texvox

It makes sense in general to always do your best to find a way to arrive at a mutually beneficial solution. Problem solvers tend to get a lot further in business than problem-identifiers and significantly further than combative business owners. There are plenty of clients I've worked with over the years that I would have happily told to go fly a kite, but from a business perspective it makes the most sense to kill with kindness, as it were. Here on Fiverr this is especially important due to the power of the private buyer review. In the real world if a client has a poor experience they can leave a public review and take their business away. Here on Fiverr they can leave a private review and take your business away in the form of the algorithm burying you after a negative private review. Thankfully I've never had this happen to me, but I've known a fair few people who did have this happen in spite of doing their best to arrive at a positive solution for a buyer (I've seen the transcripts; there are truly some people out there that think they are God's gift to you). If you find yourself working with a particularly difficult client I would always focus on finding the best solution for you both given the situation, and then if you do not wish to work with them again take appropriate action to ensure they can no longer place an order from you. If you are a Seller Plus subscriber and have access to the "Request to Order" function I would highly recommend using it. I have mine on 24/7 and it's done nothing but great things for my Fiverr business, allowing me to pre-screen buyers and projects to ensure we'd be a good fit, much like I would with my direct voiceover clients. If a situation seems fishy, or a client really seems like a poor fit, I can simply decline the project.

I'm running into a ton of these as well and agree, it's pretty crazy how repetitive they are. I've used this to my advantage though and pitched copy editing services to bring the scripts out of the robotic and into the human conversational realm. One of my copywriting connections is benefitting more than he knows from me referring people to him to refine these terrible scripts from Chat GPT 😆

This opinion is coming from the perspective of being a full-time voice actor who rarely produces final projects for clients. For overall performance I really like Reaper. Highly customizable, very powerful, and the learning curve isn't terrible. If you're recording spoken word and also in need of a solid production tool you can buy a license for this pretty cheap ($60 for the base license last I checked, with a slightly more expensive license once you earn over X dollars). If you aren't producing projects and are primarily recording voice-overs like myself I prefer Adobe Audition CC though. It was seemingly really built around spoken word recording, with multi-track and other tools appearing to be add-ons, but not the main course (you have them if you need them, but you don't have to work with them or with any complex controls to get the job done). All of the controls are extremely intuitive for voice acting without almost any customization needed. If you're a voice actor after something free and intuitive though, I'm still a big fan of Audacity. I switched to Audition because I needed to be able to run live plugin emulations, but if I didn't I would have stuck with that (Audacity actually offers the ability to use live plugins now I believe). I built a successful full-time voice-over business on the back of Audacity and while it's very limited from an editing perspective (destructive editing, bleh) it's still a solid program overall.

I haven't been able to get away from my Audio-Technica AT4040 for the past 2+ years. For a $399 mic it's been killer, and a perfect fit for my voice. The noise floor isn't terrible, the build quality is great and the frequency bumps don't over-polish it in the wrong ways. As a darker baritone voice with a fair amount of grit it's worked wonderfully for my natural tone. And as someone who is often hired to perform more youthful, upbeat millennial work as well it's also been a great fit for that type of performance. It's the only mic I own at the moment (with the exception of a duplicate backup) as I haven't found that I need to swap for any particular genre. Since purchasing it I've earned multiple 6-figures solely on this mic and have voiced some pretty high-profile projects with it; not a bad return for a pretty affordable mic. Also worth mentioning - I've bought and returned numerous more expensive mics since owning this one because I didn't feel like they offered enough of an audio improvement to be worth their price tag. Among the models I've bought and returned are the Neumann TLM 102, and the Sennheiser MKH416. Both required additional work to tame sound issues that didn't really fit my voice. I'm a fan of less processing so I sent them all back and stuff with the AT.

Oh boy, good times haha.

