My 4 year fiverr story - the success and the downfall [ARCHIVED]

[davidtiberiu]

Hello, again Community! After 3 yeas of inactivity here on the forum, I’ve recently come back with a lot of crazy stories and experience gained here on Fiverr.

So, I started as any other small freelancer with a lot of dreams and hopes of getting rich and famous, but this amazing experience taught me that every good thing in life comes with a lot of commitment and hard work. I did struggle at the beginning, barely getting orders, but slow and steady, I did grew up.

After my 2 years, in the Graphic and Design category with no negative reviews at all, and exceptional delivery quality, I got Featured and Top Rated Badge (BUM). I didn’t expect that, and also I didn’t expect that huge amount of new orders coming with this massive exposure. I quickly assembled a team of 4 members and now from me it was Hivetex Design Studio, and the situation changed drastically. This was my first time when I needed to coordinate other 3 people, to implement my vision and how do I see this gig, and explaining to them what are the standards of this gig. It was a hard time setting the things up, but the results come right away. We did explode in no time, the gig climbed to the first page on the “Avg. Customer Review”. The team grew up from 4 members up to 8 and things got better and better. But here comes the good part so stick with me.

One day a team member experienced the same success as I did on his personal account and he left the group. I had no problems with that, I wish him the best of luck but from this point, the problems suddenly appeared. After a couple of days of his absence, I suddenly lost my Top Rated Badge, because “someone” reported the gig for delivering stolen vectors to the clients. And guess who was delivering stolen vectors to clients before he official left the team? You got it! And of course I was unable to prove my story to the customer support and now my account is just another regular Lvl 2 seller. After his report, we lost our Top Rated Badge but he lost his account because he had ONLY stock vectors delivered to his clients. Oh, I forgot to mention that I’ve lost my Featured Badge also along with that Top Rated one. Now, we are at the 7th position on the “Avg. Customer Review” page, because after this “internal sabotage” we focused on getting better and better, and the team has now 12 designers.

Today, we are on the way of getting back somehow the Top Rated badge, I don’t know how, but we are on the way of getting it back I’m sure. So the conclusion: Fiverr did change my life, I bought a car, a house, I have a dream life because of the Fiverr platform, but take care to the persons whom you are working with because your best friends could be your strongest enemies. My advice is to keep all the relations strictly professional and don’t get personal with anybody when money and business are involved.

Regards,
David.

[Guest offlinehelpers]

Good luck getting your TRS back David, and good advice about team working - having been in a similar situation in a ‘proper job’, I’m much happier working by myself now.

Cheers for now!

[king_of_kings]

Hello, again Community! After 3 yeas of inactivity here on the forum, I’ve recently come back with a lot of crazy stories and experience gained here on Fiverr.

So, I started as any other small freelancer with a lot of dreams and hopes of getting rich and famous, but this amazing experience taught me that every good thing in life comes with a lot of commitment and hard work. I did struggle at the beginning, barely getting orders, but slow and steady, I did grew up.

After my 2 years, in the Graphic and Design category with no negative reviews at all, and exceptional delivery quality, I got Featured and Top Rated Badge (BUM). I didn’t expect that, and also I didn’t expect that huge amount of new orders coming with this massive exposure. I quickly assembled a team of 4 members and now from me it was Hivetex Design Studio, and the situation changed drastically. This was my first time when I needed to coordinate other 3 people, to implement my vision and how do I see this gig, and explaining to them what are the standards of this gig. It was a hard time setting the things up, but the results come right away. We did explode in no time, the gig climbed to the first page on the “Avg. Customer Review”. The team grew up from 4 members up to 8 and things got better and better. But here comes the good part so stick with me.

One day a team member experienced the same success as I did on his personal account and he left the group. I had no problems with that, I wish him the best of luck but from this point, the problems suddenly appeared. After a couple of days of his absence, I suddenly lost my Top Rated Badge, because “someone” reported the gig for delivering stolen vectors to the clients. And guess who was delivering stolen vectors to clients before he official left the team? You got it! And of course I was unable to prove my story to the customer support and now my account is just another regular Lvl 2 seller. After his report, we lost our Top Rated Badge but he lost his account because he had ONLY stock vectors delivered to his clients. Oh, I forgot to mention that I’ve lost my Featured Badge also along with that Top Rated one. Now, we are at the 7th position on the “Avg. Customer Review” page, because after this “internal sabotage” we focused on getting better and better, and the team has now 12 designers.

