smashradio

It's great being your own boss and all, but that also makes you accountable for every mistake you make. As a freelancer for more than ten years, I've made my share of mistakes. These mistakes have cost me money, time, and sometimes, even my sanity. Here are some tips I've learned over the years as a freelancer on Fiverr. They might help you avoid some of the mistakes on this list – or to deal with them if you make them. Mistake number 1: Delivering late without proper communication with your buyer There can be many reasons for missing a deadline. You shouldn't find yourself here in the first place, but when you inevitably do, remember to communicate with your buyer! You might think that delivering a day late isn't the end of the world. Let me tell you; it can be the end of your freelancing career if you allow this bad habit to grow. It gets worse if you don't communicate with your buyer when it happens. It will make the buyer dissatisfied with your services and cause a cascading effect of negative feedback, reviews, loss of levels, visibility drops and frustration. And don't forget: Use the resolution center to your advantage if you need more time. Manage your time well, deliver on time, and always communicate. Mistake number 2: All eggs in one basket If you keep all your eggs in one basket, you're in trouble. Having some regular, awesome buyers is great! But don't rely on them to stick around forever. Their business might change, disappear or find someone else to work with. Another reason to "spread your wings" is Fiverr itself: it's a business, and it's outside of your control. If you wake up one day to find out that Fiverr is going out of business, you lose everything. If your mom gets sick and the 20 gigs in your queue get cancelled because you had to travel, you lose everything. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket. Mistake number 3: Pricing yourself too low If you charge too little, two things will happen: you'll make less money and appear less professional than you are. This is a common mistake among newbies on Fiverr, because they think more buyers will order if they charge just five dollars. But there's a reason why the top-rated sellers on this platform usually charge more. Fiverr encourages it! I have this on good authority from my success manager at Fiverr: pricing yourself too low will make you come across as cheap (read: low quality) and make you less visible. Fiverr is a business, and if they can sell a 20 dollar gig instead of a 5 dollar gig, they will do so. Don't undersell yourself. Mistake number 4: Don't overestimate your own ability Know when to say "I might not be the best fit for this project". You're not a world champion superhuman. You're not all-knowing. Admit it to yourself and your buyers. That doesn't mean you should underestimate yourself and your abilities: it means that you should know when to admit your shortcomings. If you don't, you'll end up taking on projects that you're no expert at. Negative reviews await! Know your limits and your worth. Mistake number 5: Not vetting your buyers Vetting means making a careful and critical examination of someone or something. Just like a buyer should vet their seller before hitting "Order now", you should vet the buyer before hitting "Send offer". It's easy to get tempted to work with someone, even though your gut instinct tells you to run like Forest Gump (Great movie, by the way)! Don't work with just anyone. It might lead to terrible experiences, negative reviews, order cancellations and all manner of butt-clenching consequences. Mistake number 6: Not over-delivering Many sellers on Fiverr view all orders as just another quick buck. It's a shame. Don't do the bare minimum to fulfil an order. Go above and beyond. If you're falling into this trap, remember why you became a freelancer in the first place. Remember what's at stake if you drop the ball. When you see a seller with a Top Rated badge on Fiverr, they didn't get there by doing just enough to fulfil their orders. They did more than what was asked of them. Repeatedly. Make every order shine. Mistake number 7: Not listening closely to your buyer I've experienced this both as a buyer and seller. Few things are more irritating than a freelancer making mistakes because they didn't bother to listen and read instructions carefully. This should be a given as a seller, but sometimes it's easy to think you've understood everything while you really haven't. Never pretend to understand something you don't. Read everything twice. Then read it again, just to make sure. Delivering work or revisions they didn't ask for or not following instructions will only lead to frustrated buyers. If in doubt – ask. Now go out there. Sell. Impress. Be your own boss – if you've earned it.

