donnovan86

100% I mean, the majority united with this review/level system and realistically nothing changed. But I agree, trying to find alternatives and expanding is the right way to go here.

Realistically, we are never in control unless we have our own platform and we decide everything. As I said countless times, as sellers we have very limited power. Even all that outrage about the new level system and review system didn't change anything. People are still getting unwarranted 4 star reviews, many sellers had an unjust demotion (at least based on the data we know/see)... So yeah, I am definitely trying to expand to other avenues as well, because sticking just with Fiverr or any other single freelance platform for that matter, is not a wise idea. It has become way too volatile.

Yeah. We've added a lot of valuable tools! The last 3 additions are pretty much things you can do yourself, reaching out to previous customers, coupons, pretty much all the newer features are bad and I don't see any use for them. So.. price alignment for what, useless features? I totally agree, it's contempt. Are they preparing a new set of must-have features for Seller Plus? Most likely not.

I've been here for 10+ years at this point and these private reviews were only introduced in the past couple of years. And they were introduced because a lot of sellers were taking advantage of buyers, there were buyers on the forum that were constantly complaining sellers were forcing them to leave a very positive review to get their work. Some even left a review and never got their money back. So you can see why Fiverr introduced these reviews. I am not sure where you got the idea that I think private reviews are fair. I don't think they should exist. But due to circumstances beyond our control as a seller, they exist and they affect us. My problem is not that they exist, it's the fact that they have a lot of weight in the algorithm. If they would considered every autocomplete order with an automatic good private review, that's fine. But a lot of people don't leave private reviews. Generally only unhappy people do, and since these private reviews have a lot of weight, that can damage your ranking and you have no idea why. Especially when there are people that only leave private reviews after marking the order as complete.

Yeah, because we know each other very well, LOL. I just shared my opinion, as you did with yours. It's not like in the grand scheme of things our opinions matter anyway, Fiverr is still going to make changes that are "good for business". Sometimes that's pro-seller, most of the time not the case. Just because I tend to have a more objective look at things, that doesn't mean that I agree with the latest changes. I just know that as a single seller, my power is very limited and if someone that's a Pro/TRS seller with over $1 million in sales showed Fiverr the issues we face, why this success system doesn't work.. yet they still didn't make changes to it, I don't think they will listen to sellers like me or you. They already know the community hates this system, but we already have a month and a half since its introduction with no changes (aside from customer support-canceled orders not being taken into account). But other than that, no visibile changes, we are still compared with others and even if we have great reviews private or not, we can still have a low success score because a single seller is compared with an agency masking themselves as a single seller. Try to surpass companies with 20 employees that deliver orders every 10 minutes.... I explained some things to you, objectively, if you don't agree with them, that's fine. I don't care if people agree with me or not on the forum, everyone has their own opinions and ideas anyway. I am not. Shared bad things about the update as well. Clearly you're not reading so I won't bother replying any further. Goodbye as well. 🙂 Hopefully if they do make changes to this, they will be more pro-seller rather than pro-buyer. But I somehow doubt that. All the best and good luck to you!

That's because almost everyone that's an active seller on Fiverr with a few hundred reviews or so has 5 stars and is a level 2. So they just found a way to lower review scores across the board. And I am sure they won't be stopping here. If anything, I can only imagine it will get much tougher for us sellers. As I said, everyone said what they wanted about the new systems, Fiverr knows, but there's no indicator that the success score will go away, at least not for a while. I wouldn't spend so much money and time on something just to throw it away because some sellers that aren't even under contract with me anyway are unhappy. So realistically, I don't see them making any major changes. As for success scores being low for some people, we don't have the full story. We don't know 100% of the metrics behind the Success Score. We can assume, obviously, but without having access to all the data, you can't realistically know if the success score is correct or not. Objectively, that's the case. There are some things I dislike, including sellers being compared with competitors, so if you have 2 sales and the competitor sales are 10x that, then it impacts your own score. So I can see why people have a low success score, because competitors have more sales, who knows what private reviews they got, etc. There's just a lot of hidden info, data that's not accessible. So without seeing all the data and seeing how the score is calculated with complete transparency.. it's difficult to say the score is wrong or not, objectively at least.

