donnovan86

I quit using it too. I tried it twice and it was not for me. It seemed to work for a bit and then nothing. Also, after the 4 students contacted me for homework and I turned them down, I did not get one message the next day, which is unusual for me. I guess since I did not convert those 4 messages the algorithm did not like me. ⚡ Hmm, that’s quite unfair for the sellers, if it’s true. What is 20 competitors decide to send a message and they don’t want to purchase, that means the algorithm is against me? I hope that’s not the case.

Pretty sure it’s due to the change they made with those category tags being shown on your gig… In Articles and Blog posts… I barely get any new clients for my main gig, which is general. I have way more inquiries for the About Us gig I have, which doesn’t have tags yet.

You do realize there are 3-5 times more sellers than early 2020, right? There’s no shortage of sellers.

It’s all about the buyer experience here. There are millions of sellers here. There’s no guarantee, you just have to learn, adapt to the rules and experiment to see what works. It’s the truth… no matter how harsh it might be.

Don’t keep all eggs in a single basket. Diversify. And of course every buyer sees different stuff. That’s because they need different things. I am a writer, in my case someone wants an article about traveling, another person wants an article about cooking. They can use filters to narrow down categories, where the writer lives, the amount of money they want to spend and so on. Obviously some buyers will have way different results when compared to others. That’s what Fiverr 3.0 is all about. Catering to the buyer requirements and narrowing down what they really need. As Frank said, it’s all about being specific. A lot of buyers will just use filters to narrow down the stuff they want, and if your gigs are not properly updated and adjusted to suit your target audience, then you will lose potential clients.

Because you have the same IP

That might be an issue. I’ve been on Fiverr for 7 years, so close to your tenure. I always say… don’t rely on a single source of online income. It can crash and burn very fast. Fiverr tracks the last 60 days, so they still include your time off, that might be what’s keeping you out of the loop. I had health issues in late October/Early November, I was removed from search for 2 months until mid-January, so it does take a while for things to get back on track.

He said in the beginning that it’s his own set of findings. No one aside from Fiverr actually knows the algorithm, how it works and so on…

I am able to promote a gig that has 5 reviews. All of them are received within the last few weeks, since it’s a new gig.

Speaking of that… This week I received a message I can promote even gigs without 20 reviews or so. I assume they are tracking the seller performance and they allow even gigs with a couple of reviews to be promoted? Or maybe they just rolled things out for everyone? Hard to say.

I’ve got a few 10,000 words for $10 type requests. My Marketing gig got a lot of impressions and Clicks from being promoted but no messages and no orders. It’s surprising considering that gig specifically encourages messaging me to discuss their needs. Given the cost per click of that I have decided to stop promoting it and will have to consider how to change it or whether it is worth doing. WOW… Just WOW. These people… The sad thing is that you have sellers falling for these “offers” and they work day and night just to receive that first, crucial review.

Same here. The first orders were great, but since then I barely got any leads, and most of them are for academic assignments or stuff outside of the TOS…

I’ve only gotten 2 messages since yesterday. One asking for an assignment (why?) and another asking for barcodes (again, why?). A few days ago, I was only receiving relevant messages but I don’t know what happened in the last few days. Thank you for bringing this up! I went ahead and had a look at my gig and seems like I hadn’t selected anything for the Gig Metadata (which I assume is new). I didn’t even know that this was added. I don’t even have that feature right now. Hopefully, they roll it out to everyone soon cause I could really use it right about now. It’s not something new. I know I completed my metadata a while ago. But I purposefully left it to general, because I do write on a variety of topics. So I don’t believe choosing a niche would help me for my general writing gig. For others, maybe.

I could definitely see that being a thing since that would make more sense to focus on than relying on a single metric for conversion. On that note, the last 3 - 4 days have been pretty weird for me. I’m getting almost no new messages or orders from new clients and the messages I do get don’t seem to be related to my gig at all which hasn’t happened for the last month or so at least. Weirdly enough, I’m getting more clicks on my gig than usual. Hmm, I am pretty sure that category update is to blame for this. I am dealing with the same issue. Same with the clicks. I can only assume our gigs are shown to more people, but they are less relevant.

I am aware you have mentioned this is based on your personal observations, but do you really think a tiny spark can get things going again? Also if you can explain a little the ‘‘tiny spark’’? Thanks I am not Frank, but I assume the tiny spark can be anything from an influx of new orders to positive reviews.

They added an update yesterday to the writing section, especially articles and blog posts. Since yesterday, I barely received any inquiries. So you’re not alone. I believe there’s something happening, and it might get better soon.

