raghnalltuathai

I don't know if this is exactly how it happened, but I am often shocked at how much power Fiverr gives even new buyers over sellers who may have been active on the platform for several years. Especially with new customers on the platform that do not really understand how Fiverr works yet.

Thanks for clarifying. Sounds awful. So it's better not to leave a review at all or just a 5 star review to not anger the master. A private review is not a problem in itself, but the fact that it has side effects like shutting down a whole profile for up to 60 days (as you can read in the thread of @designboom ) is probably not worth leaving honest feedback with an unfriendly customer.

As a buyer, can you submit private feedback even after you and the seller have rated each other? Is it then not risky to rate buyers honestly (in negative cases)? There were a couple of threads that confirmed that private negative feedback has incredibly huge effects on a gig. Suppose the client is satisfied with the work and gives 5 stars, but for the seller the cooperation was unpleasant and they make this public in a negative review and the buyer sees it on their profile; do they still have the option to leave private feedback afterwards? Just curious. In that case you could "take revenge" untruthfully.

That's true. I actually have both - gigs to order directly from and the more advanced stuff where I ask to contact me first because it just makes sense. I actually almost lost my TRS badge due to two of "tHeSe bUyErS" I had shortly after our discussion. They ordered directly, one was looking for something totally different and didn't understand the difference, the other one requested to cancel the order because I (quote) "was asking too much about his project". Like necessary stuff to get started. In cases like this it's just super frustrating that these guys can just go ahead and order. But that's how Fiverr works. And it makes sense - at least from a business point of view. To answer your question: I am guilty of doing this. I am asking to contact me before ordering. Yet I am confident and proud of my work. But I'm working with 3D Animations, CGI & VFX and while I understand the difference between certain technical aspects, most buyers don't. And that's ok. That's what I'm here for and that's why I'd like to discuss a project upfront. Otherwise you'll get an order and someone will send you the trailer of Disneys Frozen asking you to "make an animated movie like this, just with my characters". You'll find some more reasons in the thread I linked. There are a lot of reasons you need to discuss projects in advance - at least in subcategories like mine. But of course I agree: it would "kill the vibe" if you have to do that for every small order. The whole magic of Fiverr is ordering within a few mouse clicks. Just saying that there ARE valid reasons people put this in their descriptions.

Ouch, Mike. Not long ago we had the same discussion, sad to see it didn't change your mind on this topic at least a little bit.

Actually something I can understand. I only used Buyers Request a few times and 99% of the sellers send out copy-paste template messages that have nothing to do with your briefing. You are just flooded with spam. That's one of the ways you can actually do a quick check to see if someone sent out an unique offer based on your request. Of course I wouldn't recommend "mustard" :D. And of course this has nothing to do with their cheap behavior of wanting the world for $5. Buyers Request is nothing more than a Battle Royale Mode. Only no one wins in the end.

Timothykoen

This has to be a joke. Either 100% trolling (successfully) or absolutely delusional. Sorry but there's no other explanation.

