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How to deal with multi-thousand dollar gigs?


lerondpoint

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Up until now I did gigs that were in the “couple of hundred” dollars range. When it exceeded my max allowed price of 325$ I split it up (and that’s why I can’t get my level 1… I’m abusing the delivery button… yeah you read that right!)

Now I have a customer who has a much larger project, tens of thousands of dollars. Will I have to split it up in 300$ chunks and p!ss him off? Or can we come up with a solution that best suits everybody involved?

P.S. Is there no place on Fiverr for big gigs, I don’t do 5$ jobs?

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Believe me I know it’s not the right platform… the question is “Can I deal with it here and comply to the TOS or find an absurd way of taking it elsewhere without getting locked out?”

And the reason he spends that much on a seller with 13 reviews is because there are 15 years of experience behind that 1 month of Fiverr activity…

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If it’s that much you do not want to be accepting Paypal payments because he can do a chargeback. For that kind of money you need to get a cashier’s check from him before you do the work. I’m sure since you’ve been doing big jobs for 15 years you know that though.

Paypal chargebacks are not uncommon here. If you take it elsewhere you will be in violation of the TOS and could have your account banned. Ask customer support for more information on this. Maybe they can give you a solution.

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I completely agree with misscrystal. Buyers take advantage of new sellers all the time and it wouldn’t be surprising if a chargeback occurs. In the case that you are unclear how chargebacks work, it goes like this:

  1. An order (or multiple, in your case) is created.
  2. The buyer accepts the order and you get paid.
  3. The buyer goes to Paypal and calls the charges or work fraudulent, claiming they never were delivered anything
  4. Your money is taken from your credit and given back to the buyer. You have no manner in which to defend you. Fiverr will not defend you.
  5. Fiverr bans the buyer.
  6. The buyer creates a new account and repeats steps 1-5.

You need a safer method of escrow to be working with. Fiverr is not safe enough to be working at that high a level. It sucks to get a chargeback on a $50 order, let a long a $5000 order. You’ll work for days and there’s a distinct chance you’ll never see any of the payment you earned.

Talk to Customer Support and see if they can offer you any protection. But know that anything that seems too good to be true (like a $1000+ order on a bargain site like Fiverr when you’re new) it probably is. Never accept such high-paying jobs from new buyers. You need to build trust and rapport before taking on big deals or you’ll get burned very quickkly.

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“Fiverr will not defend you.” That’s a very interesting fact… it kind of goes along the same line of what I experienced up until now with the CS (which basically told me to EF myself and that they would not help me…). So Cristal, that’s the answer I got when I asked how to handle these gigs: “GO EF YOURSELF, we are not providing solutions”!

Now the question as to why people come to Fiverr for such massive jobs is beyond me but what should one do? This is such a stupid situation, doesn’t Fiverr actually want it’s piece of the pie?

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Fiverr is not set up to handle jobs of that size. Its vulnerability to charge backs stops most sellers doing jobs of substantial value.

Personally, I am suspicious of high value orders. Fiverr is definitely known as a cheap, micro gig site, the very idea of committing 10k to an order where I cannot contact the seller directly, where I have no idea who the person is and where even asking for real contact details is against the rules is terrifying. Any buyer looking to spend that money has to be prepared to have their order cancelled and then be stuck with 10k in Fiverr credit - Fiverr don’t do refunds.
All of this is what makes me question the sincerity of a buyer willing to take these risks. You may be great at what you do but is there nobody else who can do it? Perhaps someone operating on a platform that is built for orders of that size? Why are they taking the above mentioned risks?

It’s great that you get orders this size but every time you take one, you are risking losing a lot. I split any order over $200. I tell the clients that it is better for them as they can check the work as I go along. Iv never had an issue with this when I have asked clients to do it.

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It’s what I did up to now, but this contract simply doesn’t fit the mold of Fiverr which is why I asked what people did with them. Now the guy sent me basically everything he built: business plan, design, specifications for the system, even a quote from gigster… for 75k$… which is basically what it would cost in the US.

