Any relaunch tips?

[cyaxrex]

Howdy, all.

I hope that everyone is grand in Fiverr land :).

Sadly I myself am not ‘grand’ as the past two weeks have seen me experience what I can only describe as the most god awful pain in the world. I know that there is the old adage of no pain ever coming close to childbirth (and granted I’m not really in a position to experience childbirth myself). However, a week of non-stop crippling stomach cramps, bodily fluids coming out of places where they really shouldn’t be and not being able to sleep due to the pain has (in my book) to beat giving birth.

Anyway, what started as a barbecue with some marinaded chicken wings just over two weeks ago has seen me out of the game for the past two weeks with salmonella poisoning. Also, I really can’t stress enough just how painful catching this particular bug is. In this case, don’t just always thoroughly cook meat, switch to a vegan diet and cut the risk out completely. In fact, I can honestly say that I would rather throw myself off a bridge rather than ever experience being in so much pain a second time.

All that said, no one likes a whiner and I’d rather have someone buy me a cold beer rather than send a get well card. Besides, at the moment, I’m really just weak rather than ill and being pleasantly surprised by how well I now fit into some of the old beachwear I keep in my ‘for when I get thin again’ draw.

What I do need, though, is a bit of advice before I re-activate my gigs. I had about $300 worth of orders in queue when I was forced to hit the vacation button. Moreover, at the time, I thought I was just going to need a day or so to get over a bit of deli belly, not two weeks. In this case, when things did get worse, I sent out numerous cancellation requests and where possible delivered any work which I already had which was nearly finished free of charge with said cancellation requests.

After doing the above, I didn’t log back on to Fiverr until today aside from to withdraw some earnings and thankfully it looks like all my requests were accepted and I have been able to avoid the dreaded ‘failed to deliver on time’ automatic review.

My main problem, however, is that I have a few quite stinging messages in my inbox. These go from, “I’m so disappointed in you!” messages for $5 orders (which in fairness I cancelled 3 days prior to the gig deadline) to “I sincerely hope you get well soon,” but with a tangible touch of sarcasm. My question then is should I respond to these or will not responding already have been reflected in my response rate?

Also, would I be legally allowed to contact my regulars to let them know I am back in the game? And lastly, can anyone say for certain if amending gig descriptions definitely switches you over to gig packages? - I’d like to do a bit gig spring cleaning you see.

Either way, I’m not planning to reactivate my gigs until tomorrow and any relaunch tips in the meantime would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Andy

[fitrigwrites4u]

I didn´t come here to give advice as I don´t know what to suggest. But just wanted to say I have had food poisoning (from seafood when I was on holiday) as well many years ago. It sucked but I was only sick for a few days. I guess your case is more serious. I also wanted to say, ˝get well soon!˝ but we know that´s not gonna help anything anyway.

[writer99025]

Hey brother…I knew about this before because I had recommended you to one of my old clients and he came back to me saying you were very ill. So I had to complete the order that you were supposed to be doing. That client is a good man and wishes you well, so you don’t have to worry about him. You can send him a message to send you some work. He has got a lot of work to be done, so that’s where you will get your first batch of orders. You know who I am talking about right - the cell phone signal boosters guy. Great chap.

[writer99025]

But I suggest taking rest for one more week before getting started.

[Anna]

Andy, I am really sorry to hear about your bug and hope you are doing much better now.

I think if you don’t reply to messages after 12 hr or so it already counts against your response rate. Since you were in vacation mode it might not. I am not quite sure. Maybe someone else can give you a better answer on this one.

I would def. reply to the messages. You can say something like…"I apologize for the late reply…due to an unexpected illness…bla bla bla…
When you cancelled the orders, were those orders from regular buyers? Did you give them a reason to why you had to cancel?
I would only follow up with regular clients if you had to cancel the order. I would apologize again for any inconvenience this might have caused and offer them a discount.

As for the editing of your gig, yes it will take you to the new packages. But you can just stick with one package which is very similar to the old way.

