donnovan86

It's not a job though, a job has paid benefits, a schedule, etc. I don't know if customer support is using AI or if they copy paste stuff, they might in order to make things easier. But realistically, what did you expect as a reply to that message... I think maybe you mentioned promoted gigs in the message, that's why they said what they said. Regardless, even if you meet with a success manager, they will try to showcase benefits you get from staying, yet if you don't feel ok working on the platform anymore... I wouldn't close the account, at worst it can be an extra source of income. I do agree that many of the newer changes were not seller-friendly, but obviously that's because a lot of people curate their reviews and they cancel stuff just to avoid bad reviews, that's why reviews for canceled orders are a thing. There are tons of people with thousands of cancellations on the platform that still have a high success score because at the time, they had mutual cancellations and those were not penalized by Fiverr. If you do end up deciding to leave Fiverr completely, good luck. It's sad to see people go, and you're not alone either.

Well it seems the person was looking for a specific dialect, if I understand correctly. There's nothing you can do because ratings are final. And the buyer has an option to leave a private review too, which will further damage your account and ranking. But as I said, that's final and nothing that you can do regarding this order. However, make sure to ask people about dialects and things like that in the future. Because you never know what people might want, so what I would do in your case is to improve the order questionnaire and also create a list with gig-related things that you want to ask your buyer if possible.

I think you should know by now that businesses don't care about your time or mine. They care about money. That's all. They do listen and make small changes. But removing the entire success score? Nah, that's not going to happen, at least not for a while, and not because sellers want. It will most likely be due to them finding a better method that fits with their long term view for the company. I am sure you don't have doubts. But also you can't know what private reviews people left, or what private data was offered for your orders. So regardless of what data you have, it's not complete. Not everyone leaves a private review. So if you have 5 orders, each with 5 star public reviews, but there is only one private review and that private review is negative, then you will have a very low success score. Because private reviews matter way way more, and if you only have one, and that's bad.. then it will have a very very veerry bad impact on your success score. Well, you can aim it, but not sure if it will hit the target 🙂 There was a massive outrage when the success score came out, and a month prior to that, with the new review system. Guess what? Fiverr representatives said they saw the sentiment, understood what people were complaining about, and according to them, some things like extensions or cancellations from customer support are not damaging the success score anymore. However, we are 2+ months away from that launch now, and nothing has changed. Ah, they changed value for money to value of delivery. Other than that.. the success score continues to be exactly the way they wanted. Realistically, people got used to it. Buyers understood how the review system works, there are less random reviews being left, etc. And I don't see that much outrage, aside from a topic like yours here and there when someone ends up with a lower success score. But I think most sellers that have been here for a while realized that Fiverr is a for-profit business, and their focus is on attracting buyers, improving the buyer experience.. Plus, if I remember correctly, the company is losing buyers, and there are a LOT more sellers than even a few years ago. So yeah, there's no shortage of talent, if you or me go, there will be others to take our spot in search. Good luck, maybe someone from Fiverr's higher ups sees this and they have a change of heart. But as I said, I think it's very clear the direction Fiverr is heading towards, and it's not a pro-seller one. It's aimed at getting more buyers, making people spend more, and also removing meksells and bad sellers along the way. And also, heavy on AI too.

I know it was here for a long time. However, we couldn't lose our level due to agencies, now we can if we just have 1-2 orders a week and they have 100. Actively using that comparison to lower scores because others cheat the system and are an agency or they outsource like crazy.. that's not ok and certainly not fair. Well, I think the most successful writer, a Pro writer says they work alone, and clearly if you check their socials they promote their AI business and their company with dozens of writers. Yet on their profile, I WRITE, I HELP, I do everything. And that's not the only person, I just know the situation because they are in my niche. I checked a lot of other sellers from other niches and it's clear they are outsourcing or they are an agency.

