My successful running gig removed after adding FAQ

[adrianturika]

I see loads of reviews on Amazon with some kind of ‘disclaimer’ like ‘I got this product for free [for a reduced price] but am not affiliated with the seller or manufacturer and its my honest opinion etc.’

You won’t be seeing those for long as Amazon is removing them. This is no longer the policy of Amazon to allow these.

They have an ongoing ban of reviewers who do this with new bans every day for the past few months.

Amazon has a policy now of not allowing these kinds of reviews for free products.

I don’t agree with how Amazon is approaching this. If you had a new product and wanted to break into the market, wouldn’t it be a good idea to give a bunch of people a free product (build value), ask for feedback about what you can do (get reviews), then launch the product and expect sales (because X amount of positive reviews - social confirmation bias).

It seems like Amazon is trying to monopolize the same marketing strategy they’ve been using for years. They are so big they can pretty much push around any site - or keep any site in AWS from doing business with them, pretty much pulling an online version of what Walmart did to local neighborhood stores.

[misscrystal]

There are reviews like that for Amazon’s own ‘review club’ though, vine or what they call it.

I am talking about free merchandise in exchange for a review, not the review club Amazon has.

Hundreds of reviewers have been banned with more being banned every day for doing this. They are going through all reviews looking for this.

[miiila]

I am talking about free merchandise in exchange for a review, not the review club Amazon has.

Hundreds of reviewers have been banned with more being banned every day for doing this. They are going through all reviews looking for this.

Yes I know that, but the reviews I saw only now kept popping up, so I thought it’s only the reviews for free stuff without such disclaimers they go after, but I guess then it’s just because it always takes some time until ‘things’ move from one continent to the other.

[misscrystal]

Yes I know that, but the reviews I saw only now kept popping up, so I thought it’s only the reviews for free stuff without such disclaimers they go after, but I guess then it’s just because it always takes some time until ‘things’ move from one continent to the other.

I’m in USA so it might be different in other countries.

[miiila]

I don’t agree with how Amazon is approaching this. If you had a new product and wanted to break into the market, wouldn’t it be a good idea to give a bunch of people a free product (build value), ask for feedback about what you can do (get reviews), then launch the product and expect sales (because X amount of positive reviews - social confirmation bias).

It seems like Amazon is trying to monopolize the same marketing strategy they’ve been using for years. They are so big they can pretty much push around any site - or keep any site in AWS from doing business with them, pretty much pulling an online version of what Walmart did to local neighborhood stores.

As someone who buys on Amazon I’m fine as long as there’s a note telling me that a product was a review item or free or whatever.

I have been seeing some products though which had like 20 reviews but only with vine or other disclaimers, and while it’s OK it still gives a weird impression and I might even rather buy a new product that yet has no reviews than only such reviews, I might be not the typical consumer though. 😉

Amazon definitely was the end here not only for many bookshops but as well other retailers, but well, it’s the Internet age now. Still I think they should be watched very closely like all monopolists.

[fastcopywriter]

Did your review mentioned Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other third party? Never mention them! Say you’ll post reviews on social media, say you’ll review books, restaurants, etc, but don’t mention the sites.

If you don’t mention the sites, it’s hard for 3rd parties to complain. Of course, sometimes third parties will order your gig just to spy on you, and then they complain to Fiverr.

Personally, I think review gigs suck nowadays. What’s the point? You have too many buyers offering 5 reviews for $5. They are willing to have multiple accounts. Besides, they don’t pay well, a former friend of mine told me he was making $250 a month writing reviews, that’s not enough. You’re better off having other gigs.

[king_of_kings]

I think the ‘anywhere’ might be the culprit?

Even if you did add FAQ, many buyers just don’t read them and the ‘anywhere’ kinda contradicted what you stated in the FAQ, I guess it can be interpreted as that you consciously try to give people the impression that you will write anywhere and that you just ‘hide’ the details in the FAQ so you can say your gig is legit. I don’t say that you do that! just that I think people could see it that way.

I wouldn’t wonder much about that you dealt with CS before and they didn’t say anything to your gig as such, if the things you had to contact them for were just normal stuff they might have given the normal canned responses and not even have read the gig title or description for all I know.

Maybe a competitor who has already in their gig title something like ‘anywhere except…’ was, let’s say, worried you have an advantage because yours just read ‘anywhere’ and when they looked at it, they had to show you the 3rd party card.

Or a new search algorithm, or staff been told to comb through the gigs after the PDP issue noticed it, the timing with you putting the FAQ could either

be random, or drew someone’s or something’s eye.

