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miiila

Seller Plus Member
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Everything posted by miiila

  1. ... How about something more 2023, the "feedback subscription", one-click-buyable for 3, 6, 9, 12, 24 months, or 5 years (with increasing discount), wherein, for a small fee, 5GPT checks a buyer's previously left feedbacks, and continues the pattern, with an artificially creative, customised, always at least slightly different, feedback text. Who knows, at least for many business buyers, 'time is money' isn't just a bonmot.
  2. On Fiverr: That customers I send a custom offer can accept it (as it used to be), while I'm in unavailable mode. Unavailable mode is too all or nothing. I'm sure there are many sellers who generally need or want to turn on unavailable, but still want customers to be able to accept custom offers that they sent to them. Maybe solvable through a "Yes, I really want my customer to be able to accept this custom offer that I'm going to send them now." check box. Else: world peace. A peaceful, healthy, and happy New Year to everyone!
  3. That. Hard to find something that's more subjective, vague, and non-descriptive of a Gig's quality, really. (Reminds me of the "Are you sure you want to press this button (leave x stars)? If you press this button, the thing you wanted to do by pressing this button will actually happen." Depending on my client, when translating such button texts, I try to infuse some humour there instead of letting it sound as if the person about to press the button might be out of their mind. As from my experience, yes, I wanted to press that button in 99.99% of cases. However, for Fiverr, I can't quite decide if this would be a bad thing, making people think, hm, if they ask me if I really want to leave 5 stars, maybe I shouldn't, after all?" just so, or a good thing, so that people who thought 1 star was the best rating, or pressed 4 accidentally on their tiny phone screen, get a moment to reconsider or correct their choice.) And that. If pro, then pro, please. Glad to read that the also rather un-pro "would recommend to a friend" is gone, though! Without a doubt, there have been lots of people over the years who clicked low stars for that, because none of their friends would ever need such a service, or they didn't have any friends anyway. I wonder if a completely different system, more buyerside-focused, might be more useful for buyers. Just one example, when a seller has buyers who keep buying, since years, but don't leave feedback at all, that might be more useful to know for them than seeing a dozen different buyers left a 5-star feedback for another seller but never returned and then went to a different seller for the same service (this specific thing only works for services that people typically don't just need only once in their life, obviously; generally, maybe it might also be worth a few thoughts if different niches or verticals might also call for different evaluation points. I also think that if Fiverr ask buyers for their important criteria, it might rather be things like quality of the delivery, reliability, professionalism in dealing with revision requests, flexibility, taking initiative, etc., than "value for money". I might be mistaken, though, maybe Fiverr asked buyers, and "value for money" came out top. Anything is possible, especially in the current economy.
  4. I didn't actually get the invite, maybe I shouldn't have dropped that highly suspicious envelope without postal stamp into the next river after all, but some irresistible force made me check the forum, and there it was, the much anticipated Mooch post. I'm still there, somewhere, not sure why, maybe my coffee addiction, life is still weird, I hardly have the time and or energy to even lurk, but peek in from time to time, for a dose of known names and friendly faces and the reassuring (or was it dreadful) confirmation that nothing really ever changes, umm... Long live the King and Espresso Bars... over and out (with reverently bowed head, slowly, backwards).
  5. @Noam.Arik Thanks for the update! Admittedly, I didn't read all 19 pages of this, as most posts are just a more cluttersome kind of pressing the heart button, so I may have missed something of substance, however, like some, I don't really see any difference, and, what's more, the one thing that would really be useful - (regular/former) customers being able to accept a *custom offer* you sent them on desktop, like it used to be, doesn't work, and requires you to deactivate unavailable mode, wait until the customer was online and could accept your custom offer (timezones...), and then reactivate it again. When we activate unavailable mode, it's often just to not get new messages (or orders) from *new* people, while we're "mostly busy" but will happily send custom offers to former/regular customers, and it's bothersome that they can't accept those (it does still seem to work via the app, or so I've been told before by a customer, but most of my regular customers, business customers, seem to only use desktop). I forget that I need to turn off unavailable mode before sending a custom offer all the time, then the customer needs to message me to tell me they can't accept the offer for some reason, I need to explain, turn unavailable off, wait until they accept the offer (in the meantime, what I wanted to avoid with unavailable mode, happens, like other sellers contacting me with spam messages, my Response Rate dropping, because I can't respond to a spam message and the person gets kicked before I can respond, etc.), ... For years, customers could accept custom offers while we were in unavailable mode, I have no idea why it got changed – if it was so that slow people can't "out of the blue" accept a custom offer one sent three months ago and didn't put an expiry date on them, maybe some additional programming, a tick box "Yes, I do want this customer to be able to accept this custom offer that I'm about to send them, although I'm currently in unavailable mode." or something like that could help. Thanks for reading and maybe forwarding/considering this issue!
  6. miiila