I usually have a good radar for such things. I have not been scammed once on Fiverr in my eight years selling on the platform. So I think you've just been unlucky. Fiverr is a lot bigger than it was back then, you're a new seller, and probably that can have contributed to you becoming a target. Most of my working experiences on Fiverr have been great. I love working on Fiverr because it makes things so simple. It takes care of the marketing side of things, the accounting, has a complete CRM solution (Workspace) and most of my orders follow the same, simple process: A couple of messages, order gets placed, order gets delivered. There's less back and forth (usually) and less time is spent negotiating. I don't have to spend time doing pointless meetings all day, and I set my own schedule. Even so, I have seen my share of buyers wanting to take advantage of me and other sellers. But you quickly learn to deal with them and recognize them. It's rarely a "scam" per se, but you'll find the Scrooge McDucks of this world, to say the least. Some buyers will also leave you in endless revision loops, unless you stay firm and hold your ground when needed. The trick is to not let anybody push you around, while being polite and friendly (with a good dose of firmness when the situation calls for it). I think you've misunderstood how copyright works. Any intellectual work you create (write, design, draw, take a photo of or even my voice when I do voice overs) is your property. You don't have to register anything: it belongs you to because you made it. In other words, if I stole a logo that you made, i.e. used it without your permission, you have the legal grounds to stop the usage and require compensation. I'm not sure about logo designs, but for photos, it's normal to charge the full fee + 100% for the illegal use. As an example (I'm a voice over, writer, translator and journalist) is a website that "borrowed" a bit too much of my content without proper creditation or permission. I sent them an invoice along with the documentation I had collected (screenshots, source code, original article, web archive) for a total of 200% of the original freelance rate I would charge for such a project. If they hadn't paid up, I'd have taken them to court, and most likely won. So don't skip it if you ever find out that the logo is in use somewhere. Remember: you don't have to "register" anything as a trademark to own the copyright to the work: it comes automatically when you create something. Now, the laws aren't identical across borders, but in the EU and the US, the laws are pretty much similar when it comes to copyright. Here's a (translated) part of the Norwegian copyright law, know as "Lov om opphavsrett til åndsverk": "A literary or artistic work that is an expression of original and individual creative effort is protected as a work of art. The creator of the work is described as the author, and his right to the intellectual work is called copyright, see § 2. No registration or application is required for the author to obtain copyright. Copyright arises when the intellectual property is created." Sourse: https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2018-06-15-40

I suggest reading up on the forums. Make sure to only take advice from people who have veriafiable success on FIverr. That means checking out their Fiverr profile before trusting advice they give you. Unfortunately, the forum is also full of bad advice. Here's something to get you started!

Who said that gig videos aren't good for some niches? I think a gig video can improve your gig a lot for almost all categories. The exception is voice over and perhaps music, since Fiverr ruins the audio quality of the videos.

This thread might help! 🙂

That explains why it happened. Even so, if you had completed the order and it was delivered, it shouldn't have been cancelled, in my opinion. So I hope Fiverr Support will fix it for you. After all, you did the work and should be compensated for it. Proving that the files aren't corrupted should be fairly easy, if you're not working with niche formats. If it's a Photoshop file or something similar, sending it to Fiverr should prove that the files aren't corrupted. I've heard about buyers who sign up, order with Paypal, then delete their account and orders a chargeback from Paypal. That would lead to a cancellation, since Fiverr can't pay you if they don't have the money. These "buyers" will do this simply to scam sellers on the platform. Luckily, I haven't heard about many of them, but I know they are out there. I hope Fiverr will make you whole again, but I doubt they can/will. Usually, there could be other ways of dealing with this. If you made a logo, you know their company name. You have the files. You could probably do reverse image searches and look up the company name online. If you manage to identify them and they are using your work without permission, you could take legal action against them.

That means you deliver on time and are getting great feedback from your buyers! Awesome 🙂 Keep up the good work.

Usually this will happen if your stats become too low or if buyers have left negative private feedback to Fiverr about your service. I see you have some gigs that weren't delivered on time and a long response time. That might have something to do with it. If that didn't happen recently, it's probably a negative private feedback. Fiverr only wants to promote the best sellers. So keep working, deliver high quality and excellent support to your buyers, and keep making them happy. You might become eligible for gig promotion again later on.

The buyer obviously thinks you got upset. Why is this? Is it because you were rude? By reading your messages, I could get the impression that you're not a serious business person, and that you might have been upset. "yeah yeah last I can offer"....? This isn't a fleamarket. When explaining to a buyer that their budget is too low, it helps to do so in a friendly and polite manner. The buyer might simply be uneducated about standard rates and costs of doing this type of work. Even with lowballers and the Scrooge McDucks of this world, it really does help being polite. With that said: of course you shouldn't work at a 90% discount. That's ridiculous. It's ok to fire a client, but do so nicely. You were absolutely right to say no to this. When it comes to your experience with "Fiverr select" – these guys buy a lot on Fiverr. Perhaps they are used to a low rate from someone else. Buyers who shop on Fiverr tend to have lower budgets than elsewhere. So it might be true that Select-buyers come across as cheap, since they are most likely looking for a good deal. Personally, I haven't noticed this as an issue. The Select-buyers I've been working with have been great, helpful and more than willing to adapt to my rates. In the few instances where their budget haven't been acceptable, I've explained this to them in a nice and polite way. Usually something like: "Hi, *name*, Thank you for reaching out to me! I truly appreciate you considering me for this project. It does sound very interesting. Unfortunately, your budget doesn't really work for me. My usual rate for such a project would be X. Thanks again – and don't hesitate to reach out again if your budget or project scope changes down the line, or for future projects. I'm always eager to hear about new and exciting oppurtunities. All the best, *name*"