I mean it depends. Based on my experience, your chances are higher if you have a Recommended gig. If it shows that within your Promoted Gigs dashboard for a gig, then I do agree, you have a very high chance of getting more clicks. But even then, it always depends on your gigs and how appealing they are. Because people might click on them, however they can easily just step away if the gig is not something they like. Lots of buyers don't know they click on a promoted gig. In fact, I had a lot of sellers asking for work, and it showed "promoted", so I basically paid for their spam.

I think it's the opposite. Younger people are more versed with technology when compared to older ones. I think those over 40, 45 are particularly vulnerable here. But I can also see very young people, under 20, getting scammed. Regardless, when you create an account on a platform which handles your money, you need to be very careful when it comes to what you click on, where those links come from, etc.

Well if you keep it on Auto, the overall expense will be much higher.

Yep. And I can say for a fact this happened to me. I don't know what client did it, if it was a mistake or not, but last year I had only 5 star reviews for months, yet Fiverr's success manager that I had at the time said my buyer satisfaction rate was low. And she specifically said that private review scores and public reviews scores can differ wildly, you can easily have 5 stars publicly and a bad private review, as you said. And the worst thing is that you never know who did that, why they did it. It's private feedback, but I don't receive any feedback or reasons why the person was unhappy. I will say this, I had people randomly leaving public reviews too, because they were busy or it was late. So at the end of the day, I just focus on what I can control. I do think private reviews will not go away. It's a great way for Fiverr to level the playing field and it makes ranking gigs easier for them. Because if every buyer leaves a 5 star review, try to rank gigs only with that data. I don't blame that they are using any possible data to rank gigs, because there are millions of them. What I don't like is the lack of transparency when something is wrong. If there is something wrong, they should give us reasons why an order went wrong. Anonymously, not sharing the order number or anything. But I doubt we will see that.. ever, or for a very long time.

If there's a way to bypass a system, cheaters will always find it. Clearly there are people here on Fiverr with multiple accounts that receive orders on all of them. They have different images (usually girls), the same image format, the same username format, and they even shared reviews between each account. I saw that myself and I only searched within my niche, so obviously there must be in other niches. As I said, if people want to cheat, they will find ways to do it. After all, every week you have people asking on the forum if it's ok to use an autorefresher.... It might be a smaller platform then. As they scale, they tend to use AI more and more. I don't blame them, if AI can take over repetitive tasks and save money, why wouldn't you use it?

That's an indicator that private metrics are not very good for the gig. It might also indicate that few people leave private reviews, and if the only private review you have is a bad one, for example, that can have a "strong negative impact" as you said. It definitely happens to me for a gig where I only had 2 reviews/orders in the past 5 months. And they both had 5 star reviews publicly, however a month ago I had negative impact shown, since last week it's strong negative impact. And keep in mind the last order was finalized and reviewed 2 months ago.

I have a gig with no negative reviews since its inception, success score of 9, when the new level system was implemented it had a negative impact for client satisfaction. It changed (without any orders since the last order was 2 months ago, and the one before than around 4-5 months ago) to strong negative impact. But there were no reviews or even private reviews, because the review window was long gone when this changed. Anyway.. I choose to just deliver the best work I can and not think about stuff that's not under my control. Because at this point.. it's not like it will make a difference.

It can be. Last year I barely had any reviews under 5 stars. Yet my success manager said I have a low buyer satisfaction rate, which is the current success score basically. So people were happy, came back for orders, but some rated me poorly with private reviews. Some people will leave a random rating. Others leave a bad rating accidentally, and I am sure a lot of buyers have no idea these private reviews matter. In fact, lots of them ignore these, and when most people ignore them but a buyer that has a vendetta and wants to leave only bad reviews will leave such a bad private review, that will damage your success score quite a lot.

