Fiverr Community Forum

I wish Fiverr could be a safe place to work with

Your Fiverr Experience The Ranting Pot
#1

I’m over 4 years at fiverr, and it’s being 1 and a half year fiverr have been “testing” their ranking algorithm.

I can say I got fiverr golden years, when you were “rewarded” with a better placement accordingly with your performance and hard work.

Nowadays what I see is a marketplace focused on PROs, and new buyers who complain every single day at forum that they are not getting orders.

What I see today that I believe fiverr is doing wrong:

  1. Manipulating the algorithm in a way to make buyers to order the most expensive gigs. It can be explained by new/amateur gigs with no more than 10 reviews being consider the top best sellers, just because they have higher priced gigs.
  2. Focusing on PROs, which cost many hundreds, but in a site called FIVERR.
  3. creating many features to promote new buyers but none for veterans.
    You may say “but new sellers deserve a chance”. Of course they deserve, but it’s temporary. One day, these new sellers will become veterans too, and they will be forgotten, again. So what’s more important? A quick short term help, or a slow but long help over the years?
  4. Saying that ranking is based on performance, but many low performance gigs are on top of searched/categories.
  5. Fixed gigs on top, no matter their performance. For example with me, I’m having more and better reviews than 99,99% of gigs on my category, but my gig was (a few days ago) the last gig on the last page. So how the placement can be based on performance?
  6. PUNISHING instead REWARDING. There is no meritocracy. You get punished for not achieving certain goal (for example leveling system), instead getting rewarded for achieving this.
    The you may say: “but you get rewarded when you go to ha higher level”. And then what? You get level 2 and wait for a miracle to get a TRS, but you will get stuck there. If you don’t keep achieving all months the same goal you will get punished to a lower level.
  7. Fiverr doesn’t seem to get worried with sellers exchanging reviews, sellers with multiple gigs to deliver the exact same service, sellers with multiple accounts. I reported multiple times sellers like this, but they keep selling normally.
    It’s not allowed to have multiple gigs to deliver the same exact service, but they don’t seem worried to fix these, even when reported.
  8. New sellers topping search and categories ranking on “NEWEST ARRIVALS”, RECOMMENDED/RELEVANCE" and " BEST SELLING". I could accept the first 2, but best selling ever, anyway, how could a new gig could be consider a best seller without many sales?

Many wont like or agree with this, and I respect this, but like other similar discussion on the past, there will always have someone to say “new sellers deserve a chance”, but I’m 100% sure they never thought soon they will become a veteran and will on the other side of this situation.

I’m really disappointed to see these and many other situations where fiverr still seems to be an amateur marketplace.

If fiverr want to do more profits, maybe they should reward sellers with better performance, including the final price sold (maybe by the average selling price, not by initial gig priced offered. It’s so amateur and unprofessional, by “forcing” sellers to buy the most expensive gigs placed on top).

All these points explained above makes sellers to lose their safety feeling about fiverr. It is good to be on top, getting better exposures and better chances to sell, but tomorrow you can be drafted from there, like I was.

I know fiverr can do whatever they want, but I wish we could only depend on ourselves, like it was in 1 and a half year ago.

I still hope fiverr can open their eyes.

I’m still a doer, but a disappointed doer.

9 Likes
#2

You can depend on yourself but it starts by considering Fiverr search as only a small part of your marketing plan. There are too many sellers at all levels to put ever good one near the top. Make your own goals, diversify (make money in other ways) and set out to do better.

2 Likes
#3

Fiverr slogan “We support Doers”. Really?

#4

Well, theoretically it’s simple like this, But many self promotion we do, it also leads to fiverr site for free, so in other words we are doing marketing for fiverr for free.

ALSO, with a research I did with my customers, only 10% came to me from my advertising, all 90% was about the inside fiverr traffic. So I’m really not worried about advertising or not. This post was all about how fiverr value their sellers, giving more in site advertising for new and expensive sellers, instead their good sellers. For me it will keep being amateurish and unprofessional.

But like I said, fiverr can do whatever they want.

Maybe I should redo this phrase: “I wish fiverr marketplace could depend only on our performance, and not on fiverr manipulation”.

Fiverr still looks like they are selling products (limited stock), not services.

EDIT: I’m only talking about this small part, which for me is big, because I’m just considering FIVERR, not self promotion and advertising, which is the same as my work I outside fiverr.

#6

I do understand what you are saying. It’s just an argument that has problems. For example, you said they use advertising space for new and expensive sellers instead of good ones, but there are many “good” and even “excellent” sellers who are new or expensive. Secondly, there is only so much room at the top. Even if they prioritized good sellers who were cheap and not new, there would be too many to put anywhere near the top.