I don’t doubt the guy is serious and I’ll be honest, I didn’t know that Fiverr was limited in it’s capacity to handle bigger jobs when I signed up so my guess is he simply didn’t know.

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applause Good for you and your chunk o’ change. You better hope that doesn’t get chargebacked either – chargebacks can occur months later! Even if you transfer your funds into your Paypal account, they can still be taken back!

Honestly, the idea that you’re doing work at this level on Fiverr sounds rather dubious. Either you’re posting falsely regarding your earnings in attempts to make yourself look better (which makes no sense, as it is sellers and not buyers who read a majority of the forum), or you’re actually working at such a high level and taking massive, unintelligent risks by trying to make a 75k order on Fiverr. Even at Level 2, your highest price is 10k, so you’d still have to do multiple gigs.

The sellers here are trying to prevent your naivety from biting your arse so hard you’ll be standing for weeks. TRS and Level 2 sellers who have been here for a while and KNOW the troubles that can occur with Fiverr are all correct. Be suspicious of huge orders – that’s not what Fiverr is for! Be suspicious of new buyers who want big orders – you don’t know if you’ll actually get paid.

Now maybe we’re all wrong and you spend the next month making a 75k order in tiny $325 chunks (you’ll get up to level 1 and have that jump to $1500 soon), and so you’ll see a lovely 60k this month. Great, good on you. Hope it works out and you have a fantastic time. But it sounds way too good to be true and like we’ll see you on the forums in a few weeks asking why Fiverr won’t defend you when you worked so hard and your buyer got allllll their money back.

Other places on the internet have a different escrow system and less issues with chargebacks. Maybe you should consider working there for such high orders u(not that you can suggest that to this buyer, as that’s against the TOS). The idea of Fiverr is that if you lose your money, it was so little that it barely matters and you can move on with your life.

You’ve stated you didn’t know Fiverr couldn’t handle big jobs – apparently you didn’t read the Terms of Service and that means you don’t really know what you’re doing here and all the intricacies and ways you can mess up. Perhaps your buyer didn’t do their research either and you’re a pair of nubile ignoramuses trying to make it work in good faith. But more than likely you’ve got a buyer who is just taking advantage of you.

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What amazes me is that Fiverr won’t protect it’s sellers. Without sellers, there wouldn’t be a Fiverr. What’s even more amazing is that people actually accept this… well then you could say these folks sell withchcraft so I guess you accept getting screwed when that’s what you sell.

Now you can bash me all you want for asking but apart from actually making you feel superior, you are not helping. It’s not that I don’t believe you, you have clarified why I might just leave this place, I guess I’m just so dumbfounded by this situation.

As for Paypal chargebacks, it seems to me that actually having a decent post-service conversation with the customer can help settle these. After all, if he accepts the job then admits to liking it, what is there to dispute? Maybe I’m just idealistic and your experience will help me…

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Is there a reason to be mean? Jealousy perhaps?

You can go a long way by checking out your customers first. Now I have this fellow canadian who has a registered business, an existing web app I can validate and wants an iPad version to top off his offer. I also have access to his servers to develop… I doubt any sort of scammer would go through that hassle. For the time being, I will doubt it.

Pardon my ignorance your holyness…

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What’s even more amazing is that people actually accept this… well then you could say these folks sell withchcraft so I guess you accept getting screwed when that’s what you sell.

apart from actually making you feel superior, you are not helping.

I regret even bothering to respond to this entire post. I was trying to help.

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MissCrystal is by far the most helpful person on this forum so trying to insult her is likely to make other people think you are a bit of a douche.
She was absolutely right to question the likelihood of a buyer trusting a new seller which such a large order, it wasn’t condescending. I questioned the same.

The vast majority of buyers here are decent and do not cause problems, that’s why people accept it. But it is rational for people to question large amounts of money being offered on a micro gig site - especially to a new seller.

You have been given good advice here by myself and others but if you want to take a chance on a big order then go for it. I will be waiting with baited breath for your wailing etc on a post in the Ranting Pot when it goes wrong.

