No amount of money is worth your peace

[Guest mcromano]

Something I’ve wanted to address with the community for a while has been nightmare sellers.



We’ve all had them - the screaming banshees, the incessant messaging, the recurring nagging, the entitled attitudes. There are many things that can make a bad seller, but across the board they have on defining features: they stress you out more than it’s worth.

And believe me, no matter what they pay you, they’re definitely not worth it.



So many people on this site get trampled by bad buyers, effectively being doormats to get their $5+. Often, these buyers end up being recurring purchasers…which results in permanent increased stress levels, and dare I say, a few gray hairs in plus.



One thing I learned half way through my Fiverr journey so far is: No matter what they pay you, bad buyers aren’t worth your time. No amount of money is worth your peace of mind. No sum can buy you the happiness you’ve lost by stressing yourself up with their demands. No fortune equates that of mental quietude.



At one point, I had a very demanding buyer. We had a five month long daily gig collaboration which turned more and more demanding, and more and more emotionally manipulative on their part. I ended up temporarily quitting fiverr, burning out, becoming depressed, and getting anxiety at doing business with people. I became afraid of the fiverr inbox due to their incessant messaging, and started feeling worthless for not being able to rise to their demands. When I tried to quit working with them (twice I did and did not succeed; thrice’s the charm!), they emotionally roped me back into it. I thought the money was worth it, until the very end when I snapped…and believe me, I wish I had done so much sooner.



Now that I’m back, I’m waging war against unreasonable buyers, and I want to help all abused sellers realise this:



You deserve better than that. Fellow sellers, NEVER put up with bad buyers, people who seek to screw you over, people who don’t treat you right, people that emotionally manipulate you, and people that use their money as leverage to treat you as a rag.

Treat yourself better by being pickier with your clientèle. You work better relaxed, believe me.



$5 may be cheap…but your mental health isn’t. Don’t end like I did back then.

[Guest mcromano]

Sorry for the typos and missing letters - I must’ve been hungry and ate them all! In my defence, it’s 7 am and I haven’t slept a wink all night, so there’s that.

[burn1980]

I agree. It’s important to value your time and not do anything you do not feel you can handle. It is in the nature of people to get as much as they can for as little as they can but as a seller you need to place value on your time. Manage your clients expectations from the start and when they start demanding extras, kindly remind them that they can get what they want if they purchase extra gigs. Also, be sure that the timeframe you place on your gigs is realistic and change it if you realize it’s not.

[arquib]

I wish there was an option to blacklist or block buyers. There are enough and more gigs out there, they can choose someone else to nag.

[webtelly]

Funny, you have perfect timing. After 200 orders, and 99% positive, I just had my worst buyer. Waited until the all the delivery time had expired, and then requested a modification. It was only a 1,000 word article, that’s 2 pages. She wrote a page of modifications. No typos, no grammatical errors, just a laundry list nitpicking what she didn’t like about my writing. I had just gotten up from my nap, hadn’t had my coffee yet, looked at it for about 10 seconds, hit cancel with a note, “Sorry you didn’t like it.” Who needs the hassle?

[kreativa]

Amen to that, my friend. No money is worth your peace!

[jamesbulls]

Truer words never spoken. Have personal boundaries and enforce them, or you’ll regert long before you reach the end.

[landongrace]

I have a sticky note I see every morning that says, " No work is better than the wrong work".