moikchap

I guess we could shift it a bit to look at it like "Practice beats talent when talent doesn't practice." Maybe experience beats skill when skill isn't experienced? I'm not saying that's true, I'm just throwing it out there for debate. Experience and skill are both very vague terms that we can each have our own definitions of. But, skill could be more likely to run into pitfalls that experience might not. To draw from sports, I suppose we could also say experience creates a floor (minimum results), and skill creates a ceiling (maximum results).

Basically, the "unless clearly stated otherwise" mean that as far as Fiverr is concerned, you get the rights unless the gig is specifically marked as "Does Not Include Commercial Use". It's interesting that the support page says "gig page/description". When I contacted CS to try and get confirmation of a gig description at the time of purchase, I was told they can't provide it and that the Order Details were the actual sort of 'legal arbiter' of what was included or not. But, I'm not a contract lawyer. So, to save myself some risk, I've simply been avoiding sellers who are silent on it or have weird rules about it in their gig description. Most gigs will include the Commercial Use License for free automatically (it will show in the Gig Tiers with a green checkmark when included, grey when not included). If you don't see it listed in the tiers, it's either silent or costs extra. Most of the time you can see the available Add Ons by scrolling down the page. Personally, I just set the "Includes Commercial Use" checkbox under the "Service Options" section in Search so that I don't get any of the silent or complicated gigs.

When I go searching for a seller, I'm looking through multiple pages, adding any "prospect" to a List as I go. I don't stop at the first seller or only check the top row. Being good or bad at "getting ranked" won't matter for me since I'm checking everyone in the results. If someone seems good, I'll find them, and they'll probably get a task from me. In every search, I set a maximum budget and turn Commercial License on. If a seller doesn't offer Commercial License, and even their Basic tier is above my maximum; all the SEO tricks in the world won't get them into my search results. Repeat Business, 5-Star Reviews, 1-Hr Response Speed are all worth 0% without that. From the search results, I'll skim down looking for a "quality" gig image and title. If the gig image has a lot of un-necessary effects or embellishments, I'm probably skipping it. If it's laid out like a pamphlet or powerpoint slide, I'm probably skipping it. If the gig description has spelling or grammar mistakes, I'm probably skipping it. Generally, the best looking 3 or 4 gigs per page get added to a List. Once I've gone through all the pages, I go back to the list. From there I start opening gigs and actually reading them. If there are a bunch of shenanigans in the description and FAQ about Commerical Use, like if the seller says they "actually retain this or that" and I need to seek permission for it; I move them to a different list which I use in place of an Ignore button. As a warning to those people; per customer support, the gig description is not contract. The gig details (the checkmarks that show in the order) are. The buyer gets all rights unless you expressly decline to offer them by turning off Commercial Rights (or the gig type itself has additional rules, like Broadcast Rights for Voice Over). If the gig also lacks details, like if it has a bare bones information; I take that to mean the person doesn't know what to say, and I take that to mean the person doesn't know what's actually involved in the task. They get moved to the Ignore list. Portfolio and reviews matter. I do take them into consideration. But for me it's more a prioritization thing than if I will or won't work with someone. I trust a deep portfolio more than one with just the default three. I want to see how someone handles custom work and how the buyer received it. If the price and quality are about the same, I'll use the person with more data than the new seller. But, I will go with a new seller with no reviews if they have a very low risk price. Then, I'll probably contact the seller with a description of a task, to see if they're available/interested. At that point they have about a week to get back to me before I move the task to a different seller. If they get back to me and are speaking very low level english, I'm probably going to make an excuse to politely back out, because I'm presuming they'll get something about the task details wrong. That used to have fun results sometimes, but now I'm spending more per order so it's not worth the giggles to see what I get. TL;DR: - Have the gig set up so it will match what a buyer is likely looking for. (Also, consider some Blue Ocean options; make your gig different from others to catch more specialized buyers who are digging through too many generic results. As an example. Artists; a lot of sellers wanna draw people and places, and the gigs say people and places. But I need people who draw things, and that set of results is small even though most artists can likely do it. I keep having to ask character artists to draw tools and vehicles because there are so few gigs that aren't about characters.) - Have a polished/clean gig image and description (don't cram things in, don't add superfluous embellishments). - Have a thorough but concise gig description. Call out what you need from the buyer, describe the subtle options available to them. Ensure it is written well. - Respond in a reasonable time with at least a semblance of proper spelling and grammar.

Yeah, that's probably a major rounding. Rank 9 of 14 shows as Top 2%.

I wonder how many "Grand Masters" there are. There's a dozen in this thread alone. If you guys go to your Badges page, what does it say for "Top% of users"?

>Penny pincher arguing forex with CS This reminds me of another "favourite quote" which I can't find an attribution for, but I've been told is common in engineering circles. "If you want it to cost a tenth as much, remove 90% of the material." That buyer would probably be better off by re-planning his tasks so they take less work and can get an easier quote to handle, so they don't need to invest time in chasing down a nickel on the dollar. But now it also makes me wonder if he's from a LCOL part of the EU where $17.50 is a meaningful amount.

