Add a direct message feature to contact buyers (users with no gigs on fiverr)

[samus_x]

DISCLAIMER:
In illustrating my proposition, I’m going to mention some big issues that have been around since fiverr was born and have already been discussed thousand times and therefore don’t need to be discussed here, unless their mention is related to the the main focus of the thread:

A proposition to add direct messaging for every user (now sellers can be messaged directly by any user on fiverr, but buyers can’t be messaged unless they buy a gig from you).

As of now what would be the pros and cons of direct messaging on FIverr platform?

.
.
.
THE PROS:

• Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

• When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

EXAMPLE: I am a translator and many times I see buyer request like “I need to translate a text from language A to language B”, nothing more. But a translator price is based on text lenght and if I want to send an offer, I am here forced to set a random price and deadline. Of course you can send an offer with a symbolic price (very high) specifying that you need to discuss the details before talking about price, but many buyers don’t even bother reading it and go for the lowest offers.
With direct messaging this wouldn’t happen.

• This could be controversial, but just to list out all the advantages: reselling could be partially prevented (at least sellers whose gig are resold can choose to take action and wouldn’t be totally powerless in front of this “phoenomenon”).
  When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

  Of course this could be made only if we are sure and have proofs of what we’re saying, making an example in my field (that, as I said, is translation):

EXAMPLE: Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.
With direct messaging we would have the chance to contact final buyer, display proof (such as the review and the source file in both languages), gain a new customer and last but not the least make Fiverr a cleaner platform.

• This is a minor improvement but when meeting someone irl, direct messaging allows to reach out to him/her later (whether you’re buyers or a sellers), even if we didn’t exchange any information out of our nicknames.

.
.
.
THE CONS:

• The only big con I can see in this feature is potential spam or harassment of buyers by bad sellers
  BUT
  We could easily prevent this behavior:
  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to level X sellers (lower sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)
  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers (younger sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)
  By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t
  I’m sure many others way to block spammers and harassers exist, I’ve listed just the first three that popped up in my mind.

.
.
.
IN CONCLUSION, in the light of the fact that the “pros” would be many, big and juicy (and I’m sure there’s some other positive sides that simply didn’t come up to miy mind), and the only “con” can be neutralized without a sweat…
I think that implementing a new feature of direct messaging for everyone (with the right aforementioned restrictions) would be a great move for our platform.

What do you think about it? Should we do it? Should we not? Can you think about further pros and cons and eventually solutions to the cons?

[humanissocial]

DISCLAIMER:

In illustrating my proposition, I’m going to mention some big issues that have been around since fiverr was born and have already been discussed thousand times and therefore don’t need to be discussed here, unless their mention is related to the the main focus of the thread:

A proposition to add direct messaging for every user (now sellers can be messaged directly by any user on fiverr, but buyers can’t be messaged unless they buy a gig from you).

As of now what would be the pros and cons of direct messaging on FIverr platform?

.

.

.

THE PROS:

• Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

• When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

EXAMPLE: I am a translator and many times I see buyer request like “I need to translate a text from language A to language B”, nothing more. But a translator price is based on text lenght and if I want to send an offer, I am here forced to set a random price and deadline. Of course you can send an offer with a symbolic price (very high) specifying that you need to discuss the details before talking about price, but many buyers don’t even bother reading it and go for the lowest offers.

With direct messaging this wouldn’t happen.

• This could be controversial, but just to list out all the advantages: reselling could be partially prevented (at least sellers whose gig are resold can choose to take action and wouldn’t be totally powerless in front of this “phoenomenon”).

  When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

  Of course this could be made only if we are sure and have proofs of what we’re saying, making an example in my field (that, as I said, is translation):

EXAMPLE: Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

With direct messaging we would have the chance to contact final buyer, display proof (such as the review and the source file in both languages), gain a new customer and last but not the least make Fiverr a cleaner platform.

• This is a minor improvement but when meeting someone irl, direct messaging allows to reach out to him/her later (whether you’re buyers or a sellers), even if we didn’t exchange any information out of our nicknames.

.

.

.

THE CONS:

• The only big con I can see in this feature is potential spam or harassment of buyers by bad sellers

  BUT

  We could easily prevent this behavior:

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to level X sellers (lower sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers (younger sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

  I’m sure many others way to block spammers and harassers exist, I’ve listed just the first three that popped up in my mind.

