smashradio

And it wasn't born in the US of A. 😛 But thanks, @levinewman - I'm not sure if that says more about this thread, or the current political climate in the US. I heard Hollywood is already churning out modern civil war movies.

I purchased it at $29, and it wouldn't bother me if they increased the price to $39, $49, or even $99. I don't care. But raising the price on the groups of sellers who contributed to developing the feature as a form of "thanks" for a discount, only to earn a few thousand bucks more per year, is low.

Well, yes, it's subjective, which is why I find mirroring a useful technique. What I do is mirror the buyer's communication style. If the buyer enjoys writing long and super-friendly messages, sharing details about their day and their spouse's knitting project, I'll share some personal anecdotes in return. However, if the buyer isn't much of a talker and just goes "Hey, I need this. This is my budget. Thanks," they likely prefer brevity, and I'll adapt to that (politely, ofc). If the buyer's English isn't strong or they use simple language, I'll adjust my communication to match theirs. You can usually tell quickly whether a buyer enjoys small talk or not, and their... level of sophistication... often comes across in their writing style. I also make sure that I'm clear from the outset about what's included and what's not. If the buyer feels understood and there's mutual clarity, minimizing unnecessary back-and-forth, you should do well enough. Responding quickly to their requests and messages will probably also help. But as Mike mentioned, it can be subjective, and I have no idea what actually goes into that metric because the Fiverr brand of "transparency" doesn't work like that. With that said, it's not all subjective... Even an amateur can distinguish between a tough, overcooked piece of cheap steak flattened with a sledgehammer and cooked in stale frying oil, and a sublime, perfectly marbled Wagyu steak expertly prepared. The issue is, not everyone likes steak, and that's the subjective part. The key is knowing whether the customer who walks in is a connoisseur seeking the finest meat experience in town or the weird vegan dude wearing a "Free the Cows" T-shirt and dreads. If you can satisfy both, you're a good chef (but then again, some chefs don't want to satisfy the weird vegan dude, or they're running a vegan place and wouldn't dream of cooking up anything but nasty "burgers" made from soy protein and starch.

I love that interview. Peterson handled it so much better than I would have.

I don't think the price itself is unreasonable; it's the way they're doing this that bothers me. I signed up at $29, so I'm facing a $10 increase per month, which is pocket change. But like Levi, I haven't received the email about the increase yet. What I dislike is how they've made the service worse, with a team of SMs churcning out AI-generated nonsense that I can get faster and cheaper from GPT. I've seen a couple of e-mails that other sellers have shared, and when I ran it through AI detectors it flashed red at 98% AI generated. Go figure. I also dislike that they're not honoring the original price for the first 200 who got it at $19, or for those like me who got it at $29 (?). It's about not pissing on your best people. I believe there are parts of SP that is worth more than the new price, to some. But the shift from quality to quantity makes it come across as c**p. It's only about how long the landing page list of features is. I'm not planning to cancel my subscription just yet, and honestly, I don't think doing so would make much of a difference, for the same reason that I could increase the subscription fee of the newspaper I own by 15% overnight, and only lose 20 subscribers while increasing revenue. Because most people don't cancel. So, even if 50 or 100 sellers opt out, they'll likely recoup those numbers quickly. They have around 25k Seller Plus members, if I remember correctly.. I actually agree with you. I'd love to see it as a general paywall. Personally, I'm also happy with my SM (not that I need her much but she's always there and she talks to me like a human). If the increase makes it easier for the SMs to help those who do want to pay properly, I'm all for it. But I don't think they will. More likely, they will fire most of them and just tell us to not use our SMs instead, you know, like they did last week. Exactly. Sorry I'm adding to the jinx pot. And this is exactly why it's behind a paywall. Someone else might feel that way about another feature. But I don't like this one simply because RTO is the only way for sellers to protect themselves against a problem Fiverr created in the first place. Carnivore diet here!

Yup, I remember. It was all very passive agressive and went something like "Hey, we know you're paying for this, but, please don't use it" to my ears. It's the same feeling I get when browsing Netflix and they keep shoving the worst teenage drama shows in my manly (now bearded) pipe-smoking, steak-eating face. It's like they don't want me to watch anything. There's a difference between having a set of brand voice guidelines and having a bunch of teenage interns churn out GPT-generated boardroom balderdash. If Fiverr employed competent people, they wouldn't need to use GPT to follow a set of standard brand voice guides. I do that every day when I write for multiple companies who take that stuff very seriously. People used to be able to write stuff without AI. They also used to be able to connect like humans. There's nothing human about what's going on here. It's made to squeeze as much money out of us as possible before AI takes over everything.

