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Self-Promotion Through Buyers Requests | How Stupid It Would Look In Real Life


acossidente

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It would appear, by reading the forums, that people using the Buyers Requests section to promote their own services have always been a thing on Fiverr. Recently, this trend seems to be on the rise.

We all get the cognitive processes behind it. You invest plenty of time and money crafting your perfect gig. Days go by and your hits/conversions are still low. You change your pictures, update your descriptions, even add a few extras. Still, you get close to no orders. This would frustrate the majority of professional sellers. We, at least I, completely get it.

Left with no other option, you start eyeing the Buyers Requests section. It seems to be one of the most used features on this goldmine of a website. Dozens of new requests are published every day, after all! Why would you let all of that visibility go to waste?

Before promoting your services on that particular page, though, try picturing the following scene in your head:

"Hello! Welcome to Bob’s Bakery! We have the best bread in town! We offer loafs, cakes, baked goods, and even accept custom requests for your daughter’s birthday!"
This is just about anyone opening the Buyers Requests Section. They’re trying to offer their services to those who would buy them. They are primarily SELLING, not BUYING!

"Hey! Would you like to buy my cornbread?"
Now, this is you. You literally just stepped into a specialized shop and are trying to convince the fellow seller who sits behind the counter to buy your product. The guy looks at you, glances at several display cases which are packed with his best varieties of cornbread, rolls his eyes back into his head, takes a deep breath and says…

“Excuse me, Sir. This is a bakery! We specialize in the kind of product you’re trying to have me purchase. We have been producing cornbread for the last 4 generations…”.
While he spends some of his time kindly trying to NOT make look like a complete and utter moron, you can notice a line forming behind you. Among the crowd, a visibly stressed dad keeps holding a crumpled piece of paper. On it, if you were to take a look, you could find the details for a cake he’s trying to order. The cake is to be a crucial element for the surprise party he’s throwing for his only son’s return from a war-zone. He only has a few days before his own personal hero, his pride and joy, will be home. Minutes tick by, you’re still there wasting everyone’s time.

This clearly overly-dramatic story would like to show a few points:

1)Of course, nobody in their right minds would ever step into a bakery and try to sell them bread. Most average brains would immediately label that idea as “stupid” and archive it. I am not trying to be arrogant or anything, here. Simply stating the obvious.

2)If, for some reason, a brain (trying to stay away from the word “person”, just to avoid hurting anybody’s feelings) were to skip that Quality Check and go ahead, it is unlikely that this particular kind of effort would yield any visible results. Once more, those visiting that section are primarily trying to SELL. They are NOT interested in what you have to offer, unless it is a contract they can make some money off of.

3)You are hurting your reputation. I am mainly a seller around here. Unlike me, some might use Fiverr to both purchase and sell services. I, too, may one day decide to do so. Would I buy from someone who doesn’t seem to understand the basics of this site? Hell, no! I most likely wouldn’t!

4)You’re wasting other sellers’, buyers’, and your own time. Obviously, it took you some kind of effort to put those few lines up there. Perhaps, you wrote them down while on a coffee-break or while waiting for the bus. You most likely missed the aroma and relaxing effect of your hot beverage of choice just to concentrate on what to say. That was a humongous waste of time. You’re also wasting other sellers’ day. It takes all of us some time to go through the requests and try to separate the real from the spammy ones. Finally, you’re stealing buyers’ visibility with your crap. This of the stressed dad. Would you want to be the cause for the failure of his party? Are you that kind of an evil human being?

Bottom line: if you’re thinking of promoting your gigs through the Buyers Requests section, SIMPLY. DON’T. DO IT.
There’re other ways to promote your gigs. Try those.
Once again, I’m not trying to appear as the elected Fiverr God, some sort of Internet Messiah. I am simply a guy who has been in this line of work for a while and that might have something interesting to say.

Disclaimer: this post was originally meant for the Ranting Pot section. While writing it, I realized some might actually read it in full and learn a bit about how to be better at “Fiverring”. Since it is mainly aimed towards sellers, I figured I’d post it in the Tips For Sellers section. If the content is inappropriate for this section, any mod or admin is more than welcome to move it/edit it/remove it. I could have used HTML tags to make this long thing look a bit nicer, but HTML and I are on bad terms since High School. I apologize for that! 😉

Edit 1: apparently zone in warzone, as in that synonym for enclosed area beginning with Z, is a censored word on the forums. Hah, you learn a bit more every day!

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I believe that happens mainly because a few sellers simply spam the first 10 requests they see with an offer.

I posted a single buyer request for a project I needed completed (AKA actually trying to buy something) and received several rather generic responses that looked like they were copy-pasted from a collection of pre-prepared ones.

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What about those “buyers” requests that seems real - for example, when the req is cryptic and naively you think “maybe the buyer isn’t a person of many words” - and you take your time to answer them the best way possible, but in the end you understand that it wasn’t a buyer request but a seller trying to sell cornbread in a bakery shop? I always feel so stupid after that.

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Usually, I only send offers to requests that appear as immediately clear. This seems to have worked best for me. We fall within the same field of expertise, so that might be good for you too. After all, we are only able to send 10 offers every 24ish hours.

Try adopting this attitude: a 5 to 15 dollars order - the average price most buyers are willing to pay for our services - is frequently not worth the hassle of having to spend several hours trying to open, clear, and maintain a communication channel with a buyer that doesn’t seem to be able to properly state his or her needs.

Still, I consider Fiverr a secondary source of income. Your mileage and experience may vary if you approach the site with a different mindset.

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As I already said, there are different kinds of people on this website. Cultural diversity, a varying degree of proficiency in a language that is, by itself, extremely hard to master due to the immense number of its existing varieties, their frantic needs for an order that might translate into more or less disposable income all factor into the equation.

I’m not wishing to achieve anything with this post. Simply, perhaps naively, hoping for more people to read it and understand the effects of their actions on an already extremely fragile and volatile community.

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Haha, nice text. And you know what, there actually are quite often texts from which you can´t even be sure, if it’s a Buyer’s or a Seller’s Request lol.
Great idea to mirror it to ‘Real Life’, but unfortunately, as with most posts of this kind (those aimed at buyers and sellers alike or both), it´s most often the people reading them who don´t ‘commit the crimes’ they adress, and if the other kind even reads them (to the end), I guess it´s into the left ear and out of the right for a high percentage 😉
Still, always nice to read this kind of posts, even if only to know one isn´t alone with these musings.

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One thing I still wondering and have no answer, but it’s more out of curiosity than necessary to contact CS for an answer. If you look around, some people complains that their legit requests (i.e: looking for a logo, a song…) got denied.
And I posted requests before (the legit one, not spammy) so I know it’s true that once you type out your request and click submit, it’ll not immediately get on the site and there’ll also be a message saying it’s waiting for approval. I always got approved so I’m not certain about denial, but if there’s actually someone operating this request system, how on Earth do these self-promo get approved?
There’re even ridiculous spam like “I have a dog and it loves me”, and it’s still approved.

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