smashradio

Maybe some day 😄 But not day. Probably not tomorrow. A lot of sellers have little to no formal training. That doesn't mean you're not good at what you do. I think the issue is 18-year-old guys in certain countries who have been told that they can just make an account on Fiverr and they will get rich. There are so many "Get rich quick" guides for Fiverr out there, mostly tailored towards people in developing countries where opportunities are few and far between. They likely went to a school where they didn't have access to computers (or some Windows XP laptop shared by the entire class, at best). They come from countries where being a fully educated doctor will net you a few hundred per month. For most of their lives, they had the entire family to support them. They had programmes helping them from the international community. They are used to getting things handed to them. So they go on Fiverr, write "Am expart marketing engineer consulttint forr u pro pro pro pro", add a thumbnail they stole from some other seller who did the same before them, and sit back, waiting for the orders to come in. It's a vicious circle perpetuated by the "gurus" who promise riches online by doing as little as possible. That's your "liars". Not a sincere seller who says to herself, "Hey, I'm actually rather good at writing. Maybe I'll try putting those skills to good use!". The liar, on the other hand, has no skills. At least, no relevant skills.

Nice summary, @vickieito! I agree with most of the points on the list as being factors for the TRS badge. One thing I'd like to add. I belive consistent improvement on level two over time (increasing satisfaction rate, higher earnings and so on) could be a factor. That upward arrow might be something they look for when identifying sellers they want to look closer at. But it makes sense to see who's improving even while on level two. The ones that stay "flat" might have a harder time getting shortlisted. It's just a feeling I have. No idea if it's true. So your improvement by raising prices, earning more and over-delivering consistently, should not stagnate, just because you're "stuck" on level two. The moral is to never stop improving, no matter how stuck you feel.

I see. "Your opinion is based on the idea that the article is complex and the video is simple." Exactly. And that's my point. Every project is different. That's why I don't think we can conclude that video editing should cost more than writing or vice versa. It depends on the video and it depends on the article. I know editing can be time-consuming. I've done a lot of it over the years, just never sold that service since I've done it out of necessity at my own projects, and not because I love doing it. I think we could have a lower limit on articles as well. But naturally, some projects can generally take longer. I do understand your point, though, and right now I'm just being a nitpicking, rambling muttonhead. But like I said: I was curious. 😂

How so? If I spend four days researching, writing, re-writing, and proofing a high-quality long-form article on a difficult subject, how is that less time and effort, compared to a video edited with some transitions from stock photo that took an hour to collect? I'm not saying all projects is like this, and it's just an example. Each project is different, so I'm just curious as to how you reached that conclusion?

You can. I charge less than many other sellers in my niche, yet I am (and I don't mean to brag) one of the more professional sellers in the categories I sell in. But it can affect perceptions. It can make you look less professional. So that's something to keep in mind when you price your services. That's a fair point. I'm a good example of this. I work in the Norwegian market, but since I live in Spain, I can maintain a lower price point. This is true in all markets; you can outsource to low-cost-countries and save money. Then again, you have to consider things like language barriers, cultural differences that can affect the sellers understanding of your audience and so on. This in turn, can affect turnaround-times due to revisions or spending time explaining concepts to the seller. Time is money, so if you factor in the two added hours you spent explaining something to a seller that would be basic common sense in your own country, you've probably paid a similar price in terms of worth. My point being: Yes, you can get high quality at low cost. But it might take more time and effort to get it, identify which sellers are the right ones for you, and work around issues that might arise during the project.

Even so, you should never sell anything for five bucks. Not even if it's your first day. But charging 200 might be a bit much. Depends on the service. I just ordered a video for 60 from a seller with just one review. But they had a nice portfolio, great gig description, and clearly know what they are doing. So you can get nice orders, even if you're a new seller. But you need to take great care of your gig first and have the expertise to back it up already. You can create a gig video and showcase content from your portfolio in that video. 🙂 Exactly. The cheapskates of this world are usually rude and not very fun to work with. So if they don't like my prices, I'm happy to send them on their merry way. Tactical! I like it!

OR... Did you not do good?

What can I say. I'm a philanthropist. 🤑

Aaaw, that means a lot! 🤩 I forgive you in my awesomenessesesesss. 😄

Hahaha. Yes, indeed. 😆 Good lord. I needed a good laugh.

