39 Tips & Tricks for Super Sellers on Fiverr 2020

Rule #1

BE AWESOME

The #1 rule of selling on Fiverr is simple: Be awesome and deliver a great product. Every client you meet will want pure awesome-sauce every time, and if you're not giving that, they'll go somewhere else. There's plenty of room for mediocre sellers on Fiverr, but if you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to be real, really good at what you do.

Generally speaking, though, this rule is dominant in any sales environment. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got a brick-and-mortar store, you’re working for somebody else, you’re selling via your own website, or you’re selling via Fiverr: quality products and services can speak for themselves and can overcome a lot of other shortfalls.

If you're not really, really good at what you do, then you really, really need to get better. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t sell on Fiverr, but it does mean that you should be actively and consistently engaged in a process of self-improvement to raise the quality of your offerings.

Rule #2

BE VERY NICE

Customer service is really important. I know it sounds silly, but you have to make every client believe that he or she is the most important person in the entire world. Communicate quickly and be charming! You have to make them feel special and important, because the truth is, they are: your livelihood of Fiverr depends on positive reviews and repeat clients.

But again, generally speaking, customer service is important to any venture no matter where you’re working or what you’re selling. You absolutely must learn to check your ego. This doesn’t mean that you have to let your clients treat you like garbage, but it does mean that every time you get an attitude with a client who steps out of line you’re adding another light-bulb to a massive illuminated billboard that says, “Go Away.” If you add enough light bulbs, negative reviews combined with word of mouth will drive away clients you haven’t even met yet.

There are a time and place for telling bad clients to jump off a cliff, but that should be an absolute last resort.

Rule #3

FAST DELIVERY

Every client you meet will want to be your #1 priority. Obviously, this is impossible, so you should carefully evaluate what you’re offering and select only as much time as you need to complete the work. Depending on what you’re offering, you can set a minimum delivery time of 2 days to give yourself some wiggle room for when you're sick or just having a really bad day.

You can also choose whether or not you're going to offer extra-fast delivery for an extra fee. I recommend that you do because you can set it to any time you like. For example, standard delivery of two days, extra fast in one day. Or, standard delivery four days, extra fast two days, etc.

Of course, don’t forget that delivery time will factor into your internal Fiverr search ranking, too. If you want your gig to be ranked high among all sellers by the level of quality as judged by Fiverr’s ranking algorithm, then you should strive to deliver as fast as reasonably possible.

Yes, positive reviews are important, but believe it or not, what I’ve seen is that Fiverr’s ranking algorithm values speed of delivery more than the quality of reviews. There are sellers in my category who regularly collect negative reviews, but they’re still ranked higher than other sellers because they deliver faster. There are also sellers in my category who’ve been on Fiverr longer than I have, but I’ve outranked them because they don’t deliver as fast as I do.

Fiverr loves fast delivery. Granted, fast delivery won’t undo negative reviews and if your work just sucks then nothing will fix that, but it counts for an awful lot.

Rule #4

ALWAYS HAVE THE LAST WORD

Leave unique feedback to every review. Your clients will always read your reviews before they buy anything from you, and this is your first chance to show them how you interact with your clients, and more importantly, how you'll interact with them.

Rule #5

DIVERSIFY YOUR PORTFOLIO

If you're not getting views, it could be because you've only got one gig. If this is the case, then you should diversify your portfolio and create multiple gigs in the same category. This will get you more impressions and ultimately more clicks, and even if you don't maintain all these gigs in the long run, it'll be a great way to help you figure out what you sell that people will actually buy. Another strategy that I've used is to feature my gigs inside my gigs. So for example, you can look at my gig for a Tarot reading, but you'll also see mention of my gig for ritual services. Cross promotion of my gigs within my gigs has been a terrific way of showcasing everything that I offer.

Rule #6

PROMOTE YOURSELF

Fiverr is a means to an end, not an end in itself. You know when you go shopping and the clerk hands you the point-of-sale machine where you swipe your credit or debit card? That’s what Fiverr is: it’s a point of sale machine. Yeah, Fiverr advertises itself and hunts up some clients for you, but ultimately you’re not an employee of Fiverr, you’re a freelancer who works for yourself and Fiverr is only the method by which you collect payments from your clients.

