texvox

@imagination7413 hit the nail on the head here. If you're a voice artist who is used to working in a studio and have no way to record from home this will be your path. Pricing it in is the only option you really have to make sure you can obtain the studio you need without destroying your own bottom line here on Fiverr. The vast majority of voice buyers on this platform are not going to be folks who are used to hiring someone to be only the voice and then having to also hire a studio for you to work from. As a side note - as a voice actor myself with a strong direct business outside of Fiverr I would highly recommend that you invest in at least some basic recording gear of your own. This was enormously important during the COVID days, but remains so even now to really stay competitive. Even if you live in LA, NY or Chicago and you're one of the golden voices that dominates the national broadcast scene and books national commercial after national commercial, having recording gear of your own is only going to grow your business. At this point you can build an excellent home studio for under $500 that can compete on the national stage, at least for auditions. Definitely worth the investment even if you continue to primarily book clients who pay for studio time.

As mentioned by the prior poster, Fiverr keeps 20% and pays you out 80%. But as an additional heads up this also applies to tips you receive on orders you complete here on the platform. This percentage also does not change with order size, so expect 20% to be deducted from every project whether $5 or $5000.

You can't really force the first order your way, but there are several things you can do to make yourself more appealing to the algorithm. 1. Clearly define the service you're offering. Make sure that a potential buyer can tell exactly what it is that you're going to be doing for them based on your gig title and your gig description. I've seen a lot of vague gigs out there that are not really specific enough for anyone to know exactly what to expect when buying from you. The more specific, the more likely your gig is to appeal to a buyer. 2. Dial in your keywords. Do some research in the Fiverr search function to see what other sellers in your niche are including in their titles and gig descriptions. Fiverr is algorithm-led, so you need to know what keywords buyers are most often searching for and what the algorithm is most frequently displaying. 3. Make sure your work examples are excellent quality. If someone is going to spend money on your service - whether it's $5 or $5000 - they want to know they're getting something good for their money. Certain buyers will have bloated expectations of what they can get for their money, but regardless you really want to show that you can offer high-quality work to attract buyers. Otherwise they may see your gig and even click on it, but leave quickly. High quality samples gives them a reason to stay a little longer, which can translate into a sale. 4. Considering adding a call-to-action phrase in your gig description, like "Simply place your order and let's get started!" or something similar. Some sort of phrase to urge a potential buyer to action. There is a lot more to be done to really dial in your gig, but these are starting points for every seller.

If this is a first-time buyer, or even a repeat buyer that you don't have a lot of history with, I would always default to charging for additional services. You're providing a valuable service, and time is the one thing you cannot create more of in life. Charge for yours. If it's a buyer you have a great history with, I'm open to providing a few "freebies" here and there. Several years ago a friend of mine who is also a small business owner taught me the value of cutting great clients a break once in a while. Sometimes giving away a little bit of your time now can generate a lot of good will with a client and a ton of work later. But this is something I reserve only for the clients I have the best relationships with and can trust.

I'm on board with extending deadlines and setting that message. Unfortunately where I went in Ukraine was a few km off the front lines and all blown to kingdom come so no wifi and mostly no cell service was gonna destroy my response rate so vacay mode was all I had. But we win some and lose some, and like you mentioned Fiverr doesn't owe us a spot on the train. It's sad to see how many folks have been railroaded by the vacation feature though. I'm glad it's worked out for you over the years! I know a lot of sellers personally whose Fiverr world has been flipped upside down by using it even briefly. But all the more reason for us to have a health direct business and, like you mentioned, view Fiverr as a side dish. Kesha said she'd forward it up the chain so who knows; a guy can dream 🤣

It all comes back to family for me. Being able to provide for them, but more importantly being able to be present with them. I could work my tail off and constantly be growing my income with no ceiling in sight and it would feel nice to have a significant surplus of resources, but if I'm not there to actually enjoy the family I'm providing for and live this one life together I would see that as a failure. Instead I set myself a specific income goal a few years ago and a target of working 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm grateful to have met and exceeded the income goal, and I'm currently down to an average of about 5 hours a day 5 days a week. Every step I make toward that goal feels like a big win to me.