.

.

.

IN CONCLUSION, in the light of the fact that the “pros” would be many, big and juicy (and I’m sure there’s some other positive sides that simply didn’t come up to miy mind), and the only “con” can be neutralized without a sweat…

I think that implementing a new feature of direct messaging for everyone (with the right aforementioned restrictions) would be a great move for our platform.

What do you think about it? Should we do it? Should we not? Can you think about further pros and cons and eventually solutions to the cons?

By making the direct messaging feature available only to level X sellers

By making the direct messaging feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers

You can’t allow some sellers to send a message and others not. It’s discriminatory and also confusing for buyers.

It also wouldn’t curb spamming. Plenty of Level 1, 2 and Pro sellers have extremely poor judgment.

[eoinfinnegan]

DISCLAIMER:

In illustrating my proposition, I’m going to mention some big issues that have been around since fiverr was born and have already been discussed thousand times and therefore don’t need to be discussed here, unless their mention is related to the the main focus of the thread:

A proposition to add direct messaging for every user (now sellers can be messaged directly by any user on fiverr, but buyers can’t be messaged unless they buy a gig from you).

As of now what would be the pros and cons of direct messaging on FIverr platform?

.

.

.

THE PROS:

• Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

• When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

EXAMPLE: I am a translator and many times I see buyer request like “I need to translate a text from language A to language B”, nothing more. But a translator price is based on text lenght and if I want to send an offer, I am here forced to set a random price and deadline. Of course you can send an offer with a symbolic price (very high) specifying that you need to discuss the details before talking about price, but many buyers don’t even bother reading it and go for the lowest offers.

With direct messaging this wouldn’t happen.

• This could be controversial, but just to list out all the advantages: reselling could be partially prevented (at least sellers whose gig are resold can choose to take action and wouldn’t be totally powerless in front of this “phoenomenon”).

  When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

  Of course this could be made only if we are sure and have proofs of what we’re saying, making an example in my field (that, as I said, is translation):

EXAMPLE: Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

With direct messaging we would have the chance to contact final buyer, display proof (such as the review and the source file in both languages), gain a new customer and last but not the least make Fiverr a cleaner platform.

• This is a minor improvement but when meeting someone irl, direct messaging allows to reach out to him/her later (whether you’re buyers or a sellers), even if we didn’t exchange any information out of our nicknames.

.

.

.

THE CONS:

• The only big con I can see in this feature is potential spam or harassment of buyers by bad sellers

  BUT

  We could easily prevent this behavior:

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to level X sellers (lower sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers (younger sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

  I’m sure many others way to block spammers and harassers exist, I’ve listed just the first three that popped up in my mind.

.

.

.

IN CONCLUSION, in the light of the fact that the “pros” would be many, big and juicy (and I’m sure there’s some other positive sides that simply didn’t come up to miy mind), and the only “con” can be neutralized without a sweat…

I think that implementing a new feature of direct messaging for everyone (with the right aforementioned restrictions) would be a great move for our platform.

What do you think about it? Should we do it? Should we not? Can you think about further pros and cons and eventually solutions to the cons?

When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

As someone who buys from other people on Fiverr regularly and generally takes the work bought, improves it, packages it, organizes it, takes the risk with sellers and all that entails, if my clients could be directly messaged by people claiming to be cheaper than me therefore better, I wouldn’t use Fiverr.

Make a policy of not working with resellers if you want but don’t generalise when you clearly have no idea of the work involved in things like this.

And for what it’s worth, I believe sellers usually like working with me.

[samus_x]

When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

As someone who buys from other people on Fiverr regularly and generally takes the work bought, improves it, packages it, organizes it, takes the risk with sellers and all that entails, if my clients could be directly messaged by people claiming to be cheaper than me therefore better, I wouldn’t use Fiverr.

Make a policy of not working with resellers if you want but don’t generalise when you clearly have no idea of the work involved in things like this.

And for what it’s worth, I believe sellers usually like working with me.

In my example the one writing is not simply saying “buy from me because I’m cheaper” but “buy straight from me next time because the one you’ve bougth from simply resells and you paid a doubled price with no reason”

[eoinfinnegan]

DISCLAIMER:

In illustrating my proposition, I’m going to mention some big issues that have been around since fiverr was born and have already been discussed thousand times and therefore don’t need to be discussed here, unless their mention is related to the the main focus of the thread:

A proposition to add direct messaging for every user (now sellers can be messaged directly by any user on fiverr, but buyers can’t be messaged unless they buy a gig from you).