You're not the one investing the money though. They are, and they won't remove it just because some of the community outrages. I've been here for 10+ years and they never fully reverted any system they added. They made some slight changes, but usually they will stick with the stuff they do. Terrible decision or not, it's their business, and sellers clearly don't have a say. Sellers that made over $1 million are leaving the platform due to these changes. Will that matter to Fiverr? Probably not. The thing with transparency is that if all data is shared, some people will use it properly, others will manipulate the system. It's human nature, some people will try to game the system to their benefit. Plus, as long as they promise buyers that private data they share is not sent to sellers, I don't see us ever accessing all the feedback and data Fiverr has on us and our gigs. The problem for me is that a lot of people rate stuff randomly to begin with, others are very vindinctive, so many times, you can have a very very positive set of public reviews, yet private reviews are terrible. That's because a lot of people don't leave private reviews. And those that do.. let's say there's a higher chance for an unhappy person to leave a bad private review, whereas happy customers won't always be as adamant to leave yet another review. I had only very positive, great reviews, but my clicks and impressions were extremely low, and my success manager told me that my private reviews were not that great, which obviously you can't see unless you have access to that data. But hey, they have to sell their Seller Plus somehow right? I am not bothering with all this stuff that's outside of my control. I don't think they will change this system for quite some time. And if they do, it won't be seller positive either. I don't see the reason to leave this platform though, if you can still make some money on it. The problem is for those people that rely solely on Fiverr to make a living. It has become way wayyyy too hard to rely on income that one month can be great, the next month can be terrible.So diversifying the income is what we should all focus on. It's better to see Fiverr as yet another source of income, and not the only one. At least that's how I think. And it's also why I am not so adamant when it comes to outraging or forcing Fiverr to make changes. I've been here long enough to know that sellers have limited power when it comes to making changes. They listen to what we have to say, but realistically, shareholders and those that run the company have the power, not us. So if they want to push AI, they will. If they want people to not all have 5 stars and be level 2, they will. As an user, you either abide or.. disband 🙂 So yeah, from my perspective, I don't see this success system going anywhere. At least we have an idea of how Fiverr sees and scores our gigs. At least we know why we are in the back of search and we don't receive any inquiries. Pre success score, you had no idea what's happening, unless you went to the success manager. Now you can see the score, at least.

Well you don't have access to all the data Fiverr has. I am not a fan of the success score either. But there's a lot of hidden data here that sellers don't have access to. Fiverr does. So yeah, while we don't agree to it, we don't really have access to all the data in order to say that the system itself is flawed. Maybe it works as intended, who knows. The idea is that yes, it does seem that Fiverr wants people with bad performance to not receive as many orders, and that's why they have a new review system, success score and reviews for canceled orders. If anything, I can only imagine they will go beyond that and find new ways to penalize sellers. The reality is that they have less buyers on the platform when compared to years ago, active buyers at least. And the number of sellers is increasing, with many of them offering low quality services because a random guru online told them they can make easy money. There are tons of sellers scamming people, not delivering the work they promised, manipulating buyers to leave a good review in order to receive their work. I see both sides, Fiverr and sellers, and obviously there's no way for them to make us happy. If they remove cancellation penalties, we get back to the pre 2015 era when people were canceling orders left and right with mutual cancellations and there were no penalties. People will always manipulate the system to their advantage, because that's what they do. Everyone wants to have the perfect 5 stars and stand out. What is Fiverr going to do about this? If they implement a new system, it stays for a very long time. I doubt they will make significant changes or that the Success Score will go away in any capacity. Unless they change it with something else. They clearly invested a lot of resources and time on this, and they think it will help them push away bad sellers. The main issue I have with this system is that it compares you to other people in your category. If you have a lot of agencies that spew orders every hour, how can you compete with them? And your success score goes down because you are not an agency. If the other metrics are in your semi-control (you do the work, you are in control of what you deliver, but the buyer has the final evaluation, which is normal for an online marketplace), this comparison with other sellers is not fair. Because a lot of people don't disclose they have a team. There are Pro sellers that have massive teams and use AI, but the account owner says they work alone. Unethical, but they are not forced to anyway. And they can easily lie and say they do the work themselves, there's no way for Fiverr to verify that.

