themarineiguana

I think we can figure this out 📊 mathematically. First, the only orders that should count at the next evaluation period are the orders that go back to May 15, 2023. Can you tell me how many orders you've had specifically since May 15, and how many of those were on-time?

👴 Briefs, I remember briefs... By this point, briefs are kind of like "pogs"... I know they were a thing once, but it feels like I haven't seen one since forever...

Your best bet is probably to take a multi-step approach to the problem: Take a look at similar gigs in your field and try to see which images pique your interest personally. And then, consider perhaps creating a new style based on those influences. When you're in the compositing phase of creating your own new images, make sure to use high resolution assets. Export at a sufficiently high resolution (something like a 4k PNG 🖼️ if possible). That way, it should still look good even after Fiverr applies any resizing/compression, but it might be helpful to experiment with different resolutions just in case. Obviously no guarantees this will reap benefits. But the fact is that when it comes to "promotion services", those are in very high supply... so figuring out how to stand out among the competition is key. 😎

If I specifically wrote that I was skilled in Blender in a gig title... and then said I was skilled with "3d animation" in my description, I think it would be a bad faith criticism to chide me if it turned out I was unfamiliar with Maya. What you're doing is called anomaly hunting. And you're using it to curtly shut down a legitimate question and concerns.

I'm sorry, breals... but I'm not quite sure your logic holds here... He's marketing himself as an Instagram expert 📷. Marketing on Instagram and marketing on Fiverr are about as different as apples and ogres (I would've said oranges 🍊, but that would've been far too close for this analogy). Professionals and experts often are in a constant process of learning new techniques, and when they have the humility necessary to ask for help, especially with an unfamiliar platform as notoriously difficult to gain a foothold in as Fiverr, seeing their request as a sign of weakness feels a bit weak in and of itself. Yeeeeeeeah....... implying someone isn't an expert or is engaged in "immoral" activities is probably kind of insulting by the most basic of metrics.

One sign of a scammer that I don't think I've seen mentioned is... 🚨🚨🚨 Extreme Persistence 🚨🚨🚨 I've had (probable) scammers in the past categorically refuse to take a "no bid" for an answer. Now, there have been legitimate buyers who have questioned a "no bid". For example, if I've refused to do an nsfw project, I haven't minded answering a request for clarification... but the legitimate buyers usually only ask for clarification once... meanwhile, I've found that scammers keep going and going and going... You'll see telltale signs like: Guilt trips. (e.g. "It's too bad there aren't any nice people out there.") Things that almost approach commands (e.g. "You can do this for me.") Them begging not to get blocked even though you didn't say you were going to block them (← this is one of the biggest red flags 🚩). Be persistent yourself. I know it can be tempting to want to ignore that gut feeling that something isn't right, but oftentimes if you've submitted a "no bid" because you thought someone was trying to scam you, your first instinct was probably right.

Hmm... looking at your profile, I think your major challenge to improving your response time is going to be the "time zone gap" ⏰, because I'm guessing the majority of your potential customers are going to be many hours behind you in the UK, US, and Canada. If you use the technique I mentioned in my first post, it might help. Also, even though gig descriptions apparently have to be in English (link), I have seen gig titles in other languages... so there might be untapped market potential in advertising to time zones slightly closer. Since you're also fluent in German, you might be able to offer a new, different service in German (and yes, I do realize Germany's not THAT much closer... but you get the idea). Here's an example of a gig with a German title, but an English description: https://www.fiverr.com/realartrandy/qualitative-designs-erstellen-und-anbieten Buyers are like "mama birds", and we sellers are all like "baby birds" 🐤 trying to get their attention for food. And there are so.... so many of us "baby birds" 😅 A lot of people like to sugarcoat it by saying "I succeeded, you can too!", but mathematically speaking 📊 it's not that simple. Some of the biggest sellers (though probably not all) have the age-old mentality of "the have nots just need to work harder"... much like a Dickensian antagonist... but many of those same sellers also don't realize that a more new seller-friendly environment of the past had better allowed them to work hard and "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" (as we say in the States). (Note: When I started in 2019, Fiverr policies were better than they are now, and it still took 2 months for me to wade past the scammers and get my first legit order.) So the million dollar question is this: Is it possible to make Fiverr work in the Year of our Lord 2,023? It's probably going to require more than it did in the past. Honing your skills and putting your best foot forward are a good start, sure... but now it potentially requires staying one step ahead of AI and also continuing to "light the proverbial fire" under Fiverr by speaking up and saying "treat your sellers and buyers more equitably, 'kay? thanks!". I'm a big believer in the power of faith, if you saw the Jesus fish necklace in my avatar you probably guessed as much. 🙂 But when it comes to faith, I've found that adding too many constraints can make it difficult to keep your faith high. I've found it's better to have faith that you will be successful in general in life, instead of trying to have faith that a specific organization (e.g. Fiverr 💵) will be the one to ensure that success.