I think you misunderstood his statement. You are saying if you can raise $500,000 for a Mc Donalds franchise restaurant, you have a chance to prove that you deliver good service, but if Fiverr introduces a $29 joining fee, you have no chance to prove yourself? Sorry, but I don't think the comparison makes sense in context. As a freelancer you NEVER have a guarantee of a steady and regular income. That's why this kind of lifestyle is not for everyone. I can be earning five figures this month and the next month the orders stop coming in. That's why, for example, getting a loan from the bank as a freelancer is an absolute pain - sometimes not even possible. In my opinion Fiverr does more for sellers than I'm used to from other platforms. Fiverr provides you virtually free of charge the technical service to create a gig, access to a huge pool of potential buyers who use Fiverr, store your data on their servers and use an easy payment process. "Pay" you actually only do when you sell something (in the form of the 20% commission). We're all starting from 0. I feel like people sometimes forget that. Instead of researching and learning how to run a successful business, they come to the forum and ask "successful" and "veteran" sellers what they should improve about their gigs because they are not making sales. They're looking for easy answers. And some guy on YouTube told them it's super easy to get a lambo by working on Fiverr. Then they blame the platform because it doesn't make all 2.3 million sellers easy money. Other platforms with different business models only provide you with the technology so that you can present your service there. But it's up to you to bring your service to customers, to do marketing and advertising. As an example: I use a site where you can upload your online courses and students can enroll. The platform provides me with the technology. Nobody cares if I ever have a student - that's my problem. I still pay monthly for the service. If the revenue doesn't cover my costs and doesn't generate a profit, I have to consider the business model a failure or think about alternative marketing. Fiverr is not responsible for you making sales or being successful. I have some huge issues with Fiverr that I think should be talked about, but in this regard, Fiverr provides sellers with more (for free!) than I've seen elsewhere. And that is both a curse and a blessing. And we come back to the original topic. At some point, the store here will become overcrowded and partially unusable. Anyone who has ever used the Buyer Requests (as buyer) knows that. I've tried to use it three times so far and each time it ended up with heaps of garbage (there's no other way to call it) and spam. Because without a barrier to entry, the number of incompetent or fake sellers without experience will skyrocket. Customers will become more dissatisfied and talented artists will be lost among the flood (new ones or veterans, it will affect most). Since the pandemic, this has been proven for many. My impressions, clicks, and inbound messages have plummeted 70%. Fiverr's reputation will suffer as a result. Sooner or later, something will have to be done.

That's actually a very good point and called ROI - Return On Investment. And if a monthly fee will help to get more spotlight onto serious sellers and gigs and increase your sales, it is worth it in my opinion. Of course there is no 100% guarantee for that, that's why I think something like a free month for new sellers and a monthly plan that can be cancelled at any time could be a fair agreement. I have multiple businesses on other platforms as well (like courses, digital products, etc.). They all require a monthly fee or get a share of each sale. Even if you switch and set up your own business on your own website you'll have to pay for monthly server costs, maybe a wordpress theme or plugin, advertisment and more.

Hey guys, I think you all are pretty stuck on the $250 proposal right now. However, that was just the idea of another user and was not in the original post. I myself wouldn't consider $250 a month on Fiverr either and I really don't make bad on the platform. So that wasn't what was meant by my original idea. I was thinking more of a smaller fee like for the Seller Plus Program - say in the $20-$29 range and cancellable monthly. In exchange, you could lower the 20% commission percentage a bit, for example. And maybe the gig promotion feature would no longer be necessary. Fiverr is actually one of the few platforms where membership is free - but you can see that because of the many copy cats, scammers and fakers that this plays into the hands of. And the 1000 forum threads on "how to make a first sell?!". The danger due to the pandemic and the increasing number of "sellers" who have heard from some YouTube Guru that you can make money quickly by using photoshop templates, is that many really good sellers will go under (i noticed the rising amount of forum posts from people who once worked full-time on Fiverr and now get no more impressions, clicks and orders). Fiverr says you should also market yourself, but instead of then putting the money into Google Ads advertising, I would rather pay a small fee, which then ensures that the marketplace is cleaned of all the false offers and real services are found more often and more easily again. As I said - I'm checking the first page when looking for my own gig and 90% per site is scam and stolen portfolio. I have to compete with clips from Pixar Movies and potential customers with no technical background no longer have an overview of which service is realistic and fair for which price. To throw another analogy into the room: Fiverr is currently a fitness center where you can train for free. Sounds awesome first. But over time all those who actually want to train regularly would no longer get a place on the machines because they are all the time occupied by people who only come to train for 1-2 days before giving up and actually have no serious interest and knowledge of the workout.

I would only like a paid membership with a fixed amount. In no case further percentage fees. I already pay around ~10k a year to Fiverr and if I now had to give up another percentage for a membership depending on revenue, then I would rather leave the platform. A fixed amount, such as the Seller Plus program, would be very welcome instead. I really like how @frank_d explained the advantages. But I can also understand how it could scare off a lot of new and experienced sellers.

