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Always Put Time Limits on Custom Gigs: Here's Why!


creat1vepattern

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Dear Sellers,

Although this hasn’t happened to me yet, I feel this is a valuable enough topic to write about in the forum (and so I hope you get something out of it)!

In the past, I would send out custom gigs with no time expiration…

My thought process was that when the buyer gets around to it, they’ll hopefully accept : )

Only after going into ‘out of office’ mode did the thought of outlying, unaccepted gigs begin to bother me.

“What if they suddenly accept an old custom gig that I don’t see it while on vacation?”

“Would the gig timer run out, leaving me with a lessened completion rate?”

I began to think that maybe custom gigs couldn’t be accepted while I was ‘out of office…’ then I thought back to a time when I had ‘out of office’ mode on and sent someone a custom gig (for a small project) that was able to be accepted.

And so the bottom line is that outlying, unaccepted custom gigs that you send out in the message center can be accepted at any time (even while you’re out of office).

My new policy moving forward is to always set an expiration - whether it’s up until my next vacation or for just a few days. In doing so, I can prevent unexpected accepted gigs from coming in at inopportune times.

Although some of this might seem like common sense, I certainly didn’t realize the value of setting a custom gig expiration until I thought this through.

I hope this helps! 😊

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If I may may make a suggestion, the topic title would be better as “Put time limits on your custom offers: here’s one reason why” so as to be more accurate to the Tip you want to give.

Another good reason is practice in setting up boundaries. Offering unlimited time to accept is like unlimited revisions: a bad idea.

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If I may may make a suggestion, the topic title would be better as “Put time limits on your custom offers: here’s one reason why” so as to be more accurate to the Tip you want to give.

Another good reason is practice in setting up boundaries. Offering unlimited time to accept is like unlimited revisions: a bad idea.

Great suggestion (I took it 😊) Completely agree with the boundaries portion as well!

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An interesting and useful topic. These are becoming rare around here!

Yes, I agree with you. I always set custom offers to expire after 48 hours - sometimes 24 hours.

My reasoning is that I offer a 72 hour turnaround on my standard gigs. Therefore in order to keep some control over order numbers (and not become overwhelmed with work), I always make sure that custom offers will expire before a standard gig deadline can approach.

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An interesting and useful topic. These are becoming rare around here!

Yes, I agree with you. I always set custom offers to expire after 48 hours - sometimes 24 hours.

My reasoning is that I offer a 72 hour turnaround on my standard gigs. Therefore in order to keep some control over order numbers (and not become overwhelmed with work), I always make sure that custom offers will expire before a standard gig deadline can approach.

I didn’t even think of that! A few outstanding orders that are all placed at once could quickly become difficult to manage if they were all placed at once.

Great point, thank you for the addition! 😀

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I didn’t even think of that! A few outstanding orders that are all placed at once could quickly become difficult to manage if they were all placed at once.

Great point, thank you for the addition! 😀

Yes, that’s exactly the point I’m making. As a successful seller on Fiver, you need to retain control of the number of orders being placed.

Sods law (I think it’s an exclusively British phrase!) means that the exact moment a custom offer is about to expire, two other buyers will purchase a gig - meaning you’ve then got three orders to process, when you can only cope with two!

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Yes, that’s exactly the point I’m making. As a successful seller on Fiver, you need to retain control of the number of orders being placed.

Sods law (I think it’s an exclusively British phrase!) means that the exact moment a custom offer is about to expire, two other buyers will purchase a gig - meaning you’ve then got three orders to process, when you can only cope with two!

I completely agree - and I actually just looked up Sod’s Law! I never knew there was another term for this, as Murphy’s Law is the version I’m accustom to (if something can go wrong, it will). You learn something new every day.

Great addition! 😊

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Fiverr Community!

I wanted to share a tip that I found useful (and actually tried out just before writing this post).

First, some context…

Custom gigs that are sent without expiration time limits can hypothetically be accepted at any time.

With this in mind, there’s a chance that you could find yourself with an unexpected active gig while on vacation or after having significantly increased your prices.

To avoid this, I have a 3-step solution!

Step 1: Click onto your inbox from the dashboard

685295516_ScreenShot2020-12-01at8_07_03PM.png.74d29668360b8bef2a7eed69a7dc9d00.png

Step 2: Select the “all conversations” dropdown

1238180329_ScreenShot2020-12-01at8_07_28PM.png.11aee3e781215ec4ff6115e992ea5c6e.png

Step 3: Select "custom offers"

1283573209_ScreenShot2020-12-01at8_08_20PM.png.41d5c93160b9f74b5155ff19862e321c.png
Screen Shot 2020-12-01 at 8.08.20 PM332×608 15.8 KB

Now, you have effectively filtered out any conversation that doesn’t at some point contain a custom offer. Here, you can quickly go through and withdraw old custom gigs that were never accepted. In doing so, you can avoid unexpected gigs filling your queue or receiving an order while you are out of office.

I hope this helps! 😊

(p.s. I now usually set a 2-day expiration time limit for any gigs that I send out)

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