(Tip: Why and how not to "Add a sample to Gig's gallery") Intro: Adding a sample to a Gig's Gallery 🖼️ can be a great way to show buyers your best work, but there are reasons why you might want to avoid doing so. And Fiverr is set up in a way where it appears to be difficult to opt out of having to choose at least one asset for the sample (leaving discretion almost solely up to the buyer). Why wouldn't you want to (sometimes)? Let's say you do a custom offer for a buyer that requires a higher quote or a lot more work than usual. If that sample is added to the Gig's gallery, it can give the false impression that this kind of project is representative of one of your standard services, and that might lead to friction down the road. 🚧 Or, let's say you have a project where any one asset is not representative of the full project. Sure, you could try to take a screenshot of the final product or some such and use that, but sometimes — depending on the complexity of a project or the nature of the service — this miiiiiiight not be ideal. How to opt out. Just compress your project in a .ZIP file 📁 and deliver that to your buyer. The "Add a sample to Gig gallery" feature does not currently extract the contents of .zip files and (wisely) doesn't even try to recommend .zip files for samples. And zipping and unzipping files has been simple as pie since the days before Rick Astley was a meme, so you shouldn't have any trouble with even your least tech-savvy buyers (well, most of them, but you could just bite the bullet and redeliver the extracted contents to the outliers).

Agreed. Even a ⌛ 15 minute grace period on editing a message would probably be helpful, so I don't accidentally say "Good morning, I'll be with you in just a secant." And that just forces the customer to do unnecessary trigonometry...

As smashradio pointed out... yes, I meant the... ⭐⭐⭐ Response Time Stat ⭐⭐⭐ ... not the Response Rate stat. (Boy, I wish there were a longer "grace period" on editing posts ⏰😅).

You mean like as example work? If they're your designs, that shouldn't be an issue. I have numerous animations I've made for my YouTube channels as example videos on my gigs 📼, because it gives me an opportunity to put my best foot forward (or at least a better foot forward) by showing some of the things that people naturally responded best to.

Who likes sleep? I like sleep. I really like to sleep. 😴 But when you have someone contact you after hours, it can be difficult to maintain an optimal Response Rate if you're like me and enjoy being able to fulfill a basic human need. Fiverr's built-in "Auto-Reply" feature is OK, but it's no alternative to actually being able to touch base with a prospective buyer to keep your Response Rate high. If you're a new seller, your best bet is to do a "Manual AutoResponse", which may seem as oxymoronic as "jumbo shrimp" at face value, but trust me... it helps immensely. What is Manual AutoResponse? Manual AutoResponse is a technique for touching base with your prospective buyer very briefly so you can go back to catching z's. 💤 It works like this: Make sure you have a SmartPhone. Write about 3 "away messages" for different situations, "Copy" them to your phone's "Clipboard", and then 🔒 lock all the away messages to your clipboard. Away messages should be something like a) "Currently away from computer, should be back in the morning." or b) "Out to lunch, should be back in an hour." or c) "Watching the birth of my first child, should be back in 2 hours". Set up the alarm that plays when Fiverr sends a push notification to be a brief, sharp tone that can wake you from sleep. Then when someone contacts you during your resting hours, quickly open the Fiverr messenger, "Paste" the most relevant away message, and then immediately go back to sleep. Why is this important? Because sleep is important? 🛏️ No, seriously... Because sleep is important! Sellers tend to do their best work when they're well-rested, not burnt out, or exhausted... ... and — as a result — not questioning whether they should escape into the depths of the Canadian wilderness and live like a sasquatch, manbear, or Great Uncle Pete who was never the same after that maple syrup explosion... And if new sellers want to keep competitive, having an optimal response rate is a good way to gain trust from potential buyers... and being able to function without crippling exhaustion is a good way to follow through on orders. What are the risks? Same as AutoReply, that the prospective customer goes to someone else. But the fact is, I've had about a 50% success rate with at least being able to get further along on negotiations with people who I ask to wait, so it is probably worth it. So in conclusion... Grab those teddy bears 🧸, grab those smart phones 📱, and throw away that subscription to "How to Live as a Hermit (Swimsuit Edition)", because it's time to get some rest and keep your response rate high.

