miiila

If you read closely, you will see that some of us do consider that, and even both for new sellers as well as established sellers. Some are against a fee at all, ask OP how much, discuss on what to base it, suggest a free trial period for new sellers, ... Just the same as new sellers, levelled sellers aren't a monolithic block of people with the same opinions. Also, unless things have changed since I was new and reached those levels, I'm not under the illusion that level 1, or 2, not even TRS, automatically means that that they could/would pay an amount of $250 every month, some might not make that much monthly imcome on Fiverr that it would be worth a fee of $250, or even lower, or at least not regularly, some of them do Fiverr part-time, for instance. And keep in mind that $250 wasn't a suggestion by the person who created this topic but by a seller who commented, so many of the replies are to the opening post, not the $250 post 🙂

In addition to the 20% and Seller+, or instead of Seller+? Monthly, yearly, amount? I'm actually not sure if just a paid membership in itself would do much against specifically the scammers. On first thought, maybe, on second thought, it might not bother the people who buy reviews, accounts, don't pay fees for software licences and such that much, while it might keep some honest and talented people from signing up. The latter might be solved with a free trial period, though, and if a seller doesn't make anything, or not enough to want to pay the fee from month x on, it probably wasn't meant to be, and they can go try something else. If it's about improving everyone's experience, there are some things that could already be done without more money needed, for example, reducing the number of gigs people may start out with, or even generally, which wouldn't only reduce the sheer mass of gigs but also might improve quality. Or at least some basic multiple choice quiz upon registering, which would let people unmistakably know that Gigs are no Buyer Requests, that they aren't supposed to contact other sellers to ask for a job or money, that it's not allowed to just steal whatever from the internet and sell it to someone, that might really help. If, for example, as @yannisenglish said above, paid members would get more freedom to do things as they want to, it might make the pill easier to swallow. If, for example, I could finally set a limit to how many gig multiples people can order without the delivery time being changed, set office hours and days, could set up a gig that can't be ordered directly but only via custom offer, or I wouldn't need to react to spam messages at all, that might be worth a fee to me (although it should be a given anyway). A fee that would be invested in some basic control, for example, to check if logo designers deliver pirated logos, or if the person who can translate any document from any language into any language within 24 hours actually can, etc., might eliminate a lot of scammy gigs, help the serious sellers and buyers, and the platform reputation. I'm not talking about complicated quality checks needing lots of time and staff, or passing judgement on creative work, just about basic things that are easy to check. Honestly, if I'd pay 20% on everything without any scaling benefits, plus the money I lose by having my earnings go through PayPal to my bank, seller+, plus a membership fee, and would still wake up to messages like "Sorry.i am a poor boy.i need some work and money for treatment 😭" on a Sunday, having to react to them, and within 24 hours, ideally less, because there's not just response rate but also response time, or have them affect several of my ratings, ranking, "seller standing", I think, is the term support uses sometimes, I'd think something is wrong. In short: I'd accept a paid membership; if I'd welcome it would depend on the minutiae.

The way how someone messages surely plays a role in the reaction of the messaged person, in addition to the reason. I didn’t and still don’t block/report everyone, just the other day I wrote a pretty long reply to someone. Ironically, while it affected me via having to reply, costing me time, and reducing my conversion rate, the person who messaged then said in their reply to my reply that they actually don’t want to work on Fiverr. Well, it all depends; in the end, you can but you shouldn’t if you care about potentially getting a warning, suspension, or ban. Especially since I have the impression that many of the people who send “spammy” messages might easily collect another warning on their way. My quick response for the “usual spam” includes a link to the ToS and Help Center. Maybe it helps the one or other person, but honestly, I can’t see a future on Fiverr for most of the people whose messages I’d count as spam, unless they choose another niche, perhaps, maybe. Well, the same is true for that; essentially, you can but you take the risk of getting reported, because that’s using the messaging option for something else than it’s intended for, so, if the messaged seller wants to report you, nothing keeps them from doing so. Personally, I’d not report you but would probably tell you something like, sorry, can’t answer that for privacy reasons. It is or was my customer, after all, unresponsive or not. I’ve been messaged by someone who wanted to ask me about a gig/seller I’d left a review for. I didn’t like it. They can read my review, that was what I had to say about the gig/seller. If anything, it made me consider to either never buy on Fiverr again or to not leave reviews in future. I realize that the situation you describe is a bit different, and that seller might be even happy to tell you everything but IMO, you’d still ask them to break confidentiality in a way. Whether that potential report would lead to a warning, I can’t tell you, that’s something you’d need to ask support.

