New buyer seeking professional advise!

[roocheer]

I will like to seek for advise on hiring somebody on fiver for my project. The whole project might takes 6-12months to complete and the cost will be high up nearer to $10,000 and seller promised me money back guarantee if the project is not what expected. That makes me feel at ease as I see it as high risk project for a new buyer like me. I will like to ask what are the options I can take to lower my risk and to ensure that I am still eligible for a refund in the long run if the projects fail or seller did not hit my expectations as promised? Of course I will be making payment first to my seller to kickstart the project and Im new in fiver and a little worried.

Thank you to you whom can advise me on this!🙂 Cheers

[leannelrivers]

Hi there,

My opinion, which is probably shared by many sellers, is to be cautious of anyone offering 100% satisfaction guaranteed or a money back guarantee. It sounds desperate and they can’t truly guarantee these things. If you’re going to spend so much money, then take your time finding a seller who has established themselves as skilled, professional and reliable. You can get a good sense of this based on their reviews and their communication with you leading up to the work.
You can also work together using the milestone system so the work and payments are made step by step rather than in one chunk.

If it’s relevant to your project, ask for work samples if they don’t already have enough available, but please don’t ask free work samples to be produced. Set some of your budget aside for this if necessary, even just a little. This helps to establish a good working relationship early on, And of course, be 100% clear about the project and your requirements so that the seller is well aware of what they need to do and an agreement can be made that is honoured on both sides.

Hope that helps, all the best finding your freelancer!

[miiila]

I will like to seek for advise on hiring somebody on fiver for my project. The whole project might takes 6-12months to complete and the cost will be high up nearer to $10,000 and seller promised me money back guarantee if the project is not what expected. That makes me feel at ease as I see it as high risk project for a new buyer like me. I will like to ask what are the options I can take to lower my risk and to ensure that I am still eligible for a refund in the long run if the projects fail or seller did not hit my expectations as promised? Of course I will be making payment first to my seller to kickstart the project and Im new in fiver and a little worried.

Thank you to you whom can advise me on this!🙂 Cheers

Of course I will be making payment first to my seller

You aren’t, really. You’re making your payment to Fiverr, which will pass on 80% of it to the seller, once the seller delivered and the order got manually “completed”, i. e. accepted, by you, or automatically completed three days after delivery if you don’t do anything. Even then, the seller will have to wait 14 or 7 days until they can withdraw that money, for additional buyer safetey. Your money is pretty safe here.

A seller can send offers for a max of 90 days duration (used to be only 30 until recently), which means if your project will take 6-12 months, it needs to be either split up into several orders anyway, or your seller could use the “Milestones feature”; I’m not sure if that has a max. duration that’s higher than the 90-day one for standard custom offers, though, I don’t use it myself. You can read up on that, and other things that might be interesting to you as a new Fiverr user on Fiverr’s support pages (sorry, I’d post a direct link, but the forum won’t let me, but you can find them through the “Help & Support” link in the main site’s footer). If you know how Fiverr works, and how potential issues are handled, that might help to feel more at ease, especially when investing a substantial amount.

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Regarding 100% money-back guarantees, I share leanne’s sentiments. Why a serious freelancer who knows what they are doing and is able to get work because they are at least somewhat good, would work 6-12 months for someone they don’t even know and offer them a 100% money-back guarantee, is beyond me. Potentially regaling a total stranger with 6-12 months of my time does sound like a really bad idea.

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In any case, welcome to the forum, and good luck with your first Fiverr project, however you’re going to handle it! 🍀

[lloydsolutions]

I will like to seek for advise on hiring somebody on fiver for my project. The whole project might takes 6-12months to complete and the cost will be high up nearer to $10,000 and seller promised me money back guarantee if the project is not what expected. That makes me feel at ease as I see it as high risk project for a new buyer like me. I will like to ask what are the options I can take to lower my risk and to ensure that I am still eligible for a refund in the long run if the projects fail or seller did not hit my expectations as promised? Of course I will be making payment first to my seller to kickstart the project and Im new in fiver and a little worried.

Thank you to you whom can advise me on this!🙂 Cheers

Im new in fiver and a little worried.

Before buying anything make sure to carefully read the Terms of Service at the bottom of the Fiverr main page for the rules as to how Fiverr works.

Everything is explained there in great detail.

[genuineguidance]

This whole thing just seems like a train wreck waiting to happen.

10k and a year long project on Fiverr?
100% money back if at the end you decide you don’t like it?