Sorry to hear about your experience. Naturally, we can only know your side of the story here on the forum. With that said: You could reach out to customer support to ask what happened. This happens from time to time, and the only ones who can do anything about it is the customer support team. If you didn't accept their cancellation request (or got one in the first place) it means the buyer cancelled via customer support. As a seller, I've never had this happen to me in my eight years here on Fiverr. If you can prove to Fiverr that the delivery was in fact not "corrupted", they might be able to reverse the request. If you got a request for cancellation and accepted it, that's on you, and this should be a learning experience for the future. In the meantime, you could always check out my guide to red flags when working on Fiverr, and hopefully it might be of help in the future. As always, I recommend vetting your buyers before working with them. You say you've been communicating day and night with this buyer. If a buyer expected that of me, I would immediately consider it a red flag of a needy buyer. I hope you don't let this single bad buyer stop you from selling on Fiverr. Greetings from another Norwegian seller, by the way. Welcome! 😄

Did the buyer actually order the second milestone? If they didn't, there's nothing to cancel.

Perhaps it's against the terms from the game developer. Not all games allow "boosting" or password sharing. Fiverr isn't fair, nor is it meant to be. Fiverr is a business. If they noticed that you violate some sort of third party terms, they take action based on that, to avoid getting in legal trouble themselves. It's as simple as that. Now, I don't know for sure if this was the reason for your restriction, but it seems like the most likely explanation. In the terms for Genshin Impact, you can find the following paragraph. This shows that Genshin Impact does not allow their users to share the login or make the account available to anyone else. So basically, you were selling a service which violated the terms of Genshin Impact. "5) Account is unique as well as important to each user. You shall neither transfer or otherwise make your Account information available to third parties, nor use other user(s)’ Account(s) at any time."

It might be the fees that Fiverr charges the buyers, in addition to the price of the gig itself.

It depends entirely on when you have a slow period. I usually have a couple of slow weeks during july, around Christmas and Easter. So I try to match it to those. But it would depend on where your buyers are in the world. In the west and Europe, mainly the summer holidays, as well as Christmas and Easter are slow periods. If you have a lot of buyers in the US, add Thanksgiving to this. If most of your buyers come from primarily muslim countries, Al-Hijra, Eid-ul-Adha, Eid-ul-Fitr, and generally around Ramadan should be slower periods of business.

It's difficult to say. The algorithm works in mysterious ways 🙂 Here's what I would change: Increase price to at least 10, but even 20 USD. Whenever I see a five-dollar-gig, I immediatly think of low-quality. How can I expect someone to take the time to make something truly great for just five dollars? That's cheaper than a cup of coffee. I don't expect excellence for that. You're also inviting bad buyers with five dollar gigs. The only buyers who will order are the ones looking to get as much work done as possible, while paying you the least amount possible. In other words: the Scrooge McDuck's of this world. Increasing your rate might also be favorable for your placement in search, as Fiverr prefer to sell gigs that cost more, in my experience. This was also confirmed to me by my Success Manager at Fiverr. Available 24/7? Do you not sleep? I prefer my designers to be well rested, so I would not be "online" 24/7. Since that is impossible anyway, it's not a selling point. True professionals know the value of rest and signing off. I would add something about your experience as a professional designer. Your background, who you are, and why what you're offering is different from everybody else. You say you're a professional. But I don't know why you're a professional. What's your background? What makes you professional? Those are questions I would like to see answers to in your gig description. I would add a professional gig video. You can hire someone on Fiverr (preferably a top rated seller who know what they're doing) to make a great looking gig video. In in, I suggest including your value proposition (why the buyer should order from you), what you can offer, and show off some examples. Gigs with video are more likely to sell and convert (if the video is good).

