miiila

If you use the Spam button directly, you shouldn't need to reply first. However, if you want to use the Report > Spam / Buyer wanted me to contact them off-platform function, you *need to* reply first, even if just a "Hi" or "No, thanks". I've had the issue of my response rate inexplicably, to me, taking a nosedive several times, until finally, a support person told me the following the other day: It still makes no sense to me. As I get loads of spam messages, I can easily test it out, and today, I did briefly reply to a spam message, first, and then clicked the flag feature, i.e. Report > Spam. A briefly flashing pop-up told me "No need to respond"... which probably was what made me think that using the "flag feature" shouldn't affect my Response Rate in the first place, after all, why else would it say "No need to respond" in that pop-up... Maybe the coding is off there, and that pop-up actually is, or was at some point, for the Spam button, but still, or wrongly appears when using the flag feature, but, in any case, don't trust it! If you want to Report instead of using the Spam button (which, obviously, is a good idea if it's a scam attempt and not just "standard spam", always respond briefly, first.

I didn't get any mail (I think, at least didn't notice any ... if people who shouldn't have gotten that mail, got it, does that mean that those who didn't get it, should have? Kind of makes you worry lol) but, yes! --- "this instance of this email was sent out in error" ... but still they tell you "know that..."? So, there are other instances of this email and/or ones that have not been sent out in error, too, but they took the opportunity of telling you that you didn't get that mail on purpose to tell you to know what that mail was supposed to tell you if it had not been sent out in error, like, preveniently, in case you didn't know and, perhaps, would need to be told that they are, in order to not receive that or another instance of that mail someday? That's nice, very suave. But, again, Kafka comes to mind, yes. 😂

Just a word of caution. If this means that you asked him to leave feedback, I hope you did so in a neutral way. You risk an account warning if you ask customers for "positive feedback", "5-star feedback", "good feedback", etc., anything like that.

That's the problem, Milestones are only a maybe somewhat good option if you don't need to do much work in advance, but only for however many $ the first Milestone, then the second, etc. is worth at a time. I've used Milestones once, and then no more, it also was with a customer I already knew from several orders. The disadvantages and the hassle that I saw and can imagine when reading how Milestones work, are too big on seller side, from my perspective, already the 8 revision days (respectively the 10 days a buyer has to start the next Milestone) vs 3 with a standard Gig, can drag this out so inconveniently long, I don't know about you, but I sometimes need to plan my time. At the least, you should never take the complete sum of all Milestones for granted, but have Milestones that pay you enough as you go, if you use the feature. If it's not possible to set Milestones up in that way, I agree that it's best to avoid them (but, truth be told, I'm for avoiding them anyway; again, I just see too much hassle vs standard Gigs). Support and the others are right, though it worked as intended, if you read the explanatory articles on Milestones, especially in the Buyer section, carefully, you'll notice (If you haven't already, I'd generally recommend reading not just the articles in the Seller section, but also those in the Buyer section, sometimes, technicalities might be clearer then, or stick out more, in different wording). Ergo, if the buyer does not approve and initiate the next Milestone (for whatever reason that may be, from not liking the output or simply forgetting to start the next Milestone within 10 days (I think that's what happened with mine back), over several grimmer scenarios that prevent the buyer from doing so within 10 days, like Covid, or an accident, up to death, it stops right there. If the seller already did more work than the previous Milestones paid for, bad luck. Milestones may work well for some kinds of jobs, if you can set it up in a way that you never do more work than each Milestone pays for, as you go. Even then, you still have the 8 (10) days vs 3, a buyer who might forget to initiate the new Milestone (would you want to remind them to initiate the next Milestone, just in case they forgot, so the order won't end, what if they didn't initiate, because they didn't want to, awkwardness ensues,...), etc. In my use cases, there simply aren't any advantages for me that would compel me to use a Milestone order over standard Gigs.

Great idea! And would even out that you may have to spend more time, explain Fiverr technical fundamentals to a new person, etc.

