vickieito

Thanks @newsmike & @breals! You both brought up a lot of good points for me to consider when adding Zoom to my business plan. I do want to "keep it real" and have that "added humanity" that you both were talking about. That's really the whole purpose of adding Zoom to my business. This is something AI can't do. Based on your feedback, I won't worry too much about my background or dress. Now that I live near my sister, I found out dresses are really comfortable and make me really happy (I couldn't wear them when I was a food scientist)! So now I look a bit more polished than I used to be. I will need to brush up on my communication skills and will not use my hearing loss as a crutch. I'll also explore what tools are available for the hearing impaired because it looks like I'm still missing parts of the conversations that I don't even realize until later while reviewing the transcripts. It also looks like there are internet connectivity issues and a lot of environmental noises that may be distracting to clients, so I'll see what can be done there. Thanks again for all your help!

I think it's based on your gig packages. In my curriculum-building gig, I set a 30-day delivery to create a full course: I don't really use this gig info. However, I notice when I do rush orders (i.e. when I deliver in 14 days), my impressions always go up. So I always set really long deliveries and deliver earlier.

When a buyer marks the order as complete, this means that the seller has delivered everything the buyer requested. This includes any revisions that the buyer requests. I was scammed by a Level 2 seller with 1k+ reviews. He told me to accept a blank delivery, give him a 5-star review, and then he would complete my order (various ToS violations here!) I was a newbie buyer and trusted him since he had so many reviews and the experience was awesome up until that point. However, the seller disappeared and ignored me for several weeks. I felt trapped and I hated having to follow up on him. I felt stupid, too, that I believed him, and I was also ashamed that I had left a review that did not accurately reflect my experience. When he finally delivered my order the next month, he revealed that he stole my data and used it in YouTube video that he posted to his followers. I had to then beg him to remove the video. He didn't at first because he had put so much work into creating it and he thought I was overreacting (since he always used his clients' data without their permission to create training videos for his followers). I wish I could put a thousand green arrow reactions on this one! ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️ You're lucky to have @maitasun to clarify this for you! I wish I did. There is absolutely no reason for you to accept a delivery until all of your revision requests are completed. It doesn't hurt the seller because a revision request will give the seller all the time they need to complete the requested revisions. It'll also give the seller appropriate motivation to complete your requests because he won't get paid until he takes care of you.

I'd have to agree with you on this, @newsmike! I've been trying to hold onto my "no Zoom" policy for awhile now, but broke away from it last week. I can't think of a better way to convince my customers that I'm real than getting on a quick Zoom call. It only takes a few second to establish credibility. I'm still going for comfort, @vickiespencer! I found dresses to look more professional and they're super easy and comfy to wear (just like putting on a long shirt but an upgrade from wearing my husband's XL sweatershirts all the time 😂). And I don't exactly brush my hair ...I just finger-comb it into a ponytail. @newsmike & @breals - how professional should we get on these Zoom calls? Should I work on getting a better background (currently a blank, white wall)?

When I was a newbie on the forum, I spent most of my 5-posts each day answering the questions posted on the forum. Because there are more people asking questions than answering them, so many questions are left unanswered. I tried answering as much as I could, and found out that even if I answered 30 questions a day (without the post limit), I wouldn't even make a dent in the questions. If you want to see for yourself how bad this situation is, try answering questions instead of asking them. It's tough. However, you'll also learn more by helping others. I'm always super grateful for anyone who takes the time to answer questions on the forum because they are doing it for free, on their own time, and often their help is unappreciated, ignored, rejected, or berated.

@zeus777 - I'm so glad this post got resurrected ...and it feels like this was just written today! I have my fingers crossed that new sellers will read your post because I'm pretty sure this covers everything that they need and more to improve their gigs!

I set mine for $50 for the first 2 months (with no briefs). When I bumped up my prices to $150, I started to get ~5 briefs a day. Once you get briefs, you'll notice that most will be irrelevant, so you have to "train the AI" to send you relevant ones. You do that by marking the reasons whenever you reject a brief. It took me 2 weeks to train the AI to send me relevant briefs and I raised the minimum price to $200. Other sellers have different experiences with the prices (setting lower prices allowed them to get more briefs). I find I get most of the briefs at the average price for my best-selling gig.

I'm not able to send you a private message for some reason. Can you try to send me a message? I enabled my mailbox again.

It's fake because of this👇: If sellers are using samples in their portfolio that were made by other freelancers, it is fake. It's not their work and not a good representation of what they can do. The buyers can still be fooled ...until the delivery is received. Luckily Fiverr does hold payment, so the buyer can cancel the order once they find out that the seller wasn't honest. This experience happens way too often to buyers, so it hurts the honest sellers on the platform. Buyers who had this happen to them are less likely to place orders with new sellers (who have no reviews), so that makes it harder for new sellers to do well on this platform. Fortunately, most of the fake buyers can be avoided because they need to pay first before the order will start. There are still some buyers who try to cancel and get the work for free, after the delivery (such as in chargebacks) but those accounts are shut down by Fiverr. I also had a buyer that ran away with my work (the order was canceled) and Fiverr paid me for the work that I did.

