donnovan86

Aside from learning from others, nothing. You won't receive orders, nor will you find clients.

Ah, yes, the beauty of AI replies. When you don't have any insight but want those forum badges.... Leaving that aside, asking for a sample can be helpful, but the problem here is that a lot of so called writers ask genuine writers for samples and guess what, they steal those samples and share them as their own. I had that happen to me so many times, to the point where I can easily figure them out, since those people just ask for samples without saying what they want, what they need or anything similar. I am fine with people asking for samples, but I am not ok with thieves that steal your samples or even worse, publish them. I learned that the hard way when I saw my samples published by people who "seemingly" wanted to see how I write. Yet they were thieves trying to steal my content and make a profit from it. So yeah, it's a double-edged sword.

Most people don't, unfortunately. The worst situation is when you have a lower price. As you raise your prices, people become more focused on reading and performing their due dilligence, which means they read your description, check packages, etc. As I said earlier, once a buyer sees the order requirements, the order is already being placed.. we should have a pop up where people agree they read the gig description and agree to the terms stated by the seller. Other than that honestly, there's nothing we can do other than stuff our gig description or gig packages with info, and as you said, that's limited by a certain word count.

Well those won't go away, these public review changes will be on top of the existing stuff.

That's the reason why they are changing things. They are making it a bit harder for people to obtain 5 star reviews. That will potentially make it easier for buyers, so there is a focus here on streamlining the buyer experience. However a lot of sellers are disappointed that it's all at their expense and in some cases they might have an unfair number of stars, even if the buyer really liked how they worked.

Ideally, I would recommend to have all the necessary info in the gig description. By the time they get to the gig requirements, that means they already placed the order, so it's a mess. I try to share all the info either in the gig description, gig package info, anywhere I can to ensure people read. But even then, you will have situations when buyers just order expecting you to be an expert in anything, as you said in your own message, you don't offer screaming but they expect that. So, you can only do so much.

If there's no activity within 5 minutes, Fiverr automatically shows you as offline. Also, people, stop trying to find ways to cheat the system. Fiverr won't offer any benefit if you are online.

Well people that were banned.. they aren't really here to share their experience. The 90 days have not passed yet, so I guess you have to wait at least for a while.

Aside from what @uk1000 already told you, it's a good idea to visit https://www.fiverr.com/levels as well. Here you can see how many gigs you can publish based on the seller level, along with other perks you get as you level up.

Either there won't be any reply, or we are left with the obvious thing... from what I see in search results, there's no priority or anything showing that sellers with a video receive any type of boost. I assume that if people see an account featuring a profile video, they click on it. But it doesn't seem you will receive any kind of boost. I never had a video on my profile and it doesn't seem that Fiverr has dismissed my profile or pushed others that do have a video. So, I hope they won't enforce people to have a video, that's not my cup of tea and I would rather not be forced to have one. For the time being, I see Kesha's post as an encouragement and not anything mandatory. And I do hope it stays like that, because not everyone wants to have a profile video, not everyone is comfortable in front of a camera or wants to have a profile video.

The way you worded this makes it seem like a jedi trick. Regardless, there's no manual autoresponse. There's just an automated response system, but you still have to reply manually, since the automatic reply doesn't count as an interaction with your customer.

Pretty sure these stats are covered for 60 days. So even if there are issues now, you can recover and regain the level. That hasn't changed, as far as I know.

Ah, the joys of freelancing :))))

Well I've been neglecting my health quite a bit due to work, to the point where I was working 12-15 hours a day most of the time. And obviously it ended up taking its toll. Honestly I don't know about Frank, he's a bit older than me, and he might be doing different things. I started doing more cardio, faster paced walking, some strength training here and there. Nothing too fancy, but it definitely makes a difference for me.

Checking in too 🙂 Pretty bad year for me, especially health-wise. The only benefit of having less sales this year was that I had the opportunity to focus more on my health, work out more like Frank did, but also improve my diet. So for me, even if Fiverr business was down, it was the perfect time to focus on health. Preparing some daring plans for next year, and also sticking with the forum as always.

Just because people don't understand the new system yet and leave stars randomly, that doesn't mean it's harder to acquire 5 star reviews though. Buyers that already know the platform very well aren't inclined to lower their review scores. I think the problem stems from new buyers, then again it happened in the past too. Not sure if you saw when I said it, but I have a 1 star review from a buyer, yet the text was positive and he was happy. But because it was late night for him, he just wanted to close the order and not receive any nagging emails from Fiverr. And I had to suffer due to his lack of attention. And it's not a half a star or a star dropped from the score, it was the most negative score you can give to a seller, all because he was not careful and obviously I couldn't report it due to a potential feedback manipulation warning. Even if it was an obvious mistake. As it was said at the beginning of this thread, they are trying to find a way to make it fair for everyone. Not sure how that will work or how will it look. Just like you, I am concerned it will affect my account as well. We'll see, I am sure there are lots of calculations happening in the background. For now, we don't have any idea how the final version of this review system will look. As I said, in my opinion, it's not as bad as some people say, it's not armageddon for crying out loud. It's just some buyers showing how much they (don't) care about how they rate their seller. But as I said, it happened to me in the past multiple times and I know from browsing my category that I am not alone. That's why I try to vet my clients first these days, and pick only those that actually seem good to work with. I respect your opinion but as always, we are on a different side of the coin. I agree that the new system needs improvements, emoji aren't really the way to go for a professional platform in my opinion. But removing a category and leaving just 2 is a step forward. 4.5, 5 and 4 are better than 4.3 and 4.7. Many times, people were just removing a star from the 3 categories just to make a point, they don't leave perfect scores.. Plus as I said, just like the canceled order reviews, this will go onward regardless, with some slight changes based on our feedback. But the core idea will be the same, more or less. If anything, I see this as a normal reaction that people have to change, because we are all creatures of comfort. I would prefer the previous rating system because I am used to it, but I will get used to this one, just like I switched to the star model from the thumbs up/down system. For now, this is not the final version, I am sure they wil adjust it, but at least for me, it's not as bad as others make it seem. It would be easier to increase your average since you're getting only good and excellent reviews. Plus, people can still see your seniority on the platform and again, bad reviews will stick like a sore thumb regardless. I don't know what the final version of their math will be, but they said they will try to ensure everything is fair. They switched from thumbs up/down to a star rating and no one really complained that much, even if it was a massive change. Now they remove one of the 3 criteria and it's the end of the world 🙂 I can only assume that .7 reviews will become .0 reviews and .3 reviews will become .5 reviews. For example, if you had 4.7, it would be a 5.0 review, a 3.3 review would be a 3.5 star review. That makes the most sense to me, and it would also be fair towards sellers too. Other than that, fixed number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 star reviews would remain the same. Honestly, that would solve the conversion and still be ok for sellers too. Again, my opinion, but I can't think of a better one when it comes to converting old reviews to the new system. Since the problem are those .3 and .7 reviews that can mess up the conversion. Round them up🙂