Sorry for the late response! I don't often check the forum but I did want to respond to this. I see what you're saying about putting more behind the paywall to make it more valuable - but realistically, being on Fiverr at all should qualify you for this most basic feature by virtue of the non-optional fees you pay. Fiverr takes 20% of every sale, which is considerably more than most platforms, at least for my industry (voice-over). Last year I made a net $127k on the platform, or $158,750 gross, which means that I paid over $30k in basic Fiverr fees to participate on the platform at all, not to mention the cost of Seller Plus, promoted clicks and whatever else I happened to pay for in '22. Even if someone wasn't nearly as successful as I was last year and made just $5k net for the whole year that would be $6250 gross, or $1250 in fees. We agreed to this when we signed up and I am not upset about it, but I think it bears stating openly that the fees are pretty high for baseline participation. Personally, I feel, high enough for access to this feature without additional fees. Were Fiverr free to use at a basic level, or at least required a lesser fee on every sale, I would be more inclined to agree that being on the platform is a privilege, but the built-in 20% fee for doing business should be adequate to grant every seller access to this most basic business function of being allowed to accept or decline a project. Sellers need Fiverr and Fiverr needs sellers, so I'd think that as a business Fiverr would want to equip sellers as best they could at a basic level. To me that differs from something like enhanced data analytics, the ability to send coupons, etc. which are optional to business success and which I agree are just fine behind an additional paywall. Anyway, my 2 cents.

The drop-down menu showing (1) (2) (3) etc. for broadcast rights allows a buyer to purchase more than 1 set of those rights. For instance, if a buyer hires you to voice 2 individual paid advertisements, each one of those paid advertisements requires its own set of broadcast rights - 1 per unique ad spot. So if they placed a single order for those two scripts they should use the drop-down to select (2) for Broadcast Rights.

I 100% agree regarding vetting before accepting orders. The unfortunate issue with this is that the only way I can see to truly vet a buyer and decide whether or not you're going to take on the project is if you have access to the Request To Order feature. Without this feature all the stat-peeping in the world won't help you when a buyer can simply hit "order" at any time without your approval. I'm a premium seller plus member so I do have access to the feature and it's been fantastic, but I have been told by individuals enrolled in the lower tier of seller plus that they do not have the feature, and of course if you aren't enrolled in seller plus at all you don't either. To me this is a basic, non-negotiable tool for running a successful business. The ability to discuss a project first and then decide if you are the best fit and able to deliver what a buyer is looking for at the highest level, and whether or not you are going to take it on is key to being able to offer a top-tier buyer experience. In my opinion rolling out an update to the review policy like this without also offering all sellers the ability to pre-screen orders and accept/decline them puts all sellers at a huge disadvantage and continues to feed into negative buyer experiences. The reality is many buyers will place an order without taking more than 15 seconds to review your gig, your FAQ etc. Pre-screening combats all of this to ensure understanding, and in my experience supports a great buyer and seller experience every time. Give it to every seller and I'm on board with your take.

I have had the RTO feature on and set for 24-hour coverage for all buyers - new and returning - since it was in the original beta many months ago. During that time I have not noticed any negative impact to my impressions or order stats. These numbers have stayed mostly consistent, spiking and dipping as normal for the platform. The feature does not seem to have negatively affected my gig at all. If anything the feature has been an absolute godsend for me, as it's not only allowed me to have better control over my order queue, but also positioned me to better "pre-screen" potential trouble buyers before accepting a project, and make sure every order has all the required extras before accepting the project rather than fighting unwilling buyers to add these after ordering. @Yoav.M As a side note on the topic of the RTO feature - it is my understanding that this feature is not available to all sellers at this time. To me this is not a "premium" feature, but an absolute baseline feature for business success and should be available to every seller. At this time I believe Fiverr is the only platform on the web for VO work that doesn't allow sellers the choice to review and accept or decline projects that come their way as a standard. Being able to pre-screen clients to ensure they're a good match, pre-screen projects to make sure you're comfortable with taking them on, and answering all questions ahead of time is exactly how I handle working with every direct client off-site, and it's good basic business management. I find it quite odd that Fiverr has not made this feature available to every seller, and strongly believe they should.