In theory, there could be “fake customers” among them in the sense of other sellers trying to get information out of you, but it’s much more probable that it’s just people who “window-shop around” and go with someone who offers cheaper or faster work, or they prefer to work with for whatever other reason, or they might decide to do it themselves and not buy from anyone in the end in some cases, or it might be hopeful resellers who are looking for the least to pay for the highest margin. You can set up some quick responses if you end up typing (almost) the same things regarding their questions, then you’ll waste less time. Reporting people only makes sense if they somehow violate Fiverr’s terms of service. Regarding the response rate/time, here’s the FAQ: https://www.fiverr.com/support/articles/360010452637-Response-Time--Rate-FAQ However, I guess nobody is completely sure if it still applies after the recent changes, as afarigh said. Maybe we’ll hear from someone who’ll ask support about it if their rate seems to suffer because of that.

I’ve posted in several threads that I’ve hired and been hired by people I knew from the forum, it’s no secret 😉 Anyway, dear friends who do actually read the topics you comment on, don’t spam. And YT gurus, don’t encourage people to spam other people, you’re wasting both their time with a 99% chance (%age courtesy of @visualstudios) and put them at risk of a warning, suspension, ban. Tell them something actually helpful, like posting actual content on the forum might help.

Yeah, my PS edit was just damage containment, I knew there’d be people who’ll just comment with thank you for the tips without reading the tips, let’s just ignore it and chat.

That cracked me up a little—in a good and innocent way 😂. Don’t want to comment on the effectiveness of invaluable tips from OP—but personally tips like this made me scared even to think about messaging a seller here from day one. Even today I was thinking about ordering from a seller here for something I really want to get done and I know they will deliver it perfectly to my liking. But afraid to send an enquiry 😅. Sounds like a comment to me, though 😉 Nobody ever said it was a problem to message a seller if one indeed intends to order from them, though! This is just about spammy messages. By all means do message them. I’ve ordered from sellers I knew through the forum myself, and why not, it can be a pretty good way to avoid issues, just as you say,

Yes, I know what you meant, thanks for bringing that perhaps 1% possibility into the discussion. In other settings, if they’d for example, contact other sellers with offers to collaborate here in the studio category, or through the forum messages, I’d not be quite as annoyed; at least it wouldn’t affect my stats and “only” take me the time to skim the message long enough to be able to reply “no thank you”, and give me the freedom to completely ignore it as well - or I could chat with them, in case it was something I might indeed be interested in.

I’d say that’s a point for when you, for example, email someone; they are free to just trash your email without any consequences, but not on a platform like Fiverr, where all your stats count. I haven’t got a single such message that was helpful for me in any way in my over four years here, so I guess the chances of it happening are extremely low and I’d vastly prefer no such messages at all to such messages with perhaps 1 actually helpful one every 5 years or never. Now If I wanted to work as a reseller and resell mostly crap to my customers, that would be a different matter, I guess, but I’d still prefer to pick sellers myself and not have them cold-contact me, but, yeah. It’s possible, though, that sellers who want to resell, or outsource parts of their work generally, like those who sell videos might outsource VO, for example, find value in some messages, that’s right. The risk of getting reported still is there, especially for people who think but only think they are offering something actually helpful to the seller they contact (“I can traslate any laguidge 24 hours I do your work and u only paaay me $5 u take more from buyer u dont have to work”), might be even higher, as some sellers might not want those kind of people on the platform, basically scamming customers if given the chance. And even if we disregard those (you certainly weren’t thinking of those kind of messages), even someone who knows that they are offering something potentially helpful, has the risk of getting reported, as you can never be sure if the seller you contact considers your message helpful too. As I said, if I could simply ignore that kind of message, I wouldn’t mind too much and probably not report, however, it would still cost me time.