Have you been thinking about raising your gig price, but you’re afraid of losing buyers? Here are some good reasons to up your game with a price increase. Earn more from fewer clients If your Fiverr dashboard is filled with small orders for five bucks, you’re probably doing something wrong. Charging five dollars for anything is madness if you’re a professional. It doesn’t matter what you do. Five bucks aren’t even worth the time it takes to thank the buyer for their order. Besides, having tons of orders means you never have time to give your buyers proper attention. It might sound counterintuitive, but you should strive to get fewer orders. That way, you can deliver your best work every time and charge more for it! One order netting you 50 bucks for an hour of work is better than 5 dollars for 30 minutes. Remember: communicating with and understanding each order, chatting with buyers and responding to their requests is also work. Less drama! My favorite reason to increase your rates. Are you struggling with bad buyers who seem to have lost their manners? Demanding ignoramuses who didn’t read your gig description? Then this is for you: High-paying buyers have a tendency to be easier to work with! Offer five-dollar gigs, and you’ll get the worst buyers Fiverr has to offer. If you’ve ever read Donald Duck, you know who Scrooge McDuck is. And you wouldn’t want to work with him, right?! Buyers who know what they want and have the budget to back it up will usually never purchase the cheapest gigs. They are looking for a great blend of quality and value for money. And since they aren’t paying “pennies” for some unprofessional gig, they are more likely to take their time, research your gig, and have a chat with you before ordering. Adulting is expensive A lot of sellers on Fiverr constantly worry about money. After all, we need food on the table. Raising your prices makes it easier to pay the bills each month (if you’re good at what you do, of course). Less stress benefits your health and clients since nothing can bring you out of the zone like a big pile of unpaid bills. You should also save money as a buffer. Ideally, it would be best to have savings that could last you for a year or more. If you only earn what you need right now, you’re doing it wrong.

A PDF is not an image. You should know this, since you're marketing yourself as "Best Photo Editor and Graphics Designer". A PDF usually comes in the A4 document size, however, other sizes can be used. It depends on the project. I'm not sure about the size limitations for uploaded PDFs.

I know that used to be an issue, but I haven't had that issue for a few years.

Simply report the message as spam and move on. It's against the terms on Fiverr. Reporting a message as spam constitutes a response in the Fiverr system, meaning your response rate/time won't suffer.

Happy to be of help! To your question: I've actually had this happen to me as well. Sometimes, a project will be more complicated, requiring additional work due to unique requirements. I prefer to solve that using my gig FAQ. The chance of your buyer reading this before reaching out is very low. But you can put limitations on your gig offering by adding something like "Please contact me before making an order! All projects are unique and different." You could also limit the amount of work that goes into each page with a bulletpoint list of what's included, like: Up to 10 images on each page Up to 500 words on each page And so on. Then explain further in your FAQ that all projects are different, meaning your pricing will vary depending on the requirements of the buyer. When the buyer asks you "why 500? It's 300 on your gig page", you can say "Yes, but...." and show them your FAQ/refer to your gig description. Hope that helps! 🙂

Goals are great! I've been setting some more or less realistic goals. I have a habit of being brutally honest with myself about my goals. So here it goes. Apply for Fiverr Pro Working on it. Not going to apply until I have everything planned and nailed down. Have a six-figure income (including projects outside of Fiverr) Nearly there. Launch at least one new gig Done Improve my skills in customer relations Looking at course options Completely refurbish the home office Ideas in motion! Build my new, dedicated home theater Just started! Get more physical activity Unlikely Eat healthier Also unlikely Get a new tailor. My last one is getting old and is nearly blind at this point. Working on it. Do more work in the garden Already started. Cut down on my gallon-a-day Coca Cola Zero consumption Already in progress. I switched to Pepsi.

There are no shortcuts to success. Fiverr rotates gigs based on their performance and relevance in each case. I recommend reading this guide:

This is your gig video audio as it plays on Fiverr (I downloaded it directly from your gig). That means our audio is at the same level as the first mp3 files in the 90s, after it has gone through Fiverr's meatgrinder of a compression algorithm. The sample rate is pulled all the way down to 22.050 kHz. It's no wonder the audio quality sounds like garbage. It doesn't matter what you do. It will always sound like garbage with this level of compression. The person who had this idea should get fired.

I've had the same issue as a voice over artist. I've tried bringing it up with support, my success manager, the support again, and even sent this to the UX team at Fiverr. So far, my requests have been met with a "The relevant team is aware of the issue" for the past three years. At this point, I've concluded that Fiverr doesn't care. And there's little we can do about it. At one point, they even claimed to not hear the difference, after two audio professionals including myself described the difference as "CD vs. dirty audio cassette". We even documented this by recording the same clip as it sounds locally vs. what it sounds when playing back from the website. They still wouldn't listen. It's the reason why I haven't been able to use a gig video for several years. I've decided to try again, but given what @mcortelazzo describes here, I have little faith that Fiverr has bothered to improve this. At the end of the day, it's all about the money: traffic and storage costs money. Fiverr did this to save money, because there was a time when gig videos had a much higher quality. And they don't care if they ruin the audio of demos and the portfolio – even when it is directly detrimental to the talent pool who needs high-quality audio the most.