Precisely why I said I don't think this will ever be implemented. It's not something that would benefit Fiverr, and it would lead to customer support time being wasted on trivial stuff, so I 100% agree with you. Of course, there would be a very simple way of dealing with that, penalizing sellers that bother Fiverr's CS with stuff not related to their gig or orders. But as I said, I don't see this ever becoming a real feature.

Well, how many times would you realistically use it every month? 1, maybe 2 times? I think it would be a nice idea to add, if it's in that upper tier. Because to be honest with you, that tier seems very lackluster to me. Withdrawing money earlier and RTO.. those are the main, most appealing things. A success manager, maybe.. for some. But who knows. Realistically, I don't see this feature ever coming to Fiverr. But if they do add it, Seller Plus Premium is where it would make sense. At least that's how I feel.

That's exactly what I said. They need way more people, and where would they get the extra income? Sure, it makes sense for a site that has 20 inquries a day. But on Fiverr there are people that contact customer support because they have no idea how to use a browser, so.. it wouldn't make any sense. It would be nice, but I don't see Fiverr investing so much for something with no return. If it would be a $40 Seller Plus Premium perk, then that would actually be a good idea.

Live chat would be very very prone to abuse. A lot of people would just turn to live chat at the sign of any problem, no matter how small. That would waste customer support time and they wouldn't be able to manage some important issues because X doesn't know how to use a browser, for example. The way the system works now is ok. It would also defeat the purpose of paying for faster customer support via Fiverr Seller Plus, so I doubt they would ever do this. They would need a lot more people for customer support and honestly, I don't see the benefit for Fiverr here, they would just be spending more money. Which I doubt they will.

Aside from what @navid_zafar said.. this is not a job. There are no off hours. If you chose to work as a freelancer.. that's on you, and you are accepting that you're working with clients from all over the world. And come on, you need to reply within 24 hours, it's not like you have to reply in a minute. I always kept a 1-hour response rate, and I don't reply right away. I don't wake up in the middle of the night to reply to anything. but I do reply rather quickly in general. Quick tip: install the mobile app and enter the app a few times a day. It's very simple and you can reply to anyone in no time. You don't have to open your computer.

Sure Yoav, I was busy the last few days and I didn't have time to come up with a list. My opinion was that we had a lot of AI related webinars, which is fine for some part of the community, but the reality is that a lot of freelancers here don't use AI in their work. I have a few ideas that I thought of the last few days, hopefully at least some of them will become a webinar, eventually. Understanding the success score: how can sellers increase their success score when they are stuck at the same score for more than a month. Explaining the Seller Plus features to newer audiences, what's the difference between packages, are there any upcoming features coming? (On a personal note, I found the last few additions to the Premium/Standard package rather disappointing and not useful, but maybe that's just me). Why are sellers compared with other sellers on the marketplace when it comes to their success score? I work alone, but there are a LOT of sellers that either outsource or use AI to complete their work and they barely do anything. They deliver 20 orders a day, I can't compete with that. And they won't apply for an agency. Obviously that's quite unfair for people that work alone and don't end up delivering a lot of orders every day. It's more of a question/suggestion rather than a webinar idea, the webinar can be about the public things that can have a negative impact on the success score, I am sure you can't talk about private ratings and other private stuff. How often should people create a new gig? Is it good or bad for sellers to create a new gig, based on the new changes made to the platform? How to deal with scammers/people that end up asking for one thing, but end up changing things after delivery, trying to manipulate the system to get more work. These are a few ideas I had, I will quote you again if I have more ideas, if that's ok. Thanks for considering these ideas, and I encourage any community members to add their own ideas here too.

I think you miss the point. No one is allowed to have more than ONE ACCOUNT. Once you made multiple accounts, you are breaking the rules and are subject to getting a ban. Why do people never read the rules, I have no idea.

Not to keep your hope down or anything, but they rarely revert any of these bans. Unless it was their fault. As far as I know, there is a department that will check on these things, but if the decision is final.. Hopefully they restore your account 🙂

What I don't get is how they canceled only some of the orders. When an account is disabled, all orders are canceled. So that's confusing, unless they did cancel all the orders and I did not understand correctly. There's nothing you can do, really. Fiverr's team tends to go over these things at least one more time, especially if your account was disabled by AI, which does happen. However, it if wasn't a mistake, they will say the decision is final. Aside from going to customer support, there's honestly not a lot you can do. And that's the thing, you can't create a business relying on a third party platform. Promote your business and generate sales that way, use sites like Fiverr as an extra revenue source. Because especially these days, Fiverr has become very inconsistent sales-wise.