Because Fiverr is a means to an end (living a freelance lifestyle), that means you still have to do your own advertising. If you’re not going to advertise yourself, or you’re not willing to do the work to learn how then Fiverr isn’t going to be a good experience for you.

If you're a writer, start a blog and use it to promote your Fiverr page. If you don't like to write and enjoy speaking, start a podcast. Or if you enjoy the video, do regular Google Hangouts and make use of your YouTube channel. Focus on having fun, being personable, and creating or sharing fun content. If you're only using these platforms to sell, you'll get ignored really fast.

Rule #7

MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE

No matter how small an amount $5 has become in today's world, for a lot of us it's still something we don't want to risk on a bad experience. I promise my clients that I'll respect their money and if I can't make their order right, then I'll give them a refund. A mutual cancellation is a lot better than a negative review, and my clients appreciate knowing that I won't try to strong-arm them. If a money-back guarantee makes you nervous, just remember that if your client gets cranky and complains about it, Fiverr won't have your back and they'll probably cancel your order, anyway. And speaking from my own experience, this is a policy that hasn't been abused. My cancellation rate at the time of this writing is less than 1%, and of those orders cancelled the vast majority of them were from clients who requested work I didn't offer or who ordered by mistake.

Rule #8

NO COLD-CALLING

If you're getting no orders, don’t fall into the trap of trolling other sellers’ reviews and trying to contact their clients. Not only is this spam, and not only is this against Fiverr’s terms of service (and can get you removed from Fiverr), but this is also a really fast way to get blocked and reported by the very people you want to do business with. I genuinely understand the frustration of wanting to earn an income and not being able to connect with clients, but sending spam email on the Fiverr message system is not a solution. Don’t do it.

Rule #9

MATCHY-MATCHY

Write your gig so that the title, description, and tags all match. Having at least one of the same key-words in all three areas helps your search ranking on Fiverr. Also, if you offer a niche service, don't use just niche tags: also use tags related to the larger category so you'll get in front of more eyes.

Rule #10

POSITIVE REVIEWS ARE GOLD

Good reviews build confidence and make clients more likely to buy. Do everything possible to take care of your clients and earn their 100% positive, five-star reviews, and don't start buying or creating fake reviews. If your work's not outstanding, clients will see the fake reviews and figure out that you're padding your own gigs. Plus, when you're a new seller, you get special ranking from Fiverr, but as soon as you start padding your gigs with fake orders, you lose that special ranking.

Rule #11

START ON THE RIGHT FOOT

Speaking of your special new-seller ranking that you get from Fiverr, be sure to get off to a good start by completing everything on your gig at the same time. Don't write a title, add one photo, write a description, and publish it, because you'll make a bad first impression on your clients. Write all the content, select all the photos, create your banner, record your video, write a couple PDF files as extended portfolios of your work, pick your tags, and settle on your extras ahead of time so that when publish the gig you'll hit the ground running.

Rule #12

WRITE A GREAT TITLE

One of the best tools you can use to improve your chances of getting noticed and making sales is meta-analysis, and what this means is doing an analysis of multiple analyses. For example, look at a seller in your category who has a lot of success. How is that seller's title written? Look at the key words in the title and think about why they're there. Then, do the same for another successful seller in your category. And another, and so on, until you start to see patterns emerge. If you want to do this the easy way, you can use an online word-cloud generator to aggregate all the titles of big sellers in your category. You will see patterns emerge. There is a reason certain words are chosen.

And as part of writing a great title, make sure it fits within the space available. You'll notice that when you write the title there's text that says, "Too short!," "Just right!," or "Too long!" That text isn't there because it looks pretty. Fiverr has simplified the gig creation process for sellers and provided tips that tell you exactly what you need to do in order to succeed. If you write a gig title that's too long, then it'll get cut off in search results and will make you look unprofessional. Don't write titles that are just strings of key-words. Instead, write titles describe your service in words that a reasonable person would understand.

Rule #13

WRITE AN HONEST TITLE

On the subject of titles, describe exactly what you will do for $5. Speaking as a client who wanted to get a logo designed, I got thoroughly frustrated shopping for an illustrator because they all did some variation of the same thing: insist that all clients must contact them first, and then doing all business on the basis of custom orders. That was an un-fun shopping experience for me because I had no idea of knowing ahead of time what sellers would actually do and for what price they'd do it.