I have found the briefs feature to be largely useless to me. I would say 75% of the briefs that I receive are for services that I don't offer, and the others are largely extremely low budget projects that aren't even closely aligned to my pricing model. I have kept the feature on for a while in case something interesting comes through, but at this point I think I'll probably switch it off.

Howdy! The promoted gigs feature has been working very well for me over the past few months, but I do feel that there is an opportunity to increase the efficiency of it from a financial planning perspective. In my past professional life I spent a few years as a licensed financial advisor, and found that long-term and medium-term spending plans are far more efficient for overall financial planning on a personal and business level than shorter-term spending plans like weekly or daily budgets (tending to the garden's overall health vs tending to a single flower while weeds take over everything else, so to speak). With this in mind, rather than a daily spending cap, I would love to see a monthly spending cap option for promoted gigs. This would enable sellers to more efficiently plan out their monthly expenses, leading to more predictable expenditures and more efficient financial management of resources. This is also much more in line with promotional advertising for your business outside of Fiverr, where pay-per-click ads are frequently built around a campaign budget, rather than a daily budget without a total ceiling. While I know we can technically do this ourselves with a little math [desired monthly spend / # of days in a month] to come up with a daily budget number this creates an avoidable compromise and leaves something to be desired, since Fiverr will sometimes spend a huge portion of our daily budget and other days spend very little of it. Example: If I want to limit promoted gig spending to $500/mo I could take $500/31 days and set my daily limit at $16/day. The problem with that is that I have frequently had days where Fiverr spends $30+ of my $50 daily allotment and successfully nets a ton of work. I wouldn't want those high-spending days to be limited by a smaller daily cap. A monthly spending cap would help me to control the total monthly spend without compromising and missing out on these high-spend/high-return days. Yes, eventually you would run out of monthly budget and promotional clicks would stop, but you could have more of your cake and eat it too without allowing ad spend to overwhelm your expectations. My two cents. Yoav, I'd love it if you could forward this feedback.

Do you have access to the "Request to order" function Fiverr recently rolled out? I'm not sure if it's available to all sellers, but it allows you to require buyers to reach out to you before placing an order to discuss the project (it replaces the "order now" button with a "request to order" button). You can choose to have it on only for new buyers, or for all buyers. If you do have access to the feature I'd highly recommend it. You could set it up so that first-time buyers would have to reach out to you to discuss their project first. That way you can go over your specialities and the types of projects you don't do. Then once they become a "repeat buyer" they would just be able to order whenever they wanted to. To set the feature up just go to the "edit" page for your gig, and the "Advanced Options" tab. If you have access to the feature you'll see it there.

I would love to see this feature implemented. It's common to CRM software and makes client management so much easier. I've worked with some of my existing clients on Fiverr for over a year now and our message strings are just too length for me to scroll through and try to find information on requests they've made, past comments that may affect current projects, or even deals we've cut. I can make my own notes in an external program, but it would be far more efficient for this to be integrated into the platform. I hope that Fiverr incorporates something like this into the messaging system in the future.

Agreed. This is a great feature often present in CRMs that I'd love to see make its way to Fiverr. I make my own client notes at times but have to do so in an external program. I've been working with some clients for a long time and our message strings are just too long for me to be scrolling through trying to find old details or deals we've made in the past. Having something like this integrated into the platform rather than having to notate on the side would be very efficient.

