emmaki

I have a response from CS. I'm afraid there is no good news. I like the last line, which seems to suggest that even if I cancel, I may still be charged, but that's OK because there will be a refund. Well, I think that's me cancelling. I hope your "price alignment" is worth it, because there's a post about SP on Reddit and last I checked, the majority of responses were "it's not worth it" or "just get it for a month then dump it to fix your KW, it's not worth it" or "I'm a TRS and I've never used it because it's not worth it". I believe they're talking about the $19 program. I doubt very few people think paying ~$80 because your SM is too busy to have a 10-minute call with you until 6 weeks later isn't worth it either. New idea: Why don't SMs have "gigs" on the "Fiverr marketplace" where sellers can leave their "honest feedback" about value for money, timeliness, all of that stuff. No? I wonder why. Personally, I think it's crazy to get SP for a month to fix your keywords, since you get, what... a bunch of HIGH HIGH HIGH HIGH data points to help you decide which keyword is best? Come on, Google only limited its Adwords data to push everyone to the paid program. That wasn't popular, but it makes more sense than charging people for completely nerfed information. tl:dr: I ain't payin, some other poor soul can pay $40 for chatgpt copypasta.

Fake news is for fake news though. You know, the whole Trump/Covid fake news kinda stuff.

Please can Fiverr stop trying to make the AI Hub happen? It's noindexed so the rest of the world is blissfully unaware of it; why must it be foisted upon us?

But that's just it: most books just don't go anywhere. This was my main "job" before I started on Fiverr. What you're recommending isn't for aspiring authors. Best practice is not to waste money on these frills and just publish - if you must spend money on the book, then hitting up the paid promo groups is the best way to do it so you can start building up a list that gobbles up your stuff and gives you money so you can start to write for them and make the covers they like etc. And how it was then, at least in my group of authors, was that one had a runaway success and he immediately invested in a team of ghostwriters (pre-AI, obvs) to write more "formulaic badword" as he called it. We all saw it in real time. He made a killing. He's now a multimillionaire author (multiple pen names) and he didn't spend anything on his books until he was making money. Some people in our group joined Fiverr under their penname to sell their covers. I think that's how I found out about Fiverr, or at least took it more seriously than "man dancing in underpants singing happy birthday" that the platform effectively was in its earliest years. Why didn't I make this work for me? I didn't stick with it long enough (Fiverr's endless stream of $5 work stole my time away from me.....I'm not complaining about that, it's just what happened). Aspiring authors should not be wasting their money on the perfect book. They should be focused on acquiring readers. And yes, maybe you're talking about "book books", but that is still very much the domain of the publishing houses and they take care of all this once the manuscript is done. The majority of ebooks purchased on Kindle are never even opened. Aspiring authors who want to make it need to accept their early works will, in all likelihood, never be read. If they battle through that and keep writing, someone will buy their book. And then someone else, as it doesn't take that many sales to hit the bestseller charts if you choose your niche strategically - but you do need to sell ASAP for the algorithm. It's very easy to tell when you have a fan: one day you make a lot more money than usual because all your books, even that cruddy first one, sold. Your advice may help Fiverr to make more money, but it will ultimately drive potentially successful writers out of business by bleeding their motivation away, dollar by dollar.

100% a scam. The QR code will take you to a fake Fiverr site and you'll be asked to do things that will eventually drain your bank account. Fiverr also uses your username or displayname, not "Dear User" in a weird font that is slightly out of alignment with the rest of it. People should also be aware of RMT Workshop (which may be behind this, though I have no plans to open the QR code), although these people target people off-Fiverr pretending to be staff and it's more of an elaborate review ring/pyramid scheme that people actually think is from Fiverr because... well, IDK why, but they do. I told CS about it and they can't do anything 🙂 Which, fair enough, it's off-platform, but 1) Fiverr is not educating people about this 2) affiliates are not educating people about this 3) gurus are not educating people about this 4) there's very little information about it online. Plus RMT Workshop changes their name every so often because things get a bit hot. Their IP address is in Iceland, which has A1+ privacy laws. Then there's the triad.... trust me, they wouldn't be on Fiverr if they weren't making good money.

TBF, when I say "Americans" I mean "American people on YT/TikTok/IG/whatever who may or may not be influencers". It's a bit like "rowt" four "route". This makes my ears cry every time.