You need to read this part as if you were recording a manly commercial for a pickup truck specifically designed for lumberjacks: "Despite my muscles and my great American jawline and that look on my face that says, “don’t speak to me you crumb,” I’m actually a man of the people."

This sentence perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with my generation. Guys. You have to do this. I need this.

Just to add to this: I think the main factor (outside of the regular, known ones, like your stats, reviews, and buyer satisfaction rate) is how much value you bring to Fiverr. Selling five dollar gigs probably won't make you stand out as a monetary resource that Fiverr can tap. And that's what we are: a resource for Fiverr to earn profit from. That's not negative, in my view, and I want Fiverr to find the best ways to push more value out of us. It helps me improve as a seller and freelancer (and it makes Fiverr earn more, making me, as a shareholder, happy). If you offer great quality at the right price point, I'm convinced it will increase your chances.

I'm hurt that I'm not mentioned as one of the popular TRS you know! (Or maybe I'm not popular enough. Maybe I should be nicer to people.) 😂 Jokes aside, here's my two cents on the claims: Forum participation: I'm going against the flock on this one. As I understand it, it's not a must. However, one of the things they look at is community leadership. I assume that involves being active in the community, helping other sellers, or doing something that benefits the community as a whole. It could be having Youtube channel about Fiverr, being active on the forum, or something else, or nothing at all. If you're successful enough and meet the requirements, I don't think they care about that bit. Gig price: I've seen TRS sellers with 5 dollar gigs. So that's not true. But I also heard from my SM that having higher priced gigs can increase your chances, since overall earnings can go up. Fiverr also prefers higher priced gigs these days, since it obviously earns Fiverr more money to sell a 300 dollar gig compared to a 30 dollar gig. Professionalism in communication: Yes, yes and yes. If you're friendly, polite and professional at all times, this will increase your chances of a promotion (and happy buyers, who will in turn, increase your chances of a promotion). Zero tolerance for grammatical mistakes: I've seen TRS sellers with a few mistakes here and there. I don't think it's a zero tolerance. But overall gig quality is obviously a huge factor in determining if someone gets promoted. Good grammar is part of that, and is always important. Gig image: Same as above. Not same service twice: I was also told this by someone at Fiverr. Even so, as long as the gigs are different enough, you should be ok. I have multiple voice over gigs, but they are tailored to different types of projects.

Here's the thing: Most of these liars and pretenders will market themselves as "experts" or "specialists". That's the first lie. They will also promise to do something they can't. I wonder: when you came back to Fiverr after a couple of years – with a plan this time around –did you know, at least to yourself, that you had the skills required to perform the services you would sell? You don't have to be an expert to sell on Fiverr. But you have to be an expert to market yourself as one. That's the difference. I have no formal training as a voice over actor (I never went to school for it!). In fact, I'm self taught. I had work lots of prior work experience, so I knew I could do it well. I'm also a self taught translator, and I've worked as a journalist for years without ever going to school for it. So you don't really need any formal education or prior experience to be good at something. I think the core of the issue is self-deceit. The pretenders fool themselves, just as much as they try to fool the buyers. You went overboard with your efforts. You refuse to deliver subpar work. Maybe you shouldn't have accepted those orders until you've learned the trade, but then again, I've accepted voice over jobs as Santa Claus, even though I usually don't offer character voices, because I'm not very good at them, to be honest. All though I do a killer Goofy laugh! I informed the buyer that character voices isn't something I excel at, pointed out that it's in my gig FAQ, and offered a cancellation. But I also said that I'd be happy to try, and if they liked it, they could keep it. If not, we could cancel the order. The client ended up loving it, and I'm now their yearly Santa Claus. I'm still no good at it, but they liked it, so I guess I'm in the clear. My point: I was honest about my limitations and didn't promise something I couldn't keep. I'll add to this, that as a translator, my clients are often from other countries. They don't know if the translation is any good. Far too often, they will come to me with a document they bought from some cheap translator on Fiverr, and ask me to just "confirm" if it's good. They usually end up ordering from me when I highlight all the mistakes/clearly Google translated content. When I do, they will go "Oh, but he said he was native!" or "She promised me a manual translation!". So yes - you might be able to get away with certain things/niches, but frankly, I don't care if you can "get away with it". It's just like those people with fake university degrees. Even if you can get away with it, it's unethical. The other day, I checked out a couple of web designer gigs on Fiverr (helping out forum members). One of them had the typical "I'm expart web developer with much long experience". He offered to "customize wix templates". That has nothing to do with "web development". Also, the guy was probably 16 years of age. Now that's a pretender. A liar. The other one had something akin to "I'm a web design intern at a large agency here in *Country*. As a side project, I create websites for my clients using WordPress.". He was honest. An intern. Cool! Still learning, but he wouldn't get that spot at his agency if he was completely useless.