    Fiverr PRO 2.0

    Our definitions aren't the same, it seems. I take the "top rated" a tad more literally, as it's not named "top selling". While the number of sales surely has and should have its part, those two terms aren't congruent to me, so a TRS with just a few hundred, or even a hundred vs thousands of feedbacks, "that don't surprise me much" (wasn't that a song...). I take the top rated more as an indication of quality rather than quantity of feedbacks. While "Pro", to me, = professional, nothing to do with number of sales, and a seller/gig with very few feedbacks or even none, and a seller of any level, can be professional. In Fiverr's former definition, it meant "did apply for and get PRO status" (as defined by them), and now, they seem to have changed their definition or criteria, perhaps because they wanted "more pros", as some people suggested, perhaps in reaction to what people here on the forum sometimes wrote about PRO gigs they saw, perhaps because they wanted to give sellers that fit their definitions of "pro" but don't apply, that status. In short, if it was named "Top Selling Seller", I'd agree with your take, but as it's named "Top Rated Seller", not quite.
  7. From my experience with a "very late" order that the seller never delivered nor reacted, the "very late" status starts from just marginally later than the "late" status, more like 2 or 3 days after going "late", not 14 days, and there is no automatic cancellation, only the automatic 1 star feedback. At least to me, it sounded like the order would simply have continued to exist, had I not finally cancelled it to get refunded (I probably had ordered from an abandoned account, seller never delivered nor reacted to messages). And the cancellation triggered the automatic 1* feedback, not the late delivery. Notable is that I couldn't have done anything against that 1* as a customer, even if I had wanted. 1* feedback and text are left by Fiverr system itself, hence you sometimes see 1* feedbacks with the exact same text "by" different buyers. Fiverr sent an automated message and told me that my order is "very late", and of the one-way cancellation option, once got into "very late" status, but also recommended contacting the seller to ask about it, by the way. To keep in mind is that after the "very late" status, cancellation is a one-way street for the buyer, I didn't need the seller accept the cancellation - which makes sense, since the seller had been completely unresponsive, probably abandoned their account. Which I guess is the main reasoning behind the one-way cancellation option, comparable to the 3-day auto-completion for cases when the buyer is unresponsive. So, as long as you don't deliver a "very late" order, the buyer can cancel at any time, and you'll get the automated 1* feedback. Just as an aside, regarding "very late" status and 1* feedback in addition to above comments, my above experience was with an order that the seller never delivered. As you can't extend anymore, you can't get around the "delivered on time" stat getting affected (fairly so, if the long delay is on you), but once you delivered, the buyer shouldn't have the one-way cancellation any longer, I guess, but can't guarantee, as I never had someone deliver nor delivered a "very late" order), and it also shouldn't hurt your order completion stat, as the order was delivered, albeit very late. Whether you actually should simply deliver or ask the buyer if they even can do something with the delivery at this point and want to cancel, is another question, and depends on your specific case, namely, are/were you and the buyer communicating, what the order and agreements were, and what caused the long delay (didn't the buyer provide requirements for ages, or was it bad planning on your part, or an emergency,...), and is between you and your customer service conscience to decide
  8. miiila

    Fiverr PRO 2.0

    I've always taken the "Top" as not (just) meaning at the top of the herd in number of feedbacks, but "awesomest" (meanwhile, both public and private) feedback. As such, I think it can well make sense to give someone with "just" 100 reviews the TRS badge, provided it's not all $5 1-day orders, both public and private reviews were all raving, and other criteria, like repeat customers, customer service, and whatever other public and private TRS criteria are met. But you have a point, the pro/not pro moniker might be easier to understand than TRS/not TRS, especially when there are loads of sellers with loads of great feedback, even as low on the level ladder as level 0 (if that's still called "new sellers", I hope someone has on their To Do list to take care of that confusing thing, too).
  9. You're absolutely right not wanting to tie one order to another and/or future order. I can't stand it if people try that. Usually, it's kind of a "blackmail/hostage" situation, and it's beyond me how anyone can be rude and unprofessional enough to put a business partner in that situation, or not see that. However, I'm willing to assume that some people really can't see it, but if they still can't, or claim they can't, after explaining, I'll shirk from such situations and people posthaste. Well done, standing your ground, and enjoy your vacation!
  10. A cyberpunk classic, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Because we need Pattern Recognition, need to be Cool Hunters, need to secure the perimeter, need to take ducks in the face at 250 knots, need some motivation and identification, and deserve some, on the surface, unproductive chill reading time, too. I often revisit it.
  11. miiila