Fiverr is a big tech company that uses algorithms and is increasingly relying on AI and templates to run the company as leadership apparently ignores everyone around them. Right now, the biggest issue is that Fiverr is a-OK with sellers who sell AI services deceptively and without revealing it. This is allowed by the Community Standards AI Policy, which was changed in 2023 (it formerly said sellers have to disclose). None of this is particularly new. People have been complaining about Fiverr for years. The competitors are just as bad, just in different ways. You also need to be careful with complaints, because while many are valid, many are also bad actors who knowingly broke "the rules" to the detriment of others. None of this means you can't be successful. Just don't think you actually matter in any way, shape, or form other than as a completely disposable asset no matter how much money you make. You are replaceable and you have no real rights (because you are a contractor and the real magic of the gig economy is that companies have found a new way to work without the regulations and protection of employment law - unionization of freelancers is listed as a threat in Fiverr's financial documentation, albeit very buried in them). There is no deterioration, just a 21st century business model which future generations will view just as we view the factories of the 19th century.

Actually $20, or are you just rounding up? Mine still says $19. I'll just update here as this is my "home thread" for now, since it keeps the AI Hub front and center of the Fiverr experience. In slightly unrelated news, I found this post from a while ago while I was researching stuff for another post I just made: I think that sums it up (I just email mine, but can you really charge $39/mo for a "feature" that is usually overbooked? Come on Fiverr. What would you do if a seller pulled this on their buyers for consultations? The phrase do as I say, not as I do comes to mind. Putting up the price when the features are largely all automated and the most valuable parts (in terms of workload/man hours) are.... like this is bad business practice. On top of the whole breaking trust with price locks for early bird discounts to claw back a maximum of $4k a month from the $19 group. These are not the signs of a financially healthy business that values its customers, whether they are buying or selling.

They won't. And it won't solve a very, very fundamental problem that OP has. Apropos of nothing, one seller who came to reddit (not OP) a few months ago to tell the world how he was the most successful poster in the CV/resume niche got a lot of attention for making vast sums of money. Elsewhere on Reddit, they told other (less impressed) people how they had had their Fiverr account valued at $250,000 (no, really). In yet another place on Reddit, I learned everything about their business model and scaling ( = outsourcing). He also advises stuffing multiple bonuses (PLR) into the delivery to add "value" to the order, and had shady things to say about one of the vertical's other top performers who apparently "makes a lot of schoolboy errors" which he has to fix. You know, standard redditor IM bragging stuff. I was most tickled when this seller posted a long and unhappy post on here shortly after the levels and ranking system was introduced. Alas, despite being one of the very best sellers, his success score was a... I don't remember, but it was low, and he had all the usual complaints. His career was destroyed. He got ChatGPT to rattle off how Fiverr could improve the system so as not to destroy the trust of extremely valuable sellers like him because Fiverr was losing all this revenue he was giving them (not a good argument, considering the buyer probably hires another seller). I found the whole thing deliciously ironic, so I commented that I love it when redditors post on Fiverr, which is basically code for you're nicked, son. Of course, he liked that comment, which tickled me even more. All I could think was that he was probably more annoyed about how he was no longer able to sell the account for $250k. Not that he ever would have been able to (there are some little "discrepancies" between his boasts on Reddit and what you actually see on the gig). These discrepancies are not just limited to Fiverr and Reddit; on TrustPilot, for example, they have 1 5-star review from someone who shares their surname. Anyway, r/Fiverr did zero research and absolutely ate it up, with many people deciding that CVs and resumes was now their future. Not one person questioned him. I just checked their profile and they're still selling gigs, just at level 1. They never made TRS. Imagine paying $250k for an account that isn't Pro and was never TRS! Of course, if you compare OP's gig description with this seller, you will notice that... well, you'll notice what some people might describe as "similarities". You know who I'm talking about, don't you OP?

I did write a reply yesterday, but it is still languishing in jail as others, which made the cut, do not. I don't have an update yet. That this took multiple days to get to a senior support agent suggests something is not right... I don't seem to be allowed to write topics, or at least my topics are also languishing in jail, so you'll just have to follow me around the forums like a lost sheep hoping that one of my posts will provide the details that you want. If I'm feeling really tricksy, I may just make it buried deep in a long line of congrats and thanks posts. After all, my posts are hidden by nature. Although I think it is worth checking on May 1st (or rather May 2nd) to see if the price update is based on month date rather than with fancy automated AI systems that calculate unique user variables and then. Although that doesn't really need AI if its database stuff.... but no matter, AI sounds more exciting and futuristic than "database update", doesn't it? Unless of course the AI doesn't do anything intelligent like "automatically update" things like next month's pricing so Fiverr can stay on the correct side of EU consumer law. Either way, if this is a mistake, what does this tell us about the actual helpfulness of SMs when it comes to knowing things about Fiverr - and thus, their actual value? You can bet I will be talking to mine about that if this is the case. After she's back from vacation, of course. I suspect it's the "EU consumer law" that is causing some issues here. I'm really looking forward to the AI act, because as @mandyzines's quote points out, algos are etc, and that's what the EU AI Act is going to try and curb with huge fines. The watch word is transparency. Since Fiverr very much tries to position itself as a mover and shaker in the "future of work".... And Mandy, he's spot on with a lot of the tech/social media stuff, but his politics is terrible (and oddly uninformed in contrast to his other writing). He's definitely not done much research into politics, so skip any time he mentions politics. I've not gotten to is coughing virus era posts yet. I wonder what those will be like, since that will have to pull in politics with the tech stuff and there's a whole world of dodgy stuff in there and some of the more palatable is starting to rise to the surface. Going to be a bit of a curate's egg, I think.