As of now what would be the pros and cons of direct messaging on FIverr platform?

.

.

.

THE PROS:

• Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

• When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

EXAMPLE: I am a translator and many times I see buyer request like “I need to translate a text from language A to language B”, nothing more. But a translator price is based on text lenght and if I want to send an offer, I am here forced to set a random price and deadline. Of course you can send an offer with a symbolic price (very high) specifying that you need to discuss the details before talking about price, but many buyers don’t even bother reading it and go for the lowest offers.

With direct messaging this wouldn’t happen.

• This could be controversial, but just to list out all the advantages: reselling could be partially prevented (at least sellers whose gig are resold can choose to take action and wouldn’t be totally powerless in front of this “phoenomenon”).

  When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

  Of course this could be made only if we are sure and have proofs of what we’re saying, making an example in my field (that, as I said, is translation):

EXAMPLE: Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

With direct messaging we would have the chance to contact final buyer, display proof (such as the review and the source file in both languages), gain a new customer and last but not the least make Fiverr a cleaner platform.

• This is a minor improvement but when meeting someone irl, direct messaging allows to reach out to him/her later (whether you’re buyers or a sellers), even if we didn’t exchange any information out of our nicknames.

.

.

.

THE CONS:

• The only big con I can see in this feature is potential spam or harassment of buyers by bad sellers

  BUT

  We could easily prevent this behavior:

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to level X sellers (lower sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers (younger sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

  I’m sure many others way to block spammers and harassers exist, I’ve listed just the first three that popped up in my mind.

.

.

.

IN CONCLUSION, in the light of the fact that the “pros” would be many, big and juicy (and I’m sure there’s some other positive sides that simply didn’t come up to miy mind), and the only “con” can be neutralized without a sweat…

I think that implementing a new feature of direct messaging for everyone (with the right aforementioned restrictions) would be a great move for our platform.

What do you think about it? Should we do it? Should we not? Can you think about further pros and cons and eventually solutions to the cons?

Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

When I buy a translation from you and you have been paid your agreed price, what happens then is absolutely none of your business and contacting people to undercut those who have bought from you is such a bad faith move that I’m surprised you would state publically that you would do it if you could.

[catwriter]

DISCLAIMER:

In illustrating my proposition, I’m going to mention some big issues that have been around since fiverr was born and have already been discussed thousand times and therefore don’t need to be discussed here, unless their mention is related to the the main focus of the thread:

A proposition to add direct messaging for every user (now sellers can be messaged directly by any user on fiverr, but buyers can’t be messaged unless they buy a gig from you).

As of now what would be the pros and cons of direct messaging on FIverr platform?

.

.

.

THE PROS:

• Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

• When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

EXAMPLE: I am a translator and many times I see buyer request like “I need to translate a text from language A to language B”, nothing more. But a translator price is based on text lenght and if I want to send an offer, I am here forced to set a random price and deadline. Of course you can send an offer with a symbolic price (very high) specifying that you need to discuss the details before talking about price, but many buyers don’t even bother reading it and go for the lowest offers.

With direct messaging this wouldn’t happen.

• This could be controversial, but just to list out all the advantages: reselling could be partially prevented (at least sellers whose gig are resold can choose to take action and wouldn’t be totally powerless in front of this “phoenomenon”).

  When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

  Of course this could be made only if we are sure and have proofs of what we’re saying, making an example in my field (that, as I said, is translation):

EXAMPLE: Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

With direct messaging we would have the chance to contact final buyer, display proof (such as the review and the source file in both languages), gain a new customer and last but not the least make Fiverr a cleaner platform.

• This is a minor improvement but when meeting someone irl, direct messaging allows to reach out to him/her later (whether you’re buyers or a sellers), even if we didn’t exchange any information out of our nicknames.

.

.

.

THE CONS:

• The only big con I can see in this feature is potential spam or harassment of buyers by bad sellers

  BUT

  We could easily prevent this behavior:

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to level X sellers (lower sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers (younger sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

  I’m sure many others way to block spammers and harassers exist, I’ve listed just the first three that popped up in my mind.

.

.

.