Hey guys, I'm just finding my way around the new forum. It looks pretty nice! In read-only mode, I picked up an interesting idea that I read in a conversation (don't remember which thread, but I think @frank_d wrote about it). It was about Fiverr possibly going for a paid membership for sellers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I remember it. Even though I found it critical at first, since Fiverr already generates a lot of revenue via the 20% commission from sellers, a fee from buyers, the early payout option, promoted gigs and now seller plus, I like the idea of a paid membership more and more. To that end, you have to know that in my main category - 3D animated music videos - I'd say a rough estimate is that 80% (or more) are scammers/faker. I struggle to rank well on pages 1-3 due to the mass of these fake gigs. These are people who either copy gigs and steal portfolios (from me, for example), or steal animations from YouTube and pass them off as their own, and in the worst case they even take scenes of movies like Frozen or the new Spiderman as their reference. Funny note: I had an interested buyer send me her latest music video. This she had also made on Fiverr. She asked me directly why my prices were so high when she had such a great and high quality music video made for $50. So I watched her video on YouTube and it was a compilation of scenes from the animated Spiderman movie. I then just sent her the original trailer of it and meant that Hollywood must have been inspired by her music video :D. The pandemic has doubled the number of these scammers and as a result my impressions and clicks have plummeted. I believe that Fiverr could really clean up big time with a small (it doesn't have to be huge) membership fee, which could help all legitimate and reputable sellers back up especially in the rankings. There have been more threads about this lately. Apart from that, it would also help buyers not to encounter so many scammers or confusing gigs anymore. What do you think? Would you consider a paid membership?

I’m not saying that one’s vertical is irrelevant, but claiming that people should take a step back before they think about making a total of six figures on Fiverr, sounds like conditioning to me personally. It’s like me back when I was a level 1 seller, reading the blogpost about a woman making millions by being an HR generalist. I never once thought that: I’m not in HR, therefore this isn’t for me". Is it easier to present people with a larger amount when calculating life-long earnings on the platform if you are selling big-ticket items? Sure. I personally felt like my ego took a punch in the face by superman himself when I met another seller via one of the Ice Breaker events. He was a developer, and he was making over $500,000 a year on Fiverr. Had over 20 employees, and thought about scaling up. I felt inspired and saw his earnings as a clear window of what can be achieved. It broke my mental ceiling. I am now working on getting there myself. (or to a version of that closer to what I feel comfortable with) But a couple of things to note here: A) by conditioning yourself in general, you are effectively creating a self-fulfiling prophecy. B) by saying that “oh he makes 3D videos, that’s why” may appear as if you are brushing off just how hard it is for a seller to juggle those 4/5 digit projects each month. It takes a lot of skills, mostly soft skills, to tackle that sort of clientele, consistently. @raghnalltuathai Keep up the good work, and please share the next part of your journey with us. Hey Frank, thank you! I definitely will. I think we sometimes forget that we are born all the same. I didn’t wake up someday and was able to create these 3D animated music videos. I started with purchasing a licence and a simple YouTube tutorial. And I’m sure there are even bigger niches. To get some clients, reputation and reviews I had prices so low I was actually going crazy. I started with a $80 package. For a 3D animation :D. I almost thought about leaving the platform but I worked on my business and marketing and scaled it up year by year. And I’m sure everyone can achieve something like that if he or she really has the intention to do so. You would think so but actually it is full of scammers. They steal animations from YouTube, use it as their portfolio and cut parts of them together to provide “customized music videos” for their clients. Back in the days I was reporting these guys as they are scamming people and stealing others work. Hell, they even steal my portfolio, my descriptions, use the same prices and there’s even some guy who uses the same software and just copies my scripts and concepts but re-animates the exact scenes and created a “new” video out of it. They became more and more by day, so there’s nothing you can do about it actually.

Well, I never had a month without any orders since then. But I had some very bad months compared to others. The worst month was about $1.200. Still sounds like a lot but I live in a pretty expensive country and have to pay taxes and health insurance as well as my personal fix costs, so these months got me kind of in trouble.