You wonder if you can contact other sellers who work in the same field as you to ask them for tips or whatever? The simple answer: you can - technically - because, unlike users who are exclusively buyers who can’t be contacted at all unless they initiate contact with a seller (because they’d get bombarded with spam else), other users need to be able to contact sellers to ask about custom offers if the Gigs offered aren’t what they need and they intend to buy from that seller. But you shouldn’t, because it’s considered spam and against Fiverr’s Terms of Service (read the ToS if you haven’t yet, it might save you from getting banned from the platform forever). And you’re likely to get reported by the seller you’ll spam, so don’t do it. The long answer, for people who say “but I just want to ask them something, why are they so mean and would report me…”: You know, the thing is that you’re not the only person who’d do that. I often get people in my inbox who ask for help, tips, advice, work, money, my orders, my customers … It would not be a problem if it happened once every two months, but it happens constantly, and that is a problem. I have to reply/hit the spam or report button within a short time to protect my stats, just as if it was a customer, I can’t just ignore their message (If I could just ignore it without it affecting me, I’d simply do that). Fiverr actually asks users to report behaviour that’s against the rules, to help keep the platform useable (I don’t remember the exact wording, but that’s about the gist of it). For a reason. You’re harming the conversion rate of the sellers you message for help. If I’d reply more or less in depth to even a handful of such questions per month, that would set me back several hours per month, maybe the only free time I’d have. If I’d reply to all of them, I could scrap my Fiverr career because there wouldn’t be time left to talk to my actual customers and do the jobs I get. That’s one of the things this forum is for. You can make a topic and ask if people who work in … would answer your questions, then those who’d want to could do so, and they’d only have to do so once vs. answering to all the sellers who might ask them in their business inbox, at a time that’s convenient for them, and without any effects on their response rate, time, conversion rate. I hope this will keep some people from burdening their fellow sellers with unwanted messages, and will keep some people from starting their Fiverr career with a warning, suspension, or even ban, while giving more insight into the why than just “it’s against ToS”. Cheers. PS Please don’t post “thanks for your tips” or anything like that, if you want to express your thanks, that’s what the like/heart button is for, but feel free to comment if you have something to say regarding the topic, of course. That keeps topics on-topic and easily readable. Thank you 🙂

It says: The “currently” seems to indicate they might launch it for other categories too, yes, I was just wondering whether some categories might not be considered at all for this, as from the ones listed so far, it might perhaps be limited to “visuals” and music/VO. I’m hoping not, because it would be beneficial in other categories as well. Well, wait and see, I guess. But thanks for the reply, it definitely makes sense if there’s some “verification” to check claim/sample.

Do you know if there are plans to make it available for all/more categories, or did you mean for all sellers who are in categories that feature was launched for?

Ah, that’s not good. I’d try to at least reason with support that your order completion rate shouldn’t be affected by the case you described in your opening post, the satisfied customer who just thinks he didn’t get his refund for the mutually cancelled second order that you couldn’t do. The cancellation of the second order with that same customer is on you, as you shouldn’t take orders you don’t have the time to do, respectively pause your gigs/turn on out-office mode, but the cancellation of the already delivered first order that your customer was satisfied with and due to your customer asking his bank to dispute the charge, which is against Fiverr’s ToS, obviously shouldn’t count against you. That overnight project might be a different affair, in case your customer told them you didnt deliver everything, or whatever, but “didn’t want to pay” isn’t a good enough reason to not pay, I wouldn’t just accept that so easily. If you can prove that you delivered what your gig or custom offer promised, you could try and ask them about that too. It might be worth trying, both for the money, and at least for your stats, as two cancellations in two days of the kind that lower your stats might affect you. You can also ask support if they can keep it from affecting your level if it would at the next evaluation. It will depend on what exactly happened, we usually hear only one side here, and how that fits their guidelines for how to deal with different situations. Good luck with the outcome, in any case.