Today, we are on the way of getting back somehow the Top Rated badge, I don’t know how, but we are on the way of getting it back I’m sure. So the conclusion: Fiverr did change my life, I bought a car, a house, I have a dream life because of the Fiverr platform, but take care to the persons whom you are working with because your best friends could be your strongest enemies. My advice is to keep all the relations strictly professional and don’t get personal with anybody when money and business are involved.

Regards,

David.

My advice is to keep all the relations strictly professional and don’t get personal with anybody when money and business are involved.

m

Agreed with you 🙂

[davidtiberiu]

My advice is to keep all the relations strictly professional and don’t get personal with anybody when money and business are involved.

m

Agreed with you 🙂

Believe me, at the beginning it is a good idea to start working with friends, but DON’T, and I repeat DON’T ever start working or do business with a friend. Business is business and you need to keep it that way.

Regards,

David.

[Guest offlinehelpers]

Believe me, at the beginning it is a good idea to start working with friends, but DON’T, and I repeat DON’T ever start working or do business with a friend. Business is business and you need to keep it that way.

Regards,

David.

…and don’t make the mistake I did of thinking that work colleagues are friends - they’re not - it’s every man/woman for themselves these days I’m afraid.

[espumita]

My advice is to keep all the relations strictly professional and don’t get personal with anybody when money and business are involved.

m

Agreed with you 🙂

My advice is to keep all the relations strictly professional and don’t get personal with anybody when money and business are involved.

I agree! Hope you can get your TRS back!

[fonthaunt]

Good luck with your TRS badge! I know of others who’ve lost it and gained it back, so I bet you can do it if you still to good skills and ethics!

Your story makes a point that I haven’t seen discussed before on the forum. The choice of who to work with and how to do it in a team environment is a tough one. I’ve worked with others on occasion, but it’s usually been one-off situations where I had extra work and needed help, had a life event and had to outsource a job or two, etc. There would be pros and cons to working with a consistent team.

Your story makes me think that if I ever wanted to create a team for daily work, I’d want to actually just hire employees instead of forming a partnership. I can see the value in hiring people who you like, but not allowing things to become too personal. This would be a fascinating topic for discussion in it’s own thread. Thanks for sharing and good luck!

[silkroute]

Hello, again Community! After 3 yeas of inactivity here on the forum, I’ve recently come back with a lot of crazy stories and experience gained here on Fiverr.

So, I started as any other small freelancer with a lot of dreams and hopes of getting rich and famous, but this amazing experience taught me that every good thing in life comes with a lot of commitment and hard work. I did struggle at the beginning, barely getting orders, but slow and steady, I did grew up.

After my 2 years, in the Graphic and Design category with no negative reviews at all, and exceptional delivery quality, I got Featured and Top Rated Badge (BUM). I didn’t expect that, and also I didn’t expect that huge amount of new orders coming with this massive exposure. I quickly assembled a team of 4 members and now from me it was Hivetex Design Studio, and the situation changed drastically. This was my first time when I needed to coordinate other 3 people, to implement my vision and how do I see this gig, and explaining to them what are the standards of this gig. It was a hard time setting the things up, but the results come right away. We did explode in no time, the gig climbed to the first page on the “Avg. Customer Review”. The team grew up from 4 members up to 8 and things got better and better. But here comes the good part so stick with me.

One day a team member experienced the same success as I did on his personal account and he left the group. I had no problems with that, I wish him the best of luck but from this point, the problems suddenly appeared. After a couple of days of his absence, I suddenly lost my Top Rated Badge, because “someone” reported the gig for delivering stolen vectors to the clients. And guess who was delivering stolen vectors to clients before he official left the team? You got it! And of course I was unable to prove my story to the customer support and now my account is just another regular Lvl 2 seller. After his report, we lost our Top Rated Badge but he lost his account because he had ONLY stock vectors delivered to his clients. Oh, I forgot to mention that I’ve lost my Featured Badge also along with that Top Rated one. Now, we are at the 7th position on the “Avg. Customer Review” page, because after this “internal sabotage” we focused on getting better and better, and the team has now 12 designers.