Rule #14

WRITE A GREAT DESCRIPTION

Do the same for the gig description that you did for the title. What words appear most frequently among a dozen or more successful sellers? These sellers aren't working together, but a meta-analysis will show that they all have some things in common. There's a reason for this. And don't just copy another gig word for word, because that's bad, m'kay?

Rule #15

PARAGRAPHS & BULLETS

Also, look at the formatting and paragraphing of the gig descriptions of successful vendors. People like lists, and there's a reason successful sellers create small blocks of text that focus on one thing at a time.

Rule #16

GRAMMAR, SPELLING & PUNCTUATION

And remember the importance of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and all those other goodies that create a professional appearance. Your clients may not be grammar nerds, but they know poorly written ad copy when they see it. And like it or not, Fiverr is a marketplace created predominantly for English-speaking clients, so the odds are stacked against non-native speakers. If you don't trust yourself to write your gig, find somebody who can - there's a bunch of 'em on Fiverr who could probably help.

Rule #17

USE EVERYTHING

Upload a banner photo. Upload a video. Upload as many preview pictures as your gig will allow. Upload as many PDF files as your gig will allow, and if you're not sure what to put in them, then use them as areas for extended descriptions of your gig or an opportunity to talk about what you do. Just add everything, because the more relevant stuff you add to your gig, the more "complete" your gig looks to your client, and in turn the more likely your client is to get an accurate picture of what you can do for him or her.

Rule #18

HOW TO WRITE ADS

As for activities outside of Fiverr, you can do an ad campaign. Set your budget whatever you like - $5 a month, even. Limit your ad-groups to just one set of keywords and don't dog-pile a thousand keywords into one ad-group. Then, do a Google search for the keywords in that ad group and look at the top ads. The top ads aren't there by accident, and the people who wrote them are spending a lot of money to get results, so you can be sure they've got a good recipe to follow. Copy those ads word-for-word and edit them to be relevant to your keywords and listing. As it happens, though, I'm not running an ad campaign anymore because my experience was that clicks that came from outside Fiverr didn't convert well. This might be different for people offering different kinds of services, but for me? The Google ad campaign I ran for a few weeks generated a LOT of traffic and LOT of clicks, but no paying clients. Fiverr's internal search and ranking system works well, so these days I'm letting it bring the clients to me.

Rule #19

LEARN TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA

The clients that come to me from outside Fiverr are the result of social interactions on my platform of choice: Google+. This doesn't mean it's better or worse than Facebook, Twitter, etc., it's just my preference. But the point is, the clients I met there never actually saw an ad or heard a sales pitch because I used social networking for just that: to be social and friendly. Trust me: people will want to know who you are, and they will troll your profile to learn more. If you fill out your profile information with links to Fiverr, traffic will follow.

Now, this is just one social marketing strategy among many, and I'm not a social marketing expert by any means. I'm just a guy with some prior sales experience who likes to read stuff on the Internet, so if you really want an SEO expert, uh... hire somebody else

For me, I use my Google+ profile as the central gathering point for all things "me" on the Internet: it links to my blog, YouTube channel, and my Fiverr sales page. It's "me" for anybody who wants to look.

Google+ is also where I maintain a curated collection of content related to Tarot and Satanism. Every single day I pin content to this collection, and when applicable I'll cross-post the content to relevant communities. The way this works is I create interesting content for people to read and share. No click-bait, nothing sensational - it's an accurate representation of who I am, so this way people don't feel "tricked" when they follow the link because there simply is no tricking involved.

Everybody likes to buy, but nobody likes to be sold. So I don't sell them anything - I just create and share fun or interesting content and cross-post it to relevant communities. People click through to read what I wrote, and prominently featured on the top right side of my blog is my Fiverr badge. That's where the sale happens, and that's where people click. Plus, because everything I do - and I mean everything - has an embedded "About Me" clearly posted, it leads them back to my Google+ profile where they can see all about me and my services.

My goal is to make people WANT to troll my profile and WANT to click through to my Fiverr account to see what's happening. And the important thing is that there's no trickery or deceit: I'm just me being me and doing what I enjoy. Having the Fiverr badge prominently displayed feeds traffic to my Fiverr profile, but the real key is the daily work. This is important because it's about being visible.