Fiverr has consistently emphasized our "value" to them and the importance of "transparency", while paradoxically increasing our stress through over-gamification under the guise of alleviating pressure from "sellers like you". They claim to care, but they don't. And, frankly, that's even worse than pure indifference. I've said for a long time that Fiverr needs to humanize their communication, but they haven't listened to me or anyone else. Anyway.. It takes courage to speak out. I'm sorry to hear about your issues. And I completely agree: I used to feel safe on Fiverr, to an extent. Now, I almost expect to be level 0 and wake up to the news of Fiverr taking 90% of our income every time I log in, or some new idea on how they can gamify us and charge us more money to avoid it.

I suggest you read the terms of service and community terms here: https://www.fiverr.com/legal-portal

I suggest reading the Fiverr terms and community terms here: https://www.fiverr.com/legal-portal

If your account is blocked you have to wait for 90 days before you can withdraw your funds. For some reason, the actual help page outlining this doesn't work. Fiverr will reach out to you when you can log in and withdraw the funds.

As some of us already "know", Fiverr has decided to let GPT 3.5 and what appears to be a merry band of teenage interns using two-line prompts do most of their outreach work for them. At least that's my impression after these past few months. It was bad enough before this new brand of "transparency," back when I talked at length with Fiverr staff in meetings and emails about Fiverr needing to humanize their communication (this was after Fiverr decided to outsource the team responsible for the "Top Client's" feature to someone who didn't know that Coca Cola was an international brand, took arbitrary actions to remove top clients from "pro vetted sellers" and sent us boilerplate yet scary messages about losing access to the future—I'm not joking). So here's a thought: How about if Fiverr hired some of their excellent sellers to write the outreach content for them? Instead of churning out uninspired, boilerplate communication that screams beanbag-sitting millennial gone lazy and high on AI? Because the recent stuff you've put out isn't just uncreative—it's a masterclass in mediocrity coming from a platform claiming to be the best at finding the right talent. Naturally, that would require Fiverr to actually know who to pick among their "top-rated" and "pro" sellers. Not easy when not even Fiverr seems to know how their own level system works anymore. The irony is laughable. Adding insult to injury, you decided to hike the price of Seller Plus for people who thought they had bought into a lifetime discount. And based on some of the responses here on the forum, the only thing worth the 39 bucks is RTO. The business idea is sort of genius, though. "Let's create a problem by making sellers feel completely powerless using the platform due to not having any protection against bad buyers, knowing that at any moment, someone can come along and place random orders without asking us first, and then charge for the solution." 😈😈😈 And they do it all just weeks after hitting us with a system that caused rage, confusion, and in some of the worst cases, cost people their previously successful businesses. (I'm saying this as someone not negatively impacted by the new system myself... yet). And in my opinion, the system isn't the biggest problem: it's the way they didn't involve their top senior sellers and then hit us with wall upon wall of GPT-generated corporate mumbo-jumbo, and having the guts to call it "transparency". Anyway, I digress. My point is that perhaps Fiverr should employ humans to do what humans do best – talking to other humans. You could avoid a lot of unhappy sellers doing so. 😁 Sorry for the long read.

I'm willing to bet that you're right. Option A) Fiverr treats sellers differently based on their country, because Fiverr, and because corporate greed has no end. Option B) Fiverr is looking out for their sellers in an honest and transparent way, as only GPT could. But I'm not sure how they would apply those... ehem... differences. If they did it willingly and treated people differently based on their country of residence, that would be ethically questionable, but probably legal. Like you, I'm not going to conduct any unscientific research into this, because I prefer to generalize (If I was a company, my ESG rating would be crappy!) so I tend to go with option A every time – corporate greed will prevail. And the more people you can fire and the more data you swallow, the better. Right? And when you say "less developed parts of the world" – I do wish to point out that the US has some seriously crappy privacy laws compared to the EU. Which is the reason why so many american websites block EU visitors. They just don't want to deal with things like GDPR. And I wouldn't call the US "less developed". So that would mean Fiverr probably affords EU sellers more protection than our american counterparts. Food for thought.

The success score data likely isn't considered personally identifiable information since it's essentially a set of numbers calculated by a system to establish ranking and visibility, not specific data collected about you or provided by you regarding yourself. It would be like requesting Google to disclose their proprietary algorithm because the search engine indexed your photo and personal website. The internal values used to calculate that sort of thing isn't "personal data", even if it's applied to the data sets they have on you. If all it took was a GDPR request to unveil trade secrets, I don't think companies would dare operate within the EU.