Today, we are on the way of getting back somehow the Top Rated badge, I don’t know how, but we are on the way of getting it back I’m sure. So the conclusion: Fiverr did change my life, I bought a car, a house, I have a dream life because of the Fiverr platform, but take care to the persons whom you are working with because your best friends could be your strongest enemies. My advice is to keep all the relations strictly professional and don’t get personal with anybody when money and business are involved.

Regards,

David.

One day a team member experienced the same success as I did on his personal account and he left the group.

Ah, this right here is the elephant in the room which tramples a lot of people.

No matter how professional you are with your team/employees, everyone is competing for the same limited resources/ opportunities/ revenues. That makes them your de facto potential rivals by default of the system. Never expose your leads to your employees.

Allocate work to them, get it done, and deliver it to the client as the front man, but don’t let the employees have direct access to the lead, ever (unless you have a ZenDesk like CRM system to keep track of interactions). Because otherwise it will make you a redundant entity in the whole loop since your job of bringing in the business is done, the client can simply deal with your employee and bypass you.

I’m confident you will recover from this temporary setback. When you have free time, take a vacation and please visit India, I would love to play host 🙂

I’d want to actually just hire employees

I think that’s what he implies when he says ‘team’. He hired them as employees, and they stole his leads.

Big companies have dedicated departments to keep track of their high performing employees to make sure sensitive data about leads and potential projects is not being shared with others. It’s about time startups embraced this ethos as well, we need it more than the biggies do.

Lead hijacking is a major issue with all technical fields. We have all been burned by it at some time.

[mzie88]

Amazing Story , hopefully you will get yoir TRS Badge back.

[michael78781]

You got there once. I’m sure you’ll get the top level seller again in no time. Thanks for sharing your story.

[diplomadon]

Sorry to hear you lost your TRS status, I have noticed your gig before and you do great work, I was wondering what happened to your TRS status.

If you had some proof of sabotage why didn’t fiverr believe your story and aren’t you allowed to use paid stock images if you have indeed paid for it.

Hope you regain the TRS status again soon.

[emmaki]

You could tell Pewdiepie. He’ll make a video about it that 60m people will see and you’ll suddenly be above Fiverr’s TOS.

True story.

Without that kind of clout though, no dice. I certainly wouldn’t be a primary account for a team on Fiverr for exactly the reasons you’ve outlined! Can you be sure that your bigger team is more trustworthy than Mr. Stolen Vectors?

[miiila]

I´m not sure in how far not getting personal with people will prevent such things, IMO people who´d do that would do it nevermind if they are on a professional, personal or anything inbetween basis with you, anyway sorry to hear you lost TRS-status because of such a moron and hope you´ll get it back in no time!

[davidtiberiu]

Wow, I didn’t expect anyone to really read my story and even reply back! I don’t know why I forgot about this forum, because you guys are great! I forgot that we do have a fantastic community here on the forum. Thank you for all your support and hopefully, you did learn something from my experience. Thank you again for your best wishes, I really appreciate this a lot!

Regards,
David.

[goldenpharoh]

I hope you will get it back soon 😉

[amitkaria]

Thanks for sharing… Your story is a good example of how much trust should one have on their Employee/Team Member …

[fonthaunt]

One day a team member experienced the same success as I did on his personal account and he left the group.

Ah, this right here is the elephant in the room which tramples a lot of people.

No matter how professional you are with your team/employees, everyone is competing for the same limited resources/ opportunities/ revenues. That makes them your de facto potential rivals by default of the system. Never expose your leads to your employees.

Allocate work to them, get it done, and deliver it to the client as the front man, but don’t let the employees have direct access to the lead, ever (unless you have a ZenDesk like CRM system to keep track of interactions). Because otherwise it will make you a redundant entity in the whole loop since your job of bringing in the business is done, the client can simply deal with your employee and bypass you.

I’m confident you will recover from this temporary setback. When you have free time, take a vacation and please visit India, I would love to play host 🙂

I’d want to actually just hire employees

I think that’s what he implies when he says ‘team’. He hired them as employees, and they stole his leads.