Seller: "But my grandma suddenly passed away." Fiverr: "Well you should have thought of that before you had a grandma." ───────────────────── ⭐ Honestly, the status quo was (mostly) fine. This feels like yet another update that continues to favor one class of Fiverr's customers (i.e. the buyers) over another class of Fiverr's customers (i.e. the sellers). This is eroding seller trust in perhaps all but only the most forgetful and untouchable of megasellers who seem to be blissfully floating in the stratospheric heights of yuppie-grade Survivorship Bias by this point... and this update is especially (and potentially) crippling to the newest sellers... who have had to deal with: An influx of new "gig economy" competition since the COVID era, Lowered priority sorting since the advent of the gig promotion feature, and... The arguably classist lockout of features that came with the seller plus update (features of which should probably "come standard" considering the not-so-nominal fees already extracted from sellers and buyers for each transaction). 💧 The reason Fiverr got so popular is because there was a "water cycle" of sellers who could join the platform, compete, and work hard for a chance to succeed, but the recent updates keep widening the success gap between the haves and have nots of Fiverr. And if the new sellers are not properly cultivated to hone their skills and eventually join and/or replace the "old guard" at the top, that proverbial "water cycle" risks ceasing in its tracks and creating a proverbial drought.

Welcome to Fiverr! ^.^ If you sign up for Buyer Briefs (under the "My Business > Gigs" tab)... every once in a while, Fiverr might send you a brief for what is essentially a buyer's "help wanted" ad. 😅 The brief system is designed to try to match the buyer's criteria with sellers who provide similar services. It's not a perfect system, but I can see it having a lot of potential. I don't know how often it prioritizes new sellers, so using social media to increase your visibility still might be your best bet starting out.

Buyer briefs are an interesting concept. Personally, I like the idea. (Sometimes I like changes Fiverr makes, sometimes I don't.) As far as Buyer Briefs go, a lot of the ones I received so far were only semi-relevant to my services, but it's very difficult to expect an algorithm by itself to figure out the subtle nuances of the services I provide without human level understanding (or at least until AI gets smart enough to take over 🤖). At any rate, there were a few briefs that were directly relevant, but I never heard anything back from the prospective buyers. 🤷 It does seem to be a superior system to the old Buyer Requests, which — talking to a few buyers — I learned they weren't particularly keen on. There was a time I gave Buyer Requests a try because I wanted someone to do an impression of Ducky from Land Before Time for a personal project. I opened it up to all gender identities, but I did get waaaaaaay too many manly cisgender guys doing low-effort falsettos 😅 Hopefully as the algorithm improves, the new briefs will get to the right candidates. 😊

Allowing buyers to change a review from positive to negative after the fact... ... but not allowing that same option for sellers... ⭐⭐⭐ ... risks rendering the review system completely useless. Seller reviews are so people can say, "Hey, this person provides an awesome service! Buy from them!" Buyer reviews are so people can say, "Hey, this person isn't a scammer and is very stable! Sell to them!" I reckon the whole point of the no-one-can-see-feedback-till-it's-posted policy was to mitigate the threat of retaliatory reviews, but if that threat is mitigated only for buyers but not for sellers, that skews the calculus of each party's assessment of the risks and rewards of leaving a review, as visualstudios has wisely pointed out.

This new policy is wildly exploitable. Plain and simple. It also just seems unnecessary. In the past, there really wasn't much of an issue because a cancelled order essentially worked to the benefit of both parties: ⭐ The buyer didn't have to pay, and the seller could avoid a bad review. Admittedly... Sometimes buyers are the issue. Sometimes sellers are the issue. Sometimes it's mutual. But regardless, cancellation is a pretty fair trade... no review left, no payment issued. And yet, it was still one-sided, because cancellation often affected "cancellation rate", which could put a seller's hard-won level ranking in jeopardy. ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ So no, it would probably be better to stick with the status quo on this one. That's a fairly broad generalization, newsmike. I can tell you that I do recognize quite a lot of my earlier work is subpar and cringey. And I haven't always been 100% happy with my current work; perhaps I might look back at some of it in the future with a similar degree of cringiness... but regardless... You've been very aggressive, short-tempered, and sometimes rude to people in this thread. I'm not sure why you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but you could probably make your arguments better if they were administered with less vinegar and more sugar. 😉

This is becoming so consistent an issue that I finally feel like it's time to post my concerns 😅 There are a few regions of the world (though very few) where scam culture is an extreme problem, and this is hurting sellers' conversion rate when work is done for a prospective customer but orders don't pan out. My recommendation is simple: to weight the conversion rate so those very few regions with high incidences of scam culture count less towards conversion rate than others.