a first date. It’s too much and too soon.

The second reason I shy away from those requests is that I’ve seen another common issue. There are many buyers who say they want long term work and they utilize that as a bargaining chip. I write a little extra for them, give them free research on a topic that isn’t a specialty for me, they give me a rave review and everything seems awesome. When they approach me again (if they do) they promise me long term again as long as I’ll give them an hour of writing for $5-10. I let them know that I have to make a profit, so my ongoing rate will be more like 15 minutes of work for $5. I never hear from them again.

I’m not saying for a moment that you are one of those buyers. I’ve just seen it so much that it now puts me off. I like a first-time buyer who wants to do a good test case, perhaps at a bit of a bargain, and then is either really done or is ready to pay my normal rates. I’ve rarely had a buyer who promises long term work and wants to pay a reasonable price for it. I don’t know if that helps you at all, but just in case, there it is! Good luck! 🙂

[rasmusb]

Well if you ordered a copy+paste from your website you got what you asked for? 😃

Happened similar things to me too. Copy+paste is so overused in Asia.

[eoinfinnegan]

I appreciate your feedback and the advice at the start is very wise. In terms of people who are level 2 or TRS, I didn’t expect a sample for them. I also had offered to pay one month, four blogs up front. My disappointment was more with the new sellers, those who fill up the forum complaining they can’t get gigs but then refuse to put the effort in to get them. I don’t think sampling is a bad thing, I regularly did samples as a new buyer and even now if the job is big enough. I did one translation sample recently, on another site and it secured me over $600 worth of work for this weekend.
I think I expect people who want things to be prepared to try, that’s all!
“There are those who dream of being a millionaire, and there are others who are prepared to pay the cost” 🙂
Thanks for your feedback