IN CONCLUSION, in the light of the fact that the “pros” would be many, big and juicy (and I’m sure there’s some other positive sides that simply didn’t come up to miy mind), and the only “con” can be neutralized without a sweat…

I think that implementing a new feature of direct messaging for everyone (with the right aforementioned restrictions) would be a great move for our platform.

What do you think about it? Should we do it? Should we not? Can you think about further pros and cons and eventually solutions to the cons?

When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

Doing that would be a breach of confidentiality and therefore a Terms of Service violation.

Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

I don’t need to message a buyer who haven’t messaged me before. I have no reason to.

When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

Why would I want to work with someone who is unable to give clear details about the scope of work when posting what they need done? They’re likely to be difficult to communicate with, and also likely to be difficult to work with.

By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

There are many desperate sellers on Fiverr. I haven’t bought on Fiverr, and yet I receive messages from them begging me to hire them. Buyers would receive a lot more (some of them are already complaining about the unwanted messages they’re getting from the sellers they’ve hired in the past), and would probably leave Fiverr if they had to deal with a huge amount of spam.

Just look at all the sellers crying about no sales, or about not receiving enough sales (even though their profiles show that they got a bunch of reviews lately), and imagine a buyer having to deal with spam from all of them on a daily basis.

[mariashtelle1]

😒 maybe it’s good maybe it’s bad but I had only bad experiences with sellers being able to message me.

I bought some things on fiver and posted a couple of buyer requests. Guess how many people reached out To me with genuine questions? Right, zero.
All I got was spamming from sellers asking me if I’m going to choose them and chasing me every couple of hours. Of course their messages also was affecting my response rate because non of them actually look if it’s a night time at my place.

[samus_x]

By making the direct messaging feature available only to level X sellers

By making the direct messaging feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers

You can’t allow some sellers to send a message and others not. It’s discriminatory and also confusing for buyers.

It also wouldn’t curb spamming. Plenty of Level 1, 2 and Pro sellers have extremely poor judgment.

There’s plenty of different advantages and disadvantages according to your levels (e.g. level 0 sellers do not see almost any buyer request). So I don’t see that as discriminatory since it would be implemented in a system that already sets apart different users according to their account age/performance/past behavior

[samus_x]

Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

When I buy a translation from you and you have been paid your agreed price, what happens then is absolutely none of your business and contacting people to undercut those who have bought from you is such a bad faith move that I’m surprised you would state publically that you would do it if you could.

Man, I think you didn’t understand that I’m talking about “exposing” RESELLERS.

Not stealing customers from other sellers.

[eoinfinnegan]

Man, I think you didn’t understand that I’m talking about “exposing” RESELLERS.

Not stealing customers from other sellers.

I am someone who resells certain things as part of my overall service. “Exposing” resellers is something you think is good or necessary but I have no problem stating I resell things I buy from people. Many on the forum know I do and generally are happy to work with me on that basis.

This idea of yours that resellers are evil and stealing your money and clients is in your own head. Sure, some are problematic or unprofessional but that is them as individuals, not resellers in general. I also work with many translation agencies, some for years, who are obviously reselling what I do for them.

If you’re jealous of resellers or think they are stealing your cookies then perhaps focus on how you can make what you do able to be sold at that level by yourself.

[samus_x]

When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

Doing that would be a breach of confidentiality and therefore a Terms of Service violation.

Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

I don’t need to message a buyer who haven’t messaged me before. I have no reason to.

When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

Why would I want to work with someone who is unable to give clear details about the scope of work when posting what they need done? They’re likely to be difficult to communicate with, and also likely to be difficult to work with.

By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

There are many desperate sellers on Fiverr. I haven’t bought on Fiverr, and yet I receive messages from them begging me to hire them. Buyers would receive a lot more (some of them are already complaining about the unwanted messages they’re getting from the sellers they’ve hired in the past), and would probably leave Fiverr if they had to deal with a huge amount of spam.

Just look at all the sellers crying about no sales, or about not receiving enough sales (even though their profiles show that they got a bunch of reviews lately), and imagine a buyer having to deal with spam from all of them on a daily basis.

Why would I want to work with someone who is unable to give clear details about the scope of work when posting what they need done? They’re likely to be difficult to communicate with, and also likely to be difficult to work with

Everyone here knows how often buyers can face issues in understanding properly how the whole platform works, especially if they’re new. Since they don’t see the buyer requests from the seller they can do some mistakes, but I don’t think we should immediately discard people just for a moment’s inattention.