Refunds are by default done in form of Fiverr balance unless the buyer actively asks support to refund to the payment source. Maybe your buyer didn’t realize that he got refunded to his Fiverr balance and thus asked his bank to dispute the charge for the order that you actually delivered? It’s in the Payments T&C: https://www.fiverr.com/content/payments-terms-and-conditions I’d try to keep working with support to clear this situation up in any case. Did your order completion rate drop after the recent cancellation?

When I need or want days off, I use out-of-office mode, with the checkbox “receive messages from new people” unchecked, so I also won’t have to reply to any messages from new people, most importantly spam messages. One issue I unfortunately have with this method lately is that Fiverr changed something a while ago, and now, customers I sent custom offers to, can’t accept them while I’m in out-of-office mode, which very inconvenient, and doesn’t really make sense either.

Ah, great, thank you for tagging me!

You’re most certainly right, it used to work. I’ve been using out-of-office a lot, including having been in ooo most of Dec-Feb/March, and could still send offers to regular customers.

Wait! We mustn’t throw such violent thoughts into space. It’s relativity. It’s mutant manifestation. Sometimes, a wish is the chime heard on the wind. Depending on the listener - that wish may come true. Depending on the wind, it can be brutal. Do you realize what sort of disorganized, fragmentia could emerge by remaking Ferris Bueller? Ferris Bueller is the guardian to the cosmic portal. A teenage movie about delinquency with a moral center and grade - A humanity? That’s not a movie. That’s a miracle produced by the universe, sent here to protect us from ourselves. An audio/video ancient scroll, translated into 80’s lingo, complete with a modernized monastic chant: (Bow Bow chick … chick-a-chick ahhhhh) Ferris is a modern translation of Fergus. Fergus in Irish culture can be traced to Fearghuis (or Feargus) a giant appearing with mortals as a protector. Some believe him to be a spirit - or God- protecting the realm for those that share his story. His forms have included a lengthy run as protector and king of Ulster. Sworn to always protect - until he was replaced. Needless to say … they weren’t so protected after that. (There’s also a lot of “Lengthy” information on the size of his … let’s call it “Manhood.” Like, an uncomfortable amount of info. Like… who was asking to this extent?) By now, I’m sure you’ve made the connection. In its current form, “Ferris Bueller’s Day off” is our protector of this realm. Remaking it would act as a symbolic “replacement” ceremony, causing the realm to be totally susceptible to all sorts of badness. I ask you, “in the name of O’ Fearghuis, where does it stop? We, the small and pitiful of this fleshly tribe, have already tempted the fates by remaking Psycho. (Pause Scene: Seriously, does anybody remember that? The time that Gus Van Zant lost his ever loving mind, got drunk while watching “Swingers” and thought, “This loud kid would make an amazing Norman Bates?” Was that a fever dream?) It’s a commonly known fact that ideological and mythological deities loath the remake. We’re bending the spatial and temporal dimensions by eroding the ecosystem of preservation currently provided to us by such diverse and complex beings. Rumor has it, upon seeing the live action remake of “Dumbo,” Perun, Slavic God of Sky, returned to the Pantheon and denounced Polytheism. Denounced it! Reason cited? “There’s no amount of deities that can undo this dumpster pile. I’m out.” Great! So let’s hope the sky doesn’t need tending to. Pangu, the Chinese horned beast that came into existence from the same egg that birthed the universe watched thirty minutes of the “Carrie” remake and immediately posed the primordial existential question. He posed it directly to the Jade Emperor! The actual inventor of “something.” Who was all like, “because I said so.” Do you see the consequences of these actions? Remakes aren’t just bad movies, they’re a declaration of a divinity lost. It’s humans run amuck. Our muck runneth over. Please, please never suggest, even in the most hypothetical and passive sense, that “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” could ever be remade. But, if it pleases the God’s, I’d definitely listen to a sequel pitch. Ahh. “Let the Lord of Chaos rule.” He does anyway, doesn’t he. I’m fine with no remake, though. I’m not in the habit of watching them in any case. But if someone or something out there picked up on my not-wish for a Ferris remake, please make it an anime with soundtrack by TK. In which case I promise I’ll watch. Euh, I’m extremely off-topic now though and will leave to not get flagged 😉 and will study others’s processes quietly and from afar. There’s always something you could learn and procrastinate on implementing. 🙂