Pure speculation on my part, but to me either way the ‘anywhere’ looks like the problem, maybe think about one or two different formulations and ask CS if that would be OK.

But I fear you’re right with that it looks bleak from what one reads about gigs taken down, the experience seems to be that once gone, a gig stays gone and you have to make a new one.

Probably best to ask CS beforehand so you can be sure a gig you make to replace the lost one is OK if it’s a grey area thing.

Aggreed ! I think the ‘anywhere’ might be the culprit?

[adrianturika]

Did your review mentioned Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other third party? Never mention them! Say you’ll post reviews on social media, say you’ll review books, restaurants, etc, but don’t mention the sites.

If you don’t mention the sites, it’s hard for 3rd parties to complain. Of course, sometimes third parties will order your gig just to spy on you, and then they complain to Fiverr.

Personally, I think review gigs suck nowadays. What’s the point? You have too many buyers offering 5 reviews for $5. They are willing to have multiple accounts. Besides, they don’t pay well, a former friend of mine told me he was making $250 a month writing reviews, that’s not enough. You’re better off having other gigs.

I never mentioned any specific sites - or even made reference to them in particular. The closest wording was "review your products on websites.

This is why my mind is boggled. I’ve had gig requests from people spelling those sites in weird ways, like “G0O6le”.

Yeah, I didn’t expect to make more than gas money. I was doing it more for the experience on Fiverr, make money while working on my writing daily, earn positive reviews (always over-deliver), and gain Rank 2 to push other gigs I have out there. Sure - there’re people doing $1 reviews and probably operating outside the US in small villages with the help of cheaper labor and other benefits from less regulation. I didn’t plan to get competitive in the reviewing field, but felt like it was the easiest way to break into writing blog posts, copy, resumes, summaries, etc…

[miiila]

I never mentioned any specific sites - or even made reference to them in particular. The closest wording was "review your products on websites.

This is why my mind is boggled. I’ve had gig requests from people spelling those sites in weird ways, like “G0O6le”.

Yeah, I didn’t expect to make more than gas money. I was doing it more for the experience on Fiverr, make money while working on my writing daily, earn positive reviews (always over-deliver), and gain Rank 2 to push other gigs I have out there. Sure - there’re people doing $1 reviews and probably operating outside the US in small villages with the help of cheaper labor and other benefits from less regulation. I didn’t plan to get competitive in the reviewing field, but felt like it was the easiest way to break into writing blog posts, copy, resumes, summaries, etc…

I’ve had gig requests from people spelling those sites in weird ways, like “G0O6le”.

lol interesting what automatic filtering software can make people do, innit.

Maybe ‘anywhere’ now is on the list of suspicious words too and you need to spell it creatively 😾

[adrianturika]

This Just In: CS Responds to inquiry

Tl;DR: Seems like a canned response. Still won’t tell me what I did wrong or what I can do to prevent this from happening again. I also requested information about the third party that reported the violation and the specific violation and/or what triggered it (FAQ caused an update I guess).

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Hi Adrian,

Thank you for contacting us regarding this. Unfortunately, this gig was denied because it was reported of third party ToS Violation. Fiverr looks into reported violations and removes or disables content shown to be violating third party rights.

Please note that every Gig that is denied by our Marketplace Integrity team is reviewed thoroughly before considering the action to remove the Gig. Once removed, every Gig that is denied will have an accompanying email specifying why the Gig was denied.

Fiverr appreciates Gigs that are original, creative and innovative. Therefore, Gigs which have these characteristics are always welcomed more on our website.

Unfortunately due to rules and guidelines as described in Terms of Service we are unable to share any further information regarding this.

Thank you for understanding.

If you need any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us again.

Kind regards,

[miiila]

This Just In: CS Responds to inquiry

Tl;DR: Seems like a canned response. Still won’t tell me what I did wrong or what I can do to prevent this from happening again. I also requested information about the third party that reported the violation and the specific violation and/or what triggered it (FAQ caused an update I guess).

---

Hi Adrian,

Thank you for contacting us regarding this. Unfortunately, this gig was denied because it was reported of third party ToS Violation. Fiverr looks into reported violations and removes or disables content shown to be violating third party rights.

Please note that every Gig that is denied by our Marketplace Integrity team is reviewed thoroughly before considering the action to remove the Gig. Once removed, every Gig that is denied will have an accompanying email specifying why the Gig was denied.

Fiverr appreciates Gigs that are original, creative and innovative. Therefore, Gigs which have these characteristics are always welcomed more on our website.

Unfortunately due to rules and guidelines as described in Terms of Service we are unable to share any further information regarding this.