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“As for Paypal chargebacks, it seems to me that actually having a decent post-service conversation with the customer can help settle these. After all, if he accepts the job then admits to liking it, what is there to dispute? Maybe I’m just idealistic and your experience will help me…”

If you’ll please reference my listing of exactly how chargebacks occur, above, you’ll note that I said that the buyer will accept your work. If you search the forums, you’ll find that buyers will appreciate, compliment, praise work and then do a chargeback to get it for free.

Fiverr doesn’t give you a chance to defend yourself against Paypal. No post-delivery conversation is going to protect you when the buyer circumvents Fiverr. Having a buyer ask for a refund is different than a chargeback. Refunds are with Fiverr and yes, a screenshot of a buyer saying he likes your work sent to Customer Support will prevent your buyer from demanding a refund and FIVERR giving it to him.

However! In a chargeback, Fiverr is not involved. Fiverr will not defend you to Paypal and you never get to contact Paypal about it yourself. Maybe in your case, you have a better chance if you know who your buyer is, but for most of the work that goes on here, it’s all anonymous. I don’t know who buyer123 is in real life and they don’t know me; I can’t go after a username with a lawsuit. I can’t contact Paypal and say “Hey! I sent buyer123 that file and here’s a screenshot of them saying they loved it! It happened, give me back my money.” Fiverr can only help you on the platform. When a buyer does a chargeback, it’s off of Fiverr and that’s why Fiverr can’t (or won’t) defend you and why you can’t defend yourself.

We sellers came to help you by sharing experience and knowledge. If you think that you’re above it and it won’t happen to you because of your 15 years of experience and talent and whole month of experience, go and do as you please. You don’t have to take our advice. You don’t have to sell on Fiverr with your big, expensive orders which you have to chop into $325 chunks. And you certainly don’t need to insult people who simply told you that you could get burned.

Perhaps this post was more illuminating to you. If not, I hope someone else reading the forum learns something.

–“Your Holyness”

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This is ridiculous. Read on if you want real help, though, or skip to the bottom and read the steps there. One reason Fiverr isn’t crafted for jobs in the tens of thousands of dollars is that people who can sell those at level 0 would be creating their own websites and selling there. The reason the average highly skilled level 0 seller starts on Fiverr is because they can’t afford the hosting, advertising, etc. to get a personal site off the ground. If you’ve sold as claimed, you could take the money you earned so far, invest it into your own site, and run a successful business without giving a third party like Fiverr a 20% commission.

I’m not saying no one sells high here. There are level 2 and TRS who sell large orders, typically to buyers who they have come to know after some smaller sales. It may be worth it to them over a personal site because once they have Fiverr success, they may not want to have to rebuild it elsewhere.

So, that said, if you really want honest help, the answer to your question is very simple. There is definitely a solution. If you really do have buyers already lined up and willing to pay that kind of money, you can set yourself up to do this on Fiverr in 2-6 months.

Step 1: Convince one or two of those buyers to help you out <i>without violating ToS</i> by purchasing 10 gigs separately at whatever price you agree on, and you deliver real work to them. It doesn’t matter if that work is broken up into pieces or if you sell 10 separate deliveries, it’s not hard to do this. Do it totally on the up and up so you get level 1 as fast as possible.

Step 2: Convince a few buyers (with the amount of money you say you make, you could do this easily with 5 buyers) to do the same thing again, but each one buys 10 gigs at whatever price you agree it. Again, totally legit and you deliver real deliveries on time. Make sure you get and complete all of those orders within 2 months. This time you can also charge more since you’ll be level 1 so if you’ve got someone who wants to spend anywhere from $1500 to $15,000 you can split that up into the 10 orders for that buyer. Or, if you can’t do that fast enough, just get them to order $5 orders or whatever. At the end of the 2 months, you are at level 2.

Step 3: Now, your initial problem is solved. At level 2 you can do 10K custom orders. Even better, if you have buyers spending what you claim, you’ll be a Super Seller and/or TRS in no time, as long as you follow the rules.

The problem is, you aren’t following the rules so far or you’d already be level 1. I doubt you have buyers ready to spend tens of thousands either, honestly, but that’s just my personal guess.

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