Big companies have dedicated departments to keep track of their high performing employees to make sure sensitive data about leads and potential projects is not being shared with others. It’s about time startups embraced this ethos as well, we need it more than the biggies do.

Lead hijacking is a major issue with all technical fields. We have all been burned by it at some time.

when he says ‘team’. He hired them as employees, and they stole his leads.

He implies in other responses that he got a group of friends together and created a team of partners. Some if not all had personal Fiverr accounts.

When I say “hire employees” I don’t mean working with friends as partners. I mean setting up a small businesses and people apply to work for me. I can create a policy that disallows personal accounts while working for the FontHaunt brand. There are ways to set this up with contracts that are enforceable in your location. I think that’s different from how many teams end up forming on shared Fiverr accounts.

I know at least one TRS who rents office space and works this way which allows him to fill hundreds of orders around the clock. If someone did something illegal under his brand (like using copyrighted work) he could terminate them and retain records to show Fiverr if a secondary issue came up. Of course, by doing it he gives up his “freelance lifestyle” in many ways. It’s not for everyone. 🙂

[fastcopywriter]

Your story is exactly why I refuse to work with other people. More People = More Problems. One of my competitors, a man I have hired myself, has a queue of 35. I asked him if he has a team, he doesn’t, and he delivers in 3 days, sometimes 2 days. I asked him how he did it? He said he sometimes works 12-hours a day. So you see? You don’t need more people, you just need to find out how much you want to work on Fiverr and set your gigs accordingly.

[davidtiberiu]

Your story is exactly why I refuse to work with other people. More People = More Problems. One of my competitors, a man I have hired myself, has a queue of 35. I asked him if he has a team, he doesn’t, and he delivers in 3 days, sometimes 2 days. I asked him how he did it? He said he sometimes works 12-hours a day. So you see? You don’t need more people, you just need to find out how much you want to work on Fiverr and set your gigs accordingly.

@fastcopywriter the things are not that simple as you may think. We have around 40 new daily orders in queue, so I really can’t deliver them by myself in this position. And at the beginning when I’ve asked my friends to help me out I didn’t think it will be for a long period of time, I just taught it was something until this big volume of sales will clear up, but things got bigger and bigger…

[nareshps]

Hey David,
Just focus on your work as you are doing.
You will surely get TRS badge with best service.

[haileydwriter]

Nice share! Good luck!

[silkroute]

when he says ‘team’. He hired them as employees, and they stole his leads.

He implies in other responses that he got a group of friends together and created a team of partners. Some if not all had personal Fiverr accounts.

When I say “hire employees” I don’t mean working with friends as partners. I mean setting up a small businesses and people apply to work for me. I can create a policy that disallows personal accounts while working for the FontHaunt brand. There are ways to set this up with contracts that are enforceable in your location. I think that’s different from how many teams end up forming on shared Fiverr accounts.

I know at least one TRS who rents office space and works this way which allows him to fill hundreds of orders around the clock. If someone did something illegal under his brand (like using copyrighted work) he could terminate them and retain records to show Fiverr if a secondary issue came up. Of course, by doing it he gives up his “freelance lifestyle” in many ways. It’s not for everyone. 🙂

That’s some good insight. I hadn’t thought about it. 🙂

[rainny_writer]

Hey David,

Just focus on your work as you are doing.

You will surely get TRS badge with best service.

You will surely get TRP badge with best service.

TRP badge = Top Rated Personality… Lol 😁

@topic: You’ll surely get back to levels lost if you continue to provide quality service. As for myself, I hope to get to levels new… Hopefully, I’d celebrate my TRS badge with you all…eventually

[nareshps]

You will surely get TRP badge with best service.

TRP badge = Top Rated Personality… Lol 😁

@topic: You’ll surely get back to levels lost if you continue to provide quality service. As for myself, I hope to get to levels new… Hopefully, I’d celebrate my TRS badge with you all…eventually

Thanks for correcting… 🙂

I seen some news about TV trp so that was in my mind. 😄

[fonthaunt]

3 posts were split to a new topic: Request for Help [Moved to Correct Category]