From the Top to the Bottom, and to the Top Again! [$3K to $500, then to $3K Again]

[flatio]

Hello fellow Fiverrs!

It has been a long time since I last had the time to write on Fiverr forum and I want to share with you the story of how I hit the bottom on Fiverr and climbed my way back up in the last 6 months.

I have been a seller on Fiverr for more than 2 years now and I can say that Fiverr has changed my life and it is a big part of it now. I’m lucky enough to be one of those very few who does what she loves all thanks to Fiverr and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. I have always been good with computers and loved to design graphics, and now I do motion graphic design jobs on Fiverr.

I signed up on Fiverr on April 2015 and it was towards the end of the year that I started to make good money. It was, of course, not a sudden success and was the result of an on-going hard work, but the momentum started to increase really fast in the last months of 2015. Four days to New Year’s Day my not-so-greatly-selling gigs suddenly started to perform much better, my sales started to increase, and after that day I started to have a steady $100-$150 per day. I was now earning $3000+ per month (3 times more than my very-demanding day job) which is very very good money where I live. I saved some of it, built a better PC which makes my work much faster, and even bought my first car. I was living the dream.

Until…

It was a regular day for me (Around June-July 2016). Orders flowing, me working on PC happily. Then my sales suddenly stopped. I didn’t care much, thought it was just a temporary thing. I also thought I could use couple of days off work. But after 3 days I started to worry. It was simply strange. Then, when I checked where my gig was supposed to be, it was GONE. I still didn’t worry much, as I thought it was a website glitch or something and Customer Support could simply fix it and make my gig appear where it was a couple of days ago. I was wrong.

I immediately contacted Customer Support and let them know about the situation. Their reponse, however, was the most standard response anyone could ever receive:

“To clarify, a Gig’s position in search is based on seller performance over a set time period (among other factors), it’s not a static position that’s sorted by descending order. There are many factors to take in to consideration when it comes to your seller performance, such as order cancellations, delivery rate, responsiveness, etc.
If there’s a change at the top of the rankings, please be aware that it’s not permanent. There can be many other Gigs currently performing at a higher rate than yours, and that’s the reality of any marketplace. If other sellers are ranked higher than you by performing better than you (delivering early, getting 5 stars, communicating quickly) then it’s simply how the marketplace works.”

Nothing had changed in my performance when my gig disappeared; I was getting only 5 stars, very low cancellation rate, always replied to customer messages within minutes. It was not also possible that hundreds of buyers suddenly outperformed me overnight, as I was able to finally find my gig on 8th page in the category (according to customer review)! I explained that to Customer Support, but their responses were all along the same lines. So I gave up.

Just when I was expecting to be promoted as a Top Rated Seller, my Fiverr business was shot dead overnight. From $3000 down to $500-$600 a month, my dream was over, and it was a total nightmare for me now. I was no longer as enthusiastic about working on Fiverr as before, and decided to focus on my day job rather than my Fiverr career. I never quit working on Fiverr, though. Only it was not as much fun anymore…

Then I decided to create some new stuff and give them a shot, and maybe earn a bit more. As for my once best-selling but then-dead gig, it was still lost in the category and rarely appeared in search results. I decided to create a new video for that gig too when I was at it. Then I realised that editing and adding a new video to my dead gig somehow revived it. It started to get sales. Not as many as before, but it WAS getting one or two sales in a couple of days. Better than nothing. Then my sales started to increase, and my gig was moving up, and it was moving up FAST. In a couple of months it climbed up from 8th page to 2nd. It was getting more views now, and more sales. It did not take long until it moved up to 1st page, too. My gig was ALIVE again! Moreover, one of the new animations I created in that desperate time was also a hit and it moved up to the 1st page quickly.

Now I am getting almost as many sales as I did in my golden times, and my Fiverr business is literally back from the dead. Checking my Analytics page, I see that I earned $2738 in the last 30 days which is very close to my best times. It is also getting better and better everyday, I am getting MORE sales every week than the one before, and I’m 100% positive that it will get only better. I will do my best to make sure of that.

Working on Fiverr for more than 2 years and seeing its ups and downs has thought me that everything is possible on Fiverr and success favors those who never lose hope and give up. I will keep up what I have been doing on Fiverr for the past 2 years; give my 100%, stay the course and will eventually be the a Top Rated Seller. That is my sole purpose now.

You may have bad times on Fiverr, or even hit the bottom like I did; but as long as you keep up the good work success will always find you.

[Guest offlinehelpers]

@flatio Thank you so much! It just goes to show that if you’re willing to flexible, as you’ve been, we can all do well on Fiverr, regardless of search positions etc.

You deserve more than one heart for your post, so here you go:
❤️

[miiila]

That’s really an interesting story, thank you for taking the time to write it, and good luck that it stays like this.
Considering another recent post it makes me wonder, though. Was it ‘just’ your new gig that got you to the top again? Did your old gig recover?

edit: ah sorry I see you wrote you added a video/edited it and it went back up again.

Well, then, hope you’ll reach your TRS goal soon. 🙂

[flatio]

That’s really an interesting story, thank you for taking the time to write it, and good luck that it stays like this.

Considering another recent post it makes me wonder, though. Was it ‘just’ your new gig that got you to the top again? Did your old gig recover?

edit: ah sorry I see you wrote you added a video/edited it and it went back up again.

Well, then, hope you’ll reach your TRS goal soon. 🙂

@miiila Yes, my old gig revived and it is higher up in the category than my new gig.

Thank you! 🙂

[oloyedejamiu]

@flatio i’m happy for you.

Congrats.

[mayankdhuria]

I am sooo happy for you. Nobody should ever face a tragedy like that. 😢
But the way you got back up is just… I’m speechless. I can’t thank you enough for sharing this story and I am going work really hard from now on. 🙂
You really made my day today!!

[misscrystal]

That’s a great story. I would love to hear some details of what you did to edit the old gig that made it move up and start getting sales again.

[flatio]

That’s a great story. I would love to hear some details of what you did to edit the old gig that made it move up and start getting sales again.

@misscrystal Actually all I did was adding a new gig video and somehow my gig started to get sales & move up. I also tweaked the gig description a bit.

[sparx_intros]

Very inspiring. It revived me too.

[grydlynnes]

I connect with your success, OP.

[Guest excelassist]

Very inspiring, its true that its difficult to maintain same performance on fiverr
But you have really inspired us

Thanks

[design_palace]

Thanks for your words. Your experience matches mine word-by-word and it inspires me to persist. Thanks a lot for writing it and sharing it on Forum.

[barryhamilto933]

Good story, fair play !