Ranking doesn't work like that on Fiverr. Where your gig shows up in search results is based on relevancy and your profile/gig stats (buyer satsifaction being the most important one). Fiverr works to connect the buyer with the right seller that can solve their needs. So you have to research who your clients are, what you're offering, and how you can solve their needs. Then work to optimize your gig for that audience, while making sure you deliver great quality and top-notch support to all your buyers. In other words, you might rank on page 1 for me, but someone else might not find you until page 15, because the algorithm has decided that your gig isn't really relevant for them.

From the Fiverr help section: Impressions: These are the number of times your Gig appeared in Fiverr's thumbnails (i.e., on the homepage, category/subcategory page, search, and user page). Clicks: These are the number of clicks after a user saw it once on the homepage, category/subcategory page, search, and user page. Orders: This is the total number of orders purchased from this Gig. Cancelations: This is the cancellation rate or the number of all types of canceled orders divided by the number of orders from this Gig. In the graph view, you can also see: Conversion Rates:This is the average of the total impressions divided by orders. Source: https://www.fiverr.com/support/articles/360010750318#:~:text=Impressions%3A These are the number,%2C search%2C and user page. To know if your gig is "going good", you should look at conversion rate, rather than clicks and impressions. Sure, it's nice if many people click your gig, but if they don't buy from you, that's of no use. Regarding your gig, I would say your gig video could use some work. It's not that professional. Hire a professional animator or video editor to make a great looking gig video that also explains what your service is about and why people should buy it.

If people click, but don't buy from you, that will give you a low conversion rate. If a large portion of the "clickers" buy, then that be a higher conversion rate. I'm not sure if you understood correctly.

Access to buyer requests improves as you level up, so you won't get access to many. But keep at it, and make sure to check back often for new ones. Just getting a few orders can start the ball rolling. If you have a satisfactory number of impressions and clicks, the problem is with your ability to convert those into sales. Again, this is about trust and selling your services. You can check out a guide I wrote about increasing conversions here:

You shouldn't use the Questions section for this type of question. That's there for things that need a solution, while this is more of a conversation. Just a tip 🙂 May started out slow. But then again, I was more offline as well, since I needed a break from things. It's been picking up a bit too much as of late, so I've had to activate out-of-office mode twice in the past few weeks. I just had to stop the flow of orders, and I still have too much on my plate. Ups and downs, indeed. That's why it's so important to have tight control over your finances as a freelancer. Keep a rainy-day-fund that can support you for at least two months, but preferably for a whole year of no business. My earnings are not your business, though. 😄

The ranking system is complicated. You can learn more about it here:

You're in a highly competitive niche. That makes it more difficult to get started, obviously. My first impressions of your gigs based on their thumbnails, is good. Your profile descriptions aren't bad at all, either. So it's difficult to say why you haven't had any sales. Perhaps you could work more on sending out responses to buyer requests, to get a few orders under your belt? I wrote a post about responding effectively on them here: Like I said, you're in a competitive niche. Also, you're using Canva, which is a tool meant to be used by people who are not designers. Except in your Canva gig, you might want to remove any mention of it. Since "anyone" can use Canva, I think it comes across as a bit unprofessional. Another thing I instantly noticed, is that there's no real picture of you. When I'm looking for a freelancer, I'm looking for a real person. Someone I can work directly with, communicate with. Not a logo. So I'd recommend hiring a professional photographer and get yourself a great profile picture of yourself. Show that you're a real human behind the profile. It creates trust, and trust is everything, especially when you're a new seller. Best of luck!

I've had the buyer insights for a good while now. It's great! I don't see how this information can in any way violate privacy laws as they stand at the moment. For privacy laws to apply, the information has to be connected to an identifiable individual. It also has to contain specific information, as I understand it. This is simply averages given that can easily be calculated by their public reviews. The number of orders they had on the platform can be considered a community stat (not so different from showing how many followers you have on Twitter). The average order amount is simply an average. It doesn't tell you what any single order amounted to. I'm pretty sure the Fiverr legal team had this in mind when setting it up. There are other freelancer platforms out there that reveal similar things and have done so for a while. Fiverr might say "Yes, this is necesssary to improve buyer/seller communication, transparancy and trust on the platform.

This is most likely done automatically. You could ask Fiverr support if they have any idea why this happened. These things are often handled automatically, so it may be easy to fix! 🙂

It would help to know which specific gig you're talking about. That way, we might be able to tell you why it has been moved based on which category it's in now.