Raise Your Price Rapidly to Control Orders and Increase Profit
Bright green line is estimated daily orders assuming price raises shown; start low, raise frequently.
The chart above shows an average seller of Voice Over services starting at a price between $5/400 words to $5/500 words (ultra low). If the seller has somewhat typical success, the light blue bar shows how many orders/day they will get if they don’t raise their price. The darker blue bars show orders/day assuming they raise their price after 4-5 weeks to between $5/250 words to $5/300 words (low). The purple bars show orders/day assuming they raise their price after two months weeks to between $5/100 words to $5/150 words (medium price, nearly the top edge of the “bargain” market). The next suggested price jump would be to $10/200 words (between Bargain and Standard pricing levels), assuming the seller has reached level 1.
When you start, you make a little money, but you are mostly getting paid in reviews and reputation. Reputation lets you raise your price quickly. The chart assumes you are a trained and decent voice talent able to produce yourself fairly quickly, and that you have absolutely outstanding customer service. Succeeding on Fiverr requires outstanding customer service.
Impressions: Getting Seen
So, how does Fiverr control how many orders you get? Fiverr increases or decreases how many times you are shown in search results, known as your number of Impressions. Total impressions over a time period depend on many factors, but when you’re new, or your account goes through any kind of reset, it works approximately like this:
- Time Period #1: Fiverr gives you enough impressions that you have a 50/50 chance of getting 1 order.
- Time Period #2: Got an order? You then get enough impressions to have a 50/50 chance of getting 2 orders.
- Time Period #3: Succeeded so far? Now you get a 50/50 chance of getting 3 orders.
Assume each time period is at least two weeks long. If you raise your price total impressions will drop, but then continue to grow. A big jump will reduce you to less than one order/day.
So the general rule is this: If you fail to perform as well as expected, Fiverr reduces impression growth—or even goes backwards. If you perform as well or better than expected, Fiverr shows you to more buyers (increases impression growth). Fiverr can also speed up or slow down the process. You also want to slow down the process by raising your prices quickly, or you will be overwhelmed with low-paying orders. Rule of thumb: If you are working 15-20 hours/week on orders, raise your prices. Otherwise raise them every month.
In theory, 20% of sellers follow this curve, 40% go faster, and 40% go slower. So the odds of it working exactly like this for you are low. What are some reasons might you be forced to start back at time period #1?
- Coming back from a vacation of over 3 days;
- Changing your gig pricing dramatically;
- Reaching a new seller level;
- Getting a negative private review.
In the case of reaching a new seller level, time period #1 will have more impressions than in the case of a new seller just starting out. Fiverr gets to decide how long the time period lasts, and what your average impressions will be.
When it Doesn’t Work
This chart above can take weeks, or a year or longer to achieve (if you make too many mistakes). Regardless, Fiverr will increase your impressions if you are doing more things right, or decrease them if things go wrong.
The biggest limits to success, in order, are:
- Low-Quality Customer Service
- Low-Quality Product
- Poor Marketing and SEO
- Not raising your price frequently and strategically
95% of your reputation comes from the worst 5% of your clients. Everyone likes nice people—it’s the tough ones that make or break you.
The Quarterly Impressions Carousel
Assuming you are doing well with no penalties, Fiverr raises your impressions higher each month. But at some point they will drop your impressions dramatically, and you will have one of your worst-earning months in awhile. But then it will slowly climb back up to a new high (sometimes). What’s going on?
They have to take some impressions away from you in order to have enough to give to other sellers—so everyone has a chance to succeed. This will happen every 4-5 months for most sellers, or 3-4 times/year.
Marketplace factors our of your control include total Marketplace dollar volume level and trend, total quantity of sellers and quantity trend, etc.
The 2022 Cut and Reset
In 2022 dollar volume growth stalled, but growth in total quantity of sellers continued, until too many sellers were chasing too few dollars. Fiverr didn’t overhaul the effects of the algorithm much—they didn’t make it work significantly differently—they just set a strong cutoff.
They figured if they cut the number of sellers by around 20%, there would be enough money for the remaining 80% to do well/be happy. So they instituted much harsher penalties for the bottom 20% of sellers—effectively cutting them off from most of the money. Whereas previously the bottom 20% may have been making 3% of the money, now they were making 0.3% of the money available—their impressions were dramatically cut back.
The 20% just above them were penalized a bit as well, but in their case it took the form of holding them at their level and not helping them grow. So really only the top 60% found that Fiverr was still working as expected based on their past experience.
This is similar to what they do when dollar volume drop seasonally (in January and July, for example). The bottom 10-40% of sellers become more cut off from the available dollars. This is why large groups of sellers may post on forums that their monthly income has dropped and stayed down, while other sellers say they are not affected.