charlsmcfarlane

Da Vinci Resolve, Lumafusion or Final Cut Pro. All excellent editing apps

I have preferred apps but will sometimes use others, if required by the client. These are what I use in order of preference: 1. Final Cut Pro and Motion – WAY better than the industry gives them credit for and a single, one-time payment. (I’ve been using this software for over a decade and not paid a penny since buying them, while still getting all the updates). The one disadvantage is they're Mac only. 2. Da Vinci Resolve – incredible all-in one software that (somehow) has an incredibly feature-rich decent free version. I almost never run into a paywall. 3. Adobe Premiere and After Effects – if the customer requires them. The big thing going for these is that they are the industry standard. Unfortunately the subscription cost is crazy so I only sign up for these when I have a project that requires them. 4. Some others like iMovie, Lumafusion etc.

Like most creatives, I’m worried about the impact AI will have on my business. In truth, I have seen a slowdown in the last 6 months, which could be AI related. It’s always hard to tell with fiverr as the work seems to come in waves. Anyway… I think Fiverr just doesn’t want to get left behind. The world is embracing AI and if they’re not offering it, competitors will. I agree the legal and ethical ramifications are tricky, but that’s true across the board. As long as Fiverr is saying the right things (such as “make sure you own the rights to anything you create”) I guess they’re protected. Personally, I’d rather see AI used to make the process quicker for users. For example, translations in the inbox (that are much better), quick questions (“what time will it be for the buyer at 6pm, my time?”), and AI that can assist in writing long messages (which the user can review and edit before sending).

Agreed. I guess what was worrying me initially (and possibly what is worrying other sellers) is the following: While I've been fortunate enough to work with a huge number of awesome buyers, there's the odd one that seems impossible to please. I think I was worrying a little too much about the 1% and forgetting about the other 99. That concern isn't completely gone, but I'm being a little more objective about it now, because when I really think about it, I don't actually think this change is going to affect me much. I do appreciate feedback though. If anything, I wish a larger percentage of my orders received feedback. 61% of my orders have. It doesn't feel like a high number but I don't really have enough context to know if that's good or not.

Thanks. I'm new to the pro thing but I'm hoping I will qualify. I guess we'll see. I submitted an application yesterday.

Im not sure this has been announced but I’d imagine it would be for any new orders or perhaps any orders that were completed within a certain timeframe, like the last 14 days or something.

@smashradio Not that you need the support, but I would add that I (unlike you) was extremely against this decision at first. Having met with Fiverr, I felt heard and empathised with. They also made a concerted effort to address my specific concerns. I wouldn’t say I’ve been swayed 100% the other way, but I feel like they deserve the benefit of the doubt, which is a pretty big delta to my initial thoughts on this. I guess we’ll have to just wait and see how it plays out.

That’s the spirit! 😎

I’m currently building an application for fiverr pro. Do you all think I’m wasting my time if it’s imminently changing?

Some buyers don't trust a perfect rating until it's made up of a huge number of reviews. I've spoken to some buyers who find that 4.8, for example, seems more realistic and they feel like they can trust that those reviews are genuine, because – let’s face it – nothing and nobody is perfect.

Interesting. I’ve not heard of virustotal. I might give that a try. I’ve always found they go quiet too, and invariably it soon shows the fiverr message that they can “no longer be contacted”

Thanks for your thoughts. I’ll add some of this to my response too!

I occasionally receive messages with little to no information. Within the message they direct me to a link to see the brief. I know this is probably a scam or a link to a malicious website – especially when they use link shorteners to hide the URL. I'm also conscious that these kinds of communications need to stay on platform for everyone's protection. When people send these kinds of messages, I've been responding with something like the following: I don't want genuine buyers to feel like I'm accusing them of something nefarious, but obviously I can't go around clicking every link that's sent to me. I had one of these today and a few hours later that person's account is blocked, so I'm glad I didn't click the link 😅 Does anyone have any feedback on this? Is there anything missing or can anyone suggest a better way to respond? Thanks

I just had my meeting with them today and feel reassured now. Obviously, it remains to be seen how it will play out, but I have more faith that this will only largely affect sellers of questionable quality.

Okay, thanks for clarifying. This is interesting and I wasn't really aware of how Fiverr support can help with this particular issue. To be clear, it's not something I've dealt with personally as I don't really get cancellations all that much anyway. I was just curious about it because I would imagine this scenario can happen. Thanks again

I agree with all these points. They do also lead me to another question… So, if the buyer is saying that what you have delivered is not what they expected, but they are out of included revisions and refusing to buy more – and you have delivered everything in accordance with the agreed specifications…. What’s to stop them now just requesting to cancel? Now the buyer can take the delivery, and the seller gets nothing (except a negative review, soon).

Love this. Thanks for writing this post @smashradio. I respond to every review, regardless of the rating and I’ve always endeavoured to respond to negative reviews in as positive a way as possible, while attempting to clarify my point of view. It can be hard to remain objective and not take negative reviews personally, but I think it’s important.