EDIT: the below was put together in a rush so I know I got a little soap-boxy and off topic. I added a notation about where my main point ends if you don't care to read further. I agree that we aren’t employed by Fiverr in the traditional sense, but the algorithm does put employment-like expectations on our participation on the platform in order to remain in favor, and using the unavailable feature has a serious impact on a lot of sellers even when used infrequently, so repeated use is a no-go. Unlike freelancing outside of Fiverr where you have complete control over the growth of your business and your visibility to potential clients, here on Fiverr these things lie in the hands of an algorithm nobody completely understands and upon which we can make relatively little impact. Almost like an employer making decisions about your career for you. With that in mind I think it’s worth Fiverr exploring small updates like what was suggested here to allow us to set recurring, automated unavailability (“days off,” but we don’t have to call it that) rather than sticking to the manual solution right now. If we’re going to be as beholden to the algorithm as we are it makes sense to have as many tools as we can, and for those tools to be as streamlined as possible. On a side note, while you can use the availability / unavailability function in its current iteration it’s nuked so many seller profiles in the past - including my own recently - that it’s not really a feature sellers can truly rely on right now. The risk level of using it is just way too high. Main point of my post ends here - other rambling below re: the state of the current vacation mode feature. As an example of just how risky it is to use vacation mode, in November of last year I set myself as unavailable for 10 days to serve in Ukraine in a missionary/humanitarian capacity. I voiced my concerns about using the feature to my seller plus manager due to some poor experiences I had in the past with the feature, but she assured me they had updated it so that it would have minimal impact "if any" and was "there for your benefit!" When I came back my profile was completely flatlined, and has just now - 6 months later - returned anywhere close to the impressions, clicks and orders that I had been averaging for 26 months prior to using the vacation mode feature. 6 months to get back into the favor of the algorithm, in spite of making every tweak imaginable and having a pristine record (confirmed with my SP manager excellent private reviews to make sure of that as well) and very high sales on the platform for years prior to using the feature. Rebuilding homes for families and trying to play with and lighten the spirits of 5 year olds who had lost limbs to mines since the start of that war cost me 6 months of time and tens of thousands of dollars in average monthly income here on the platform. This is not a unique outcome among the freelancers I know personally. Outside of Fiverr? No problem; my direct business came right back to life immediately, as in the day of my return I was already in talks for new projects with clients. It could be said that's just something that comes with the territory of working on Fiverr, but I believe it can and should be improved. For context I've also had really bad luck with taking even 2 days off via the "unavailable/vacation mode" feature as well, so it's not just a matter of that November stint being longer. Not what I'd call a safe and reliable feature, at least based on my experience. YMMV of course, but my trust in that as it is is gone.

This would be an excellent idea. It would probably not be an overly complex thing for Fiverr developers to code in, although I don't know how they'd throw this data into the algorithm. I imagine they could also program it so that your turnaround time is automatically updated based on your business days. For example, if you normally offer turnaround in "up to 2 days" and someone places an order on one of your designated non-business days the system could automatically amend that turnaround publicly to "up to 3 days" so the potential buyer could plan for that slightly extended delivery window. Or the system could place a notification on the gig page saying something like "This seller's business days are XYZ. Communication and order completion may be extended on non-business days." And maybe the 24-hr response requirement could be waived for non-working days, although it's still a good idea to at least respond to buyers to let them know you've seen their message and will reach out on a business day. Fiverr appears to be very focused on work-life balance right now based on forum posts from their staff members as well as the upcoming webinar on work-life management. @Kesha in the spirit of this work-life focus I believe this is a worthy suggestion to forward to the development team that would help to accomplish a healthier balance for sellers, vs. the "always on" 24/7 nature of Fiverr.

Yes, I've signed many an NDA for projects I've worked on here on Fiverr. For reference, my industry is voice-over, and NDAs are not uncommon when working on higher-profile commercial projects as well as video-game & animations. I generally only agree to sign NDAs for projects over a certain $$$ threshold (in my mind, why entangle myself in a bunch of legal commitments for peanuts?) and I also only sign NDAs for projects with North American companies, primarily in the USA, since North American governing bodies are the only ones that I have a good understanding of so I feel more confident in reviewing the agreement and understanding what I am signing. And if I ever make an exception for non-North-American entities I charge an additional fee to cover legal review of the NDA.