There are many desperate sellers on Fiverr. I haven’t bought on Fiverr, and yet I receive messages from them begging me to hire them. Buyers would receive a lot more (some of them are already complaining about the unwanted messages they’re getting from the sellers they’ve hired in the past), and would probably leave Fiverr if they had to deal with a huge amount of spam.

Just look at all the sellers crying about no sales, or about not receiving enough sales (even though their profiles show that they got a bunch of reviews lately), and imagine a buyer having to deal with spam from all of them on a daily basis.

As I said, this should be implemented with the help of an improved “antispam system” that I’m sure Fiverr staff is capable of. And not just Fiverr staff but the whole community can contribute.

[samus_x]

I am someone who resells certain things as part of my overall service. “Exposing” resellers is something you think is good or necessary but I have no problem stating I resell things I buy from people. Many on the forum know I do and generally are happy to work with me on that basis.

This idea of yours that resellers are evil and stealing your money and clients is in your own head. Sure, some are problematic or unprofessional but that is them as individuals, not resellers in general. I also work with many translation agencies, some for years, who are obviously reselling what I do for them.

If you’re jealous of resellers or think they are stealing your cookies then perhaps focus on how you can make what you do able to be sold at that level by yourself.

I am already doing it. But I also like to propose ideas.

You don’t have to speak down to me just because we have opposite ideas.

As I said, this is not the place to discuss about “what we think about resellers”. There’s plenty of people who think like me and plenty of people who think like you. I think you lost focus of the whole “direct message” thing.

[humanissocial]

DISCLAIMER:

In illustrating my proposition, I’m going to mention some big issues that have been around since fiverr was born and have already been discussed thousand times and therefore don’t need to be discussed here, unless their mention is related to the the main focus of the thread:

A proposition to add direct messaging for every user (now sellers can be messaged directly by any user on fiverr, but buyers can’t be messaged unless they buy a gig from you).

As of now what would be the pros and cons of direct messaging on FIverr platform?

.

.

.

THE PROS:

• Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

• When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

EXAMPLE: I am a translator and many times I see buyer request like “I need to translate a text from language A to language B”, nothing more. But a translator price is based on text lenght and if I want to send an offer, I am here forced to set a random price and deadline. Of course you can send an offer with a symbolic price (very high) specifying that you need to discuss the details before talking about price, but many buyers don’t even bother reading it and go for the lowest offers.

With direct messaging this wouldn’t happen.

• This could be controversial, but just to list out all the advantages: reselling could be partially prevented (at least sellers whose gig are resold can choose to take action and wouldn’t be totally powerless in front of this “phoenomenon”).

  When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

  Of course this could be made only if we are sure and have proofs of what we’re saying, making an example in my field (that, as I said, is translation):

EXAMPLE: Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

With direct messaging we would have the chance to contact final buyer, display proof (such as the review and the source file in both languages), gain a new customer and last but not the least make Fiverr a cleaner platform.

• This is a minor improvement but when meeting someone irl, direct messaging allows to reach out to him/her later (whether you’re buyers or a sellers), even if we didn’t exchange any information out of our nicknames.

.

.

.

THE CONS:

• The only big con I can see in this feature is potential spam or harassment of buyers by bad sellers

  BUT

  We could easily prevent this behavior:

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to level X sellers (lower sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers (younger sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

  I’m sure many others way to block spammers and harassers exist, I’ve listed just the first three that popped up in my mind.

.

.

.

IN CONCLUSION, in the light of the fact that the “pros” would be many, big and juicy (and I’m sure there’s some other positive sides that simply didn’t come up to miy mind), and the only “con” can be neutralized without a sweat…

I think that implementing a new feature of direct messaging for everyone (with the right aforementioned restrictions) would be a great move for our platform.

What do you think about it? Should we do it? Should we not? Can you think about further pros and cons and eventually solutions to the cons?

Sending a message isn’t a privilege like access to BRs. It’s a basic function, so it is discriminatory and not not comparable.

When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

That’s not only a breach of confidentiality, but it’s also a guilt-trip. No, sellers shouldn’t be allowed a vehicle to guilt trip and pressure buyers.

[samus_x]

Sending a message isn’t a privilege like access to BRs. It’s a basic function, so it is discriminatory and not not comparable.

