So , here goes a thread pertaining to “How to offer skype consultations with your gig”.
This is my experience thus far and I’ll update it if the thread gains any traction.
I hope it helps save some of you some time and headache as it’s been a 3 week process for me personally and several days of ticket sending/answering through fiverr’s support team.
Here is what I know about offering a skype consultation.
- So far , one staff member approved my gig here after it was rejected for modification …
https://www.fiverr.com/videostore/create-a-video-commercial-for-your-company
The error was :
“You may not refer users to sites other than Fiverr.com.
The Fiverr marketplace is aimed at connecting buyers and sellers using our platform and not for advertising external services. All communications, ordering, delivery, and payments must be completed exclusively within Fiverr.”
via a support ticket (Ticket #1)
Note - It does not have skype in the TITLE of the gig description. It merely offers it as an extra to clients who need to talk about larget projects more directly.
-------Skip ahead-----
2 weeks later that same gig was taken down. Again for the same reason… The error was:
“You may not refer users to sites other than Fiverr.com.
The Fiverr marketplace is aimed at connecting buyers and sellers using our platform and not for advertising external services. All communications, ordering, delivery, and payments must be completed exclusively within Fiverr.”
This was probably due to me linking a dropbox link in my gig description to show buyers more videos I’ve done for past clients… And another dropbox link that went straight to a simple text document containing no contact information… It was just a text document displaying my Re-do Policy as it was too large to type in the 1200 character limit they give us for the gig description (I know awful…)
So … when I got that message , I replied to them via a followup ticket (pointing to the original ticket where my gig was approved) to clarify what was wrong and to tell them that I had gigs with those exact links in them for over 2 years now. I did not get any response to that other than …“You cant link to outside sources in your gig description”…
- Ok so right there I must have gotten away with something for years that saved my clients time , made my business more efficient and kept me from cancelling lots of orders due to buyers making ordering mistakes and not reading my gig properly. But now I can’t do that anymore… so moving on … /rant
So in ticket #2 I told them how upset I was about the gig sitting in the system for 2 weeks while I brought OUTSIDE buyers TO Fiverr to purchase my gig…was not getting any views and it was possibly because it took all that time to get rejected again for sharing my work portfolio… In ticket #2 I asked them to re-instate the gig for a 2nd time and they did…
But seeing as how I didnt know why it was rejected … I asked more about the skype stuff…
One member of staff said this:
“Hi there, Please note that you will not be able to add a “Skype” related gig where you exchange Skype info without you having the word Skype in your gig’s title. I hope this clears up the confusion.”
The other staff member who approved my gig listed at the top said this about having skype in the gig somewhere:
“While direct communication through Skype is not something we allow in general, there are cases where this is allowed and all you need is to mention that in your Gig description and, once the Gig is approved, you’ll be able to share such information with your buyers.”
Is it just me or am I getting conflicting answers on a subject that has held my gig in limbo while I’ve been bringing outside traffic to fiverr? I had buyers unable to order my gig because it was down …
I hope this helps anyone going through the trouble of creating gigs that offer skype consultation.
As it stands now , I’m going with what the 2nd member of staff said … and that member also approved my gig the first go round in ticket #1…
(By the way , to add more frustration here - that first staff member told me it was okay to add skype in the DESCRIPTION of my gig in ticket #1 as long as i submit a ticket to have it approved by staff… where the 2nd staff member in ticket #2 (a followup ticket to ticket #1) told me that I needed to add it in my TITLE …
(((I dont want it in my title … it messed up SEO for my gigs and I dont want to offer skype primarily in my gig description… its for serious buyers placing serious orders … I dont want to market myself to skype conversations for $5-$20 order)))
Whats upsetting is that I’m not sure they read ticket #1 if they followed up with that advice in ticket #2 … maybe it was an honest typo? … but they certainly messed up giving me some advice on it here and when I know the final answer I’ll come post back…
It’s been 3 weeks and I havent gotten 1 message on my gig listed above… regardless of the fact it has $160 sitting on it. Not sure why I should send any more clients to the gig from off the site … its seems that the site is not allowing my gig to show up due to the scrupulous events that I described here.
Take from this what you will… it may be better to only get ONE skype gig up on your account and just simply link THAT GIG on the rest of your accounts that you want to offer skype support on. I’ve asked this as one of my last questions for them in ticket #2 and I hope they give me a straight answer.
-Cheers
[self promotion removed - disallowed except in My Fiverr Gigs]