I hope they clarify for you! It’s been radio silence since I emailed asking for further clarification.

As a pro in my field with a robust and growing business outside of Fiverr, I agree that the platform does still have a lot to offer to freelancers and is still a good piece of the pie to include in your business. Over the last few years however, even as my business here has been booming it's become increasingly clear that it's not reliable enough and demands a bit too much of sellers to be a huge piece of that pie. I also do not plan to leave Fiverr any time soon, but I would be lying if I said I felt as rosy about the platform today as I did 1, 2 or 3 years ago. 3 years ago I felt like Fiverr was a great partner to have in my corner to help me grow my business. 2 years ago I felt like it was a better place to be than many other platforms I've tried, but far from perfect. 1 year ago I started to feel like it was a good tool to use with some noticeable flaws, but not a platform to throw all of my chips in with. Lately I've been feeling more like I am lucky to still be seeing the success that I am, and the "writing is on the wall" regarding future potential over the next few years if recent trends in product rollouts and policy changes continues in the same direction. Fiverr's fatal flaw, in my opinion, is that it does not treat its freelancers like freelancers, and does not see itself as a tool to help freelancers. Instead Fiverr seems to assume that it is an employer and treats us more like employees, sucking the free out of freelance in the process. As Fiverr has raised baseline expectations for all sellers it's become clearer that they expect Fiverr to be your primary workspace and your chief focus as a businessperson. But the reality is Fiverr is far too general a freelancing platform to be the be-all-end-all foundation for the average freelancer to build their business upon. I know that for myself as a voice actor Fiverr leaves a lot to be desired in the area of licensing in particular, which has been a hurdle to trying to run my business here in a way that doesn't detract from my primary business off-site due to how broad licensing is, which simply does not complement our industry as a whole.

Yes, I would definitely agree! Buyers aren't looking for a new best friend, but a warm and sincere greeting is way more than they'd get from the average big corp and seems to lay a good foundation in the majority of client relationships I've ever had both here on Fiverr and elsewhere.

Congratulations, and what a cool thing to be the only TRS in your primary category. Keep up the good work 💪

I was glad to see that Fiverr did listen to feedback and rolled back some of the more questionable additions like emojis. +1 to Fiverr in my book for showing that their people do pay attention to the forums! Some of the changes I don't necessarily like, such as the limited editing window for buyers to amend their reviews, but you can't win them all and I don't expect Fiverr to cater to me specifically so I'll deal with that. Overall, it looks like the changes are somewhat minimal in my book which works for me since the platform as-is has worked well enough for the last 2 years for my business.

While I'm in my mid-30s I'm an old fogey at heart and don't use social media much, even for my business, so the algo has to dig deep to determine my likes. So my social media algorithm is full of "Hey, we saw that you bought this thing on Amazon so here's 1 million other products exactly like it for you to consider" 🤣

I asked the Fiverr Pro team how sharing my LinkedIn with them would help them with the matchmaking process and enhance my profile and the response I received was simply "As mentioned, we need it to better match freelancers with potential clients when we are doing manual matching, as well as to enhance your seller profile." Because of the risks of entangling my direct business with my Fiverr business vague responses are not comforting. Transparency builds trust, and I'd like to see more details on the specifics of how our social media will be used to achieve these objectives. In my industry - Voiceover - Fiverr unfortunately has an extremely negative reputation, to the point where agents/agencies, casting directors and even certain production houses that could become my clients have been known to (and even publicly state that they do) blacklist voice talent if it's discovered they are working on Fiverr. For this reason many voice actors use pseudonyms here on the platform and choose to separate their Fiverr business from their primary brand off-site. I personally feel very positive overall about Fiverr and I do enjoy working on Fiverr and am happy to tell certain people that I do, but only certain people after I have had some time to determine their position on the platform. There's a real risk to my direct business' income potential if Fiverr does something public with my social media and were to somehow parade that I am on the platform to any and everyone. For this reason I'm going to decline to share my social media with Fiverr until someone from the Pro team can give me a very transparent answer as to how giving them this info will actually help with matching and my profile, or until one of them flat out says it will hurt me on this platform if I don't share it. If they do decide to share these details I'd be happy to consider changing my mind.