When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

That’s not only a breach of confidentiality, but it’s also a guilt-trip. No, sellers shouldn’t be allowed a vehicle to guilt trip and pressure buyers.

Sending a message isn’t a privilege like access to BRs. It’s a basic function, so it is discriminatory and not not comparable.

I still don’t agree with the idea that for the sake of “not being discriminatory” taking something from everyone is more fair than taking it from somebody.

[humanissocial]

Sending a message isn’t a privilege like access to BRs. It’s a basic function, so it is discriminatory and not not comparable.

I still don’t agree with the idea that for the sake of “not being discriminatory” taking something from everyone is more fair than taking it from somebody.

No business anywhere only lets some users have some basic functions.

All businesses have privileges for each tier, yes, but that only ever, ever applies to extra features, not fundamental ones.

Allowing some people to message and not others is a legal, communications and public relations nightmare. No company in their right mind would do that. You’re oblivious to the ramifications.

[catwriter]

Why would I want to work with someone who is unable to give clear details about the scope of work when posting what they need done? They’re likely to be difficult to communicate with, and also likely to be difficult to work with

Everyone here knows how often buyers can face issues in understanding properly how the whole platform works, especially if they’re new. Since they don’t see the buyer requests from the seller they can do some mistakes, but I don’t think we should immediately discard people just for a moment’s inattention.

There are many desperate sellers on Fiverr. I haven’t bought on Fiverr, and yet I receive messages from them begging me to hire them. Buyers would receive a lot more (some of them are already complaining about the unwanted messages they’re getting from the sellers they’ve hired in the past), and would probably leave Fiverr if they had to deal with a huge amount of spam.

Just look at all the sellers crying about no sales, or about not receiving enough sales (even though their profiles show that they got a bunch of reviews lately), and imagine a buyer having to deal with spam from all of them on a daily basis.

As I said, this should be implemented with the help of an improved “antispam system” that I’m sure Fiverr staff is capable of. And not just Fiverr staff but the whole community can contribute.

I see that you have skipped the part (twice, now that @humanissocial has mentioned it, too) stating that contacting the end buyers of resellers who hire you would be a breach of confidentiality and a Terms of Service violation.

[samus_x]

No business anywhere only lets some users have some basic functions.

All businesses have privileges for each tier, yes, but that only ever, ever applies to extra features, not fundamental ones.

Allowing some people to message and not others is a legal, communications and public relations nightmare. No company in their right mind would do that. You’re oblivious to the ramifications.

But I’m not talking about the whole messaging function.

I’m talking about a feature that everyone has, enhanced for people who earned it and will not potentialy use it improperly. For example:

Step 1 - You can message only with sellers and buyer who order from you

Step 2 - You can message with anyone

[humanissocial]

DISCLAIMER:

In illustrating my proposition, I’m going to mention some big issues that have been around since fiverr was born and have already been discussed thousand times and therefore don’t need to be discussed here, unless their mention is related to the the main focus of the thread:

A proposition to add direct messaging for every user (now sellers can be messaged directly by any user on fiverr, but buyers can’t be messaged unless they buy a gig from you).

As of now what would be the pros and cons of direct messaging on FIverr platform?

.

.

.

THE PROS:

• Direct messaging from (and to) anyone would strongly improve communication whereas now are misunderstandings and incomprehensions.

• When viewing a wrong/inaccurate/weird buyer request, we could message directly the user who wrote it to ask for further details.

EXAMPLE: I am a translator and many times I see buyer request like “I need to translate a text from language A to language B”, nothing more. But a translator price is based on text lenght and if I want to send an offer, I am here forced to set a random price and deadline. Of course you can send an offer with a symbolic price (very high) specifying that you need to discuss the details before talking about price, but many buyers don’t even bother reading it and go for the lowest offers.

With direct messaging this wouldn’t happen.

• This could be controversial, but just to list out all the advantages: reselling could be partially prevented (at least sellers whose gig are resold can choose to take action and wouldn’t be totally powerless in front of this “phoenomenon”).

  When catching a reseller (also called flipper) with his hands in the cookie jar, we could go straight to the final buyer and say “Hey, you know the guy who made you pay 100$ dollars for that work, well he bought it from me for 50$ so next time consider buying directly from me so it’s a win-win for us”.