You can, generally, also do that on the forum – that is if the seller is on the forum and has the option for others to dm them activated. Some simply don't want to receive private messages (maybe they got too many spam or other bothersome messages). You need to keep in mind that while you may think you're the only one who contacts that seller, and they'll be thrilled to chat with you, that seller may receive a dozen spam messages and similar messages to what yours would be, daily. And has to react to each and every message, even to absolute spam. The Fiverr main site is a platform where, typically, sellers go to sell their services and earn money, not to chat. Plus, on the main site, sellers already have to react to each and every message, including absolute pure spam and scam attempt messages, within 24 hours, to not have their Response Rate drop (which can even cost them their level if it's below 90% during the monthly level evaluation) The place to chat is the forum, so you can find sellers who like to chat now and then there. And even then, many prefer to just chat publicly, within the forum topics, and not per dm. But at least, there's no penalty for not responding to forum (spam) messages, so if I absolutely wanted to contact other sellers privately (also, keep in mind that there is no real privacy in "private messages", neither on the main site or the forum, where staff can read any message if there seems to be a need for it), I'd do so on the forum, if they are on there, and not bother them (and potentially risk being reported) on the main site. You see, the crux is actually the Response Rate/obligation to respond to every single message one gets. If there was no response rate, sellers could just ignore spam and other messages they don't want to interact with, but the Response Rate is one of the metrics that affect sellers' accounts.

Maybe you could type up and save a template text on how you define revisions to put in your FAQ and add to custom offers (many people won't read as far as the FAQ). Personally, I see revisions as corrections of something that's actually wrong (like, client said they want a red car in the image, and you delivered a blue one), not an additional other colour version, or additional words that they forgot or "forgot" to mention before accepting a custom offer, etc. Then you could say that different versions were not included in the package they purchased, but that you'd be happy to provide as many as they'd want for $x as a Gig Extra or in a separate custom offer. How "strict" you want to be in sticking to your revision definition, is up to you, either way, if it's not much work, or you're sure the customer really just forgot a sentence vs "forgetting" it, for example, it might be less fuss and even save you time=money compared to the maybe just little money you'd take for the Gig Extra, and might get you happy regular customers, to just do it. IMO, it makes the most sense to set your revision rules as you see fit (while keeping them common sense enough that it should convince any normal person that they aren't randomly deliberate), and apply them, or not, on case-by-case basis. Just an extreme example to illustrate the point, it's probably not worth to potentially anger a good regular customer who never tries to bargain and leaves great feedback over a tiny revision request that's, strictly speaking, not really a revision, but if there's a regular customer who regularly orders for a small amount and requests "revisions" that are worth half the order price, and takes it for granted that you just do it, it might be too annoying to not speak up (of course, politely and reasonably). With new customers, you need to use your gut feeling and growing experience. Sometimes, people who somehow "trouble" you, can turn out great customers if you "take the risk" of working for them, or explain to them why X isn't a revision, or why y is a perfectly reasonably price, etc. And some people simply aren't your ideal customers. The more ideal for you customers you acquire, the easier you can let go of the less than ideal ones. And that's not always about the money they are or aren't willing to pay but often about how much additional time they cost you compared to your "average customer" or how much you enjoy, or not, interacting with them. I got a little off-topic, perhaps, I hope I didn't carry coals to Newcastle there, in any case, the point is, define your revision rules, make as sure as possible that the customers know them or at least can know them, doing their due diligence, and mention them while discussing a custom offer or paste them into the custom offer, and have them in Gig description/FAQ for direct orders if you take any, so you can at least point at them if there's a case where you want to put your foot down on revisions.

