First article cost $5 for 1000 words and Deadline: 4 hours

[cyaxrex]

New sellers/writers, if you have just got a message like this, do not agree to work for this person.

Having just received the following message:

“I have 20 articles work, First article cost $5 for 1000 words and Deadline: 4 hours. I can increase the price for $15 from the second article if you can give us high quality and within deadline. Let me start with one article. Let me know if you can possible to write.
Thanks”

I thought that this would be a good example of the kind of buyer who new sellers especially should avoid at all costs.

Let me elaborate. I have a few gigs with very few reviews. If a buyer finds one of these gigs without looking at my full profile, they therefore assume that I am a new(ish) seller. This is why I only ever get messages like the above for slave labour on my gigs with fewer reviews.

So, what is wrong with this message?

Firstly, my base rate on this gig is $5 for 300 words. An article of 1000 words delivered in one day would, therefore, cost $20-$25 due to the extra fast delivery extra the buyer would need to purchase. Of course, this person is saying that if I write a fantastic 1000 word article for $5, thet will send me lots more work. - This is a lie.

How do I know that this is a lie?

Firstly, this buyers profile was created this month yet they seem to have a pretty good grasp at how Fiverr works already given that they know how to try and bait new sellers desperate for work and reviews.

Secondly, this buyer is obviously not a native English speaker. This is important as if they need articles in English, they must be for a third party client and this in itself tells me that this person is already familiar with outsourcing. In my opinion, there is, therefore, a very high likelihood that this person is a scammer who will either try to get this first article for free by saying that they can’t use it, or simply won’t order any more work and make me feel very foolish.

So as a tip for new sellers, never ever fall for this kind of bait. You want the work and you want the reviews. That’s fine. But what you are probably not familiar with is the low-quality morals of the people who will plead poverty in order to squeeze work out of you for pennies.

In fact, accepting an order like this could very well ruin your career before it starts. This is because, in my experience, these people will rarely leave a 5-star review even if you somehow supply them with the elixir of life.

Worse, these people will often request cancellation of orders after delivery and even in the best case where they do pay and order more work, they will lock you into a cycle of working yourself to death and not being able to focus on more profitable work and/or reasonable clients who actually respect your time.

Did you get a message like this? Tell them that you are busy and move on. Nothing good will ever come from this kind of buyer.

[miiila]

It´s good to inform people, sellers and buyers alike, about these things. Personally, I don´t mind if a reseller is upfront about it, my choice then to take it or leave it. Generally of course, or at least that´s of course to me, I´m much more likely to give a direct customer, say a self-publishing author who deals with me directly, a good rate, than someone like in your example. Resellers though, generally spoken, not referring to the one you refer too, are only humans too, and it can be quite okay to work with them, it´s an individual case-by-case basis to me, if their price is fair, and their own customers know what they are doing, I don´t see a big problem, while, obviously, it would be nicer/better/better-paid to work without middlemen, if they can get you good work you otherwise wouldn´t be able to get, it can be a chance, especially for new sellers.
Your assumptions about how things might go if one accepted that agreement though, don´t seem very far-fetched. I´d even add that there is the possibility of them giving a different of their 20 articles to everyone who bites, and not the same to everyone to compare quality, so in the end they have all their 20 articles for 5$ each.

[benjamin5va]

Some of these scammy “buyers” think everyone is foolish. The other day one of them messaged me, said he needed a speech of about 400 words on a certain topic. I said ok, place a $5 order then. And then he was like, I should write him a sample speech first using the topic he provided. Nice try. He probably planned to walk away with the “sample” speech without paying a dime. To cut a long story short, I told him I was busy and moved on…

[benjamin5va]

I´d even add that there is the possibility of them giving a different of their 20 articles to everyone who bites, and not the same to everyone to compare quality, so in the end they have all their 20 articles for 5$ each.

Yes, you are so right…

[cyaxrex]

Yes, I didn’t mean that all resellers are bad, the majority of my own work comes from resellers. However, this reseller ticked all the right boxes for being a pain.

As for resellers being only human. Yes, I agree with that. However, it should be remembered that some are motivated by pure greed and not simply a need to make ends meet.

