cubittaudio

The fact that people continue to believe that a business listed on the NYSE would use a ‘rotation’ system for serving up search results, rather than an algorithm which focuses on matching spending buyers with appropriate, able sellers, truly baffles me. I can only assume it’s because it’s easier and less painful to blame poor performance on “rotation”.

Fantastic article @frank_d , thanks for taking the time to put it together. Here’s my recent experience, that for me 100% validates what you’re saying; About a year ago, we branched out from Voice Over, and started offering Screen Capture videos. Completed maybe 60 over the year, and made some good money out of them. 100% 5-star reviews, happy customers etc. But, they were a NIGHTMARE to convert. I think if I converted 5% of enquiries, that would be me being generous. Buyers would message about whiteboard videos, animated videos, stock footage videos, spokesperson videos, “can you make me a video just like this huge budget Slack video” etc. Or they’d want the moon on a stick, with a budget of $50. Revisions were ALWAYS needed, projects took forever to turn around, and cancellation rates were high compared with our VO gigs. On the surface, nothing was wrong - but reading this, I suspect everything was wrong. In our first call with our Success Manager, we talked about this - and I came to the conclusion that we’d lost our focus, because ALL of our gigs were suffering, and had been for a while. A few weeks back, I made the decision to pause the video gigs (temporarily, but most likely permanently), and focus only on Voice Overs again. And our VO gigs have shot off like a rocket ever since! This could only be temporary, it could even be coincidental, but it feels like our voice over gigs are on steroids at the moment, and I think it’s because Fiverr 3.0 knows that when it comes to VO, we’ll give Fiverr what they want; lots of customers who are happy to spend their money. Less friction, more sales. I’ll be implementing some of the things you’ve suggested here re gig descriptions and keywords, and let’s see where this goes!

I think the meeting that we had was worth more than $20 (which is technically what we paid for it). So, if we were to have a meeting like that each month at $20, then yes, definitely worth it. As it stands, we actually suggested not meeting each month (I’m not one of these people who believes we have to use something just because we have access to it - I’d rather 3 or 4 great meetings a year than 12 average meetings a year, personally). What I think you also get access to is your Success Manager via email, at any time. Our’s sent us a really good, personalised follow up email afterwards, detailing what we talked about with a reminder of the actions to be taken. We now have her direct email address, and she suggested that if we made some profile/gig changes and wanted to run them by her, she’d be more than happy to take a look. I do believe that’s good value for money. I also think this is why they have to be quite selective about who they add to Seller Plus - I can see some Sellers abusing this and sending a barrage of emails every day. To me, your Success Manager should be like a career coach; someone you contact when appropriate, to review something specific, but only every now and then. I’m fine with Seller Plus as-is for the time being, but I would like to see this become more than just ‘here’s your Success Manager’. I’ll be really interested to see what this might evolve into.

As my original comment on here (where I was admittedly a bit skeptical about this) continues to get a lot of likes etc, I thought it only fair that I report back on my first actual experience of Seller Plus. We had our introduction call today with our Seller Success Manager - and honestly, I was seriously impressed. Our Success Manager was friendly, professional, EXTREMELY knowledgeable about our vertical and Fiverr, and in the space of a 30 minute intro call, gave us a solid 3 or 4 tips/things to think about in relation to our profile that have really given food for thought. We talked through what was working well on our profile, where we were struggling, some possible reasons for why that might be, and some clear and actionable tips for moving forward, that I genuinely believe will help us improve our profile. For anyone expecting the ‘secret sauce’, or some kind of cheat code for more sales… You’re going to be disappointed. But if you want a professional with an insider’s understanding of how Fiverr works to give you honest, no holds barred feedback about how you could step your game up quite considerably, I’d really recommend signing up to this, if you’re given the opportunity.

