manucornel

Hahaha, you are a funny man. Good luck with your attempt at educating buyers how awesome/victim you are that you don’t need to provide samples. After you succeed with this, go at the design category as well, and preach about how designers don’t need to have a portfolio because they have reviews. Maybe you will succeed even convincing Amazon to sell products without showing pictures! Think about it. Selling products without images, using just reviews. That will be amazing! Except it won’t be, and you wouldn’t survive a day outside Fiverr with this mentality. 🙂 Just because some people abuse the sample system, some people cheat and some people want very specific things that a portfolio isn’t supposed to provide, that doesn’t mean that all sellers should drop portfolios and all buyers should stop asking for samples. Maybe you should find better ways of getting over bad clients and bad experiences in general. The world doesn’t suck if you know how to deal with it. Get better and life will be better. Good luck to you. I would participate in this conversation longer but I am too busy reaping the rewards of publishing a ton of free content out there and not having to explain to my clients why I don’t have a portfolio. PS: The “arrogant victim” mentality is the one that is predictable and way too common these days.

This is a lot of fuss for nothing. Anyone CAN create samples for the purpose of having the samples and CAN prove legitimacy by posting said samples on personal website. And if someone can’t create samples by themselves on different scenarios and topics that they intend to sell on, maybe writing is not an appropriate profession for them. Just because we have a review system in here that doesn’t prove anything about how a writer fits to someone’s needs. I don’t think you would honestly buy ANYTHING in this world based solely on reviews. So why you expect this privilege is beyond me. 🙂

As a writer, I would like to give my input as well. I totally understand your POV, but I don’t agree with you. For this discussion, I exclude stubborn clients that don’t know how to treat people, because they are not worth the time. Let’s talk about legitimate people that are looking to find a good writer. Having REAL samples to show a buyer is more than proving one’s quality. It also shows the style and how the writer adapts to the topic overall. A text sample says much more about a seller than we can imagine. How would you recognize the quality of Picasso or Beethoven without seeing or listening to things they’ve created before? Like it or not, people are admired for their work, for what they create. A legitimate sample tells more than 30 reviews can. What you should do as a buyer? You simply go with the fact people like them and that some virtual freelancing platform is “guaranteeing” you will get what you ordered? I hardly doubt there are guarantees here. In fact, if you get a low-quality article, the best you can do is leave a 1-star review. That doesn’t bring back the money spend or time wasted. What you are asking for is kind of blind faith, don’t you think? And not all creators are suited for everyone! There are different styles for different folks. I don’t say that writers should breach copyright terms and show samples they’ve done for others! No, definitively not. But everyone can create samples FOR the purpose of sharing them with their clients. I don’t think it’s that hard to create 5 or so articles on the niches you cover to showcase your style, that you can publish on your blog to avoid stealing from clients. This is NOT working for free or copyright infringement. Consider that you lose much more time trying to explain why you don’t have samples than you could have lost creating samples. Not to mention people that turn away from this kind of attitude, myself included. When I hire writers (on rare occasions), I do ask for samples. That gives me insight on more than the quality of the writer. I can see if they breach copyright agreements or not, and I can see if they give importance to having a beautiful portfolio or not. It shows me their style, their discipline, and how good they are. Would you hire a designer without seeing things they’ve designed before? Would you hire a musician without listening to music they did before? Would you hire a web developer without seeing websites they did before? Would you hire a home decorator without seeing what they’ve decorated before? If no, why a piece of text should be treated differently? After all, writing is an art, even if people consider it like this or not. If I would be your buyer, you would basically ask me to have blind faith in you and assume that you are fit for me just because you have good reviews. Tons of people like the Kardashians, that doesn’t mean I like them too. What if you’d have your own website? Do you think you could have got away with the fact that you don’t provide samples of your work? Reviews improve the odds of getting an order, but they are not a guarantee. And they are not always a good reflection of the quality provided. At least, that’s my opinion. 🙂

How about making a list of those countries, then, or the list of those 160+ countries, so that people know in advance whether they can work on Fiverr or if they would just get banned as soon as it’s discovered that they’re from a certain country? +1 on that. Transparency on these sort of issues should exist. People could make a lot of money before being banned, like in the case of the OP.

That’s a great idea, actually! I sometimes wake up in the middle in the night and I check my messages, so it would be nice to have a darker-friendlier appearance. 😃

This shows my age, but it reminds me of when I was a kid and I read all of the Nancy Drew mystery books. They all had the author name “Carolyn Keene” (I think that was it) and I thought the books were fun. Looking back at them, some of them were pretty awful, actually. 🙂 Anyway, there was no internet then either so I didn’t really look into this author but one of my high school teachers eventually told me the truth. There was no Carolyn and there wasn’t even one ghostwriter. The books were written by many different ghostwriters who knew how to go by the formula. The author name was always fictitious. I’m sure ghostwriting has been going on as long as books have been written. Interesting story. I am sure there are plenty of cases like this. 🙂 I once searched “popular books that were ghostwritten”. The results surprised me a lot!

What person, in their right mind, buys from a ghostwriter (or copywriter or article writer) and doesn’t check the work to see if it’s original? She is clearly lying and most people will detect that. I don’t think we will feel even as much as a small wave from this. Ghostwriters existed since the first book published and they will still exist as long as there are arranged words in pretty format to sell. 🙂 I’d say it’s nothing to worry about, even if you work on Fiverr or not. And while I didn’t saw many authors communities, I noticed that the majority of them are pretty negative when it comes to ghostwriting, simply because they can’t monetize their hard work while the latter can. TBH, I find it a bit strange that some people are so angry with the whole ghostwriting idea. While it’s perfectly normal to know that there are writers behind any music, ad, movie or flyer, it’s baffling for some that there are writers behind writers. 😁 In reality, there are cases where there are even writers behind writers behind writers. Haha

Besides the fact that googling it wouldn’t take you more than 1 minute and you could easily found out what it is the thing you are selling, don’t you think your client can be here on Fiverr forum? And see you struggling with the basic things? One has to wonder what you’ve been doing in those “over 7 years experience”. 🙂

Exactly. That’s the reason send messages will not be able to be edited, ever. That feature will permit abuses. Simply read everything before you hit send to make sure you don’t have any mistakes in it, is not that hard. 🙂

The actual definition of is But I do agree with you that is a way of life. A freelancer can be an entrepreneur or not, depending on the vision they take on approaching money making. If someone is only doing designs and that’s all, for example, I wouldn’t call that an entrepreneur. But if that person does designs while also developing his or her own websites and brands, I would call them an entrepreneur. For me, I consider this word means my ultimate goal, to create my own brand as a personal coach and invest in other brands as well. A few years ago I had my own firm, but a business is no longer tied to offline. Anyway, I agree with you. Entrepreneurship is a state of mind. A business nowadays can simply mean a website from which you are selling your products or investing in stock market. Anyone that has a broader vision for themselves, beyond the “this is what I make, this is what I get paid for” thing, and is taking action in that direction, can say that they are entrepreneurs.