To give you an idea what I mean, I'm going to be very honest: I'm not the best Tarot reader for every client. Some people prefer a different sort of service, and that's okay. I think I'm really good at what I do - and +10 years' experience is evidence of that - but viewed as an absolute, there MUST be other readers out there who are better than me.

But they're not as visible as I am. Because I publish content multiple times per day, my posts - by volume - make me more visible and, to use a phrase, "better positioned" than other readers. If it sounds spammy, it isn't. You've seen the people who post the same tired crap over and over, and those are the people that nobody likes. But when you create new or interesting content every day - even if it's only a few paragraphs - this creates interest and positions you as a leader in your field.

So yeah, just by the statistics of it, there MUST be other people in my industry who are better than me at what I do, but my goal isn't to be better than them: it's just to be my personal best and make sure that my content is fresh and featured in relevant communities.

That's how I use Google+. I could probably make a LOT more traffic and sales if I also used a Facebook account, but I don't like their privacy settings and how difficult it is to know exactly what I'm sharing and whom I'm sharing it with. The other advantage to using Google+ is that it's Google, and Google pretty much runs the Internet. If I want to come up in relevant searches, doing everything in Google gives me that edge. It's a small edge, but I'll take everything I can get.

Rule #20

FIVERR FORUM

The Fiverr forum is an odd place, but there's a lot of great stuff and smart people here if you can sift through the rubbish. If you need to talk to customer support, then you have to create a ticket for that with them, but the community (such as we are) have a lot of knowledge and experience if you can find it. If you don't see it, ask a question - you'll probably get a good answer.

Rule #21

IT'S STILL THE INTERNET

On the subject of the community forum, it's worth saying that even though you're on Fiverr, it's still the Internet, so you need to grow a thick skin. People will say stuff that you don't like and don't agree with, and that's not necessarily against the rules. Deal with it.

Rule #22

NO SALES?

If you're not getting any sales, there's a reason for that. If the problem is that you're not getting enough views, then you need to fix your title, tags, and add a video. But if you're getting enough views and yet still not getting any sales, then the problem is in your gig description and how you communicate its value to your clients. Write from your buyer's perspective. For example, I work in the Astrology & Fortune Telling category as a Tarot reader. My gigs used to say something along the lines of, "I'm a professional cartomancer with 10 years' experience and I can answer any question," but that's not appealing to the client because it talks about me and doesn't recognize the client's needs. I changed my gigs to read more along the lines of, "I offer detailed, accurate, and professional readings for love and romance; money and business; advice and direction," and so on. This describes my service in terms the client will understand and highlights the exact reasons my client is probably looking for a psychic.

Rule #23

SAFETY FIRST

As others have said before me, keep your account secure by completing all the profile steps: connect your FB and G+, set a password, and so on. Not only will this help protect you against the hackers that I'm told are out there, but clients will see this when they read your profile (and they will read your profile.) Speaking as a client, it makes me feel more confident about working with a seller who has a 100% complete profile. Also, as others have said, don't open email attachments from other Fiverr users if you're not sure what it is. So I've been told, there have been (or still are?) hackers on Fiverr who'll try to get you to download an attachment that turns out to be a key-logger so they can get into your account and do all kinds of mischief.

Rule #24

NO FREE WORK

Speaking for myself, I refuse to do free work. I don't care if my client wants a one-card pull as some sort of interview, I'm not doing it because I'm the seller and I set the terms of engagement. If this client is going to bully me for free content without a purchase, I can be sure the client is going to bully me for free content after the purchase, and that's a relationship I don't want. When somebody asks for free work, I refer them back to my gig description and to my YouTube channel which demonstrates the work I do. If they can't make a decision based on that information, then there's nothing else I can do to help them.

Rule #25

BIG PAYCHECKS?

How much do you want to earn on Fiverr? How much will you earn on Fiverr? These things aren't the same. If you're frustrated with Fiverr, remember that the competition in your category is probably pushing prices down and client expectations up, so adjust accordingly. After all even Fiverr advertises itself to sellers as a part-time, freelance lifestyle, not a full-time job. Remember, too, that clients are willing to pay higher prices for sellers with higher reviews. Build a strong portfolio of positive reviews and your ability to charge higher prices will rise accordingly.