Hmm … Well … the biggest part of my process is making myself sit down and start, even though, all of a sudden, I feel an almost irrepressible urge to do things I don’t really want to do but should actually do eventually, or should already have done last week, or month, or year, like climb on the roof and clear the leaves from the eves gutter, repaint the kitchen, shine all the shoes, and defrost the fridge, in that or reverse order, or even things I usually would not ever even consider doing, like clean the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, sort my books alphabetically (they need to be sorted by colour, obviously), or go grocery shopping in broad daylight. Once I’ve talked sense into myself, and under the reproachful glare of NeeChee, the plushie cat, who doesn’t want to become homeless and sofaless, I’ll open a YT window, choose some music without lyrics (too distracting if you deal with words) that fits my mood of the day, or the job at hand, or both, and start. Once I’ve started, it’s all love, peace, and harmony, with rainbows and unicorns sprinkled all over, and the flow can be so zoney that suddenly I notice it’s dark, and check the time with panic-widened eyes, to see if the supermarket is already closed. Roughly about that. Very boring, I know. However. After I haven’t heard or read anything about Ferris whatsoever since years, I guess, or even decades, just yesterday, a friend mentioned the movie in a mail, today I read a reference to it in a Fiverr forum thread … if I happen to read or hear of it for the 3rd day in a row tomorrow, it must be the universe telling me something, a sign … that I should do something really outrageous, like … take a day off. That masterful artwork of a movie went under the title of “Ferris macht blau” here, by the way, which literally translates to “Ferris makes blue”. “Blaumachen”, “make blue” meaning, you may have guessed it, “skip (work/school/weekly hamster club meeting/…)”. I love my work. And I’m not a procrastinator – a nice lady in a Ted Talk told me I’m not a procrastinator but only have a procrastination habit! And now, I’m wondering whether a 2021 Ferris remake would be called “Ferris the procrastinator” instead of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” instead of going to bed …