  Of course this could be made only if we are sure and have proofs of what we’re saying, making an example in my field (that, as I said, is translation):

EXAMPLE: Someone buys from me a translation of a cookies advertising from language A to B, later after delivering it I find out that someone bought from my buyer a translation from language A to B and wrote in his review “Thank you for the translation of the cookie advertising, that was excellent!”.

With direct messaging we would have the chance to contact final buyer, display proof (such as the review and the source file in both languages), gain a new customer and last but not the least make Fiverr a cleaner platform.

• This is a minor improvement but when meeting someone irl, direct messaging allows to reach out to him/her later (whether you’re buyers or a sellers), even if we didn’t exchange any information out of our nicknames.

.

.

.

THE CONS:

• The only big con I can see in this feature is potential spam or harassment of buyers by bad sellers

  BUT

  We could easily prevent this behavior:

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to level X sellers (lower sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By making the “direct messaging anyone” feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers (younger sellers could still contact sellers and buyers who ordered from them)

  By simply using the already existing “mark as spam” button that clearly shows to Fiverr staff who’s been using the messages properly and who isn’t

  I’m sure many others way to block spammers and harassers exist, I’ve listed just the first three that popped up in my mind.

.

.

.

IN CONCLUSION, in the light of the fact that the “pros” would be many, big and juicy (and I’m sure there’s some other positive sides that simply didn’t come up to miy mind), and the only “con” can be neutralized without a sweat…

I think that implementing a new feature of direct messaging for everyone (with the right aforementioned restrictions) would be a great move for our platform.

What do you think about it? Should we do it? Should we not? Can you think about further pros and cons and eventually solutions to the cons?

I know you are. I’m referring to this.

By making the direct messaging feature available only to level X sellers

By making the direct messaging feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers

[samus_x]

I see that you have skipped the part (twice, now that @humanissocial has mentioned it, too) stating that contacting the end buyers of resellers who hire you would be a breach of confidentiality and a Terms of Service violation.

I see that you missed the part about this thread being about a new feature.

The title is not “Is reselling good or bad?”, “How to fight reselling?”.

I included “preventing reselling” among the pros because I know that part of the community would see it as a pro, if you see it as a con then you’re free to do it.

Still, the discussion is about the proposed feature.

[samus_x]

I know you are. I’m referring to this.

By making the direct messaging feature available only to level X sellers

By making the direct messaging feature available only to X days/weeks/months old sellers

I edited that part so my idea is as clear as possible.

[eoinfinnegan]

You have three “Pros” of the system you are proposing.

1. Improve communication - I don’t see how. If a buyer wants something they contact you. If they order without contact, you can communicate on the order. The only other thing that could happen here is sellers contacting buyers without the buyer requesting it - that’s spam.
2. Contacting buyers who don’t make clear Buyer Requests - A better solution to that would be allowing comments by sellers to ask questions, as is done on several other platforms.
3. Exposing resellers - When you dismiss the spam point because it is a bad idea, and use the existing solution that is successful on other platforms for buyer requests, this is the only “Pro” left for your idea. However, You seem to think that discussing this is off-topic…

As for cons, you forgot the con where many buyers and sellers who buy here will simply stop using Fiverr for things because of the risk of their buyers being spammed. I know I wouldn’t buy here if this were implemented.

PS. I am not sure where you feel I spoke down to you but I can assure you it wasn’t intended to.

[catwriter]

I see that you missed the part about this thread being about a new feature.

The title is not “Is reselling good or bad?”, “How to fight reselling?”.

I included “preventing reselling” among the pros because I know that part of the community would see it as a pro, if you see it as a con then you’re free to do it.

Still, the discussion is about the proposed feature.

I included “preventing reselling” among the pros because I know that part of the community would see it as a pro,

But that “pro” would be a Terms of Service violation. And unethical. Somebody honestly pays you what you’re charging, and then you go behind their back and try to ruin their business.

Speaking of Terms of Service violations, sellers are not allowed to message buyers unless buyers have messaged them first. If sellers do message buyers without buyers contacting them first, it’s spam, and they can be banned from Fiverr.

[cyaxrex]

To be honest, the entire argument here seems to rest on two points:

• It’s hard to get work from buyer requests.
• Some people resell other sellers gigs.

The simple facts are as follows:

Bidding on buyers requests is as efficient a use of your time as learning to levitate. Rumor has it, it is possible. However, it is probably never going to happen. If you are hoping to get work this way, you also need to ask yourself why.