What does the email say? Usually it says the reason why this happened. Normally, if the account is disabled, it will go through a dedicated team that checks it again. If it was a mistake, they restore it. But if they said in the email that the decision is final.. that might be final. At this point all you can do is wait for them to send a message.

I am sure Fiverr was comparing accounts with each other before Agencies became a thing. I know for a fact a lot of the writing competitors that I have are agencies/outsourcers and they've always ranked very high in search because they can output 5x my work and deliver more orders quicker. You can't compete with them. There's also at least one Pro seller that I know uses AI and also hired people, but they say they write everything themselves. So there's a lot of stuff like this on Fiverr, but in the end it doesn't matter if it makes the platform $$ and doesn't break the rules. It does break morality rules but who cares about that really, if it's financially feasible, right?

True, the only problem is that you can't jump to $100 right away, you have to do it gradually. But it's definitely something to consider, especially with AI being very prevalent on the writing market. I mean, as @emmakisaid, there are Pro sellers using AI for creating the content and they just change it a bit. So me.. writing only manually, I should charge more than them.

True, I was adamant and even talked with my success manager that we should at least know our buyer satisfaction rate score, and I guess either my suggestion was heard or someone from the higher ups in the company had the same idea. There is a bit more transparency because at least we know what score each gig has. But that's where it all stops, unfortunately.

I will. I think pricing is the main reason why I am not TRS anyway. I will try to accumulate more reviews, ensure this one goes away and I will most likely double my price. It will be a bold move but I think you are right in the long run.

I mean, people were complaining about losing their levels just because they canceled a few orders or were late due to sickness for example. Now that this system is not as harsh, people still complain. You can't please anyone, clearly. The problem with this system is that it doesn't tell you if you're improving or if your score is going down. Plus, there are so many private, hidden metrics that you can't really know when and how or if the success score changes. I get it why some metrics are left in the dark, but it's definitely a disadvantage for sellers. If you don't know what was wrong and why people were not happy, how can you improve...

Melanie, just increase your delivery times. OOO can be extremely bad sometimes.

Thank you Mark, I appreciate that. And you are right. I will wait a little bit to accumulate more positive reviews and get past this one, and most likely I will increase prices. I already ask for requirements, but people can easily say X in there and skip it, then force you to ask them obviously. I should have seen this coming with the order in question but I went onward and tried to help anyway. The thing is, that client said it's all good and only some slight changes might be needed. Then, the requirements changed to focus solely on their products and not include other stuff, then add a lot of studies from Pubmed and other stuff like that. I agree, RTO is good when you want to have more control, but at lower prices, it certainly pushes people away. I will still need to figure out pricing on my side, but increasing prices with RTO might be an answer. And this happened right when I wanted to cancel or at least stick with the regular Seller Plus.. Well.

Not sure what kind of message I send if I suddenly increase my prices after a bad review. But I guess I should, I just relied on Fiverr too much over the years and due to AI in particular, the last year and a half was very rough for me. I still managed to push through.. yet as I said earlier, reviews like these drain the motivation out of you..

It's a new, fresh review. Fiverr has a preference when it comes to highlighting bad reviews, so I am sure it will be the first Relevant review tomorrow or in a few days. I just feel sad because I had a good number of weeks with new clients, then sales tanked and I was just getting back on the groove. And then this.. Well, I guess it sums up the Fiverr experience, things can go sideways at any moment. I guess I need to try some extra income sources, because the only reason why I kept this low is because I had consistency. But with AI, things are way more inconsistent. So even the lower price doesn't help anymore. Seeing such a review is the deathblow when it comes to motivation, at least for me. Knowing this will be highlighted for months, and that it comes an elegant private review to match.. that really kills all the motivation I have.