Just wanted to take a moment to express my opinion of the response rate metric on fiverr. I’m a level one seller and trying to shoot for level 2 in the next months or so, I’ve been an active seller for more than 7 months now; specializing in technical support and Linux system administration gigs.
I think the response rate metric has got to go! Anyone who has spent more than a week on fiverr knows that you don’t always get quality leads and like any business not everyone is even worth the time to talk to.
It should be the buyers discretion whether or not, we respond to an inquiry. Some people are just not worth the time. For example I offer an email server setup for small business and personal use – I make mention that the services I offer is no good for bulk email, email marketing, or spamming as this kind of use is either going to get the sender IP blocked rending the setup useless, or is just straight up illegal since no one wants to bother reading into spam laws (such as making sure people are opt-in before emailing them, a physical address is located at the bottom of the email, so on) since I don’t offer legal services and the gig description clearly states this type of thing is not within my scope of support, I feel that these inquires should just be ignored and a seller should not be penalized for choosing who they speak with.
Another example are these buyers that message you asking for 100 things for $5, if on the first message from a prospect it’s crystal clear that their expectations are so unrealistic for a $5 budget, why even waste time explaining? Doing so normally results in these poor quality leads just becoming rude or asking for even more. Sellers are here to make money and should not have to be forced to waste time with complete nonsense like this.
Anybody that offers professional services as a freelancer starts to gain the ability to scope out a good lead and can normally detect a bad one from a mile away just by reading that first message from a prospect, so with that insight it really needs to be the sellers decision who they engage with on the platform and if they don’t feel like dealing with an obvious poor quality prospects, that want to enlist them for illegal services, are just to lazy to read your gig offerings, or have the audacity to ask for a full day of work for $5 they deserve to be ignored and I really don’t feel the seller should be subjected to a negative score.