The Big Bad Button (order limit)

[janebarnaby]

When you go to your gigs, and you select one, you will see that Fiverr gives you the option to limit the orders in your queue. If you hit that limit, your gig will temporarily become ‘hidden’ so that you won’t get any more new orders while you work on completing the rest in your queue. It sounds great, doesn’t it? I thought the same. Until I used it.

I joined Fiverr in January and did the stupid thing of waiting for orders to come to me. While I did half-heartedly advertise on Twitter here and there, things didn’t get going until after my first two orders, both of which I personally brought to this site. It was by the end of March/the beginning of April that I started getting my first ‘organic’ orders, and things picked up from there. From one order a month, to one every two weeks, to one every week, until, in the last week of April and the first week of May, I started getting orders every single day, or even multiple a day. One of such days, I got 3 orders, two of which were 24-hour ones and one of which a longer-term one. I freaked out a little - although it was a happy freak-out - and put the order limit on 3. My gig went hidden, but it wouldn’t be that bad, because it would only be for a few hours… right?

And that’s where it went wrong. From that day forward, I didn’t receive any more messages in my inbox, whereas I’d previously had inquiries on a daily basis. All my orders came from my regulars, until those, in time, left too. My gig completely dropped off the radar. I tried contacting support, but it was during the time that the analytics were gone, so I got a standard “the analytics may be broken visually, but they’re working, and we’re working on fixing it, etc. etc.” All sales I received came from the buyer requests, which I’d just unlocked after reaching level 1.

Now, with the analytics returned and with me still sending buyer request offers every single day, I have had one order in six weeks and have seen my gig impressions bob between 5 and 15 in 30 days. I have since created a new gig for a different service (a service I like a lot less but will provide if I have to) and received several reviews and orders there, but it doesn’t seem to have helped my other gig much.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or did I run into some kind of fluke? Should I create a new gig in a new category that has since popped up, even though I then won’t have the 10+ reviews I’ll have on my old(er) gig (which I would keep up at the same time)?

TLDR: I was becoming a little too successful. I pressed the order limit button. My account has suddenly dropped into the abyss and hasn’t come out yet despite several months passing.

Small note: I do proofreading/editing, a manual job that takes a lot of time. The secondary service I now offer is manuscript critiques. Maybe that explains some things or why I did what I did.

[virginiabg]

When you go to your gigs, and you select one, you will see that Fiverr gives you the option to limit the orders in your queue. If you hit that limit, your gig will temporarily become ‘hidden’ so that you won’t get any more new orders while you work on completing the rest in your queue. It sounds great, doesn’t it? I thought the same. Until I used it.

I joined Fiverr in January and did the stupid thing of waiting for orders to come to me. While I did half-heartedly advertise on Twitter here and there, things didn’t get going until after my first two orders, both of which I personally brought to this site. It was by the end of March/the beginning of April that I started getting my first ‘organic’ orders, and things picked up from there. From one order a month, to one every two weeks, to one every week, until, in the last week of April and the first week of May, I started getting orders every single day, or even multiple a day. One of such days, I got 3 orders, two of which were 24-hour ones and one of which a longer-term one. I freaked out a little - although it was a happy freak-out - and put the order limit on 3. My gig went hidden, but it wouldn’t be that bad, because it would only be for a few hours… right?

And that’s where it went wrong. From that day forward, I didn’t receive any more messages in my inbox, whereas I’d previously had inquiries on a daily basis. All my orders came from my regulars, until those, in time, left too. My gig completely dropped off the radar. I tried contacting support, but it was during the time that the analytics were gone, so I got a standard “the analytics may be broken visually, but they’re working, and we’re working on fixing it, etc. etc.” All sales I received came from the buyer requests, which I’d just unlocked after reaching level 1.

Now, with the analytics returned and with me still sending buyer request offers every single day, I have had one order in six weeks and have seen my gig impressions bob between 5 and 15 in 30 days. I have since created a new gig for a different service (a service I like a lot less but will provide if I have to) and received several reviews and orders there, but it doesn’t seem to have helped my other gig much.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or did I run into some kind of fluke? Should I create a new gig in a new category that has since popped up, even though I then won’t have the 10+ reviews I’ll have on my old(er) gig (which I would keep up at the same time)?

TLDR: I was becoming a little too successful. I pressed the order limit button. My account has suddenly dropped into the abyss and hasn’t come out yet despite several months passing.

Small note: I do proofreading/editing, a manual job that takes a lot of time. The secondary service I now offer is manuscript critiques. Maybe that explains some things or why I did what I did.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or did I run into some kind of fluke?

To be honest with you and after reading the forum for quite some time (plus being there myself), I’m not sure that what you’re experiencing was indeed cause by using the order limit function.

To me, it sounds like it’s ‘just’ the gig rotation Fiverr does from time to time combined with the influx of new sellers and gigs. I mean, I too had a peak in sales during April and May, which made me work my a** off during my birthday (I was not happy about that, btw), but then it suddenly stopped for no apparent reason.