Wait, people with a Business account pay for that? That is very strange because I had one “HESHE is a Fiverr Business client” recently and his first message was: Can you take (link to @frank_d video from the portfolio) and remove/replace the logo in video with mine, in next 6 hours (I kid you not, this is the beautified/simplified version, names changed to protect privacy). So he is business client? :thinking: I have a lot of profile names with blue thingy next to them in the inbox, all converted to orders but there is no significant change in order amount or income. Some of my gigs literally have no choice but to repeat in tags what is in the title so I did not change all of them drastically. image798×54 6.15 KB image787×80 7.75 KB And when I read here stats that people are sharing all my GIGs are underperforming all the time this entire year because I never had more than 1-5 clicks per day. My all-time best selling GIG peaks at 8-12 clicks. But all my GIGs are in the most overcrowded categories. Promoted, results first 24 hours image781×241 8.83 KB Just as an aside, this makes me remember a comment by someone who said he was told by support that the algorithm does change to avoid people trying to “beat it”, and this not in the ‘algo 2.0 for 2 years’, ‘algo 3.0 for 1 year’ sense but in the ‘what is true this week may not be true next week’ way. The entity algorithm 3.0 as a ‘major release’ surely will have “stickies” that remain the same, like “relevancy”, or “cancellations are bad, we don’t like cancellations”, but might play around with “lesser values” to keep things fresh and exciting for sellers who try to figure it out and adapt accordingly. That could also function as kind of an alternative “gig rotation”, not caused by shuffling sellers just so with an “everyone gets a turn every once in a while” attitude, but in a “let’s make fast turnaround sellers the freelancers of the week”, “this month is lucky month for sellers who edited their gig within the last month”, and so on. I just like the thought that they are having fun hanging out in their virtual conference room and debating whether to make a new change next week, or to reuse the change from calendar week 2 because no over-smart seller would see that coming, or to just let it run the same this whole month and work on 4.0. $149 for an annual subscription, so not really a hurdle for actual businesses. What’s more interesting though, is that you can add up to 50 co-workers to your business account to collaborate, etc. You can find the info in the help pages, there’s also an extra ToS version for Fiverr Business.

Just buy yourself a dozen new jumpers on Fiverr, problem solved! Regarding metadata, once I had issues with my gig, and discovered that somehow my language pairs (which I know I had chosen …) had been “reset” to nothing. Retrospectively, I thought, the most probable reason other than a very random bug, is that it somehow happened when they made some category update. I think it makes sense to check one’s gigs at every such update to make sure that all metadata are still there/as one wants them, even if one thinks one doesn’t want to change anything when reading about the category update.

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? Ah, yes, I can see that happening … and the question indeed is what to do, or if to do … When I started on Fiverr and saw all the almost identical translation gigs, like one person having a dozen of them offering pretty much the same (if not the same save “awesomest” vs. “perfectest” 😉 translation), I wondered if it has to be that way but settled for general and a handful of specialised offerings, although in fact I kept some of them mostly on pause and only used them temporarily, either to test ideas, or just for customers who’d specifically ask and I’d be fine doing that for. I had long stretches with only my main, general gig active, and usually only have a max of two or three active at any one point. My niche gigs are for things I really like doing and wouldn’t mind just doing, and the more it will shift from the general gig to those, the better. Maybe I’ll give up the general gig someday. With my current level, I could have loads of niche gigs, but making gigs just for the sake of dabbling in any niche imaginable … meh.

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.

Many of the things mentioned in above posts aren’t mutually exclusive. The “top 3 gigs on everyone’s screenshots on the first page” are probably owed to those gigs great performance, or the people who talk about gigs “glued” to their position, even despite the infamous “gig rotation” could also see that as confirmation of their glue theory, our results even change based on our perception, not just the facts, it’s pretty funny. Sometimes, when reading this kind of topic, I feel like checking over a long stretch of time to see and document what happens, but then, theorizing and other things seem like much more fun. 3.0 sounds good in any case, both the theory and the name, but my perception is also biased in favour of uneven numbers, so I can only hope that 4.0 will be short-lived, and am expecting great things from 5.0, obviously.

I saw pretty much the same as most people who posted screenshots. However, it was also my first time searching for backlinks, and I never clicked on or bought any. Probably the more intensive and often I’d search, especially after I’d already clicked some or even bought one, the more personalized my personal search results would get. I don’t think I get the same search results when I search for something I already “bought one of” that I’d get if it was a completely new search for me. This ranking that people here usually mean when they talk about their ranking and being on position x and page y, might be relatively similar for users who are new and a blank page for Fiverr, and different for users who aren’t a blank page but start to search for something specific and new for them, and very different for users who search and buy the service in question already since a while, the better Fiverr knows what to show them. At least, it makes no sense to not make it dynamic and try your best at matching if you have the option.