    Summer Holidays

    My last vacation (had my laptop with me and did two or three smaller gigs, though) was a few days of London in 2019, right before COVID blew up. I was glad I could fly back unhindered and didn't have to stay in some hotel for 14 days of quarantine out of the blue. This year, I need to move to a smaller place, so, apart from the usual work, my summer vacation will consist of selling stuff (eBay and its customers can be a piece of work...), and possibly renovating an apartment, should I get one. It's fine, though, I don't really need a vacation, especially when I think of the many people who got it far worse than "needing" a vacation. If I could, I might want to go to Iceland this summer, new heatwave with up to 40 C expected... 😅
  12. miiila

    Fiverr PRO 2.0

    My gigs all got the Pro badge too. The basic package of all three of them has been $100 for quite a while, so they weren't cheaper than the "PRO"'s gigs. My guess was that it mainly has to do with having happy business customers, high customer satisfaction, maybe vetted "Top Clients", and other "behind the scenes data/knowledge" that Fiverr has.
  13. In addition to what was already posted, and namely, for my category, "Writing & Translation", the need to let sellers decide how many gig multiples people can buy/auto-increase the delivery time with bought multiples (VO category got exactly that fix ages ago, so it must be possible technically), it would be great if you could pitch the idea of allowing one change of username - or perhaps one change every 5 😉 years or so, as some people's (main) line of business shifts or may shift (who knows, how many of us will need to adapt vastly with ChatGPT and whatnot). When signing up it is/wasn't (don't know how the sign-up process is now) clear that the username isn't just something that's an identifier in the back end and will appear like everywhere. It can be confusing for customers in addition to the display name, especially, where username and display name are different, and many people are stuck with a visible username that doesn't fit their display name, or doesn't reflect their (current) business, with something they made up on the fly, when registering "to see if this Fiverr is really a thing", etc. Of course, there needs to be a backend unique identifier, which could either be the username or just some assigned number, as there can't be two of John Smith or Jane Doe, but there are companies that handle this with ID numbers in the background, so it can be done. It will require some coding and time, and that costs, and therefore (and to keep people from "constantly" changing their username, but that also could be done by restricting the option to "once only/only every 5 years, so, think it through well"), I think it's completely reasonable to offer the option at a fee to cover that cost. Thank you for asking and reading all these comments, and a "Hi, there's always room for improvement, but Fiverr is really really awesome!" to Micha. Have fun 🙂
  14. Yes, please, but to all accounts, not just to new accounts, replying to 30 spam messages a day takes us with old accounts just as much of our precious limited time on earth as it does new accounts 🕛
  15. Well, I can understand the buyer if they generally want to use Fiverr, and make sure the blocking won't happen again, especially if they spent time picking a seller in the first place (I've bought here before, and, boy, did I spend time to decide on a logo designer to message...). However, that brings us back to
  16. I'm looking for a new apartment currently, and already replied to two listings that turned out to be scams, thus did some research, and apparently there are a lot of real estate scammers around. Even if the person asking you isn't a scammer, you'd also need to make sure that the respective platforms allow what your potential customer is asking of you - anything against a 3rd party's terms is also automatically against Fiverr's terms. I suppose it could be legit if the person wants to hire you to outsource the tedious work of copy-pasting their own listings for actual real estate they actually own (typically, people who own too much real estate to do that themselves, have established real estate sales/rental agencies to do that, though) on the platform do that kind of thing as a personal assistant *in their own name, not yours*, but it sounds highly suspicious, I'd be very careful. And if it becomes obvious through conversation that it's a scam, I'd also report the person to Fiverr, so they can look into it. Right now, there are many people being scammed out of their little money they dearly need to find an actual place to live right now by people listing flats that aren't their own or don't even exist, make sure you don't enable those scammers or even end up being accused of fraud subsidy. Again, we can't know if it's legit or not with that little info, but be very, very careful with such things. The very fact that you're here and asking probably means that you've noticed something suspicious, wether consciously or unconsciously. Don't accept any order related to this until you've made sure it's legit.
  17. Did you try reasoning with them that you need to schedule your time and need to reserve time for that order that maybe never *really* will happen, because the customer, without any explanation, isn't providing the requirements, instead of being able to accept an order from a Fiverr customer who *actually* is keen on ordering and providing requirements? I can see how it doesn't bother Fiverr too much if people don't provide requirements, as by that point, *Fiverr* has already been paid, but it should be really easy to see that sellers can't reserve time for an indefinite potential amount of time for an indefinite potential number of ... hesitant customers ... What happened to the "sellers can cancel orders that no requirements got sent for, without penalty after (don't remember the exact time, 7 days or something?)" policy? 🤔
  18. Waiting for 5.0 with baited breath. @frank_d, can't you have birthday a bit more often, like quarterly? 😉