Completed an order for a buyer yesterday. The buyer accepted within 5 minutes, and 1 minute later I was notified that the buyer left a tip, yet there was no review. The public review and corresponding notification showed up about 20 minutes later. I assume this is just a small bug as a result of recent rollouts.

I always lead with "Howdy - thanks for reaching out! It's nice to meet you. I'd love to see if I can help." I've always found that a quick pleasantry goes a long way with most folks, regardless of culture, but especially with us westerners. Getting right down to business can feel very cold to many people. When working with a large corporation this may be to be expected, but when working with an individual freelancer or a small team your buyer is likely hoping for something more than just taking an order and cranking out a result. Otherwise there are a million big businesses out there who can probably do what you're doing faster and cheaper due to scale. Relationship really seems to take things to the next level when freelancing.

Fiverr is definitely in a state of flux right now. Where it ends up is anyone's guess. But even if we didn't have access to the stats regarding the number of buyers leaving and the massive influx of sellers over the last 1-2 years (many posing as experts when they are far from it), one can easily tell that Fiverr as a whole is grasping at straws based on the numerous "improvements" they have been rolling out. At times it feels very much like the developer teams are throwing spaghetti at a wall hoping a few noodles stick. Does this mean Fiverr is doomed? I don't think so. For every person I hear that is having a very poor experience with Fiverr this year I hear another person having the opposite. I consider these to be ongoing growing pains. I'm on the "still experiencing a lot of success" side of the spectrum myself, in spite of some very poorly conceived rollouts from the Fiverr product team that have added hurdles to the path this year. Will that last? Who knows. That said... Fiverr is not a platform where you want to put a majority of your effort right now if you aren't already established here. Building a business on the back of a mysterious algorithm operating in the shadows is never your best bet anyway, but pouring a ton of effort into a platform with such a mysterious algorithm that feels like it's convulsing at the moment feels especially unwise. For a few years I focused a lot of my effort on Fiverr and the turnout has been great with several 6-figure annual returns, but even for those of us experiencing success "The writing is on the wall..." as they say. I still think that Fiverr can be a great piece of the puzzle and I love doing business here, but do yourself a favor and let it be a small piece, and not the backbone of your business.

Joined back in 2018. Fiddled around for 3-4 months, couldn't really generate any traction so I paused all my gigs and shelved the platform. A friend convinced me to give it another shot in 2020 and apparently second time is the charm because I quickly gained my footing and took of and haven't looked back since.

Black coffee has really grown on me over the years. I still have a sugared-up milk-filled drink once in a once in a while, but it's very few and far between. Give me that jet-black rocket fuel instead 🤣

Things like this do make me wonder (genuinely) what protections Fiverr has in place to ensure AI is not used in un-savory or un-ethical ways on the platform? I would assume any company going as all-in on AI as Fiverr has probably had some meetings about this. There are a lot of AI-based scams out there in the ether outside of the platform already. With the rapid advancement of these tools they'll find their way here on no time flat, and I don't think that a simple policy requiring people disclose their use of AI is going to cut it.

Also a voice actor here, and I know way more than I ever thought I would about both male performance issues and heavy machinery. Because of my vocal print I'm hired for a lot of dude-related stuff and blue-collar projects. I'm the primary voice for a large male performance clinic across the US and several heavy machinery dealers and manufacturers in and outside of the US. If asked to I could probably write a quick thesis paper on the causes and common treatments for ED as well as standard and new manufacturing practices for both augers and excavator buckets 🤣

Yes I did! And that happened about 3 weeks after my 3rd child was born, so you can imagine the adrenaline pumping as I stood in the parking lot wondering what in the world I was going to do. Crazy start to an interesting career path.

Money is also good, considering my bills don't accept "good will" as payment 🤣