Get well soon and best of luck with everything 😉

Edit: Know that contacting buyers is considered spamming so I would just go with your gut based on the relationship you have with the client.

[fitrigwrites4u]

Agreed.

[misscrystal]

1. Just ignore the messages as they really don’t affect anything.

2. No you can’t contact previous buyers.

3.If you are in a category that has packages if you revise your gigs you will be switched over to packages like it or not.

Hope you feel better soon. I do know how poisoning can make you feel.

[cyaxrex]

Thank you! Don’t worry though. I really am okay now, just weak and getting to the point where I’m wondering how I should feast once I get my full appetite back!

In fact, my big concern is ever eating meat again. I used to be in charge of food safety in my last real world job and my girlfriends family in Hungary keep a pig through the year which they kill in the winter and I have never had anything like this. Worse, everyone I ‘enjoyed’ the meal with that made me sick was completely fine afterwards. In this case, I’m fully veggy from now on as I really can’t even stomach the idea of taking the risk again. In this case, my ‘feast’ seems to be about to take the form of a lot of mushrooms, cheese and…noodles? Would that go? I’m not really sure yet but I think I have got off to a good start by drinking a ton of tomato juice over the past few days.

[cyaxrex]

Hi writer99025,

Yes, I think your buyer was one who I sent as much as I could before requesting cancellation.

I’m really sorry about letting you and your buyer down like that. I really try to run as tight a ship as I can and if I ever have an order which I can’t complete on time (even by a day) I always send the work I have already done, request cancellation and ask for a new order to be placed rather than say that I will deliver all the work in question late.

As for your suggestion of taking some more time off, I must admit that I would love another week but for the past few days, I feel like I’ve been doing nothing already so tomorrow is going to be my big get up and go moment.

That’s the problem with working online. There’s no sick pay and I think it’s better to get out of doing nothing limbo sooner rather than later.

[cyaxrex]

Thanks annai80.

Yeah, it’s a bit tricky. I put myself on vacation when I first felt unwell but a day later simply started sending out cookie cutter cancellation requests and some of these were to regular buyers who I think would have preferred a more detailed response.

That said, (and as per Miss Crystals response), I think what I am going to do is simply wait for old buyers to pop around again and apologise as profusely as I can for being unavailable.

[esthernyambura]

My friend, i was wondering why i was not seeing your comments on the forum. Sorry and get well soon…

[writer99025]

It’s okay, you will get over it. Don’t worry!

[fitrigwrites4u]

So looks like you have a trauma from the food that made you sick this bad. I can understand that. But maybe after you really get better and have your appetite back, you will like meat again (beef, chicken, pork etc). I don´t know. It is up to you if you wanna go vegan or not. If you like it and your stomach like it, perhaps that would be a good choice. I think you should consult what you should/can eat with a professional. Because people are different. I personally cannot eat noodles too much as it will make my stomach upset. But some people can eat noodle everyday.

Speaking of pig, I have never had a pig (coz I always lived in a city before). Actually though, I want to have a couple of mangalica pigs (you know, the pigs that have some kind of wool on their body). We can put them in the stable (the previous owner of the property had a horse). But perhaps we can kind of ˝renovate˝ the stable to be more suitable for the pigs as they love mud. But maybe not in near future as I am already overwhelmed by the pooches (especially the old ones that need special attention) 🙂

Anyway, I really wish you willl get back on track soon.

[fonthaunt]

Sorry to hear of your awful experience. Just so you know you’re not the only one to take the experience that way - I had a bout of food poisoning after eating lamb in a 5 star hotel in Tel Aviv in the 1980’s. I didn’t go vegetarian then, but after watching a loved one hospitalized after eating pork chops at a dinner party, I didn’t go vegan but I did become completely vegetarian. I came to love being a veg-head! Whether it sticks for you or not, good luck with recovering your strength, your customers and enjoyable meals of any kind!

[idostuff4u]

you can contact your regulars legally, through the ‘contacts’ tabs in your dashboard. screen shot > http://screencast.com/t/P3OjbmQ7w