I had one recently who asked for 10 x marketing videos made from a template but with each customized to a degree. Usually, this would be $10-$15 but I stupidly agreed to do each for $5. Then came a second request for a fully custom explainer video + another template based sales video. I completed this for $30, again feeling very stupid, only for the buyer to request a full redesign because they hadn’t supplied me with the right information.

Anyway, both these events led to 5-star reviews, however, the buyer then came back asking for 10 custom videos for $5 each and in the meantime, I discovered that their markup on my work was 300%! In this case, I’ve politely told them to find a different seller as I can’t offer anything like the discounts which they have already received, never mind further ones.

This is the problem with resellers and greed. No one on Fiverr or anywhere will provide the aforementioned person with the quality of work which I did (for the price). The greedy resellers, though, push and push sellers limits until they cut their own noses off by losing already very beneficial relationships. - I know this as I’ve had more than one reseller like this crawl back to beg for work again in the past.

[djgodknows]

I think the keyword here is “template”

For services in my shop, I do not get much scammers, but do see few resellers on buyers request (I think). They go like, I would like 20 website templates, blah blah blah… $20.

LOL…I mean like GET OUTTA HEYA! :o :o :o
You know you gonna take that $20 and flip it to $2000 if not $200.

Seems like Fiverr’s market is slowly turning into craigslist… oh my!

[Guest lorddaniel2006]

Talk about heartless buyers. There’s this buyer that contacts me to unlock is Galaxy s6 for $5!! (I dare him to do that elsewhere). I said no problem and he asks how long it’ll take I said 24 hour but it’ll typically be unlocked in a matter of minutes (on a good day). He agreed and ordered my gig. Now barely an hour after ordering he starts whining about how late I am and opens a dispute!! The heck?? I politely told him he cannot open a dispute when technically I am well within my rights because his order is opened for 24 hours and he has no right to open a dispute just yet. I explained to him that it’s weekend and it is normal that his phone takes longer than usual to unlock. He apologizes then I continued the job and the son of a gun leaves without so much as a how do you do. No review, nothing.

[djgodknows]

“All I wanna say that, they don’t really care about us!” :o
(The struggles of a Fiver Seller)

[miiila]

Some people´s patience and attention span are really frightening. You can only hope nobody gives them the really wrong toys and buttons to play with some time. Some people´s other things that shall go unmentioned here are really frightening too, but that´s more for the Election Thread.

[hq_dynamics]

I have been on Fiverr for a little more than two years now and I know all of the tricks some of these heartless buyers try to pull. I fell victim to this kind of scam in the first few months on Fiverr and never ever fell for it again, since. Red flags go up every time a buyer says “Can you do this for $such and $such? If you do a good job I have plenty more work to come my friend!” New sellers would be elated to get started, but what they don’t understand is these persons exploit you. The one buyer than I mentioned that scammed me, when I still had my photo editing gig up, came one day and told me this: “Hello, I am looking for a great editor to edit my photos for a magazine, I want to send you a photo for you to work on for me so I can gauge how good you are. I need you to work really well on this photo and if you do, I have much more work to come!” I accepted and edited the photo top notch for free and sent it to the message window ready to await official orders. The buyer left and never responded ever again. DO NOT FALL FOR THIS.

[emmaki]

I think most freelancers fall for this type of scam once, early on in their career. I know I did. I tend to view it as a learning experience, as the burn of being scammed is a good armor against it ever happening again. We can advise newbies not to fall for it, but we all know how thrilling that first sale is, and combined with deadly hope that this really is going somewhere, and it’s just a psychological game.

I would have charged OP buyer my going rate of $275 for 1,000 words, then doubled my 24-hour delivery extra of $100 to $200 (hey, it’s 4 hours man) for a nice little payment of $475. Hell, with that price, I’d deliver in 2 hours. But let’s face it, this guy didn’t want that. Sounds more like the type of guy who would be furious at ME for wasting THEIR time despite having my prices clearly listed and having a good reason to tack on an extra $200 for the rush…

[hq_dynamics]

Agreed