It would be great to have the ability to schedule messages in the inbox and order chat, as well as schedule deliveries. That way, we could deliver messages at a considerate time for the recipient, without having to send them at an inconvenient time ourselves. It could even be as simple as a button that says "Deliver when it's daytime" (for the recipient). One reason I'd love to schedule deliveries is sometimes a job takes me much less time than I expected. (For example, if I finish other work faster than I expected and can get to an order sooner than planned.) On the surface, it might seem like a win-win to deliver the job days early and sometimes I do, depending on the nature of the job and my relationship with the buyer. However, sometimes I am wary of this, as it could be perceived that I haven't put enough work in, or it might make the client think I will deliver very early each time, which doesn't set the best expectation for the future. I know I could just wait until it's closer to the time, but then I have orders sitting in my list that are already 'done'. I'd love to be able to 'deliver' it, so it's out of my to do list, but so it arrives with the client closer to the time they are expecting it. Questions for other freelancers: Am I overthinking the early delivery thing? What do you think to scheduled messages? Thanks

This is very insightful. It’s not something I considered. Thank you. I’ve switched mine off and I’m curious to see what effect it has.

Interesting. It's good to hear that the strategy I'm following can work in the long run. It's worked very well for me so far but I've only been on Fiverr since 2020 and obviously the world's changed a lot in the last few years and it can be hard to know if what's worked so far will continue to work. I'm sure there's a ceiling on how high I can push things in terms of pricing and I've already seen a slow down in the amount of orders I'm getting. Luckily the order value has been steadily increasing, which counteracts that.

What should I include in my automated inbox reply? I'm interested to know if I'm missing anything important. This is my current message: I try to make it very clear it’s automated, so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to quickly process a customer. I also want it to be useful, so I include resources and suggestions of things they can check out. 90% of the time, I reply for real within a few minutes anyway, but I live in the UK and 90% of my clients are US based so I often get messages in the middle of the night. With this feature it hopefully helps them not feel like I’m leaving them hanging for 5+ hours 😅 Anyway, what other useful info do you put in your automated replies and what feedback do you have on mine? Thanks

I get this anxious feeling EVERY time I deliver an order and have always wanted these same ideas to be implemented. For me, it could be as simple as making it so the full file name is revealed when hovering over the attachment I just added in the delivery pane.

The idea here is that the automated message would be in the order chat the second the order is placed, before a client could possibly ask a question, mainly to point them in the right direction for resources, invite questions and set the scene – especially if it's 3am for me and app notifications are going to go unread for several hours.

When I started on Fiverr I was offering my gigs at a much lower rate. I think this was partly lack of confidence and partly trying to get some reviews on my account so I could get a good foundation to build on. This served me well but I have had to say goodbye to some clients as I've raised my prices. I'd rather not have needed to, but as long as there are new clients taking their place, willing to pay more for a good service, it seems to work. I'd rather make more money out of fewer orders. The one exception I will make to discounting, though, is when I'd like to bring a particularly good client on the journey with me. So, on occasion, when a previous client comes back to me and comments on my prices being higher, I'll offer them one further order at my previous rate as a "loyalty discount". The thinking here is to deliver great work again and show that it's worth the higher price tag (for next time). It also shows a level of appreciation for the customer's loyalty. When I do this, though, I make it very clear that it's a one-time offer and that further orders will be offered at whatever the current rate is at the time. It's important to note that I will only do this if it's a client I really like and don't want to lose. Has anyone else done a similar thing?

Thanks. I guess the way to make something like this work is to have the message clearly marked as an automated message and not affect your inbox response time, just like how the automated reply feature in the inbox doesn’t affect your response time metric. Here’s the automated reply I have set up in my inbox, for example “Hi. Thanks for getting in touch. This is an automated reply to let you know I've got your message and will reply as soon as I can. In the meantime, feel free to check out my profile page below, which contains information on all the services I offer, my certifications, experience, past clients, samples of my work and more. https://www.fiverr.com/charlsmcfarlane I look forward to talking to you soon. Charles” As you can see, I make it very clear that it’s automated and it just provides the potential buyer some resources to check out in the interim. Regardless, 90% of the time, I send an actual message within a few minutes anyway. I just think something similar could be convenient for both the buyer and seller – especially if someone places an order at 3am, my time, and it’s going to be 4+ hours until I even see it. This happens for me a ton, as I live in the UK and 90% of my clients are in the US. So, I’d set up something like the this, for example: ”Hi. Thanks for your order. This is an automated message to let you know your order has been successful. I’ll get in touch as soon as I’ve had the opportunity to review your order. In the meantime, please feel free to send through any further information you think I might need. I also welcome any questions you may have on the process. I look forward to working with you Charles” I think it would also be great if you could have a different automated message for a repeat buyer. What do you think?