This makes me sad. 😟 There are still a lot of "fake" sellers on the platform that steal others' work. Please report these "fake" sellers when you see them! "Fake" sellers make it really hard for honest sellers on the platform to do business. Buyers should be able to buy in full confidence that the seller has the skill to do the work. Unfortunately, many buyers have had negative experiences buying from sellers who shouldn't be offering services on the platform.

It's not necessary to mention Fiverr's fees because it applies to all sellers. Instead, charge what you're worth and explain the value you provide through your services. There are buyers that will pay premium prices for quality, so those are the buyers whom I choose to work with. I also noticed that the buyers who are willing to pay premium prices are also the same buyers that don't want to do rush jobs (and are willing to wait for weeks or even months for a quality order).

I don't. Your best marketing is done right there on the gig page. If that doesn't look good, no matter how much traffic you drive to your gig, no one will order. When I was new, without any orders or reviews, the one thing that convinced buyers to order from me was my portfolio. You have 3 gallery images, a gig video, and 2 PDFs to show off what you can do. Use all of these tools so that your buyers will want to place an order when they see your samples. Buyers would contact me in my inbox and specifically mention my work samples when explaining why they wanted to order from me.

Your account is restricted for 90 days. After 90 days, your account will either be reinstated or shut down. If you aren't at fault, then Fiverr should come to that conclusion, too, and your account will be reinstated. Otherwise, you'll get instructions to withdraw any earnings you have (before the account is fully shut down).

Normally they would shut down the gig, not the account (which may or may not result in a warning). This usually doesn't trigger on a full account restriction. They would have to have seen something else to put your account in "restricted" mode. Unfortunately, I don't know what they saw. All the things that you listed are good reasons to shut an account down. Also, if they saw widespread use of "non-original or copyrighted" materials. I just saw another seller yesterday who had 7 gigs shut down for this reason.

Hi @shabansatti602, Based on Fiverr's response to you, there were two criteria that Fiverr was looking at: 1. Your Services: Are your gigs professional? Compliant with Fiverr's ToS? Are your services going to add value to the platform? If your gigs break the rules, look low-quality, is in an over-saturated (or strange) category, your gig may be denied. 2. Your Profile: Does your profile image accurately reflect you and your services? Is the image yours (and not stolen)? Do you come off as a trustworthy seller? Based on these two criteria, your profile and gigs were carefully reviewed and you did not meet the qualifications that Fiverr had. So they could not approve your seller account "at this time." This leaves the door open for you to try again in the future.

The gig may have been an automatic flag. However, if your account was restricted after 15-20 days, it looks like Fiverr may have found other reasons to put your account into "restricted mode." It takes them up to 90 days to make their final decisions and they can shut down accounts if they think the violation is serious enough (3 warnings are not necessary). It looks like all of your gigs are now under review. So they must have seen something else in your other gigs.

At least you agree that staying online isn't a solution: But don't promote something that isn't working for you: @smartdezigns's advice here is helpful for anyone who stumbles upon it: None of the sellers on the platform can see the metrics for each seller who comes to the forum asking for tips on how to get their first order. Only the seller can see how changes to their gigs affect their impressions, clicks, orders, and conversion rates.

If a non-designer like myself can make designs from scratch using non-Adobe software, a designer with better tools can definitely create their own designs.

If you can't tell if your images are original, then don't offer the design for sale. This is advice that I use for myself as well. I am a writer, but I do also format and custom-design documents such as resumes and PowerPoint presentations from scratch. I avoid using premade templates made by others. The designs that I do use are designs that I have created myself, from scratch. So I start with a blank canvas and add in each line, textbox, or shape. I don't use any premade templates unless it's a template that I created myself, from a blank canvas. I design mostly out of Word and PowerPoint and admit that I could probably have better designs if I used a template, but at least this way I know that the designs I create are original.

@nnazir, I don't think this question is relevant to what you are trying to do. I've seen new sellers do well in highly competitive categories with 260k+ results in search because they know how to make their gigs appeal to their target customers. Both @jonbaas and @miiila provided great advice for you here: You state this in your gig description: This can also be applied to your gig: focus on improving your gig card and gig thumbnail image because your buyers only have a few seconds to decide if they will click on your gig or not. And write engaging and high-converting copy on your profile and gigs that will result in more sales for you. If you can do that for yourself, you can also do that for your customers.

I saw a new seller that just started his account last month (Jan 2023) in the competitive field of web design. He has 5 orders so far, so it looks like buyer requests aren't needed for a new seller (in the web design field) to be successful.

Hi @farhad_jony, Fiverr wrote an article on gig images here that may be helpful for you: https://www.fiverr.com/support/articles/4410883326481?segment=seller

You have 15 minutes to make a correction. Just click on the three dots in the top right corner of your post and select "Edit." I think some people have a longer window of time to make edits.

Fiverr may have put your seller's account under review due to a possible ToS violation. The seller still has limited access to their account (they can be online) but they can't message anyone unless there is an active order in place. No one will be able to find them either. Are you able to talk to your seller on your order page (if you have an order in place)? Delete that account because it's against Fiverr's ToS to have multiple accounts. You risk getting both accounts shut down by Fiverr.