Fiverr Website Traffic Down, Revenues Down, Possible Problems Ahead?

[edume]

Well, it seems traffic to the Fiverr website is down by 11% to 12% in the past month along with monthly revenues dropping to 650k and ad revenue also down. Hmmm. It should be going up not down. This tells me to be aware of what is going on. Don’t make fiverr your full time job. Micro-job website concept has past. Fiverr may remain a small entity for future. But, honestly, there’s too much junk gigs, fraud, bad communication. That turns off buyers and they go elsewhere as there are lots of choices. Nobody knows what the future holds for this website.

[dayyanbajwa]

Fiverr may have seen less traffic in past few days but recent changes to inbox and other here and there is a step toward better communication facilities between parties. I think fiverr will bounce back soon. As for the fake gigs we should all work together to report them so that they do not affect our business.

While there are many bad eggs here at the same time there are genuine sellers who work hard to meet buyer requirements and I believe hard work is always rewarded in one way or another.

[edume]

Traffic has been going down consistently over the past few months. Improvements on the website mean nothing for traffic. Fiverr makes a lot of their revenue from fake services so I don’t believe they will do anything. Reporting to fiverr admin is useless. Anyhow, fiverr is not our main business and those on fiverr should also be careful for future.

[deanstokes]

@edume Do you have a source for these facts that you’re posting?



Fiverr should not be a sole source of leads for freelance work. Lots of your posts here seem to put the site down but you still seem to spend an awful lot of time here!



The traffic to my gigs has been going up consistently. If you’re receiving fewer orders it may just mean people aren’t looking for what you’re offering right now.

[omanbux]

yes 1000% agreed to u. this attachment image will explain the damage 😦

[livingfree14]

AHHH, this conversation and graph explains so much to me! I’ve seen a 50% drop in bigger orders, but an increase in requests for me to do $5 work. I have 20 something orders in queue now, only totally just under $200. Before, I was working at $50 or so per order. Hmmm, things to ponder and look into.

[mohinip]

Thanks for helpful information. So, can this be the reason in drop of individual gig views?

[ruffcut]

Alexa doesn’t provide accurate data, maybe there are just more people now not using the Alexa toolbar. My gig views are always going up, and they’ve just been running TV ads so I highly doubt that there is trouble ahead.

[freelancemm]

Based on their recent investments(TV commercials are NOT cheap.) and the money I am aware of they have to burn through from investors(read news about Fiverr online, you’ll probably find the info I am referring to.), I don’t believe they’re going anywhere any time soon even if traffic or anything else may or may not be down at the moment.



I think what puzzles me most about this is, how do you know what Fiverr is making? Tools online for measurement like that aren’t exactly the most accurate, especially with all the “behind the scenes” money/investments you may not be aware of.



I’m not too worried for the short-run, but in the long-run, perhaps. It’s too early to tell in my opinion at this point, though.



Another thing to note that almost every time in October it’s always REALLY slow for me, and then come November and December it gets pretty crazy busy! We’ll see what happens.

[m2webs]

Reply to @ruffcut: You are right that Alexa isn’t accurate. But your math is wrong. If there are less people using Alexa that means less people for all the sites, not only fiverr. So no matter if there are 100.000 or 200.000 people using alexa fiverrs alexa ranks should be the same.

[sfpkirk]

OK so I am down again I have two messages and I keep getting a error saying i cannot contact the buyer directly? So how I am suppose to read the messages?

[m2webs]

Less orders is not only about traffic to fiverr. It has a LOT of factors. For example, a lot of orders are made by fiverr sellers. If I have a lot of orders I will spend some money on other fiverr gigs. If not then I will not order anything. Right now fiverr is fighting against link spammers facebook likes and such. Those kind of sellers got banned, their ravenue is zero now so they do not buy things here anymore. If someone has 20 active and selling gigs he would probably buy some videos for them. But if he is banned he will not invest anything more in it.



Another problem are editors and customer support. I think fiverr should invest in that part. By overly promoting new sellers and moving down proven ones fiverr is getting bigger percentage of scummed buyers. When you search on fiverr for some service you just can’t know who is better for what you want. All the sellers have 5 star ratings and 100%. That means nothing. Their ranking system, categorization and moderation of gigs must be better.



Customer support must be much more friendly. I talked to them few times in past 4 years and many times got flat answers but something like robot answered to me. When I explain my problem I like when someone really reads it and understands it and then answer like human. I expect more after giving them $3.000 of fees.

[omanbux]

Reply to @ruffcut:

ok then why it showing last 3 month traffic is high ???

[mgjohn78]

To me it seems like traffic to fiverr is way up. Alexa did some changes that messed up rankings for allot of sites.

On the other hand fiverr doesn’t use alexa tracking code so only those of you who use alexa browser toolbar are tracked, should fiverr get an alexa account and add the code i believe alexa rank would boom right now. Anyway according to compete fiverrs traffic has increased with hurricane speeds, this makes sense and would explain the downtime and timeouts that occurred a while back. According to google fiverr traffic is also at an alltime high.



To sum things up based on my observations, stats and research my theory is that the reason behind allot of the issues mentioned in this thread are due to fiverr not being fully prepared for a traffic boom. Now changes and compromises are being made to battle the multiple issues that a traffic boom brings.

[jonbaas]

Reply to @edume:

And those are your opinions. That does not make them fact.