Of course, they aren’t going to eliminate new sellers and expensive sellers because that wouldn’t really make sense, so there will always be a mixture. Ranting is fine and I’ll leave you to it after this. It just isn’t likely to be effective. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#7

Yes it’s true but we need to remember one thing that there a thousands of sellers and it’s increasing day by day and I think it will not be possible for Fiverr make all of them happy.

I think they are not willing to get place micro worker any more. Their business strategy is going for higher authorized seller or company. I also think there will come some other marketplace who grab that micro freelancing business and it will definitely impact Fiverr revenue.

2 Likes
#8

exactly. I wish I could apply for a PRO too, but it’s not for every category.

But like I said in the past, it wont work to rebrand a FIVERR ($5) name to direct it to PROs (hundreds $$$). It wont work for PROs and it also will prejudice it’s own not pros section.

Exactly, that’s why it’s a amateurish strategy when you use a $5 name to sell $100. It’s the same that names a clothing shop of “$10” but sell only for $100, you may have traffic but wont have sales. Does it worth?

2 Likes
#9

I agree especially with the point 6, I feel punished by a BOT now!

#10

By the way @fonthaunt, I need to ask you what’s the meaning of self promotion, directing your service to fiverr and lose 20%?

I can see only 1 thing: To have orders/reviews, and with this, create a reputation inside fiverr, so you can enjoy, later, the organic traffic of buyers who come to fiverr and chose you
But it’s not happening now, because you can have the best performance and you can still be placed on the last placement, having the last impressions and chances to sell.

I don’t see any other meaning of losing 20% of your revenues, by bringing buyers to fiverr (which could also chose your competitor), instead dealing directly with the buyer. For fiverr it’s excellent (free advertising and promotion), but for sellers there is no other meaning.

#11

Well, I don’t look at self-promotion the way some people do. I believed that the smartest way to utilize Fiverr is to make your Fiverr profile one of the landing pages that you utilize to sell your personalized service. For example, I have a Fiverr profile, profiles on some other sites and a personal site. I don’t spam social media, I’ve tried that and it fails other than doing what you suggested by bringing curious people to all of Fiverr.

Instead, I am actively involved in several forums and Q&A sites (i.e Quora) that allow me to engage actively with people who are selling products, books or blogging in my niche. I didn’t promote my own services until I had a relationship with those forums and sites. Once I did, I started to link back to all of my landing pages including my Fiverr profile. People who find my answers interesting are more likely to come directly to me, not to my competitors.

To answer your question about losing 20% - all of my landing pages cost me something in one way or the other. My personal site has domain and hosting fees. The other freelancing sites have fees or bid credits or something. Even when I had a free website I had to use PPC advertising to get traffic to it. When I write media for Amazon my royalties are never as high as 80%, so when Fiverr gives me 80% it looks fine. Some of my clients prefer to buy from me on Fiverr because they feel protected by Customer Support, although the people who found me somewhere besides search are less likely to dispute.

Nothing is really free. You’ve heard the old saying “It takes money to make money” and even if that is a small amount, it’s true. Self-promotion has to be highly targeted, though, just shotgunning social media is generally a fail. Also, just to get this in, about 70% of my Fiverr sales still do come from Fiverr search - but not because I am at the top of search. If you go to my category I’m really not high in search. My title keywords are gold for me, though. When people come to Fiverr looking for something in my niche, they are likely to search by one of my keywords. I have a question in my requirements to find out how people found me and the majority say they searched by one of my title keywords.

Sorry, that’s long, but since you asked directly I wanted to answer you for real and not just give you a fluff answer.

#12

exactly, you understand my point.

If we are using these sites is only because we want to take some benefits on these. “Giving” these 20% is extremely fair in my opinion, with all the tools fiverr offer to us, but it doesn’t makes fiverr invincible.
I mentioned this point, because who bring buyers to fiverr, is losing 20% of it’s revenue, while doing fiverr marketing for free.

When I said I would like to depend on ourselves only, it was directly to the “fairness” of fiverr marketplace. I repeat, they do whatever they want, but it’s doesn’t mean it’s good.

We sellers, who already built a reputation, we for sure want to enjoy the efforts we did , but now it seems these rewards are being given to other sellers. That’s why I support meritocracy (better your do, better you are rewarded, not others).

#13

But there are still many $5 gigs here. All of the gigs of some sellers are $5. I suspect that some sellers have never and probably will never raise the prices of their gigs. The Fiverr name meaning does disappoint buyers who come here to pay only $5 per gig, and can’t find what they want for $5. But we still have lots of them.