Apart from 1 gig that I had to increase my delivery time and tweak a few things, I didn’t do anything else that could cause the order flow to stop. So I’m guessing it was the gig rotation that caused it. And after reading your post, I think you’re one of the people that had the luck to actually have the limit order function work out for you as it was supposed to - for many others, it didn’t do much since people could keep ordering their gigs if they had a direct link to it, had saved it, and things like that… :woman_shrugging:t2: I can’t even imagine being in their shoes, I’d probably go insane if that had happened to me.

[humanissocial]

Correlation does not equal causation. This could easily be a coincidence and there are many explanations.

[janebarnaby]

Correlation does not equal causation. This could easily be a coincidence and there are many explanations.

Correlation does not equal causation. This could easily be a consequence and there are many explanations.

I am aware, which is why I added this:

Or did I run into some kind of fluke?

The Fiverr system is strange, and almost no one understands it. Yet I can’t help but feel ‘punished’ for doing something the site ‘doesn’t like’. It’s probably just my human mind trying to attach emotion/reason for something that has no emotion and might not have a reason that I understand.

[janebarnaby]

Has anyone else experienced this? Or did I run into some kind of fluke?

To be honest with you and after reading the forum for quite some time (plus being there myself), I’m not sure that what you’re experiencing was indeed cause by using the order limit function.

To me, it sounds like it’s ‘just’ the gig rotation Fiverr does from time to time combined with the influx of new sellers and gigs. I mean, I too had a peak in sales during April and May, which made me work my a** off during my birthday (I was not happy about that, btw), but then it suddenly stopped for no apparent reason.

Apart from 1 gig that I had to increase my delivery time and tweak a few things, I didn’t do anything else that could cause the order flow to stop. So I’m guessing it was the gig rotation that caused it. And after reading your post, I think you’re one of the people that had the luck to actually have the limit order function work out for you as it was supposed to - for many others, it didn’t do much since people could keep ordering their gigs if they had a direct link to it, had saved it, and things like that… :woman_shrugging:t2: I can’t even imagine being in their shoes, I’d probably go insane if that had happened to me.

I too had a peak in sales during April and May, which made me work my a** off during my birthday ( I was not happy about that, btw )

Very late happy birthday. I’m sorry that happened to you on a special day.

To me, it sounds like it’s ‘just’ the gig rotation Fiverr does from time to time combined with the influx of new sellers and gigs

I’ve heard of this rumoured gig rotation, but I thought it was something that lasted a few days up to a few weeks, not months. Did I think wrong? And is there any way around it (eg. create a new gig with a similar service but different enough to be allowed)?

[virginiabg]

I too had a peak in sales during April and May, which made me work my a** off during my birthday ( I was not happy about that, btw )

Very late happy birthday. I’m sorry that happened to you on a special day.

To me, it sounds like it’s ‘just’ the gig rotation Fiverr does from time to time combined with the influx of new sellers and gigs

I’ve heard of this rumoured gig rotation, but I thought it was something that lasted a few days up to a few weeks, not months. Did I think wrong? And is there any way around it (eg. create a new gig with a similar service but different enough to be allowed)?

Very late happy birthday. I’m sorry that happened to you on a special day.

Thank you! That’s very thoughtful of you ☺️

I thought it was something that lasted a few days up to a few weeks, not months. Did I think wrong?

The thing is that no one really knows, right? It’s all just a mixture of theories, sellers’ stories, and things we can see happening on the platform. And then there’s the fact that what some experience, others don’t experience in the same way…

And is there any way around it (eg. create a new gig with a similar service but different enough to be allowed)?

You could try it. As long as it’s different enough, I don’t see why not. I’ve seen sellers doing it, and I even have a couple of translation gigs that aim at different things (book translation, legal translation; things I’m proficient at and are more niched than my general translation gig). Does it work? Well, the way I see it, it just gives you more chances to be found in the search engine. If a buyer uses a filter to look for a specific service, there’s you. If they don’t, there’s also the probability that your gig will show up in the category it’s under (so it basically just gives a little bit more exposure, that’s all IMO).

[janebarnaby]

Very late happy birthday. I’m sorry that happened to you on a special day.

Thank you! That’s very thoughtful of you ☺️

I thought it was something that lasted a few days up to a few weeks, not months. Did I think wrong?

The thing is that no one really knows, right? It’s all just a mixture of theories, sellers’ stories, and things we can see happening on the platform. And then there’s the fact that what some experience, others don’t experience in the same way…

And is there any way around it (eg. create a new gig with a similar service but different enough to be allowed)?

You could try it. As long as it’s different enough, I don’t see why not. I’ve seen sellers doing it, and I even have a couple of translation gigs that aim at different things (book translation, legal translation; things I’m proficient at and are more niched than my general translation gig). Does it work? Well, the way I see it, it just gives you more chances to be found in the search engine. If a buyer uses a filter to look for a specific service, there’s you. If they don’t, there’s also the probability that your gig will show up in the category it’s under (so it basically just gives a little bit more exposure, that’s all IMO).

And then there’s the fact that what some experience, others don’t experience in the same way…

Because simplicity is out of the question…

You could try it. As long as it’s different enough , I don’t see why not.

I will get to that, then. I want to be a book editor anyways (as a lover of fiction and a writer of fiction myself), and since that category has recently been added, I might as well hop in. Thank you for the advice!