Rule #26

BUYER REQUESTS

C'mon, sellers: don't be dummies. "Buyer Requests" is an area where buyers posts requests to receive offers from sellers. This isn't a place where you can post free advertisements for buyers to request your services. Not only does this make you look like a dodo in front of the other sellers, but you won't actually be seen by the single buyer - it's only possible to view this area if you're a seller with an active gig.

Incidentally, if you're posting a buyer's request to get work done from a seller, then the best way of doing this is to post a $5 test-offer: offer to pay sellers $5 for a small sample of their work according to your specifications. If you're planning to spend more than $50 on your project and you really can't afford it if the work isn't done right, then you owe it to yourself to spend $15 or $20 in order to interview the top 3 or 4 sellers who offer to complete your work. You might end up spending $65 or $70 to complete a $50 budget, but I promise you'll be very satisfied with the results.

Rule #27

MISOGYNY DOESN'T SELL.

I didn't think I'd have to say this, but sifting through some rubbish on the forum made me change my mind. Listen up, men: objectifying women in the Fiverr forum, on your profile, or on your gigs isn't just offensive and tasteless, it will also lose you sales. If you don't understand why objectifying women is offensive, then I don't know how to explain it to you. Be aware that female clients are voting with their dollars and taking their business to sellers who respect a woman for more than her physical appearance.

Rule #28

NO COPYCATS.

I think I covered this earlier, but it's worth saying again: in your hurry to create great gigs and start selling, don't copy other sellers' gigs. Don't copy. Don't do it. Copying is bad. Not only is this totally rude and completely dishonest, when the original seller finds out what you did - and the original seller will find out - and reports you to customer support, not only will your gig get taken down, your entire account could get closed. Plus, unless you're able to deliver the exact same quality as the original seller, the gig won't match your services and clients will post honest and probably negative reviews. Don't copy gigs. Don't copy. Don't do it. Copying is bad.

Rule #29

CHANGE IS GOOD.

To coin a phrase, "the work will teach you how to do it." Fiverr's internal search and the ranking system works really well, so if it's been a few days and you're not getting any orders, chances are good the reason is because there's something to do with your gigs. Play around with the title, change your video, re-word the description. Whatever you do, just pay attention to what works and do more of the same. It takes a little while to get your footing on Fiverr, and if you're observant, the platform will teach you how to use it. Try new things and when you see what works, write it down! Change is also good because - with respect to your preview video - Fiverr gives more search impressions to gigs with recently updated videos. If you're struggling to get impressions and clicks, then you should update your videos once a month for best results.

Rule #30

DON'T FIGHT WITH CUSTOMER SUPPORT

The time will inevitably come when there's something wrong with one of your gigs, or you're having a problem with your account, or a client left a completely unfounded negative review, or some other Awful Thing will happen that can only be fixed by Fiverr's customer support. Chances are excellent that you'll be really upset about it, and chances are good that the customer service rep who takes your ticket doesn't want to deal with it. These people are your life-line, so show them some respect.

Rule #31

GO TO BED, SLEEPY HEAD.

Buyers love getting their gigs really fast, and I know I've been in the position where I check my email one last time before I go to bed just to find a couple orders sitting in the inbox. Which is great - I love getting orders - but I learned from personal experience that the only thing buyers love more than getting their gig fast is getting a good gig, period. If you're tired and up past your bedtime, the quality of your work is going to suffer. Unless your client is a jerk, he or she will understand that you had to go to sleep so you could finish their work while you're alert and refreshed. If you deliver bad work in the name of fast delivery, you're going to lose a potential return client and might even get a four-star or lower review on the order. So respect your limits and remember that there's a time to work, and then, there's a time to sleep.

Rule #32

RETURN TO SENDER

Clients won't think twice about returning your delivered order for revisions or asking for more services than you originally offered on the gig. So it follows that you shouldn't think twice about asking your client as many times as needed to clarify what he or she wants. My gigs always include follow-up instructions, but about a quarter of my orders I have to send back to my clients for more information. This doesn't always mean they didn't follow the original instructions, it just means that I see a way to improve on what they asked me and I need their input to proceed. Practically speaking, this results in a better product and a happier client, and those are both good for me.