:laughing::laughing::laughing:

#14

Best course of action, if not done already, is branch off a bit and have fiverr as a side gig in addition to working on something else. They aren’t going to change how they’re doing things unless it guarantees something positive for the company overall. It’s not what many want to hear but they do need to do something in regards of chargebacks.

There are some companies that have safeguards in place to keep these kinds of transactions from going through instantly which include an investigation into the request.

#15

I was at Level 2 for a long time. Now I’m at Level 1 because of a buyer that I couldn’t work with because he was an a…e. Pretty sure I’ll get back to Basic Level now because I didn’t get enough orders to up my completion rate.

But getting back to Level 2, I was a long time, and had high prices, no orders, just buyers who would ghost out when I would send them the offer. Ok, I would lower my prices, zero orders. I would tweak my gigs, my descriptions… ''cricket noise"

To be honest sometimes I would get more orders when I was at Level 1 so personally the level doesn’t bother me.

What bothers me is the huge promotion of new comers and the fact that older sellers get left behind. The fact that they push these ,rising talents" so bad while the vets have to do marketing, promoting, searching here and there just in hope that new clients will arrive.

Well first of all, that is free promotion for Fiverr, that’s why they insist on promoting your services on other platforms. I know my social media connections, none of them would buy my services because they’re not into music and it’s too expensive for them anyway.

Second, they should say ,Hey, we will promote you big time when you start but when others come, you’ll get thrown into oblivion" but that would be too fair, wouldn’t be?

The major problem with this platform is the inconsistency of work. If I would have 10 gigs per day, every day, heck I would work for 20-30 bucks per gig. But I haven’t had an order for like 2 months, just a returning buyer orders from me.

Change will happen when a ,rising talent competition" will come and sellers will have consistent work over there. Until then… “cricket noise”

1 Like
#16

well said @nicolaevici1

In any respectful company, when you do good, you get promoted, you get valued, you get rewarded.

What I see happening on fiverr: Lets take all your rewards you deserved by doing a good job and give them to this new comer, which may be good, or may be not. You don’t need this anymore.

I know we are not fiverr employees, but we do generate fiver revenues. We are a kind of middle term between employee and client.

Anyway, when a company doesn’t treat your clients as deserved, they search for another. Luckily for fiverr, there is no other competitive platform to compete with fiverr, so they can do whatever they want.

Thankfully I have some good returning clients, but I don’t know how much time I can handle this

1 Like
#17

Yep, of course I appreciate that they put out a platform where you can share your services and make money, but what use if you don’t have consistent work flow?

We can rant all we want, which is good and creates conversations but the only real solution would be a competitor as big as them or bigger, where the work flow is high, the buyers don’t want the world for 10 bucks and where sellers get promoted based on the quality of work they provide not based on the ,rising talent" standard.

#18

I still believe that the workflow comes from better placement. So as better you are placed, more impressions you have and more chance to sell too.

But as I’m observing, good placements are being given to random seller. Fiver doesn’t encourage sellers to seek the best, by rewarding them. It’s more like punishing for not achieving what they want.

ALSO, most important. I see, in my category, 4-5 gigs fixed on top, and all the others are rotating. The most amazing is that I’m performing better the some of these. They are almost 2 months on top just because.

#19

For sure better placement = more orders

I’m sure that I was placed much better when I started.

Random sellers or sellers that get a lot of orders and those kind of sellers usually work cheap or let’s say ,affordable" , they sure get good exposure.

Look, I’m aware that a lot of buyers want cheap and quality work, that’s why I had a period where my rates were very low, guess what, no orders.

So I can see where you’re coming from with the ,punishing" part. The mindset of ,you don’t get us enough orders, we’ll drop you" , like it’s my fault that buyers don’t contact me lol

As for the fixed gigs on top, same here, I see them in my nieche as well, I don’t know if they’re performing so good that they deserve that top place or Fiverr decided that those gigs remain on top regardless.

#20

I have no idea what is happening anymore if I’m being honest. I’m at the top of the page more or less (according to my search results anyway), the average number of orders is still hitting my expected weekly minimum (there’s been a significant drop since the middle of August but so far it has been manageable).

Yesterday I was unexpectedly bombarded by inquiries for new potential orders for an hour or so, received probably 7 or 8 of them like in the good old days (with the intensity I’ve last experienced since May) and today it’s just crickets which is unusual for the middle of the week. Is someone playing with some kind of exposure switch to see what will happen or something?

1 Like
#21

That’s what I was saying in some other posts.

How come everything is silent for weeks/months and all of a sudden messages and orders start flooding. And all of a sudden, silence again.

I like your metaphor with ,exposure switch" which is more likely to be true, you can’t just get an avalanche of orders the first day and dead silence the next which goes for weeks or months.

But I believe only the guys from Fiverr know the real answer.

1 Like