I don't think I've seen anything marked "ad", but possibly the categories I'm searching simply don' t have anyone promoting. But, when I do dig through pages, I often see the same four gigs at the top of each page. I had been assuming those were promoted. I don't see any special marking on them.

Those buyers must be from jurisdictions where the sales tax is included in the aisle price rather than added at the register. I've never once thought "Wait, this is way higher than they said", but I live in an area where 15% sales tax is added at the register, so I'm acclimated to a big jump at the last second.

Another one attributed to Henry Ford (though with no record): “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” If people have a problem, try to assess what their actual goal or need is; what do they want the outcome to be (independent of the tool they use to achieve it)? Craft the best solution for that problem and offer them that.

That's exceptionally bad luck. I'm sorry to hear about it. I focus on new sellers as well, since they tend to have much lower prices. Out of about 80~90 sellers, I've only encountered three or four which were using things I suspected they didn't own. You could probably make a post in the Suggestion forum, but also add in some framing that the warning could be an opportunity for an upsell to funnel buyers into more reputable (and higher value) sellers. Fiverr likes the idea of funneling, so that might give the suggestion more traction with them (it's one of their four business model pillars, you see it under "Go Upmarket" in the shareholder letters).

There will be a spectrum of buyers with a spectrum of price tolerances. Fiverr has indirectly given a sliver of guidance in their shareholder letter [Q1 2022]. The two elements I would call out are that the average buyer spends $251 USD over the year between all tasks, and that Fiverr considers someone a "high value buyer" at only $500 of spending in a year. That said though. I see a lot of people start their prices low to build up their reviews, queue, and seller level, and then bump the prices when they start getting a backlog. So, you can set the price to something you feel comfortable with and then increase it over time. I've had new sellers start doubling prices within a couple weeks after I kickstart their activity. So, it seems like a temporary "loss leader" seems to work for getting prices up to what the seller is actually comfortable with and balanced against their traffic/clickthrough.

I'm similar. It feels like my heart gets finnicky in the heat. I had a grandparent pass from heat sickness in a heat wave a few years back. The frustrating part is that it gets too hot to cook. I like slow-cooked stews, but I can't have the pot heating the place for eight hours. One nice thing is that where I live pretty much always has a cold sea breeze, and it has a lot of dairy bars (our top industry is tourism, so there's a lot of vacation traps). Whenever I need a break from the heat, I head down to the harbour parks to visit one of them, and sit the the shade with the ocean wind. One of the food trucks is a cold-stone that uses local milk and fresh fruit. I'll typically try there first and decide where I wanna go based on the line/wait. But, our summers are pretty mild and tolerable overall. They're trivial compared to our winters.

Hey, no problem. 1) I haven't done it recently, but from what I recall; yes, it's possible to leave a private and not a public. I just finished an order and it prompted me for private feedback directly off accepting the order. It asked me for private before public. From what I recall, I can leave private without leaving public, I believe I have done that before. But, I have gotten the prompt for public off the order flow, but not private, and then I would get the notification for private later. Possibly they have multiple flows they're A/B testing. 2) I don't recall ever seeing a prompt which mentioned the seller leaving a review. There has been a few orders where I didn't have a lot nice to say, so I didn't leave a public. I didn't get a notification that I can recall about those sellers leaving a review. Maybe there were, but they weren't phrased as being the seller's action. But it kind of sounds like sellers don't get prompted to leave a review unless they get a review. So possibly none of them were electing to. In my experience, I get a public review if I leave a public review, and I don't get a public review if I don't leave a public review.

12 Cancelled ordered out of 272 total. [Note: In all cases, I contact the seller to agree on the order before I place the order. Cancellations to change price occur after agreeing on price.] - I initiated it. The seller had opened a dispute to raise the price after I submitted a revision request. - The seller initiated it. Seller had personal issues arise and could not complete the order. - The seller initiated it. Seller had personal issues arise and could not complete the order. - I initiated it. Delivery was about a month late and the seller was not responding. - I initiated it. The seller had technical issues which prevented them from completing the order, and preferred I initiate. - The seller initiated it. After further discussion of the spec, they wanted me to replace the order and go down a tier. - I initiated it. Delivery was about a month late and the seller was not responding. - I initiated it. After further discussion, the seller felt they would not be able to meet spec, and preferred I initiate. - I initiated it. Delivery was about a month late and the seller was not responding. - I initiated it. Delivery was about a month late and the seller was not responding. - Customer Support initiated it. The seller's account was suspended or deleted. - I initiated it. Seller claimed there was a typo in the price and the order needed to be redone, and preferred I initiate.

I'm sort of 1, definitely 2, sort of 4. The thing muddying the waters for 1 and 4 are that I'll write a big spec with references and then accept the first delivery, or ask a single revision at most when unprompted. There's a Venn Diagram of "What I Want" and "What I Can Use". "What I Want" is a tiny circle mostly enclosed within the massive balloon of "What I Can Use". It feels like it's easier to adapt my project to the delivery than chase an exact match of "my vision".