I replied to a person saying they need to be compensated because they work for Fiverr. Which makes them an employee. They specifically said they work FOR Fiverr. We all work ON Fiverr, on a platform as independent contractors. Things might change from country to country when it comes to the legal status. Check previous pages if you want to. But clearly everyone has their own opinion about this, some even say they are forced by Fiverr to work a certain number of hours a day, which they are not. I swear.. a lot of people see Fiverr as their employer, when it's just a platform for freelancers. As I said, to each his own. To be fair, Uwork also tracks your performance for the last 2 years. So if anything, they aligned to that. The problem here are private reviews, and how they are a massive factor for the success score. Not knowing how and why you are rated a certain way privately is indeed a problem. However, that has been a problem for 2 years+ now, since private reviews were introduced. Yet not everyone was mad about it. Now that these scores are affecting their level, all of a sudden they became an issue. I don't really use Uwork that much, but I know that Fiverr did borrow ideas from their systems, just like Uwork did from Fiverr with the gig system. I think they also have private reviews, if I am not mistaken. Yeah. And they make new ones. They use fake identities. I agree, there could be different ways to handle. But it's easier to use AI in order to track metrics and take action based on that. And also cheaper, when compared to paying people that manually track and do those things. I am not a huge fan of these changes, especially with success scores and such, but I also realize that even the community itself doesn't have massive strength when it comes to decisions. Even people that made over $1 million on Fiverr like Levi were unable to change the way things work. Fiverr already knows what the community dislikes, they know the success score is not well-received by sellers. But it wasn't meant to anyway. The focus was on lowering review scores across the board, and it worked. So yeah, in the bigger spectrum the focus is on AI-based/supported services, I am sick and tired of these ads, social posts, webinars that are spewing over AI benefits and stuff. There's a lot of stuff outside of my control, I complained to a Fiverr manager about the success score and review system even before it was implemented, and I was not alone. But clearly Fiverr has different plans so instead of complaining, I just focus on my work and stuff that I can control. Speaking of work, I have some gigs to deliver, so I'll be off 🙂 Good luck!

Yep, as I said in another message. It differs from country to country. Some countries will establish certain rules when it comes to freelancing or ride sharing, or any independent activity. But that's the exception, not the norm worldwide. You are still not employed by Fiverr, which was the point of the entire discussion 🙂 Yeah, because not a lot of people leave private reviews. At least in my experience, only those that are unhappy do. And since Fiverr sees private reviews as more important than those public ones, if you just have a bad private review or 1 bad private review and one good one, it's easy to see why they show your gig has a "Strong negative impact". I have a gig which in the past 3 years only had 5 star reviews. Yet the buyer satisfaction showed negative impact, and a few days ago it changed to "Strong negative impact". It only had 2 orders in the past 5 months, each with a 5 star review, and the last order was 2 months ago. Before the review system and level system was active. How can things change from negative to strong negative without any order or review.. not to mention all reviews were very positive? Clearly either someone left me a bad private review by mistake without knowing, and as you can see, there are a lot of private metrics that we just don't have access to. That's why the success score feels random without access to that data. Realistically, as long as they guarantee people their private reviews will never be shared, we will never have access to that data. And as others said, how can you improve without having the full picture of what happened? We can blame sellers who scammed buyers and manipulated the system to their own benefit. That's why private reviews were implemented, the new leveling system, etc. And I am sure Fiverr will continue to add these anti-seller measures. Which is unfortunate because it affects legit sellers. I had more reviews under 5 stars in the first 3 months of this year than all of last year combined...