That’s interesting to see, I’ve already written that I’m convinced that Fiverr 3.0 wants people to specialize somewhere above. It probably matters little to and for Fiverr if some people will make fewer sales because of it - as long as there are more than enough sellers in the respective category to absorb all potential orders. One of Frank’s important points was “make the buyer happy”, and I’m pretty sure it makes buyers (especially the more sophisticated, demanding, up-market, … ones) very happy to buy from sellers they think are specialised on their topic, or ideally from sellers that are indeed specialised on their topic. Had an order today for proofreading - I have one proofreading gig to cover all. He then asked to cancel it because he found someone who specializes in proofreading Website Copy… He sent the link to me and the person has a variety of “specialties” as well as a catch all proofreading gig. All have almost identical descriptions bar the one specialty keyword. Explained this to him and of course he was happy to stay with me then but the point stuck with me that I may be missing out because I don’t have proofreading gigs to specialize in every individual thing. Same could be said of translation, Marketing, SEO… I will market your dog toy business, I will market your cat toy business, I will market your pet toy business. This type of rubbish really annoys me and is completely unnecessary in most cases. Sure, specialization is a thing and some people do some things really well, but this idea of having 6 specializations is just a joke. The questions is now, do I rant about it continually or do I jump on board? That’s what I said. For writers, translators, proofreaders, you can’t have dozens upon dozens of specializations. It messes things up for us. Right now I am just offering general content, I didn’t specialize in anything, I just want to test it out and see how it goes.

That’s interesting to see, I’ve already written that I’m convinced that Fiverr 3.0 wants people to specialize somewhere above. It probably matters little to and for Fiverr if some people will make fewer sales because of it - as long as there are more than enough sellers in the respective category to absorb all potential orders. One of Frank’s important points was “make the buyer happy”, and I’m pretty sure it makes buyers (especially the more sophisticated, demanding, up-market, … ones) very happy to buy from sellers they think are specialised on their topic, or ideally from sellers that are indeed specialised on their topic. There will be sellers who’ll copy what they see the top sellers choose as categories, and there will be sellers who’ll cover anything else that can be chosen. If there are topics that aren’t very popular among most sellers, there might be a chance there, as long as there is demand. Lucky those who’d choose unpopular topics out of their own volition and not just because they think their chances will be better there against the established/busy sellers. A bit simplified, if everyone wants to cover English, Music and Sports, and you cover Maths, Physics, and Chemistry (all the more if you really have a knack for it), the force may be with you. True, but I am specialized in writing… in the case of writing there are hundreds of different topics… I can’t have a gig for everyone. I can see how specializing in certain types of logos or videos makes sense. But for writing, you literally have dozens upon dozens of topics. Well, we learn and adapt 🙂

I understand that. But I already have gigs that cover specific niches, why not allow a general one too? Well, guess I need to create more niche-specific gigs I guess.

11063×764 115 KBAnnnd, yet another thing that might mess up rankings and access to the right gigs. I see it’s only for Articles and Blog posts, but they are showing tags/writing genres. Is it just me, or people will think a writer can only cover those topics and that’s it? This was already a filter, not sure adding it will make things better. It will just lead to less sales for most people, if everyone thinks like me and they believe those are the only topics covered by the writer. Not sure if/when this will appear for other categories.

Just like Frank said above, don’t take anything you see here for granted. These are all our personal observations. What works for me might not work for you and the other way around.

I don’t know if relevant but I’ve been getting lower impressions and clicks but MORE orders from new customers and the messages I do receive from potential buyers are mostly relevant to my gigs more so than before. The same thing is happening to me as well. They are targeting sellers based on their keywords and performance. I noticed every time I deliver multiple orders, I receive new inquiries/orders. If I am away and don’t really deliver any order during the day, then I barely receive any message or order. So performance does matter, just like reviews and other factors.

As Frank said in his initial post, there’s no more ranking. You’re up or down in search based on your performance. I do have around 15-20 of those inactive orders, and they don’t matter. What you need to realize is that things changed. It’s not 2014 anymore, Fiverr studies everything, from reviews to response time, cancellations, secret reviews, all of these matter. Plus, you are in a VERY VERY VERY competitive niche, with hundreds of thousands of people. Fiverr tries to be fair with everyone, and that means they will allow others to show your skills. The same thing happens for me in the writing section. There are people with way less reviews or experience that are on the first page, while I am on page 9 for example.

Thank you for clearing things up Frank. I don’t really buy here on Fiverr, so I was confused why some people ask for a revision without needing anything revised. This explains a lot to me.

I agree with the things Frank said. There are people, like me for example, that work mostly on Fiverr. I am here around 12-15 hours a day, so obviously it can be hard to get traction against people that are doing this full time. That being said, you will eventually receive exposure and orders, it all comes down to being resilient. Switching to Fiverr full time now, during the pandemic, can be hard since the number of users is doubled, tripled or even quadroupled in some categories. Yet it can still work as a side business. But you can’t expect growth and exposure similar to what Fiverr veterans have. I do wish you all the best with your side business here.