Yes. It's important to end with that. It gives the more perceptive types a chance to think again, even if they only could focus on the start and end of your message and not on what's between, or can even save you the hassle of long explanations in order to achieve that. 😉 Or to cut the time short, when you know you'd not mind not working with them anyway, and are perhaps even dreading them agreeing to your actual price, after all. My actual replies vary, as they depend a bit on the situation and person, but basically, something along the lines of "quality costs and I'm not willing to compromise on the quality I deliver". Or "Good luck." 🙂 You could also always tell them they can bargain over your prices with your secretary, Swifty, in person, at [insert shifty bar of renown in buyer's homeland], but that's only if you know they are DaMooch forum post readers.

First of all, I'm so sure that Google doesn't approve of anyone making accounts for anyone else, unless maybe it's some prince or princess who've been living their lives secluded from the real world up to now and need their secretary to navigate the process for them, that I wouldn't even bother looking it up but just assume it's not allowed. That would be the end of that scam and "job discussion" for me already. Then, while I know avail.co's rules even less by heart than Google's, I'm also pretty sure that if they allow listings for others, it comes with a set of conditions that most probably wouldn't be met in this scenario. Where the scam could be, well, you may list something for them that either doesn't exist, or isn't theirs and not theirs to list, and would be making yourself an accessory to a scam, and probably the only one who'll be "grabbable" when the scam victim will come forward to complain. In any case, this is that kind of fishy that I'd not even hover between Spam and Report button, choose the latter, and leave it up to Fiverr. It seems pretty common sense to me that it's a scam attempt, which may be why nobody elaborates.

You mean apart from half of our forum posts' content and all our site suggestions and bug reports about it? 😉 It's really simple: it doesn't make sense that the delivery time doesn't scale with the number of Gig multiples/words that people order. The VO category got that fix long ago now, so, obviously, it's possible technically, and it makes zero sense that Writing & Translation didn't get it. Thanks for your interest!

Well, I can only hope the satisfaction rate of that first time "buyer" who actually was a seller, thinking they need to buy my Gig for me to give them an order, won't weigh as heavily on my BSR as their unrelenting post-cancellation messages of woe about needing their money back, did on my nerves. Anyway, just in to say "Happy Birthday", though, Covid finally caught up with me 🤒 so I'll keep my incoherent thoughts to myself. I'm jealous of your cake eating, too, my sense of taste is completely gone. No fun being sick if any kind of tea tastes like just another cup of hot water.

I think it's good, but I think it would be better if the actual username wasn't visible on the frontend, just the display name (and that unique identifier number that uk1000 mentioned, to avoid issues if people have the same display name).

The thing is that both display name and username do show, though, so it doesn't really help with very unfortunate usernames. 😅 It would be best to have user IDs like, e.g., DisplayName @ 2016-8745 (where display name can either be a personal first name, first name + last name, nickname, or company name, depending, the number being a unique identifier, replacing "dogfarts123" in your example, the first 4 could be the year of joining, the last ones assigned in order of registering accounts, or if too many, yyyy-mm-dd-......, something like that). After how "Top Clients" went, I'd not be astonished to see things like Fiverr_Pro, Coca-Cola, etc. as display names, though, if any kind of nickname is permitted... so, maybe limiting it to personal name, short form of personal name, company name might prove needed... and if the personal name nickname won't get cross-checked with the actual name the seller's payment source or ID shows... Well.

Yes, it seems to have worked, the change carried over to both normal and business profile, as far as I can see. No idea if it will have any consequences on my business profile, though, I guess I'll see if I get notifications to get approved again or prompts to change it.

Interesting. It was mandatory for Business, though, and apparently, it just took that over from there, I was not able to add my nick (short form of my actual first name), neither my middle name (similar to username), but only either my full first name and first letter of surname, or full first name and full last name. It also didn't accept only the actual first name, despite it said it would in the instruction. The only two valid options were RealFirstname R. and RealFirstname RealLastName. I'll try if I can edit for non-business profile later today.