Well you can imagine people won't download a random file from the internet, those that are security savvy anyway 🙂 But from what I see, it seems the seller was offering something they shouldn't.. Is the seller still on the platform or did Fiverr remove them?

Well those bad reviews also come with a bad private review. So.. the overall performance drops very quickly, regardless of how many thousands of reviews you might have. You have to keep that in mind. Granted, the review average will take a while to change, but people can easily sort based on the number of stars, latest reviews and see if you are receiving very bad reviews in recent months or during the past year. At least that's what a dilligent buyer will do. Those that just buy when they are in a rush or don't really care about the seller/their work/their performance will always end up leaving a random review. That's my experience anyway. Obviously some will have a lower average when compared to others, that's to be expected. It depends on how many orders you had on the platform, when you joined, also the type of work you do. Some niches are more complex, others are simpler. But then again, people will compare you with the average score of people within your niche. And in the case of a person with 100 great reviews and 1 bad review, even if the average is lower, you clearly see it's due to a single review, one that might be from a nutso 🙂 Again, every buyer should do their due dilligence.

Well I bought some stuff here and there and the first thing I look for is the star rating. Also, then I narrow down with samples and prices. But whomever tells you they don't give 2 giggles about stars, they are lying. Obviously it's the first thing that grabs your attention, along with the gig thumbnail. I am pretty sure I was the first one who said it in this thread, clearly they want to differentiate sellers. Because again, there's decision paralysis and many buyers find it hard to figure out what seller is ideal for them. It takes time to go through dozens of sellers with 5 stars. I voiced my concerns at the beginning of this thread, I don't think saying anything more about this system will make a difference. Fiverr will implement it, maybe they change it a little bit, but as I said, they implemented the reviews for canceled orders without major changes, and I think that will be the case here. The bar is already lowered to 4.2 stars when it comes to losing levels so.. they already covered that front. At this point, we can expect even more random reviews from people that liked our work, yet they rate it 3 stars. Not sure if you saw above, but I had a 1 star review from someone that liked my work, it was late on their side and just wanted to close the order to go to sleep. Needless to say, that mistake from my buyer haunts me to this date, since the review is there, a 1 star review with a positive comment... I think we can expect even more of these. Although I will say, the system itself seems more intuitive, I don't see how people leave these random reviews. It even shows the final number of stars at the end before you publish the review. So I think buyers that leave these bad reviews with the new system either don't care, they randomly choose stars, or that's exactly the review they want to leave.

What I don't understand is what you bought via Fiverr. Pretty sure website subscriptions are not sold here, and if they are sold cheaper than they are legally, then you might have someone breaching the terms of service for that website. If that's what you bought.. of course.

Private reviews dictate where you are in search, so if you have bad private reviews, it doesn't matter what public reviews you might have. And even then, a very positive 3 or 4 star review shows the buyer was either very picky or chose those stars by mistake. I have a 1 star review that says good job or something like that, it's still there to this day. Will that make a negative impact on the buyer even if it's a bad review star-wise? I doubt it. Good buyers will always read reviews and see for themselves what issues are there, if any.

Also, staying online does nothing for impressions. Plus, don't focus on impressions, clicks matter. That means people actually clicked on your gig and saw it. Impressions just show people saw your gig in search results and never clicked on it so.. how does that matter? :))

Unfortunately they won't. This is the new system going forward. They will refine it and that's why they ask for feedback. But just like reviews for cancelations, they will not remove this. So, we have to share our feedback and adapt. It's the harsh truth. And yes, pretty sure they want to avoid decision paralysis for buyers. A lot of buyers are confused who to choose because everyone has 5 stars. The new system also speeds up the review process for buyers, while also allowing those with time to check certain boxes about what they liked in the order.

Maybe they are just doing a quick check. Who knows. They do say it might take up to a day for funds to appear. It's instantaneous with PayPal, Payoneer might be different. Just wait 24h and then talk to support.

Well you shouldn't ask people about reviews, you will get banned if you're not careful. I think you're making too much of a fuss. It's a positive review and most likely it has a positive private review. So it doesn't have any negative impact on your gig..