Who wouldn't fail to be impressed by a nice young man who speaks 7 languages and who has helped 5,700 people to get their dream job over 9+ years with a 100% success rate? 🥰

Oh dear... I shall say no more.

My original thought when this got sent out was that someone had forgotten to segment it. AFAIK the staff on here have not passed any comment (probably wise after the fiasco with the new levels/ratings system) and my SM really only sent me platitudes via corporate GPT, assuring me that this had been thingied. Wouldn't it be fun if a Shift Manager at CS found out that I was right all along and that I've been howling on the forum at the transparent company that listens(TM) and has fabulous internal communications? It would bring joy to my shrivelled up, black heart. I might even say something nice about Fiverr. Once.

Clients with bigger budgets do tend to be a lot easier to work with, especially if they're not spending their money but their business' money. So long as the work is competent (or exceptional), there's little reason for value for money to be marked down. Putting prices up also discourages personal project people from considering you. I have nothing against them or their projects, but typically they will be emotionally invested in their project, not especially good at working with freelancers, and have very skewered expectations as a combination of those two factors. Effective communication is another one. I see a lot of advice that the way to improve this is more communication (especially on Reddit). I remember one person recommending daily updates with Zoom video meetings to ensure "everyone was on the same page". In theory, yeah, that sounds effective, Until you remember that people are busy, and that there are better, briefer ways to communicate daily updates that respect people's time. I also see advice that you should "wait" to deliver from so-called experts, all of whom are seemingly blissfully unaware that the SS rewards faster deliveries (and by extension, more realistic delivery times; if people want to manipulate that metric, that's how you do it. Of course, you can only manipulate it so much before your stated time becomes unattractive...) Ultimately, I think the SS is game-able. Just not in the way that the people who like to game things usually game them. I must say, I find it amusing that people are pausing gigs to "improve their score". I do not think that is a smart move, because the system needs data points: I don't know if the SS metrics expire, but we'll find out pretty soon.

As they should be. I still don't love Bing, but the search results are SO MUCH BETTER. I also like Yandex for more "controversial" subjects. Yesterday, I couldn't remember what the Flexner Report was called. Google, Bing, Perplexity, even DDG, useless. Yandex? Had it in minutes. All I had was vague memory of the title but a good idea of what it was about. More than enough to cough up the results unless they're being suppressed. But if we're honest, in the event that Google collapses under the weight of its own greed and mismanagement and people start "binging" stuff, it shall only repeat the same cycle. Fundamentally, the whole internet is broken, and it is breaking society with it.

That's where the 30 seconds of vigorous special hugging comes in.

When a mommy (seller) and a daddy (buyer) love each other very very much, they do a special hug. After 30 seconds of vigorous special hugging, a subscription is made. It can take up to six months for the subscription to be born, unless a sad thing happens and mommy and daddy decide to do a bad thing to the subscription. God is always very sad when a subscription stops like this. when this happens, he sends his angelthms out to make sure it happens less by reminding mommy that success is important, and that she did not make daddy or God happy because her tummy is a failure. That's why mommy has to be cast out into the desert, so she can learn her lesson and be a better mommy to her next subscription. The angelthms do not bother daddy because daddy is an economically viable unit, and God loves all of his economically viable units very, very much. OK, bored of that flight of fancy now and its difficult to take it anywhere without taking a dark turn into socio-economic commentary about the fundamental power imbalances of etc.

