First order, buyer reviews and gig ranking in Fiverr

 

Some time ago, I wrote an article about the most important factors that may affect your gigs’ ranking in Fiverr search. Ranking in Fiverr works much like ranking in any other search engine—a fixed algorithm calculates the position where a gig should appear in buyer's search; based on several factors each of which carries a certain weight. Today, we talk about how three variables which appear to carry a disproportionately greater weight in ranking and sway your gig’s ranking in Fiverr in upward or vice versa direction. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not claiming to have cracked Fiverr’s gig ranking algorithm. All I am doing is keeping a case study of one of my own gigs in front of you. The graph in the figure below shows a snapshot of the gig’s performance in terms of number of impressions over a month. I have highlighted three dates in the line chart using red arrows to explain how the first order, selling price, and buyer review affect the number of times your gig appears in buyers’ searches. But before that, I want to state an important assumption that we are making here: a rise in the number of impressions means your gig is being fetched by the algorithm more frequently and is being placed in a relatively higher position—since that’s the only way it can get more impressions. With that said, let’s now dive into the factors that may be responsible for this surge in impressions.

Getting the first order

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the first few orders for how well your gig will perform subsequently. Although it might seem from the graph in the figure that getting my second order (we will talk about the first one in the section about price below) on January 13 has not affected the number of impressions. Impressions have remained relatively unchanged after this date. Well, apparently. However, notice that impressions spiked after January 22 when one of the orders received a 5-star rating from the buyer. Needless to say, getting a review without getting an order is impossible—unless you buy fake reviews, which we will talk about in a separate post. Therefore, getting your first order (or first few for that matter) is indispensable to pushing your gig to the top in buyers’ searches for the keywords related to your services. It may seem like a paradox: if my gig does not appear in enough searches, how do I get the first order? Well, the answer is simple: your gig does appear in enough searches to get an order IF your gig is well-optimized with keywords, has a powerful thumbnail to attract clicks, is described well, and your overall profile looks credible.

A 5-star buyer review

Fiverr is for buyers. If a freelance marketplace was possible without sellers, it would be Fiverr. There is a long list of reasons I am saying this which is out of the scope of this article. The point to make here is that Fiverr cares a lot about the buyers. Consequently, buyer reviews are by far the most important factor in deciding a seller’s fate. Referring to the graph again, I got my third order on January 17 and delivered it within the next 35 hours as requested by the buyer. On January 22 the buyer reviewed the order and gave it a 5-star review. The rest is evident in the image—exponential growth in gig impressions. There is no way I can explain using this graph how a different rating might have affected the gig performance since I have not received a less than 5 rating in this timeframe. There is, however, enough evidence to conclude that a positive review affects the gig ranking positively as compared to a no-review condition. This was also evident from my first order (not shown in the graph). The buyer never rated the order and gig performance remained roughly the same.

Selling price

The first order I just mentioned was priced at $30, as compared to the second and third priced at $100 each. It did not impact the gig performance significantly. It might quite well have been because it was not rated also. But my guess is, the lower price also contributed to no impact on the gig performance. I have also observed this effect while experimenting with some of my other gigs (I have seven of them) as well. The higher the price you successfully charge, the higher you rank in the buyers’ search results. You may find this article on how to optimally price your gigs useful.

Final thought

Now, everything might seem to revolve around getting the first order; and you might be feeling frustrated right now— and rightly so. My experience with selling on Fiverr suggests that Fiverr initially favors new sellers unless it cannot. It cannot favor you if your gig lacks optimization. There is an incentive for Fiverr to give chance to new sellers since they might turn out to be successful sellers and ultimately generate a lot of revenue for it (Fiverr gets 20% of each order’s gross price from the sellers in addition to the complex fee system they have in place for buyers).

Thus, what you can do is master your skill, optimize your gig, and delight the first few customers (it is always a good idea to delight your customers for all the right reasons) and reap the benefits.