Why I love fiverr. And why I hate it!

[raghnalltuathai]

Hi Guys.

After being here for a long time, taking some very useful tips from experience reports, I thought it was time to write a little report by myself - why I love Fiverr, but still hate it.

Fiverr offers a great concept! It helps countless artists and sellers on this platform to be independent and provides all possibilities from small additional earnings to full-time jobs. I and my team are now approaching the full-time job and it’s a great experience that makes life really easier.

Once we had to settle down to find the right prices, establish a workflow, and find potential customers, I would say that we’ve overcome the biggest hurdle. In the meantime, we receive daily inquiries, weekly larger orders and growing calls for our offers.

Although Fiverr’s original intention was to offer everything for five dollars, I think the development from an artist’s point of view is extremely good. Most sellers here are trained and/or very talented individuals whose work is valued and should not be sacrificed a pittance. On Fiverr you still get most of the stuff for an extremely low price compared to those from outside agencies or freelance artists.

Most of my clients have been great people so far! Polite, friendly, appreciative of our work, even invited us to their concert or promoted our service through their social media. We received big tips and unbelievably nice reviews. We are grateful for this experience and it motivates us every day to create the best possible video for these people, even though sometimes the time and effort are not really covered by the costs and revenues.

That’s why I love Fiverr.

Nevertheless, I hate Fiverr. Especially in the low-price range one encounters more and more often rude customers who suffer through the platform an absolute loss of reality and feel like a king for throwing some cents at a dancing fool.

They do not read the sales description, they ask for their money more than they are entitled to, even become vicious, as soon as they are reminded of additional costs for it. They expect free rehearsals and free work. It seems that even 5$ hurt them so much… why is the damn seller not giving out his work for free?! Sometimes I would love to call their boss at work and ask him to cut their paycheck down to 5$. But I always stay calm and polite.

Only today I had a “customer” whose attitude is incomprehensible to me.

Without reading our description or the FAQ, which says in bold and color, that you should contact us urgently before buying an offer, - because sorry, we are not Pixar Studio and not able to animate you Beowulf Part II for 150$ -, he has bought a package and then wrote some pretty big instructions.

I politely wrote to him that we have many problems with his script because we are technically unable to create most of the parts. Nevertheless, we promised to give it a try, after which he sent me a screenshot of several 3D models. Creating 3D models or rigging is not a service we offer, which is clearly stated in our FAQ. Now we are standing with a script whose content we can not create for the most part and a screenshot of models that we can not make. Well, that happens every now and then. Dumb, but you can not change it. So I kindly described the situation to him and asked him to cancel the project with his agreement, so that he’ll get back his money as soon as possible.

Now the fun started.

“U are lame”, “U wasted my time”, “I think you should be removed from fiverr I will push for that”, “Because of taking the job then decline”, “Fiverr has agreed to let me leave a review on u “,” And it’s going to be scathing”.

This is the actual text that arrived in our chatbox.

I was completely confused. I always stay polite, always try to explain the situation in a friendly way, but we do not let ourselves be threatened or blackmailed. Nevertheless, I wrote in a relatively neutral way that he purchased a gig without making contact before, most of it is work that we explicitly do not fulfill and that this is made clearly on our page and in the FAQ, which he obviously didn’t read.

After a short break he accepted the cancellation and wrote us:

“Just wait we just started !!!”

Unbelievable, but this guy (I found out after a short search) is the CEO of a company. How unprofessional.

And here is the problem with fiverr. Fiverr doesn’t really care for you as seller. They’re more interested in the buyer, because he is the one paying. This guy could now (if he really goes for it) call his friends or create another account, or even buy the same gig and give us a really simple task. After that, he’ll just give us some negative reviews. And there goes the 5-star-service, there goes your gig, the SEO and ranking. You are able to report them, but in the end the seller is not really protected or has no chance to call out such actions. You can only write a negative review too, but in the end… people are often not even reading your description. They’ll just see the 1-star rating. Also I do have no option to block the buyer from buying another of my gigs.

I really often read your (other sellers) negative reviews to see what went wrong and I often see these kind of cases. And I can fully understand the seller in this situation. But the negative rating remains.

These are just my thoughts about fiverr. I think it’s a great service but it will need to do more to protect the sellers from crazy, mad or psycho buyers. They may be the ones buying, but we are the ones working, it needs both of us to work out, so it shouldn’t be too one sided at all!

Well, I would be glad to read some of your opinions :).

Best regards

[topaz_muse]

I think this is one of many reasons some sellers have requested an accept order feature. This way they can see what the buyer is ordering and if whether or not the job is within their capabilities before an order is placed. Some are for this idea and some are against it.

I would just like it if when changes and new features are introduced that some in depth research gets done prior to them getting released.