vhskid

I'm also from EU and I'm documenting my income by issuing invoices to Fiverr International Ltd company details. Fiverr doesn't have to receive them (at least by my country's laws). I'm a VAT payer, but in Poland, it's not necessary for invoice issuing.

One more thing... While the impressions / clicks drop might be caused by your score change, they might be just as well unrelated. 7 days is a very short period and slower months concerning a whole industry is nothing unusual. Another cause might be the Fiverr algorithm working on intervals. I noticed that there are weeks when I'm flooded with requests and that's followed by complete inbox inactivity (regardless if the requests lead to orders or not and my score is constant). I'm guessing that the algorithm is dividing the impressions / leads pool among sellers by showing their gigs more for specific periods and giving them chances alternately.

The algorithm that matches gigs with buyers in their search results looks into the individual gig scores and decides what to show. So yes, buyers don't see your Success Score, but how your gigs are rated affects your impressions. In some form, the system worked like that before. The difference now is that we can see how Fiverr's AI and private reviews score us. We won't know that.

AI analyzes our behavior, interactions, and communication style, then assigns data markers rating every little thing. The algorithm puts us in the data brackets and compares, then matches with (also analyzed) buyers in their search results. All these data patterns and segmentation are used for behavioral profiling. If there are enough Success Score data markers tied to the seller's profile, then this data stack could be specific enough to be considered as a digital fingerprint. The data from one profile probably wouldn't be enough for cracking the algorithm and reverse engineering, but I imagine that Fiverr would argue under the angle of the occurrence of trade secrets violation. We shouldn't know how exactly the algorithm works, but we should have access to the list of (at least those) negatively flagged interactions / messages. It would be fair and transparent (even if available only behind the SP paywall), but won't happen because things would get ugly, starting from paralyzing Customer Support by appeal / clarification requests.

Oh yeah, the classic subscription-based service launch move - promise lifetime 50% off and then do a terms update.

For those without SP - what's the Seller Plus controversy?

I know and I'm following your topic. I don't as well, I just have an elephant memory (which can be a blessing and a curse). I would say that with the new level / scoring system everything is in a continuous transition period. By design (keeping everyone on their toes, over a cliff, every second of every day) and due to incompetent product release. I, myself not getting used to anything. The stars' comeback included.

Hmmm, amnesia?

I'm expecting them to deflect and send incomplete data or some vague summary as other companies do. Sending another one, a more thorough request sometimes does the trick, but specific legal wording addressing specific parts of data is required. Knowing Fiverr it would be a dozen back-and-forth before getting some results and / or a long waiting time. I don't have time and energy for this hide-and-seek but maybe someone with relevant legal experience will forge the path to getting some insights into gig scores / metrics data.

Has anyone from the EU tried to request a copy of their seller data based on the GDPR directive? Before and / or after the new levels system launched?

But we don't know if / how the ORDER AGE matters for the SS. The ⭐️ Rating and Success Score metrics can approach the interpretation of data differently.

Again - the 2-year window concerns the Rating score (stars), not the Sucess Score: So the 2-year-old public and private reviews go into ⭐️ Rating. We were never informed about the time scope for the Success Score. I think that there is a very widely spread misinformation and / or misinterpretation among the sellers in this forum regarding this. This score, that score. This rating, that rating.

The 2-year window concerns the Rating score (stars), not the Sucess Score. But yes, we'll never know how this is all interconnected in the black box. For my SS change, I'm betting either an effect of the scores being dependent on other sellers' performance or "fine-tuning" the algo by Fiverr's product team.

I would assume that this is an effect of the scores being dependent on other sellers' performance but it might be "fine-tuning" by Fiverr's product team as well.

My SS went 1 up recently, but I haven't had any new orders / reviews since January.

Can show that point in TOS? I think you misread the statement below that prohibits using Google Ads for promoting URLs to your Gigs and Fiverr profile... It's not a non-compete clause. You can freelance outside of Fiverr.

I think that Fiverr is very invested in good buyer-seller matchmaking (subjective, yes) and making deals. Also, the "hidden" agency accounts might skew the algorithm too much, even for Fiverr. Significantly above-the-average delivery frequency and income size indicators (for the category / industry) could be used for automatic or semi-automatic detection of these agencies. I'm talking about 2 different things, but the 2nd could only happen if the 1st works: Internal detection of these agencies posing as freelancers and internally treating them as agencies by scoring and gig-serving algorithms Official Agency feature and forcing the "posers" to convert accounts The Agency feature has been present for a few years now and it's re-released again or refreshed(?). I don't know what they are changing with this. I think that Fiverr doesn't care if these people want to admit that or not, and can force them to convert their accounts, so the agency's searching buyers have a better selection and less confusion. The servers constantly grinding the algorithms could also generate less cost.

What is obvious here? Regular accounts led by agencies could have been detected and marked internally as agencies and treated as such when it comes to comparing with other accounts. I have the same concern, but at the end of the day, we don't really know what exactly the sellers' comparison means. This is a transcript fragment from one of the webinars: So this "fair competition" would be to flag these "hidden" agencies (at least internally) and not compare them with regular freelancers. But we can't really tell what's going on there.

So is your TRS in actual danger because of the new levels? It's easy to say "We shouldn't give into fear". People have different life situations, different stresses that accumulate, different mental health states.

Thankfully not with yours

Got it

Who on earth said it hadn't!? Massive assumption on your part. If you want the facts. February was my lowest revenue month for over 2 years, about 75% lower than my average month. You're just assuming that everything is fine with me because I'm not slamming the new system. The arguments can go both ways. Successful sellers can say they don't like it, and sellers that are getting hammered by it can say they do. That's allowed... I meant your level / TRS status here. Since yes, I don't know your revenue stats. While revenue drop might depend on different things - not only changes introduced by Fiverr - the more or less drastic levels' demotions are big indicators that things might really go bad for someone during this year.

Is that really necessary/constructive/kind? Was this necessary/constructive/kind? suggests by definition that I do not, that I am in fact narrower, shallower, and have a more careless perspective. I don't think this is fair [...] Agree to disagree. There is no objective true / false when it comes to subjective images of ourselves.

I wonder about it myself - if these profiles are internally marked as agencies and not compared to regular freelancers or not. The distinction should be obligatory and public. There is the "Fiverr agencies" account option, so these not-so-freelancer profiles should be converted.

This analogy never works and let me tell you why. If you have a spouse and they tell you every day you're amazing, but they secretly tell their therapist you're a total piece of junk as a spouse, you aren't seeing the full picture. Here's the rub: neither of them ever tell you that you are doing things wrong. But now, that therapist quickly reveals you've been messing up the entire time and you have 30 days to fix it all before you're forced to get divorced. That. That is how this entire thing worked. Fiverr didn't ever fix the existing problems until they said, "Oh yeah, I'm leaving you, you have 30 days to fix a problem that's unfixable in 30 days. YAY!" Stop carrying water for a poorly designed system. You're carrying water for Fiverr when it makes no logical sense to have this system designed in this specific way, and then expect people to completely change their abilities within such a tight window. It's simply bad implementation, bad management, bad communication, and bad leadership. It's logical (disappointing but not surprising) that sellers who weren't negatively affected by the new system (e.g. still sit on their intact TRS status), won't criticize it as much as people whose profiles / gigs were hurt. But it's nice to see "unaffected TRS" @levinewman (at least status-wise) who sees the system's faults with a broader, deeper, and more careful perspective.