Rule #33

ESTABLISH YOUR SELLER RECORD

This goes along with previous notes that positive reviews are pure gold, but a good way to establish yourself is to quickly collect a portfolio of at least 100 positive reviews by selling a killer $5 gig. I mean, this is practically going to be charity, but doing this will collect a record of positive reviews, and this gives new clients confidence and helps them trust you. After you've really established yourself as a Level 2 seller, then you adjust the gig to reflect what you're really charging. Don't fool yourself into thinking that people will pay extortionist prices, simply bring the price up an honest reflection of the amount of work you're doing. For example, I built my portfolio of five-star reviews selling full 10-20 minute readings for $5 each, but after I got +70 reviews, I changed my rate to $5 a minute. This price honestly reflects my $60/hr. rate as a professional Tarot reader with +10 years' experience, but a micro-pay format made it accessible to a wide range of clients. After I changed my prices, I made more in two days than I had in the previous two weeks combined.

Rule #34

OLD BUSINESS BEFORE NEW BUSINESS

If you deliver an awesome gig and the buyer loves it so much that he or she wants more work from you, that's wonderful. But unless there's a VERY pressing reason to do so, extra work related to the same order but requested after the first order has been delivered should be completed as new, separate orders. There are two reasons for this:

First, it's too easy for an order to run over-time and become late. Suppose you have a 24-hour express order that's due on the 1st at 12pm. You deliver your order at 10am - two hours before the deadline - and the buyer doesn't say anything back to you until 10am on the 4th. The buyer requests additional work, and you tack on an additional gig to the original order with 24-hour delivery. What happens is that when the buyer accepts your offer, the Fiverr system adds an additional 24 hours to the original due date, which means that you have just created a new order which should have been delivered not later than 12pm on the 2nd and is now instantly late. If you're going to add more work to the original order, do it before you start the work as part of a resolution process to get the client to pay for the extra work requested. If more work is requested after you've delivered, then start a new order.

Second, there are unscrupulous clients who will place large orders and sometimes even leave positive reviews, but days, weeks or even months later will initiate a charge-back on PayPal claiming that they didn't authorize the transaction. It's harder for a buyer to process a charge-back against Fiverr if they've got a long string of repeat orders. But if it's just one order, then it's just one charge-back. As a seller, you should minimize your exposure to charge-backs by breaking up very large orders into smaller gigs. For example, instead of a single $100 order, complete four $25 orders.

(Due to limitations, the remaining 5 tips and tricks are added as a reply)

Rule #35

TAKE BACK

Once upon a time in my life, I sold cars for a few weeks. One of the tools I learned as a salesperson is the "take back," and that's when you tell the client you don't want to sell to him or her anymore. The reason to use the take-back is when the client is beating you up on price or keeps asking for extras and additional services that aren't included in the original sale. Same thing on Fiverr, when you get a client who wants to haggle you down to bottom dollar and then keeps asking for immediate delivery and extra services outside of what they're willing to pay, you use the take-back: request a mutual cancellation and send a message along the lines of, "It breaks my heart, Mr. Smith, but I'm refunding your order. You don't seem certain about what you want, and twice you've asked for work beyond what we agreed. For these reasons I think it would be best if you found another seller to complete your order." At this point, one of two things will happen: Either your client will accept the cancellation and go away, or the client will give up being problematic and get with the program. Nothing hurts a client more than saying "I don't want your money," so if you're going to use the take-back, be sure it's for a good reason.

Rule #36

A LA CARTE

The question is asked, How do I use gig extras to earn more money from my gigs? The answer is simple: don't offer a complete product. This isn't scammy, it's just being honest about what your time is worth. When you're established on Fiverr, you'll want to charge higher prices and this is how to do it: Break your gig into pieces and let the client choose how much of the complete product he or she really wants. My own gigs, for example - most of them I can't scale down the quality, so I scale the quantity instead: I sell in 5, 10, and 15-minute increments for my time-based gigs. In this way - breaking your gig into its individual components and selling it a la carte - you can push gig extras and earn a higher income. For example, maybe you're a graphic designer, so you could break down your gig like this:

• Black line-art (bust only)
• Black line-art (full body)
• Color
• Additional character at same level of detail
• Simple background
• Detailed background
• Commercial Use

And so on. If you're creative, you'll see how to apply this example to your own gig and expand the amount of income you're able to earn.