Depends on what you mean by "handling" increasing demand. Do you want to just manage what you're working with, or potentially decrease demand in the short-term? General suggestion: If you have access to it I can't sing the praises of the "Request to order" feature enough (this feature requires certain - or all - buyers to contact you first before ordering). I have it set to be on 24/7 and it has been a wonderful tool in helping me to control my queue without having to limit the # of projects I have taken on. If my queue has too many projects in it for my regular turnaround time I explain that to buyers up front in our first conversation and give them options for moving forward with custom turnaround times that are a bit extended, if they are not open to the rush delivery option. Not only has this feature not slowed me down at all, but it's led to bigger and better quotes as I've been able to discuss every project with clients beforehand. Similarly it's eliminated the situation of clients placing an order and then fighting you or cancelling when you explain that they need certain extras. If you want to "lessen" your demand short-term: If you've found that your demand has increased to a level that is difficult to maintain over the long-term, it may be time to increase your prices. If you've just seen a sudden spike of activity for 1-2 weeks then maybe don't rush to increase rates just yet, but if it's been going on for a month or more that's a good sign to me that your product is in high enough demand to justify a more premium price. Don't make sudden drastic price increases, but somewhat incremental increases here and there to your base pricing and certain gig extras can work. This will begin to "price out" some clients in the short-term while opening the doors to people looking to work with more "premium" buyers. If you want to better manage what you have now: Be up front with buyers. Explain to them as early as possible what your queue looks like, and what you are reasonably able to deliver when they order. Getting in front of the problem is always much better than trying to desperately put out a fire later. It will also make you look more professional (I can't tell you how many buyers have told me this). Then spend some time determining how you best work. For instance, I am often booked for voice-over performances in very different genres using wildly different performance styles and vocal deliveries. I batch order and complete all of the deliveries for X genre back to back, or all deliveries requiring Y emotional delivery at the same time. The concept of "multi-tasking" has been scientifically proven to be a farce. The more different each task you are trying to juggle is from each other task the slower you will go, or the more your work will suffer. Whatever product you're selling, find some commonalities and see if you can batch your project completion to "like projects."

As someone who only works off of one gig I wasn't even aware this wasn't an option - it seems like a very natural feature to include. I may create new gigs in the future and would love if an option like this was in place rather than only being able to adjust gigs one-by-one for changes that could apply to every gig like extended delivery. Great idea.

Howdy folks - nice to meet all of you. I'm Stephen, a full-time voice actor living in central TX. When I'm not holed up in my booth I'm outrageously happily married (13 years in June!) with 4 small kids aged 2-10. I'm also a beef jerky fanatic, but I digress... I joined Fiverr back in 2018 but after floundering and gaining zero traction after a few months I completely scrapped my efforts, pausing all of my gigs and moving on to other platforms and methods of building my business. Fast forward 2 years and a friend of mine convinced me to give it another shot in November 2020 so I had him help me set up a new gig and the rest is history. Fiverr has been absurdly good to me since then, helping me to break the 6-figure annual earnings mark for the first time and continuing to grow YOY in a big way. I'm looking forward to connecting with some of you, reading and sharing thoughts and best practices, and hopefully helping in the development of Fiverr as a VO marketplace in the coming months and years.

I am in complete agreement with this suggestion. As David and others have mentioned, the term "commercial" in itself is often quite confusing for buyers and another naming convention would be a simple change with a large impact. I currently bundle commercial rights with every order automatically in my baseline pricing, and chose to do so because of the constant problems this term created with buyers. I would confidently estimate that 99% of the buyers I have ever worked with on the platform have needed commercial rights per the TOS, but the number of people who argue against them on the basis of "I am not going to make a commercial!" has been astounding. Before I chose to bundle these rights into every order I spent an entirely unnecessary amount of time having to review the TOS with buyers to convince them I wasn't trying to scam them with an unnecessary upsell. This is not an issue I have ever run into when working with direct clients outside of Fiverr because the phrase "commercial rights" does not exist anywhere in the industry except for Fiverr's TOS that I have seen. Please, change the naming convention for these basic business usage rights. I also agree with @newsmike's take that the opportunity here goes well beyond just changing the name of these rights. To me there is a lot of potential for Fiverr to partner with experienced, professional voice actors to achieve an end result around rights negotiation that is both beneficial to us as professionals while still maintaining the focus on "simplicity" that Fiverr leans on heavily in their advertising. That said, I would like to at least see this change at a minimum to eliminate at this grievance in the short term, with a deeper dive long-term to bring Fiverr into the modern age of usage negotiation.