danno1950

Great point, Mike! By contrast, in Fiverr world, if you are a solid producer, you get penalized by the one dissatisfied customer. What a great loyalty and retention incentive for sellers.

What I'm taking away from this is that "new seller" does not actually mean someone who is placing their first order on Fiverr. I checked all my orders going back to my last cancellation, trying to figure out how I got the email, and the only one who might qualify had previously placed 8 orders. Where's the threshold, I wonder? Fiverr logic - NEW does not mean NEW. But I can get penalized more for it anyway if I don't please a buyer who falls into that category. Sheesh! I checked the Buyer Activity Tool, and couldn't find any enlightenment on this issue.

You really stated the essence of the minimal help this new email provides for us. It's really nuts!

I got the email, and after looking through the help resources, they were not very helpful. If they don't give you info on who was dissatisfied, the email doesn't help much. Yes, this is a great question. "Based on what" we've noticed a drop in your BSR? lol - yup, if it is a "benefit" of being in Seller Plus to get this email - pretty meaningless. I wish I could find a great gif about trying to navigate a minefield, because that's what it feels like recently to be a seller on Fiverr. Lots of mines, and of course they are hidden from the sellers, so you never know when you might go BOOM and your sales plummet.

Well said! Yes, it really is frustrating because we can't pinpoint exactly what is causing all of this.

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That is definitely a strange trend, but I don't know what it means. Yes, does feel like what we've been talking about, that there might be a change in something search related.

Absolutely, Alex. I'll keep my profile, but I won't just be waiting around for Fiverr to figure things out. That could take a while. It's in my best interest to not rely on Fiverr as a consistent revenue stream, with the way things have been going. That it unfortunate, because I'm a big fan of the way their business model operates. I just think they're too fond of tinkering with it, without solid oversight.

I completely agree - that will be what motivates Fiverr to change - when they start losing money.

Yes, it's time to beef up and search out alternatives. I'm not confident that Fiverr is going to be motivated enough to figure out what's going on with their platform that is negatively impacting so many sellers.

Interesting. The fee sounds appealing, but I'm still not at all a fan of their business model. Their bidding process can lead to a lot of time spent with little return.

Thanks for the clarification, guys!

This talk about a possible algorithm adjustment makes for interesting timing when you think about the planned downtime on March 26th. It says "upping our site's efficiency," but I'd be curious to know what that efficiency increase actually consists of.

Maybe that's why they differentiated on the Request To Order feature between "First Time Customers" and "All Customers" - to at least give us a way to feel out difficult new buyers. I sure use it that way.

Wow, this just happened on Twitter. This is exactly what I've suspected for a while about Fiverr. If there is not a competent developer familiar with the underlying code of Fiverr, who is at the top supervising these algorithm adjustments, after a while, the whole thing just spins off course. I remember when we heard last spring that Fiverr was working on developing many new features, all at the same time. One thing I know about programming is that you just change one thing at a time, because then you can gauge the impact of that change. If you're changing a lot of elements that interact with the algorithm, how can you tell which change did what?

It really makes me wonder if they still have control over the algorithm itself, or if the developers are doing things without adequate supervision or training on how it is supposed to function, which leads to substantial negative impact on sellers.

I'm all for that, and sooner would be better!

I absolutely agree, Mike. The circumstances are just too widespread to say "chance occurrence." My only hope is that enough sellers will lose revenue that it will motivate Fiverr to address the impact of their latest algo tinkering.

Interesting that you revisited Upwork as well. When I went there, the jobs in my area were all about things that I don't provide, so that's where I lost interest.

Thanks for sharing this - very enlightening! I haven't gotten this notification yet. It looks like it is saying that it will add the feature that we will be shown the winning bid on a cost-per-click basis. I think that will help us set our cost-per-click prices above the winning bid, if I understand correctly what this update will accomplish.

Just in fairness to myself to hedge against a continued slump at Fiverr, I revisited Upwork. I was active on it for a while, but I hadn't been there in 2 years. After a few minutes of trying to navigate their "connect" bid model, I remembered why I preferred Fiverr. So for now I'm just inclined wait it out on Fiverr.

Well said, and that gets to it in a nutshell.

I agree. I'll stick with Fiverr, but I think they need to evaluate what they're doing in order to remain competitive.

I agree with that - the Upwork bidding process didn't work for me at all. I got some work there, but not enough to tolerate the process.

Great points! I think those are all valid factors, and along with the explosion of the AI issue, could be impacting Fiverr orders. However, those are more global events, and the impact on Fiverr might be more of a trickle down effect. I'm still curious about the fact that some of us have experienced the same dropoff in traffic and orders at almost the exact same time - Jan 30th to Feb 6th - which could point to an additional event, like an algo adjustment. I don't think any of these issues are mutually exclusive, so we could be getting hit on multiple fronts in a number of ways.