Designing Lorri

Well, the advertising worked! I saw an ad on TV a while back for this company called “Fiverr” and I decided to give it a go. Before then, I saw many ads around the internet but largely ignored them because it sounded a little to good to be true. I made my profile, created a few “gig” posts (“Gig” is the Fiverr term for your service or product listings). Personally, I thought it was a little unprofessional to title each listing beginning with the words “I will…”. However, I’ve come to think that this really levels the field a little bit–everyone’s gig starts with these words.

So, I made two gigs: one for graphics and one for item descriptions. I downloaded the app just in case I got any takers, but for the longest time all I got was spam. I lost hope and uninstalled the app.

A few days later I was checking my email and got a notice from Fiverr that there was an order. A REAL ORDER! Someone had purchased my gig, “I will write product descriptions for online stores.”

The major perk about Fiverr is that clients MUST pre-pay Fiverr, and then Fiverr holds your portion of the pay until you submit the finished product. I was so EXCITED to get this done, I completed the task right away.

The buyer was great to work with and happy with my work. My only beefs are with a few of Fiverr’s features.

1: They take FOREVER to process pay and FOREVER to add it to my account for withdrawal. All I know is having to wait this long for payment from a Freelance gig is a little hard for me (It’s been almost 2 weeks). The client has already payed Fiverr, they already gave me a glowing 5-Star review, why does processing take so long at this point? I understand perhaps waiting until a certain amount has been reached to release the payment, but this is still showing as pending.

2: Your response rate is EXTREMELY important. My rate is showing 100% but that it takes my 5 Days to respond. This is a BS lie, and an inaccurate statistic. You see, I received a message from my client AFTER the order was completed. I responded to this message, but it shows that he replied “thank you” after I had already sent my thank yous. Anyway, because I had responded already and because the order closed, I didn’t think anything of it until my response rate dropped to 0%. Around that same time I received a spam message that I had to report. While waiting for the spam report to process, this also effected my response rate.

I sent a request to have my stats updated along with proof, but all that happened from that is my recovery of the 100% response rate– it still shows a 5 day response time. Gross!

3: The ads for buying from Fiverr and for taking their courses are quite a lot. I stopped removing them so I could see just how many I’ve been getting. I took the free course offered, but quite frankly paying any money to take a course for something I spent thousands of dollars on in my degree plan is a bit of an insult–not only to me as a person who is still paying off debt, but to my professors who worked so hard to teach me! Stop with the ads and give some more recognition to professional degrees if they’ve already been obtained!

Overall I’m not completely hurt about the stats issue. I will keep promoting and hope that people read this to know the backstory of the inaccurate stats. Hopefully more comes of this Fiverr thing. I truly do like the concept!

If you want to take pity on my Freelancer soul, my most inexpensive gig is a $5 micro story. You choose the topic, genre, keywords, or anything else you care to request. I promise magic in 250 words! Of course, you can upgrade to more words *insert winky face*.