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Forum Activity =/= More Sales


jamesbulls

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For all you sellers who are convinced that if you just keep spamming the forum with advertisements for your gig or dog-piling onto the popular thread of the day, you need to know that being active on the Fiverr forum doesn’t equal more and bigger sales. It’d be nice if Fiverr had some actual traffic analytics we could see versus the joke they’ve given us, but judging from my own experience I know that the biggest factor for recruiting new clients is the work that I do outside of Fiverr. If I go a few days without being busy in my social media marketing web, my sales start to diminish.

Also, the reality is that only a tiny fraction of all Fiverr users ever visit the forum, and the vast majority of those who do visit the forum are sellers talking to other sellers about sales. You get it? They’re not here to shop.

A quick Google search says that Fiverr averages about 1,000,000 transactions every month. Now certainly there are some people making multiple purchases on Fiverr, but if we take a really conservative estimate and say that these 1,000,000 monthly purchases were made by a total of 250,000 people – where are they? How many active voices do you see on this forum?

There’s the regular peanut gallery like myself and a few other clowns I won’t name, but what about the rest? Sure, there’s you, and there’re the other other people who might comment on this thread, but how many regular users do you really think are participating here? 100? 300? Would you call it 500? Let’s be really generous toward the forum and say that there are 1,000 active, daily users who are REALLY engaged in what’s happening. That means that .004% of all Fiverr users are reading the forum.

And how many of those 1,000 people do you think are reading every post and trolling the comment section to find new, exciting, and innovative sellers? If we’re really generous, then we can say that 25% of all forum users are seeing what you’re writing. That means that of the 1,000 imaginary people who are really excited, totally engaged, and absolutely enthusiastic about combing the forum to find the seller they love to meet, at best you can expect 250 of them to click through to your seller profile and learn more about you. And of those 250 people a month investigating your profile as a result of activity on the forum, how many of them do you think need and want what you’re offering? Let’s be really generous and say that 25% of those super-engaged people want and need what you’re offering, so that’s 62.5 people who should be contacting you every single month.

Are you getting 62.5 new client messages every month? I’m totally invested in the Fiverr forum and I’ve authored several posts that have been more-or-less permanently stickied at the top of major forum categories. I try to participate in nearly every worthwhile discussion that turns up. And let me tell you, I’m not getting 62.5 new client messages every month. Not even close.

But, that’s neither here nor there. Let’s keep going with our numbers game. Look at your best-selling gig. What’s your conversion ratio? I’ll be REALLY generous and say that your hypothetical best seller has a conversion ratio of 15%. This means that of the 62.5 new client messages you should be getting every month as a result of activity on the forum, you can expect 15% of them to convert into paying clients, or 9.4 orders of at least $5 for a total of $47 a month. Subtract Fiverr’s 20%, and you’ve got $37.20, then subtract another 15% for the amount you ought to be putting into savings to pay your self-employment tax at the end of the year and it’s $31.62.

In other words, if you’re TOTALLY engaged in the forum, and the other people present in the forum are TOTALLY excited and are ABSOLUTELY scouting every new thread and replies within the thread, then for all your effort you can only expect to net $31.62, or about $1.05 per day.

Going by the really generous numbers I’ve used in this thread, and as well-positioned and relatively known as I am in this forum, I am NOT getting anything near the numbers I’m describing with regards to new-client messages. If we get rid of the really generous estimates I’ve made in this thread, and use your actual conversion ratio which is probably between 5.5% and 9%, then the number of sales you get each month as a result of activity on the forum falls a whole lot closer to none. Is it possible to meet new clients and get sales as a result of forum activity? Yes it is. But if you’re expecting activity on the Fiverr forum to sky-rocket you into rock-star sales, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

So all of that is to say, believe me when I tell you that being active on the forum DOES NOT equate to more and bigger sales. If you want to hang out, compare notes with other sellers, make some friends, and have fun laughing at the wacky stories sellers share about their buyers, then you’re in the right place. But if you think that posting in this forum is your magical marketing solution, then you’re better off trolling the social media platforms of your choice because - as the numbers show - the Fiverr forum is full of people, but they’re mostly sellers who aren’t buying.

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The analytics I can see for the forum aren’t ideal so I can’t confirm how close @jamesbulls is. What I can see from the graphs is that the majority of people who have posted or comment on the forum the last 7 days, the vast majority are sellers. Now, some may also be buyers, but many probably are primarily sellers.

The other thing that I can tell from comparing what I see in new registrations to what I’ve actually read on the forum in 30 days, most of the people who appear to be primarily buyers are here for 1 to 3 reasons. A small percentage are here to ask questions about using Fiverr and they pretty much go straight to categories like FAQ or Tips for Buyers. A smaller percentage are on the forum to mention a service they want to buy because they haven’t like the responses they got to a buyer request. The larger percentage who are buyers-only are here to complain about something or someone they have come to dislike.

So, from a glance at some vague statistics available, the average new-level 2 seller would be very lucky to get 1 message per month asking about a gig from a random clickthrough on the forum. If all you post is copycat tips or “great post” comments, that reduces the likelihood of getting a buyer contact 1 ever 6 months. (Chances are a little higher if you post ads in My Fiverr Gigs or write really interesting posts.) I am on the forum a LOT and the admin tag sometime generates a contact from someone who thinks that means more than it does. Even so, I would guesstimate that I get 1 message related to my gigs every 3 months based on my forum activity.

Summary: The only type of marketing that is worse than making random posts on the forum is doing none at all. The forum is a GREAT place to talk with other sellers and learn from that, and it has high entertainment value in some categories.

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Thanks for the compliment 🙂 I don’t consider myself a writer by trade, but I have done a lot of writing. When the mood strikes me, I like to write flash fiction (1k words or less), but the bulk of my writing time is dominated by my work in progress, a guide to reading Tarot in line with the core tenets of Satanism. I’m rather hopeful that I can get the book published by Harper-Collins or Red Wheel / Weiser. I’ve self-published a few highly forgettable books of no consequence, but I pulled them from publication because they just weren’t as good as I thought they were. I’ve considered doing a writing gig on Fiverr, but I’m already having difficulty fitting my work into my daily schedule and am reluctant to add anything more to it.

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This is what I think as well. Reading your post, replies and even your responses on the order is a delight in itself. I read a lot of blogs and going by your style, you can be a very successful blogger. You have all the qualities to write an engaging content but on your blog, I do not see many articles. Now I know where all those articles are going. I wish you all the success for your upcoming book.

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