Well if you don't stop those new orders from coming, then constant extensions, potentially late deliveries can be an issue. Not to mention higher prices will put some people off. The gig will not appear in search until the number of orders is under that limit. I didn't feel any major difference, last time I used that was 2 years ago, but I did use the system for years and it didn't affect me. Whether things changed or not, I don't know. But it's definitely better than the alternative of dealing with bad reviews, too much work and pressure. You should assess the situation and see what works for you.

Change the number of orders in queue you can accept. If your gig reaches that number, it automatically stops and makes your life easier. I used that multiple times.

Well there are plenty of sellers begging/forcing buyers to leave a 5 star rating before they send their work. There are lots of sellers that consciously manipulate the system, curate reviews by canceling, etc. You can find lots of posts from buyers upset that their sellers delivered very poor work or even scammed them and got their 5 star review and then did not send anything. Obviously that reached Fiverr and they started implementing all kinds of things. What's funny to me is that before this level and review system change, we had pretty much the same metrics, but more of them were hidden. Now we can see waht metrics affect our success score, so there's more info than we ever had, and people are outraged. The problem here is not the info we get, it's the success score being affected by private ratings, and the success score affecting what level you are. As you said, if a buyer randomly leaves a private review at 3 AM (which happened to me by the way, a public 1 star review because the buyer was tired, and the review text was positive), then that will affect you for months.

It's hard to assume why the location inconsistencies appear. But from what some people in the forum said, it might be due to VPN usage. Because one second you login from X country and the next second you are in another country. Obviously that shows Fiverr you are cheating things in some way, and that might be the case. If that's why these location inconsistencies appear, I can see why they flag accounts. However if there's another reason, then it's hard to know exactly why.

Similarly to Fiverr's legal side I assume. I am sure Fiverr doesn't want any kind of major liability. Yep. Everyone needs to have an expert look into their own stuff. It was nice chatting with you 🙂 Going offline.

I can imagine. That's why I've been working with an expert since day 1, I heard various horror stories. I know these tax laws are convoluted and hard to tackle. So I 100% agree with you with the tax things you said. I just wanted to let you know that this entire conversation started from sellers with 0 sales asking for compensation from Fiverr because they were not getting orders due to the new level system. That's why I was telling here they are not hired by Fiverr. That was all. Creating an account on a platform doesn't immediately mean they hired you and you receive benefits and compensation 🙂 Hopefully other people see our conversation and they are encouraged to talk with a tax expert, so they get their stuff in order.

Well it's not about local taxes and laws. So you agree people with 0 sales on Fiverr should be compensated because they just created an account? Because that's where it all started, some sellers with 0 sales were asking for compensation because they are working FOR Fiverr. Which obviously is not the case. Sure, there are legal requirements and implications based on the country. But Fiverr didn't hire those sellers and they are asking for money as compensation... that's very funny to me.

Still, Fiverr didn't hire you. You are not employed by Fiverr. You are just an independent contractor, and that doesn't change, regardless of where you live. The only people employed by Fiverr are those they hired, like customer support professionals, their dev team, their success managers, etc. We are just contractors using their platform. So they don't pay/handle our taxes, we don't get any benefits a hired person would normally get. I doubt any country can force this onto Fiverr, because that's the nature of the platform. It's just like Uber or Bolt, or any other similar apps/services. You're not working for those platforms, they are not seen as your employer. In fact, you can drive for both or even more than 2 apps at once. Same with freelancing. These apps allow you to make money, but you are liable for any taxes. I agree with you, everyone should talk with an accountant/expert. However, it all started with the assumption that people think they are hired by Fiverr and should receive compensation because they are not getting any orders. So yeah, while there will always be certain local laws that differ, what remains the same is that Fiverr is a platform where you sell services, not your employer if you are a freelancer. I find that funny, because some sellers here expected compensation for being on the platform with 0 sales. But everyone should go to a local accountant to get things sorted and avoid any gray areas, as you said, if you are making money on the platform. Because every country has its own, convoluted way of dealing with freelancers.

I can only assume you had a great private review that boosted your stats.