leannelrivers

I got it a couple of days ago. My only first time buyers have been really happy, so it's either something from weeks or months ago, or the buyers weren't honest with me and used the private review to express that. But I don't believe that the last 3 new buyers were dissatisfied at all. I'm still in communication with one of them about a continuation of the project and he's delighted with the work and the relationship so far. I don't know what else I can do to please clients enough in order to avoid these blackouts, other than pandering to every demand and unreasonable request. And not telling us why our buyers aren't completely happy doesn't help. Kafka comes to mind.

Nonsense. The forum has nothing to do with it. You might get one or two forum users going to your profile if you've asked people to check your gigs, but no one is going to order from that.

Yes, it's a shame. I used to do pretty well on there way back, but the bidding is a pain, and unless you're quick to the job post, you're probably somewhere on the bottom of a list of 50-something applicants. And it's swamped with vague job descriptions that are not worth the paid bid. But I'm using this time to improve my profiles elsewhere and start another round of agent hunting. If there's one benefit of work drying up here, it's that my comfort zone expands pretty quickly.

Who just made official their 10% across the board fee.

Beers are on me when the good times roll again, which they will....

You're one of about 12 billion sellers on the platform. Sometimes you'll take a trip on the merry-go-round.

I've had a profile there for a while that I left to basically rot. I have gone back to beef it up and take advantage of the new features just to see what happens. It has its pros and cons like every platform, but it is another egg in some form of basket. For voice over it's tough, by the time I get to see the job posts with good budgets they've got something like 20-50 bids (very vague), at that point it seems pointless to bid. And they do still take 20%. That reduces with return clients. I think once you hit $500 in sales with one client the commission goes down. We kind of have a loyalty system here too in the form of coupons, but that comes out of the sellers pocket so I never use them.

Could be. There's so much instability and uncertainty globally at the moment, not to mention the potential savings that switching to AI generated services could provide, that any number of things could be contributing to the overall situation.

5 bucks plus broadcast rights.

This is one of the reasons I have a very strict daily spend limit on the one gig I can promote. I have had worthwhile conversions in the past, but not recently.

Haha! Oh boy... Comforting!

Do you get it back on every order they make with you? And it is much easier to stand your ground with private clients when the threat of a bad review tanking your business isn't hanging in the air. But I haven't had a single bad experience with my own private clients. No haggling, threatening, taking the mick with revisions...

I completed a survey recently asking general questions about freelancing and Fiverr. One was along the line of would I or do I bring buyers onto the platform from outside. Er, nope! I certainly don't break the rules and take them off the platform, but why on earth would I give up a client I've acquired myself, pay 20% and possibly lose them in the ocean of sellers.

I started from the bottom on Fiverr so it's been my biggest earner for a while, which is now unfortunate. Other things come and pay very well, but I'm anxious to expand and find more reliable opportunities. Once I'm in that position I won't sweat the Fiverr black holes.

I don't feel I've reached the same peak since the Ukraine war began, I have no idea why. But definitely the last 2-3 months have been the absolute pits in terms of impressions and new queries. I have had some orders, but nothing compared to what I'm used to. There's always more advice about what do, whether it be a new gigs, updating tags, price changes, etc. I've just increased my prices slightly again after being told lowering might help. It didn't, so what the hell.

I have a new gig pending offering AI, sci-fi style voice-over. It's something I've done before for artists and filmmakers before AI REALLY got rolling. My selling point is basically "Hey, do you need an AI voice BUT enjoy working with humans?" Bonkers that being flesh and blood has become a sales strategy. Let's see what happens. I need things to pick up across the board.

I'll discount a little bit sometimes for larger projects that I really want to be involved in, but otherwise I politely say no. If they persist I just block them.

Thank you for another detailed post, Frank! It's been clear for a while what a huge impact private reviews have but I wasn't aware that first time buyers can hit that even harder. It's impossible to please everyone. I've also heard told that the algo favours higher priced gigs, but then I was told to lower my prices because I wasn't competitive enough. I wonder if there's also a downside to turning down briefs which I do a lot because the budgets are often unreasonable, or the clients simply never reply to my offers. I do my best with every order and every client and improve my gigs where I can, outside of that it's important to put eggs in plenty of other baskets. As grateful as I am for the success I've had on Fiverr, and for my great success manager, sales have been so thin and unpredictable that I struggle to take it seriously as a branch of my business. I've been in a relative slump for a long time now, months, and I know some of my very talented and successful peers here are also getting far less orders than they've ever been used to. We can't all have lower buyer satisfaction at the same time.

This doesn't surprise me one iota.

What happened with Top Clients?

I think it's a decent little feature to have, especially for those sellers who now regret choosing permanent user names like dogfarts1234. That's not a real seller name (I hope), but y'know what I mean.

I should have added that if the honest feedback your clients do leave you is negative that's on you. You should only expect positive reviews when you deliver good work and good service. If you are busted trying to manipulate buyers in any way to leave a positive review specifically then you will get a warning and you risk having your gigs shut down.

You are allowed to mention that you'd appreciate them leaving their honest feedback when you complete the order (not before). Avoid the word review and don't ask for a positive review. Honest feedback only. If they don't leave honest feedback after you've mentioned it don't ask them again. Leave them alone. That's the advice I got from my seller plus manager.

No one should be providing revisions years later. Even months later is unreasonable unless you offered this at the time. I haven't looked at your profile, if you haven't already, add an FAQ stating exactly what your revision policy is. You can also add a note in order requirements to politely point clients in the direction of you FAQs so that it's on them to inform themselves. They won't always read these without being prompted. It's fine to be flexible with revisions, I do go above and beyond for some clients, but only if they're quality clients who are not out to take advantage. In difficult cases go to CS as @newsmike has already suggested. These things do happen occasionally, it's the nature of the beast, but you can't allow yourself to be held hostage by clients who expect you to continue to work on things long after the order is finished without compensating you. Especially months after! I doubt they would be willing to do that, it's bad for business. A simple comparison is a restaurant. Would you go back to a restaurant months after your meal and say, "Actually, my burger wasn't seasoned well, make me another one for free or give me a refund."? It's absurd.

I get them dripping in. They're at least in the voice-over ballpark, but often don't match my accent or they want a male voice-over artist. I rarely get replies when I do apply, and there are a lot looking for explicit content. I'm not sure why those are able to get through. That said, I'm currently working on a fantastic job voicing a character in a computer game and the client is incredible. I got that through briefs.