I don't think you need to be very alarmed at this. This sounds like a classic Telegram scam, only done with a document instead of a message, most likely because Fiverr has become good at picking up on those messages. If so, you should only be alarmed if you gave them any personal information or contacted them via Telegram. But just to be on the safe side, a virus scan can't hurt. If you're running Windows, just use Microsoft Defender to scan your system, and delete the file after you're done. I would also change my passwords and make sure you have 2FA activated everywhere. But like I said: I don't think the goal of this is to send you a virus, but to get you to contact them via Telegram so they can phish for personal information there.

We can't help with account-related issues like this here on the forum. You'll need to reach out to support, or if you have one, your success manager.

Technically, it might not matter much. If the reason you're not getting orders is because your gigs don't stand out, it could be better to just edit them to improve what you can. If the issue is that your offerings aren't what buyers are looking for, deleting them and creating new ones could be an option. But to avoid ending up in the same situation, make sure your new gigs are well-researched and tailored to current market demands. Don't just copy what others are doing. Remember, your visibility on Fiverr is tied to your performance compared to others (as the algorithm sees it). The only way to gain more visibility is to be better than your competition and deliver great work (and then hope that the buyers understand the new review system).

Yes, and no. It depends on your motive. Is it because you're sincerely keen on buying their services? If so, then absolutely. Collaborating with fellow sellers on Fiverr is allowed, and many of us are both sellers and active buyers on the platform. But if you're messaging them just to ask for work or tips, then the answer is no.

It's Fiverr, not Fiber. Depends on what tweaks you're making to your gig. If you're enhancing something, it could mean more business. But, if your edits are hasty and not thought out, you might just see a dip in business.

The only way to size up a seller is to have a conversation with them these days. Metrics/levels mean zilch. It takes a bit more time at the start, but it's a huge time-saver down the line. Unfortunately, Fiverr has handed the reins over to AI. Even the Fiverr staff appears to be run by GPT these days. I'm not sure if there's any hope, but as someone mentioned in another post recently: hope is all we have.

Absolutely. I've seen fewer telegram messages lately, but they still come from time to time. I have seriously strict routines for downloading files. I only open documents in the cloud, even if it's a Word file (they can also be harmful!). But if you drop your guard for a second, that's when they get you. The weakest link in the security chain is always the human.

This has nothing to do with your success. It's a myth.

It really helps if you've already laid out what counts as a revision in your custom offer or gig description. If you haven't, buyers might twist things around and claim they thought it meant something else. Always be crystal clear about what a revision entails—like, is one revision just for tweaking a tiny detail, or does it cover a complete style overhaul? I've worked with agencies that define revisions in all sorts of ways—from minor edits to completely changing course with the design. So it's really important to get that across before the order begins, so you can agree on a price that actually reflects the work involved. Details like that matter. If you didn't clarify this upfront, chances are the buyer might assume these things were included, and they might not take kindly to any surprises. If you put your foot down, prepare for negative feedback if you don't meet their expectations. But with that said, I'm not a fan of working for free. I'd politely explain to the buyer that a revision means a small tweak to the original design, not a full makeover. But like I said: you risk a negative review if you go down this route.

After a decade on Fiverr, many of them as a TRS/PRO seller, I'd say the real challenge isn't about hitting levels, it's about standing out from the crowd. When you're up against thousands of sellers all peddling the same stuff, how do you stand out? I'd say the new level system is actually an advantage for new sellers/level 0. You can rise the ranks quicker and actually see your progress, even if Fiverr's idea of "transparency" isn't very transparent. I think the new level system is worse for old-timers who've been grinding as TRS or level 2 sellers for ages, only to get a gut punch and suddenly find themselves at the bottom of the pile because of some arbitrary algo change. That would make me quit. Don't quit. Do great work when/if it comes your way, and climb the levels. But don't expect it to become any easier just because you level up.

Just as I mentioned earlier. Read the part about competition. I also strongly suggest investing in professionally designed gig thumbnails. Your current ones don't quite match up with the best and you can probably do better with the help of a designer.

Yeah, when you know the basic design rules on Fiverr, it's easy to spot, but it might not be if you're desperate for an order and new to Fiverr. So I made a separate post warning about this particular scam. Yeah, the increase is alarming but it's not sudden. We've always had this sort of thing – but they're clearly getting more and more targeted with a clear goal of gaining access to people's accounts. And that's worrysome because it means even established sellers can fall victim to it ( it happened to @vickieito ) and those accounts can easily be used to scam others. If a fellow pro seller with TRS status reaches out to you for a collaboration, your first thought isn't "scam", like it would be if their username is "siojdaoisudjoiasduj980840", has a new profile and are from certain countries.