Rule #37

EVEN NEGATIVE REVIEWS ARE GOOD

Okay, well, no... negative reviews aren't good. You should do everything your ability to provide a totally awesome product and earn every gold star you can. But even if you get a review of fewer than five stars, you can make that work for you. Now, I'm not telling you to lie - telling fibs is bad, m'kay? - so this doesn't mean offer crap service and you'll come out looking fine. Because you won't: more than a few bad reviews, no matter how you handle them, and you'll find your sales dwindling.

But, assuming that you've done everything in your power to be an awesome seller and your client just wasn't willing to give you a chance to make it right and left you a bad review, here's how to handle it: be nice, be honest, and don't be a jerk.

Bad reviews can work for you because although every client who visits your gigs will read the reviews, every client will specifically look for the bad reviews. This means that you're given an opportunity in your bad reviews to leave a message that EVERY new client will see. For example, a client recently left me a three-star review that took me down from 5.0 to 4.9. Not a big deal, but still - I'd rather have a perfect record.

But that review was an opportunity for me to say, "Naturally I'm disappointed that I couldn't earn your five-star review. You ordered 5 minutes but I actually gave you 8 minutes to provide all the details I found in your short reading. Again, I'm sorry the answer wasn't what you were hoping for but I did my very best to work with the cards I pulled." See what I did there? I didn't attack the seller, I just explained how I over-delivered (more time than was ordered) and I show my dedication to my client, regardless of how small a purchase he or she made. If you handle bad reviews correctly, you can make them work for you. But don't lie about things you didn't do, and don't be a jerk even if the client deserves it.

Rule #38

WHAT IS YOUR CONVERSION RATE?

And more importantly, What can you learn from it? The conversion rate can be measured a few different ways. The conversion rate you see on your analytics page is an overall conversion rate of all your gig data combined.

Here's what you're looking at:

Impressions mean how many people saw your gig on another page somewhere on Fiverr.

Clicks mean people who saw an impression of your gig and clicked through to see more.

Views mean people who've seen your gig. This includes clicks, but also direct page visits.

Orders are the number of unique sales you've made. Duh.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Remember how to do fractions? Easy peasy: smaller number above the larger number. You can measure the conversion rate of your impressions by dividing it by the number of clicks.

In this case, my best-seller is converting (510 clicks / 23000 impressions), or 2.2% of all people on Fiverr who saw my gigs clicked through to learn more.

Of the people who clicked my gig, I'm converting 9.8% into orders.

And of all people who've viewed my gig (regardless of whether they clicked through from an impression or directly came to my page from a saved link or external link), I'm converting 4.2% into orders.

So there's some interesting stuff to be had from the numbers. The first thing that can be said is that I look better by comparison: when my clients come to the Fiverr website to find a service I offer, something about the buying experience and window shopping doubles my conversion rate. Is it the video? Or is it my relative standing among other sellers? Hard to say, but I can't argue with the numbers.

The numbers also show that I could do better at grabbing attention - I don't know what other sellers' conversion rate is like for impressions, but a 2.2% conversion of impressions feels low. This could be because Fiverr is counting impressions that are shown on the bottom of other gig pages (where people aren't looking) as well as impressions in the "Recommended for you," which is something I usually ignore (and other people probably do, too). Whatever the case, it shows an area for improvement.

And if there's a difference of more than double in my conversion rate between clicks and views, then this means I can still improve my gig listing. If people are seeing my sales pitch but aren't buying, then I'm not properly communicating the value of what I have to offer. Of course, there's no way to know that the gig views I'm getting aren't the result of Internet crawlers and other non-human traffic, so I put more effort into my clicks versus my views.

RULE #39

PREVENT AND REMOVE NEGATIVE REVIEWS

One of the things that come up a lot on the Fiverr forum is the matter of negative reviews, and more specifically, how to remove them. I have two answers to that question:

Don’t deliver work that you know deserves a negative review. Seriously, sellers: don’t serve poo-tar on a plate and think you’re going to get glowing reviews for your effort.

If you can prove that the negative review is abusive or simply untrue, you can petition customer support to have the review removed. Be aware that if you go this route, you’re going to need screenshots and documentation to support your claim. customer support doesn’t remove negative reviews just to protect your ego, only when the review itself is abusive or untrue.