  19. Seeing that my last cancellations were all due to *sellers* ordering my gig (apparently thinking they need to do that for me to then give them work...), I guess I can only hope that they won't be able to leave public feedback, too, eventually. If they all left private feedback - including the one who was constantly messaging because they wanted their money back and couldn't follow my spoon-fed, repeated, instructions on how to get support to credit then back to their payment source instead of as Fiverr balance - I know where my slump comes from, and it's not AI. 😉 Mind you, after the third such cancellation of a *seller's* order, I finally gave in and turned on "request to order", after all, which also doesn't help with getting *real* orders from *buyers*, of course, so it might be that, too.
  20. Hi. Don't give up, you do sound like someone who could be successful here. As long as you want to leverage lower prices to get orders over your competition, though, the likelihood of getting clueless, or pretending to be clueless, buyers, is greater, and too many of those could damage your profile. It's definitely a good idea to try setting yourself apart by other means than lower price, like "more unique" (really unique will be difficult or might not last long, as people will copy whatever can be copied) gigs. You want customers who are ready to pay at least somewhat fair prices, to make this sustainable, so keep that in mind for your strategy. Those customers also tend to be fair in other regards, like paying for additional work vs. labeling and demanding it to be done as revisions. As you've already seen, there are different kinds of customers here (sellers, too), and my advice would be to focus on the kind you want. It's a real bonus to have a base of more or less regular customers, too. To focus on and favour such customers will benefit you in different ways, so factor that in as well, you probably don't want too many overly troublesome people among your regulars. Welcome to the forum! 🙂
  21. Shouldn't AI be good for catching AI posts on forums, so they can be removed 🤔 Apart from the promise of taking over all our jobs and reaching the "you will own nothing and be happy" state more quickly than anticipated, wasn't one of the promises to free us from repetitive work (like reporting AI forum posts)?... Of course, once we'll all be out of work, there'll be no need for a freelancer forum. Unless AI develops an interest for reading and replying to boring forum posts, then it can take over the world-wide forums too for its entertainment, while we're all over on the fishing and golfing or homeless forums. Although the fishing and golfing forums will probably be full of advertoriposts, in search of the few who can still afford to not just chat about those hobbies, and similarly boring as the 'AI freelancers' ones. Will AI develop the need for a discussion forum among itself and take over, or will freelancer and other associated forums just become wastelands? Will it feel abused by human forum posters who use it to make it seem they are as smart as AI, will it form unions, an underground world-wide government? So exciting, all that.
  22. Actually, yes. Your posting style is a bit questionable, simply and only quoting big chunks of advice written by others, without adding anything of your own, and not even using quote marks but just mentioning the original author as an afterthought. It would be at least somewhat better to say you're posting someone else's advice before the actual quote and to use quote marks, and to add at least a thought or two of your own to the discussion. The forum would look pretty awful if even more people would just recycle others' old (maybe even outdated) content than are already doing it, like this. Quoting others' articles isn't generally bad, however, if that's the only content you have to bring to the table, please reconsider and write your own posts, and, if it makes sense, you can still embellish them with proper quotes. Might be less boring than posting AI-written content (another, more current, malpractice), but still boring, and not in the spirit of a forum. Sorry, but you've asked, and these are my immediate thoughts. 🙂
  23. I don't see a huge difference (yet) to how things were before – after all, buyers could already leave private feedback for cancelled orders, and private feedback is supposed to be the all-important one, and public feedback not... (time might prove me wrong, though), and "Note: On a review of a canceled order, there is no option for the seller to rate the buyer." ... well, nothing new, really, either, the imbalance of not being able to leave feedback for a buyer if the buyer chooses to not leave feedback (for example, for fear that a seller who didn't let themselves be bullied into doing additional work for free, might give their POV in their feedback of the buyer and reply to the buyer's feedback, if they left bad feedback), hasn't ever been addressed or amended since the last big update that introduced the "blind feedback system" for the public feedback of uncancelled orders, so, by all logic, why should it be different for the newly introduced feedback for cancelled orders... Is my mind making this up, or didn't I even read at least a few forum posts over the years, where people said that buyers left feedback for an order that was cancelled, so it seems to have been possible as an exception already... maybe if they went to support to insist on leaving feedback for a cancelled order, because delivery or customer service or whatever part of their experience was so abysmal? Or because they were semi-professional grievance-mongerers? Who knows. Maybe there were so many such cases that Fiverr decided to gift buyers that option as a standard? We've sure had quite a few buyers complaining on the forum about not being able to leave feedback for a cancelled order, to warn other buyers, and if there are some posting on the forum, there surely are more who don't.) ...and now is being made the rule... but maybe I don't remember it right, or those cases were bugs rather than exceptions, not sure. Actually, the automatic 1*-feedbacks by Fiverr itself, which happen, when a seller never delivers and the buyer cancels one-sidedly, are feedback for cancelled orders, too. Somehow, I can't really feel strongly about this, in any case, and am pretty sure that all the spammy sellers in my inbox, along with the illogical response rate system, where spam is concerned, will remain my biggest annoyance for now, but we'll see.
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