Used them once. Buyer cancelled after second order as was too restrictive. I keep them just to fob off the "plenty of work for you in the future" crowd when they're acting like a walking red flag. When I was in TLV many moons ago with another seller, we were in a product meeting and were asked to describe features we wanted. Oddly enough, we both prioritized subscriptions and gave detailed information on how it could best work. I don't know the other seller's opinion of the mess that eventually came out (I think 2-3 years later), but it was plain as day that for all the talking, the only word they had listened to was "subscription". I don't remember much of what we said, but I do know that one of our concerns was flexibility. I believe all other sellers who have had extended chats with Fiverr staff in panels etc have a similar experience: ultimately, their voices are not heard and the feature that later comes out is some sort of abomination from someone completely disconnected with the reality of how the marketplace will use it. I guess that's just corporate efficiency for you. Never mind. They have ChatGPT now, and that has great ideas. Indeed, I made a topic about it yesterday that may or may not have been approved. Probably because it was pretty clear that staff had already cadged and worsened a few ideas from it and left the good ones to rot...

I'm still reading through his posts. There's gold in every one. Here's another observation, which will also include some ponderings based on Fiverr's Q4 claims: Please take note, Fiverr. The AI Hub is a prime example of the folly of using ChatGPT for everything. Now, IIRC, Fiverr claims that AI was responsible for 4% of its revs in Q4. Indeed it does (actually GMV but I can't remember what that is and don't really care): Someone who knows stock market things will have to translate that for me, but if article A states that just 5% EBIT arises from AI and Fiverr is shouting from the rooftops about 4%, what does that tell us? Assuming EBIT isn't wildly different to GMV and for the purpose of this snarky statement, Fiverr is.... yes, performing worse than the average business with AI. I am also now wondering why they dropped the "AI" from the complex services in this section. Might it be because the more niche "complex AI services" isn't quite as impressive at all, even accounting for the fact that AI took off in 2023, so the % should be higher? You can look at their biz trends thing to see an example of huge % increases in search, although I question that people are coming to Fiverr, ready to buy a thing (i.e. they are at the final stage of their buyer journey) and type in... "AI" to the search bar. So are those numbers actually not accurate and a cumulative statistic based on the aggregate of searches that involved the word "AI"? And would that have included terms like "no AI"? Who knows. And remember, this cannot be the true statistic as Fiverr has no idea how many sellers are using AI without admitting it which further muddies the numbers and really, if you think about it, allows them to make up any old number that suits whatever narrative they're trying to sell on AI. But the real question is how many buyers is Fiverr losing because of deceptive AI (and people switching to AI since it is faster and, in all likelihood, cheaper and less problematic than working with a potentially deceptive and slow Fiverr seller)? We know 200,000 (active buyers) were lost over 2023. That's a much more concrete number, though of course not all losses will be solely because of AI. I also don't know what category mix shift really means. Is that multiple categories? Mixed AI/human categories? What? We will gloss over contextual search tool Neo, who to this day is unable to show me a seller in the United States when I ask for a seller in the United States. I would say that Neo doesn't understand context at all and is possibly the slowest and worst AI I've had the displeasure to use.

Indeed, it's bad luck that my posts are hidden. Not for me, of course. I already know the things. It's the people who could be helped by my things that have the bad luck. Reminds me of that bible quote: "there are none so blind who cannot see". Bad luck, indeed...

Except it does allow for multiple accounts. As I explained last night. It's a very specific situation, but it is allowed. It's very much allowed. You just can't sell on two accounts. That's the whole set-up. This isn't a difficult issue to fix if approached armed with knowledge and logic to enter into combat with CS. Alas, for nobody will drink from the fount of all knowledge and wisdom. One of my schoolteachers used to call me that (sarcastically) because I am a bit of a know-it-all. Justifiably so in this case, I think.

Are we talking about the same person here?!

Indeed - and considering that the Fiverr website pretty much dominates any brand name searches currently (Reddit/LinkedIn/Medium parasite articles aside), it means that any SEOs who are working on their blogs to deliver up-to-date, informative, and useful content (as opposed to outdated 2023 infobank AI drivel) are nowhere to be seen. And of course, it's a toss-up that coming to the forums will get you a good answer or even factually correct information (regardless of whether employees or random users wrote the content). Google has a lot to answer for.

I see that my first response, which offers a solution to this problem is hidden from the eyes of everyone, buried as it is in the past, which may well be a different country so far as forums are concerned. I wonder how many things Fiverr gets away with not doing because a % of users give up at the first AI template reply. You just know that someone or something somewhere has that calculation ready in case it's needed.

You're just playing your cards too early with that one. Be more circumspect and explain you don't do discounts on first orders but are open to negotiation on long-term work following an initial test project (or more). Trust me, that works just as well and you don't lock yourself into a discount when you have no idea what the work will look like. Speaking of which, you don't need to discount. Just shave things off the service to "save money" and make sure the buyer knows that this deal isn't a discount - it's an alignment of your service to their budget. As for the large discount people who are taking the badword, I just reject them outright. Not worth wasting time negotiating with.