Exactly. I got a notification to update my Gig settings, because Fiverr made some changes, and it was mandatory, apparently, as it didn't let me save my existing setup that I was happy with. Well, it would have been a great update if the Gig multiples issue would finally have been fixed, but when trying out by putting 5000 words in the box instead of the 500 that the package should come with, sure enough, the delivery time didn't budge even the slightest bit... I so don't get that. It's beyond apparent that writers, translators, proofreaders, etc., can't just simply deliver ten times as many words, or even double, in the same time, unless they are scammers and just push two or three buttons to deliver unedited AI "work". For those, the current system works fine, actually favours them, because the honest sellers who actually work on orders and thus need the appropriate time, need to think of strategies and suboptimal Gig setups to counter the issue, maybe even don't offer things that they could else, like 24-hour turnaround, and need to waste time on contacting support whenever someone orders an impossible amount of words with the same delivery time as the amount the Gig package includes. New shiny things are nice, but please fix such super evident issues first. Fixing the delivery time not budging along with ordered Gig multiples, or/and letting us switch off/limit the option to order multiples - now that is a feature that the affected sellers have been asking for, since years.

You seem to have read a different forum than I, though, 😄 what by far the most people were asking for was to be able to change their username, not add a display name. I'm okay (kind of, it opens us up to all kinds of identity theft-related issues, and, especially but not just for women, it's a big step towards better stalkability, too) with the actual name being shown, I had to, anyway, ever since the Fiverr Business approval, but then please with the option to not show the username, I don't like both, it looks messy. Just either display name or username, please, for a clean, uncluttered look.

You'd not want to know what Fiverr and the forum would look like if it was my platform, my choice. 😉 Anyway, have fun on Upwork.

Right, actually, I'd rather gift him $5 for his noble cause (well, more for making me smile, probably) than "share one of my customers" with one of the utterly unqualified and often incredibly impolite/socially inept people (Ianguage barrier is one thing, not even a "Hello" before asking people for a favour or handout, is another, and language barrier also doesn't excuse all the "hlw"s, "hlo"s, "Hellow"s, and "Hy"s I get, especially not if you're asking for a translation job to do with English) spamming me to do so. Sadly, there's no lack of people in the streets, even in trains as opposed to "only" on the platforms, asking for coins, even bills, lately, so that I can easily fulfill my quota of giving my hard-earned money away locally. And I certainly won't have a part in enabling cheaters here by "sharing customers", or passing on my orders to the "i do the work 4u and u don't need to work, u get the money, just pay me bit" ones, sorry, friend, but I'd work more if I had to check and transform your "work" into something that I can deliver to my customers. Was that too off-topic? Sorry, I forgot what we were talking about, annoyed by the most recent spam wave, if you couldn't guess. 😅

Well, at least that's better than my last "brief", at least someone may have actually be able to get that job if not you... "I need 200$ per working day" -_-

And you figured that out already, too, which is great, because you definitely should! There are also some filter options which can be very helpful for specific projects. Have fun. And welcome to the forum!

Yes, they always do, and already did for this one. It's just such a waste of time. I wish there was a "Spam" button for orders, too 🙃

I'm always getting them, but more at the moment. Preferably on Sundays. I also got "this type of order" today -_-. At least, support was super quick in cancelling it; of course, the "buyer" wanted a refund, after realizing what they'd done.

A sign for valuing people's time would be giving one's forum topics meaningful titles that will help people make a quick decision on whether it might make sense to click or not. Another free tip: Don't use "we" in one spot, and "I " in another to refer to yourself, it might keep people from ordering from you if you do that in your Gig as well. You're welcome, no need for thanks, and good luck.

Considering that I just got an order from a seller (hopeful to-be seller is probably the more fitting term, but in any case they were no buyer) for a $25 Gig, who then entered my inbox to ask why I deducted money from their account, I'd recommend setting a price that's high enough to hurt enough to read and try to understand what you're about to do, before hitting an "Order Now" button these days. $25 seems to have become the new $5. People seem to have too much money. I wish I was so careless about pressing "Order now" buttons. Tldr: If Fiverr gently tells you to set your minimum price at $15, do set your price at $15. Minimum.