Thank you for understanding.

If you need any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us again.

Kind regards,

Unfortunately, this gig was denied because it was reported of third party ToS Violation.

Weird formulation, but I guess it means that someone reported your gig…

The reason is ‘3rd party TOS violation’, and the bit where they refer to their own TOS means they won’t tell you who reported your gig, because of their own TOS. So far so common I guess.

Seems a bit weird to me to ‘deny’ a gig that had been running already for some time, somehow this implies to me that a gig was checked before it was up and was, well, denied, but whatever, waste of time to think about it, make up a new gig like that with a wording nobody can successfully report to them for 3rd party TOS violation or think of something more original as a booster for your other gigs? Maybe you’ll even find something that’s so good you don’t need a boost for your other gigs anymore. ‘Success is the best revenge’. 😉

[therelaxer]

How can you tell it was related to your FAQ update and not just a coincidence? Usually customer support answers after 24 hours, i doubt they answered for this one on 4 hours or less.

[adrianturika]

How can you tell it was related to your FAQ update and not just a coincidence? Usually customer support answers after 24 hours, i doubt they answered for this one on 4 hours or less.

The FAQ thing COULD be a coincidence. I’m simply trying to not repeat the same mistake. I don’t want to run a gig (non reviews related) and have it successful to where I’m making a living off of it then suddenly BAM. It’s gone because of unknown reasons other than “it violated a websites ToS and we can’t say who because of our Tos”.

[adrianturika]

Unfortunately, this gig was denied because it was reported of third party ToS Violation.

Weird formulation, but I guess it means that someone reported your gig…

The reason is ‘3rd party TOS violation’, and the bit where they refer to their own TOS means they won’t tell you who reported your gig, because of their own TOS. So far so common I guess.

Seems a bit weird to me to ‘deny’ a gig that had been running already for some time, somehow this implies to me that a gig was checked before it was up and was, well, denied, but whatever, waste of time to think about it, make up a new gig like that with a wording nobody can successfully report to them for 3rd party TOS violation or think of something more original as a booster for your other gigs? Maybe you’ll even find something that’s so good you don’t need a boost for your other gigs anymore. ‘Success is the best revenge’. 😉

I literally agree 100% with everything you just wrote. And yes, success is the best revenge. I don’t plan on doing reviews much longer, just curious to see if my new review gig will get denied based on how it was created from suggestions on this forum.

Also, according to the ToS - does this mean… If I add a ToS to my website which is so strict that almost all Fiverr sellers unknowingly violate it. Then I could report all those gigs on Fiverr and Fiverr would have to deny them because my ToS was violated - and nobody in the community will know why all the gigs disappeared because of Fiverr’s own ToS? Please tell me if any of this is wrong…

All I’m doing is asking Fiverr CS for the actual word. Nobody on this forum is even certain of the reasoning - and this is concerning. It’s like having your business shut down for breaking a law you didn’t know existed in another country. But instead of laws, where attorneys can go fight in court - we’re dealing with Terms of Service - which can literally mean anything the website owner wants. That’s fine until we’re looking at the broader scope of the web and being expected to memorize every websites ToS to avoid your business being shut down.

[adrianturika]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

So after going back and forth with Fiverr some more - the best response I got was essentially to “stay away from doing business using other websites”.

This explains why the request for me to get blog posts written on my own blog was also denied…

So I guess leaving the boundaries of Fiverr is grounds for removal of a gig. At least I now KNOW what I can and can’t do. I appreciate CS responding.

[miiila]

So after going back and forth with Fiverr some more - the best response I got was essentially to “stay away from doing business using other websites”.

This explains why the request for me to get blog posts written on my own blog was also denied…

So I guess leaving the boundaries of Fiverr is grounds for removal of a gig. At least I now KNOW what I can and can’t do. I appreciate CS responding.

Always better to know as many of the rules of the game as possible. Sometimes it’s difficult to get the rules in the first place, but i guess it can be a nice game to get behind why that is so too. 😉

Well, good you know where you stand now, have fun and more with your next gig/s.

[carbry]

Sometimes it happens. Nothing to do my dear.

[pickera]

Sometimes it happens. Nothing to do my dear.

Keep your chin up, Adrian.

Learn from it and go DO some more 😉

[adrianturika]

Keep your chin up, Adrian.

Learn from it and go DO some more 😉

I posted a couple gigs - pretty standard Proofreading/Edit and Writing ones - but I’m not getting any impressions (0 total after 3 days). I think I’ll need to create a new account altogether and try again 👎