Fiverr is a fantastic place to do business – if you do business here the right way, and follow the rules. There are hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of genuine sellers selling genuine services. And many of them make a good living doing so. Just because you may have experienced troubles, deleted gigs, or less traffic does not mean that that is an valid assessment of the entire Fiverr community.



Just keep doing the good that you do. There are always ups and downs in any business. Be persistent and keep working hard. Your own struggles will become less so the longer you continue working toward your goals.

[jonbaas]

Reply to @deanstokes:

Excellent points!

[socialsuperr]

I’ve got nothing but positive experiences with the system. I’m getting steady gigs with extras. Maybe its because I have a gig that’s in demand right now, and as long as business is around. (voice-over)

[cleber_rodr1]

Hey edume you need to choose, one moment you say that fiverr is not closing on this thread: http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/42995/fiverr-is-not-closing-so-relax/p1 and now you say the opposite…



The fact is Fiverr is NOT closing and all people that complain is people that don’t promote their gigs.

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[deanstokes]

Everybody - you’re not going to get huge amounts of orders ALL of the time. Any business has peaks and troughs.



As for the graph from Alexa above, it’s really nothing to worry about. I think a business that just raised $30m from investors will be alright for a while!



I’ve never been so busy - it’s great! Am I expecting it to stay like this every month? No! I’ll try my best to keep it that way but you have to take the lows with the highs - unfortunately that is the nature of freelance work.



I’ve seen a few people mention on the forums recently that lots of buyers are also sellers. I’ve not found that to be the case. Of nearly 200 completed orders, maybe 5 have been from sellers on the site.



Also - this is probably the most human conversation/thread I’ve seen on these forums. Let’s have more like this please?

[steveeyes]

Anyone who has run a website knows how unreliable Alexa and other online traffic sites are. The only way to actually know your traffic numbers is your server logs which I’m sure Fiverr is not going to disclose. I was always stunned how off Alexa and other online traffic sites were on my site compared to my server logs. I ran it for 10 years before selling it.

[artpoliticslife]

@deanstrokes completely agree about the human conversation sentiment!



If anyone is going to freelance full time, they should spread their business out on multiple platforms online and offline (and the most stable platforms are self-hosted not third party dependent). I think that’s just common sense! For me, I use whatever income I make from fiverr for fun non-essential thinks, or reinvest it in learning new graphics skills/programs.



I think it’s probably to early to tell if fiverr is growing or declining. I’ve watched so many wonderful start-ups go under or get bought out, I hope it doesn’t happen here. Also my inner economist major is curious whether growing or declining trends apply specifically to a platform (in this case fiverr) or to the freelance industry as a whole. It’s really hard to get clear economic data on the freelance industry due to it’s increasing diversity. Many people adopted freelance and consultancy or combined them with a traditional job during the 2008 recession recovery bounce back. Now (at least in the States) the economy is hitting high marks again, but that won’t last forever. The next time the us economy takes a hit I wonder if traditional or nontraditional jobs will be impacted more or equally.



Anyways, I think those who have mentioned focusing on proven buyers and cutting out the scam ones are right on point. Fiverr might be making revenue on the scam ones, but if they continue to make it easy for them it will be fiverrs downfall.



Also honestly editors should focus on clearing out gigs with poor English, instead of optimizing words in gigs. Clearly if you can’t take the time to write out a clear gig description in good English you’re not intending to stick with fiverr for the long haul (and give them the big $$$) or you’re trying to set a scam. I would also add that the layout/rules/and general ui of fiverr are really confusing from the perspective of a new user that has stumbled upon fiverr from a google search. The site starts out marketing everything as just a simple five dollars, but then there are gig extras, and custom price quotes. What should you do first click the order button or message the seller? What about requesting a gig (a feature that is still pretty hard to find especially for a new user mind you)? I still think most buyers don’t know that they can message a seller and ask for a specific variation of an item they are looking for and the seller can respond back with a price quote and timeline. The site isn’t layed-out very intuitively and it’s impossible to find one place to clearly explain everything. Anyway that’s just my two cents. End rant.

[edume]

Reply to @cleber_rodr1: I never stated fiverr is closing, Someone else in another thread did and I still don’t believe fiverr will close but they will have problems due to the lack of revenue.



I’m just trying to make you people aware. Fiverr is not our main business so we really don’t care but there’s a lot of people who make fiverr your primary income.



We help small business here as a way of giving back to the community. We are not young pups anymore but we are conveying information so you are aware of the situation. Good luck.

[edume]

Reply to @jonbaas: Fiverr is not our main business so we don’t care. We are only trying to convey information. We are only here to help small business otherwise our value and talent is worth much more than $5.

[edume]

Reply to @mohinip: Yes, there’s been a 12% decrease in traffic and fiverr is manipulating the searching ability of everyone’s gigs. In our case, they turned off the search of one of our gigs. Nobody can find it when you search. That doesn’t matter because is not our main business.

[edume]

Reply to @deanstokes: We are on the forum 10 minutes. We don’t have time to hang around but you have been reading our posts so you obviously have the time.



Look, we’re here to help you people. We are not some young punks. We’ve been in business 26 years and proud of it. On fiverr, we help small business people as a way of giving back.



We don’t care much about fiverr now as it’s polluted with fraud and misrepresentation. We only want to let you whats going on so you are aware of the situation. The problems on fiverr started back in May 2013 when they changed from v1 to v2. Nothing has been corrected since and fiverr is laughing all the way to the bank. That’s all I can say here. Keep your eyes and ears open so you don’t get ripped off.