The vast majority of people who sell on Fiverr rarely if ever look at buyers requests. Doing so is like perusing a flea market where the literal thing you are only going to come away with is fleas. There are for-purpose bidding sites that are easier to use and aren’t populated by predominantly low-ball buyers.

It is by far more productive to focus on fine-tuning your gigs.

As for resellers, Fiverr does not prohibit reselling. Whoever orders from you gets exclusive use rights to whatever you deliver. If you are not happy with people reselling your work, you an say so in your gig and/or add a gig extra that people are require to purchase if they do want to resell your work.

All this direct messaging talk is like trying to swat a fly with a shovel. There is no need for it and someone could get hurt.

[samus_x]

To be honest, the entire argument here seems to rest on two points:

• It’s hard to get work from buyer requests.
• Some people resell other sellers gigs.

The simple facts are as follows:

Bidding on buyers requests is as efficient a use of your time as learning to levitate. Rumor has it, it is possible. However, it is probably never going to happen. If you are hoping to get work this way, you also need to ask yourself why.

The vast majority of people who sell on Fiverr rarely if ever look at buyers requests. Doing so is like perusing a flea market where the literal thing you are only going to come away with is fleas. There are for-purpose bidding sites that are easier to use and aren’t populated by predominantly low-ball buyers.

It is by far more productive to focus on fine-tuning your gigs.

As for resellers, Fiverr does not prohibit reselling. Whoever orders from you gets exclusive use rights to whatever you deliver. If you are not happy with people reselling your work, you an say so in your gig and/or add a gig extra that people are require to purchase if they do want to resell your work.

All this direct messaging talk is like trying to swat a fly with a shovel. There is no need for it and someone could get hurt.

The flea market was a great one, I’m new to Fiverr (have already satisfied all requirements to get to level 1 but still need to hit the 60 days old mark to get there) and didn’t know that buyers request section is such a hellish place.

.

Regarding the reseller issue, I’ve read many times on this forum that the “buy this extra if you want to resell” is just a honey trap since it would mean absolutely nothing and people would be able to basically resell even if don’t buy that extra. If fiverr says that what you sell is property of the buyer (and therefore he/she can do whatever he/she wants with it) I don’t think the “extra” workaround could be effective/legit.

.

Besides all the “I’m a reseller so if your idea threatens my earning that sucks and you suck too” and “fiverr says I can do it so deal with it, being a reseller is so cool” arguments, I understand that maybe this kind of feature could turn out to be a mass destruction weapon rather than an improvement in user communication but it’s really just a pity not being able to develop new ideas and features only because of the ones that are likely going to exploit them or use them improperly.

[eoinfinnegan]

The flea market was a great one, I’m new to Fiverr (have already satisfied all requirements to get to level 1 but still need to hit the 60 days old mark to get there) and didn’t know that buyers request section is such a hellish place.

.

Regarding the reseller issue, I’ve read many times on this forum that the “buy this extra if you want to resell” is just a honey trap since it would mean absolutely nothing and people would be able to basically resell even if don’t buy that extra. If fiverr says that what you sell is property of the buyer (and therefore he/she can do whatever he/she wants with it) I don’t think the “extra” workaround could be effective/legit.

.

Besides all the “I’m a reseller so if your idea threatens my earning that sucks and you suck too” and “fiverr says I can do it so deal with it, being a reseller is so cool” arguments, I understand that maybe this kind of feature could turn out to be a mass destruction weapon rather than an improvement in user communication but it’s really just a pity not being able to develop new ideas and features only because of the ones that are likely going to exploit them or use them improperly.

Besides all the “I’m a reseller so if your idea threatens my earning that sucks and you suck too” and “fiverr says I can do it so deal with it, being a reseller is so cool” arguments

I suggest you reread what I said because you clearly have an issue with someone giving rational reasoned arguments. I never suggested it would cost me money, I said I wouldn’t buy on Fiverr anymore, which costs Fiverr money.

The reason I believe the idea isn’t good is not because of the millions of dollars I earn but because of its main premise which is to enable sellers to send spam to the clients of other people. It’s a huge breach of good faith and ethical behavior and simply unnecessary for the few who actually have a problem with it. Those with a problem with people reselling their work can say they don’t allow it in their gig description.

At no point did I insult you or suggest you sucked.