I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.

GG

[benedictrm]

I am with the others. You show so much fear and lack of trust that it would be hard to want to get involved in whatever this project is.

Wanting lots of work that has to be perfect for your (as yet unspecified needs) under threat of taking all monies back is just not what any sane person would want, leaving you with only the insane and desperate to work with. Pretty well guaranteeing a fail for all.

I show this to let you see what this looks like from the other side. This is not the message that you want to send, esp if you really do want a good outcome.

When working in Web I used to sit with the client to understand the sales flow that their new site needed to deliver. I also needed to know a) their financial and b) time budget in this as many wanted to build a new eBay for $300 and not only have the whole thing done in a week but have the products magically appear in the shop. Those were a total walkaway.

#1 Build a nice clear Brief - even hiring a Specialist (or The Specialist) to help you do that. Without that, you cannot even be clear in who you need to hire to get this thing done.

#2 Break that Brief into Strategy, Tactics, and specific Actions (tasks) so you can assign and monitor those, including to address any changes necessary

#3 Match the right providers to each task - making sure they are at least aware of and understanding the whole project so they can work to the main aim.

By now if something is really done wrong, it is much easier to see who made the error and how to fix it. It may well be you so asking for money back for work done to spec is completely immoral

🙂

[eliiclaire]

If I’m going to be completely honest, Fiverr is more of a place for short-term “gigs” and projects, so I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to do long term projects on the platform (especially since, as others have mentioned, the seller is offering a guaranteed refund). Even if you get the money back, do you really want to spend that much time if it doesn’t turn out?
If you decide you want to do the long term project here, I would split it up into milestones or even start with a small portion of the project as one order to see how the seller does.

[teachernita]

What I would do is this, there is a milestone option in the custom offer page. This project is just too big to guarantee. With milestones, you set work for each section. So I think you can divide the project into 3 milestones, (Fiverr will soon be offering 6 milestones.)

Fiverr.com

Fiverr Help and Education Center

One marketplace, millions of professional services. Browse. Buy. Done.

Read carefully, this will cover you and the buyer.

[roocheer]

Thank you for all the advise! Im grateful for it.

I might opt to use the milestone feature but one more question will be if there is 5 milestones, can I use my new member promotion discount to pay for all 5milestones or only the first can be used?

[stefanyoshovski]

Definitely go with a Milestone. If the milestone has any limits (e.g. max 5) what I would do at your place is to split the project in more phases. It’s something which will guarantee safety not only to you but to the seller as well.

I would never accept an order with delivery time 12 months, knowing that there is no guarantee that all the time spent, will be paid. I don’t think anyone would do that.

Instead I’d recommend to my client and I’d even help him split the project in different independent phases. You want the end point of a phase to be understandable by everyone in the field of the project, so if you for some reason don’t like the work or something happens with the seller, you wouldn’t have wasted time and money.

Here is a simple example

Project: Build a website from scratch for a Start Up

Possible phases:

1. Domain Research
2. Design of the Website
3. Choosing a Platform / SW and setting it up
4. Building the website physically
5. SEO
6. additional features, like chatbot
7. Marketing Research
8. Content Writing

As you can see, those are phases part of the project. On each phase, you’ll have to revise, confirm and proceed to the next phase. You can at some point interrupt or if something happens, another seller will be able to pick up from where the project has been interrupted.
Seller has the guarantee of bein paid for the part of the project you liked, you as a buyer have the safety to not waste time and money.

In your case, each phase can be a MileStone with smaller and even more specific steps.
It’s just what I would have done. 12 months is way too long to think about a single payment.

I don’t know what type of project you are talking about, but 12 months seems more like of a project requiring more individuals / team. If that’s the case, you might need to look for a Fiverr Studio gigs or open a Fiverr Business account for easier communication.

Also for such important projects keep an eye on the level of the seller, reviews, number of projects delivered, portfolio and other factors related to the wat he communicates with you.

[miiila]

Thank you for all the advise! Im grateful for it.

I might opt to use the milestone feature but one more question will be if there is 5 milestones, can I use my new member promotion discount to pay for all 5milestones or only the first can be used?

How and when are buyers charged?

The buyers will be charged for the first Milestone when placing the order. Once a milestone is approved and the buyer initiates the next milestone, the associated payment will be made.

To me, that sounds as if you can use your discount only for the first milestone, if it’s a one-time discount. If you want to be sure, you could ask support.