I agree. Promoted gigs, this, and the ‘advanced payment’ loan option. They’re all about Fiverr making more money. Of course, a company needs to make money, but the trend is disturbing. In my opinion, reputation management would go MUCH further to improving Fiverr’s profit margins than charging sellers more money. Still, the outcome of programs like this remains to be seen. I could be completely wrong. I’m actually very pro Fiverr making money. I’d like to see the platform make as much money as possible. It increases the likelihood of Fiverr being around for a long time, and there’s more money to invest in the platform, marketing etc. We generate a lot of money for Fiverr, and pump a decent amount of that back through Promoted Gigs etc, and so long as I can see a value in doing so, I’m fine with that. I’m just hoping that the focus in these endeavours remains on providing real, tangible benefits to sellers, and not just finding ways of generating more cash. As others have said, there’s a coaching element here, which could be worth it’s weight in gold, it all depends on what the Success Managers can bring to the table. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on those guys to show their value. $29 a month to get access to a Fiverr-insider who can really pinpoint what’s working and what’s not with our profile? That feature on it’s own would be enough to interest me. If they share some information that brings in one order for us that we wouldn’t otherwise have got, they’ve paid for themselves for the month. Sign me up. But I do also agree with those who have said that they take issue with the ‘pay to play’ model for things like Fiverr’s Choice, Rising Talent etc. There’s no way around it, other than to say that’s grossly unfair to some users of the platform, especially those to whom $29 is a lot of money. Surely Fiverr’s Choice and Rising Talent should be placed on gigs irrespective of whether they’re a ‘paid member’ or not? I’m conflicted - but I would sign up, if given the option. If you can’t beat em…

@mjensen415 I’m definitely open to giving this a go for a few months, so please do add our User ID to any signup queue.

It might be due to the program, but also the pandemic. There are a lot more sellers. I am a writer and I also receive less inquiries when compared to the same time in 2019. So yes, having more and more sellers on the platform is definitely a reason why some gigs are tanking. Yeah you make a really valid point. It’s why I wish Promoted Gigs was SO much better than it turned out to be. Something as simple as being able to choose which keyword searches you’d like to Promote to for example, or being able to focus on a specific region, like you do with literally every other Promotional tool on the web. If I could only pay for the term ‘British Male Voice Over’, from clients who are based in the UK, I’d gladly pay $1 per click as I guarantee I’d convert enough to make it worthwhile. As it is, I just hit ‘Promote’ and assume that the algorithm has my back. Which in my experience, it does not. That’s what I mean when I say that some of these recent features feel really half-baked, and more like a quick cash-generation scheme than anything else.

Hmmm. It certainly does feel as though the focus has shifted these past 6 months to squeezing as much money as possible out of sellers. Which is a shame. I’ve nothing against programmes that are GENUINELY designed to help Sellers grow their business, quite the opposite. I reckon we could double our Fiverr workload before we started to become overstretched, and that would be phenomenal for us financially. I’ve no issue with paying to gain exposure and actually grow our business. You have to spend money to make money. My issue is that recent programmes like Promoted Gigs have been (in our experience at least) awful. I tried promoting our British Male Voice Over gig. Almost $1 a click, with no option to choose who you were advertising to, so half of the enquiries we got were from people wanting an American accent. And whilst it might be a coincidence, since Promoted Gigs was introduced, organic traffic to the gig has tanked. If invited, we’ll probably give this a go - what have we got to lose? I just wish Fiverr would prioritise working on fixes and features that Sellers ACTUALLY want, rather than focusing on what are clearly revenue generation streams, disguised as features.

Always nice to see a Flourishing Forum Bromance! 😂

Just to let you know, customer service is about as official as you can get. If I were you, I would except CS as very high on the Fiverr importance scale. Just saying. Hi Melissa, I think what I said has been misinterpreted a little. I never questioned the importance, or officiality of Fiverr Customer Support. But I’ve had many personal experiences over the years, of different Customer Support agents interpreting the same rule in very different ways. I’ve literally had different answers, within the space of a few hours, from different agents, and that’s happened on numerous occasions, and regarding well established practices. My comment was in reference to a CS agent promising a new seller that Promoted Gigs would be available to everyone soon. This seems to go against Fiverr’s methodology in rolling out Promoted Gigs, and certainly wouldn’t make much business sense (giving a brand new, un-vetted seller the ability to promote their gigs to page one is a recipe for disaster). All I was saying was that, until I hear that from an official channel (like a press release, an update on the relevant support page etc) that I wouldn’t guarantee on this being 100% accurate.

Remember kids, the real Pros stay online 24/7 😉

Every time I see the phrase; “So I messaged my buyer asking why they only rated me 4.7…”

Me when I see a forum post from a Buyer who clearly can afford to pay market rates, complaining that the 15 Million word article they bought for $5 turned out to be a disaster…

When a brand new, 0-Level Seller, advises another brand new, 0-Level Seller, that the trick to ‘Unlimited Sells’ is to STAY ONLINE 24/7

What does it say when you click on the blue-hyperlinked bid amount of $0.50? Your metrics would suggest that your bid might be too low to trigger. Clicking on the bid amount should show you a ‘suggested’ bid amount to help you outbid others.