I feel more control over my future than I do from a day job. That gives me a feeling of a greater chance of success.

I've basically been idle since last September. I have a lot of catching up to do from my last year goals. My main goal is to have a "one year" backlog of content set in scheduled releases on Patreon before the end of the year. I'll need to have 7 weeks worth done and out each month. I also want to have a special "cross-promotion" batch of content done before September as well, to release alongside a certain fan community anniversary. I probably have 10% of all the content done, but 90% of that first 7 week pack. Finally got back to making contacts to confirm sellers this weekend on what should be the last kind of "new" task where I have to learn what I'm even asking for and how to convey it in an understandable manner. With the task templates being mainly locked in by this first pass, the following batches should be a lot easier/faster.

If you can't compete on price, don't. Compete on your style. Make people want your style rather than someone else's. It's more rare so it's going to have better price tolerance. I feel your gig needs to be re-arranged so that it better shows the keywords which relate to what people who want your style will be searching for. I'm not sure many people search for "doodle style". "Sticker style" may work better. Or possibly "children's art" or something. Ask people for ideas; "When you look at my art, where do you see it getting used? Who would want it?" then start tailoring your gig titles and descriptions in that direction. I can see this kind of art working on t-shirts or posters and other drop-shipping style items.

>Depends what you think is good Entirely true. Larry Elmore is the best in D&D art. If he wasn't retired, anyone with a product containing just his art would move units. Getting commissions from him would spike the upfront costs to levels unfeasible for most people. But, it would guarantee success for anyone who can afford it. But, even stuff like this can be earning 30k a month if you can manage one a day. To many consumers, quantity is its own quality. >scary good judge of talent No, I pay people to audition* basically and take the guesswork out of it. Sometimes I get this. Other times I get this. I don't go back to the first guy, I do go back to the second guy. I end up with a lot of stuff that matches the benchmarks competitors are setting without having broken the bank. The losses of the wasted auditions are recovered by the savings from the sellers who are under-pricing themselves either by not knowing their worth** or discounting to chase their first reviews. >You risk buying something that wasn't theirs I have received photoshopped stock images. This is a very real risk. * The seller gets paid regardless of what they deliver. Someone got paid $5 to give me pencil crayon sky. Their private feedback was not ideal. ** I tip up within my budget, and advise unusually good sellers where I feel they stand relative to other sellers, especially if they have a professional communication process.

I've found that I can often get very high quality for very low price and my ability to describe what I need is the biggest factor in getting what I need. I've found that I can't really try to have a product schedule. It's mainly a by-product of not usually picking expensive professionals but cheap hobbyists and students. There's a business sentiment; "You can have things good, fast, and cheap. Pick two." It feels like Fiverr is that sentiment dialed up to 11.

Hmmm. Price tolerance. I have no idea how to predict price tolerance or any formal methods for predicting it. One thing that might be transferable is a trick from game balancing. When trying to figure out the "good" value for something, the shortest path to finding the right number (when using trial an error) is to double and halve. Maybe there's an A/B Testing type method Fiverr could look into creating and offering. Like, say your Basic tier is always your Basic tier, but you could set it to test different prices and offering on Standard and Premium to see if certain things attract better value. The classic example is having magazines split run coupon ads where one group gets something saying "Improve your golf swing in under ten minute a day" and others get "Improve your golf swing for under $200" and see if people care more about the price or the time, and you deploy the winning Ad on a larger run.

Good explanation. I would take that description to mean it's a question of "red ocean" versus "blue ocean". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy) A red ocean (high supply/demand) has a lot of people under-cutting each other as they compete for clients. A blue ocean (low supply/demand), with it's lack of competition, has more room for the seller to set the price. So, while they may get fewer clients, they get more per client, and can outperform the average seller in a red ocean in total value terms. There's a lot of ways for one to create their own blue ocean. I also recommend checking out the concepts of "Unique Selling Propositions" (Rosser Reeves) and "Positioning" (Al Ries/Jack Trout).

https://community.fiverr.com/topmembers/?filter=pp_reputation_points TL;DR - Top 48 is basically 6k reputation and above.

I forget the traditional term for it... Work Order Change Request? But, I think that was my reaction the first time I got a 'dispute' too, like "Wait, what did I do? Did I set something incorrectly? Did I forget something? Did my credit card fail?" but it was just that the guy needed more time because of scheduling issues related to his university courses.

I want to be able to mark myself as "Laid Back" or "Non-Urgent" or something, and then Fiverr doesn't apply metric punishments from interactions with me. Like, I don't like that Fiverr is applying pressure/stress with stuff like Response Rates expectations that I don't have myself. Let me add it to the Shared Information gallery, if we want sellers to know so much about me so badly. "Expected Response Time Modifier: +72hrs no penalty", "Accepts Seller-Initiated Disputes (Due Date Extension): Yes, Up to +30 Days no penalty". Shenanigans like that.