So with that in mind, it’s actually easier to prevent negative reviews than to have them removed, and preventing negative reviews is all about quality service and client service. If your work sucks, that’s entirely your fault and you deserve the negative review. But client service? That’s very important because it gives you the opportunity to manage client expectations and ensure that your client actually wants what you have to deliver. Misunderstandings are easily encountered, but also easily prevented, and the best way to do that is with a business policy.

Depending on who you are and what you’re offering, a business policy is going to look like a lot of things, but at its core, it will answer the following questions:

What you will do.

What you won’t do.

How to place an order.

When to expect delivery.

Refund policy.

Optional: What happens to rude, argumentative, and abusive clients.

What the client should expect when working with you.

What the client should not expect when working with you.

Getting back to business! Now, your gig description doesn’t have enough space to answer these questions, so you have two options:

Write your business policy in not more than 3 8.5×11 pages and upload it to your preview gallery. I recommend this option because this way it’s not possible for the client to say that he or she couldn’t load an external link, and when it comes to busting bad reviews, you can’t prove what the client couldn’t do at his or her end of the Internet on a non-Fiverr website.

Record your business policy as a YouTube video and provide the link inside the order instructions presented to the client at the time of purchase. Depending on the service you provide, a video may be better because it gives you the ability to show certain kinds of visual work.

The reason you want to have a business policy is because this allows you to clearly define who you are, manage your client’s expectations, and create the client service/sales environment necessary to ensure that your clients will understand exactly what they’re getting. If negative reviews are happening, yeah – maybe your work sucks – but in most cases, negative reviews are the result of client expectations that don’t match seller realities. You have the power to manage client expectations and create the circumstances in which negative reviews are highly unlikely to happen.

Now, simply having a business policy isn’t enough: you have to integrate it into your sales funnel.

If your business policies are uploaded to the preview gallery, refer to them in your preview video.

Edit your gig’s instructions to the client to say something along the lines of, “If you’re a first-time client with me, please review my business policies located in the preview gallery below my gig’s video introduction (or at this link here, etc.)” Chances are pretty good that your client won’t notice the business policies on the first step, but when you figuratively grab the clients’ ears and make them listen, it’s harder to ignore.

If you offer revisions or modifications: At the time of delivery, include a message like, “I want you to feel great about leaving a five-star positive review. If you’re not satisfied with your order for any reason, please request a modification and give me a chance to make it right.”

So by this point, you’ve told the client to read your business policies, and closed with the promise that they’re welcome to contact you if they don’t like their order. If your client is a reasonable person, by this point he or she will understand what you will and won’t do; understand how to place an order and when you’ll deliver it; understand that they can communicate with you if the order isn’t what was expected; understand what you won’t tolerate from clients; and understand what the entire experience should feel like from start to finish.

Going back to one of the things discussed at the beginning of this article – how to remove negative reviews – a business policy is a very powerful tool because when you properly implement it into your sales funnel, it’s a powerful deterrent against negative reviews. But again, going back to the original discussion, what happens when you get an abusive or simply untrue negative review? The first solution is to talk it out with the client, but chances are pretty good that the client hasn’t much interest in communicating with you. So your next step is to take screenshots of the review and all communication with the client and open a ticket with customer support. Show customer support everything you did to provide what the client wanted, and use your business policies to demonstrate that the client made unreasonable demands or had unrealistic expectations.

And if you’re wondering, I’m not speaking from theory: this is based on lived experience. For example, I had a first-time client place a $30 order with me. She didn’t tell me her name and chose to provide very vague instructions. Both of which are fine: I don’t need to know my clients on a first-name basis, and I told the client that her decision to provide no real context for the order would result in her needing to contact me for further work. Guessing names is something I don’t do, I always provide follow-up until the client is satisfied, and the client would have known these things if she had read my business policies.

Would you be surprised to hear that the client didn’t contact me for additional work (at no extra charge), chose to accept the delivery, and leave a two-star negative review? Yeah, I was a little bit surprised, too. When I left a reasonable two-star review in response explaining that I don’t play guessing games and that I specifically asked the client to follow-up with me, the client edited the review to one-star review and claimed that I lied.

At this point, if I was a less intelligent seller, I’d be stuck with that review. But because I have clear business policies, strong client service, the client was upset due to her own ignorance about me as a seller and her choice to not review my business policies, and I could show that the client’s accusation was untrue, customer support removed that review.