Today I've added a new gig: writing about coffee. Coffee is a popular topic, and as a coffee lover and a former caffeine addict, I enjoy writing about it.
A warm cup of coffee in your hands in the morning, or in the afternoon. The scent of coffee. The scent of cinnamon. The first sip. The aroma of coffee, of cinnamon, of brown sugar. Having fun with your friends while drinking it, or working with a nice smell right next to you. Or, something to do when you're bored, or when you're curled up with a good book. Coffee is a good companion.
Your brain waking up with the help of coffee. The comfort of the warm cup in your hands. The world around you is more clear after you've had your coffee. Or, more scary, if you've had too much.
Caffeine addiction: the dark side of coffee. Some people call themselves caffeine addicts even though they've never experienced the true addiction. Heart beating like crazy (there's also the possibility of a heart attack, if you go too far). Constantly being nervous and irritable. Snapping at others when, without the addiction, you would have just shrugged it off. Panicking when there's no good reason for it. Bowel problems. Serious. And if you try to stop immediately, as soon as you realize what's going on, you can't. Well, you can, if you want to suffer the worst headache of your life for about a week. If you want to avoid the headache, you have to go slowly. Little by little. Reducing the amount you drink every day. Apply self-discipline, or it won't work.
Been there, done that. Managed. Stopped drinking coffee for a while after that. Now, I can enjoy it again. The smell, the warmth, the aroma. The companionship. Good time with friends, or on my own. As long as I keep in mind the possible danger of overdoing it, it's all fine.
Coffee is a pleasure again, and a pleasure I'm happy to write about.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Fear and Loathing on Fiverr
First time when it happened, I was petrified...
All right, not exactly petrified, but every Fiverr seller knows what I'm talking about: the first negative review, which happened while I was still fairly new. The ARS (the 5 stars system instead of thumbs up and thumbs down) was also new, and everyone was desperately trying to keep their 100% rating. People kept saying that everything lower than 100% rating was a complete disaster for a new seller, and being new, I believed them.
Now, on other freelancing sites, a rating of 95% is excellent. I believe that time will come when the same will be true for Fiverr. However, that time isn't here yet, and while I know now that one negative rating would have just slowed me down, not ruined my business on Fiverr, back then, I was worried. Saying that I experienced fear and loathing would be exaggerating, but hey, I'm a writer and a blogger, so I'm allowed to exaggerate.
Anyway, here's what happened: I discovered that I got a 1 star rating for an About Us page I've written for a client. No explanation, no modification requests, nothing. My first impulse was to answer his feedback with my own 1 star rating, explaining that the buyer never even tried to communicate after placing the order, and that he sent me very little information to begin with. I calmed myself down and messaged the buyer instead, asking about his reasons and why he didn't request me to revise the page. He said he thought about asking for a modification, but the page was terrible, it had numerous grammar errors (actually, there was a single typo), the vocabulary was terrible, it was useless to his company (all of this written in not so good English). So, I do the next smart thing and initiate the mutual cancellation, apologizing for wasting his time and offering a refund because my writing was useless to him. That would be it, i thought.
It wasn't. He refused the cancellation. They were going to use some parts of the page I sent him, he said. Some parts of a 296 words page? I didn't ask him that, of course; that would have been unprofessional. Instead, I asked him to remove the negative rating, because the page wasn't so useless, after all. He accepted, but discovered the option to do so was gone. So, I asked him to contact Fiverr Customer Support (I did the same myself), because at that point, that was the only way to remove the bad rating. He did, and I sighed with relief, thinking that it was over.
It wasn't.
He rated the work I sent him with 4.5 stars. It's not a bad rating as such, but it still lowered my overall rating and decreased my chances at success, or so I thought at the time. So, I patiently explained to him what the problem was, and he agreed to contact the Customer Support again. They removed his rating. Then he demanded that I write him a better page than the one I sent him. He did so much for me, he said, he deserved a flawless page. And, he would rate me based on the page I sent him. This time, he sent me more information, as well as some examples of the pages he liked. I did the page again, and I got 5 stars.
Finally.
This entire story went on for a few days. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it taught me a few things. One was not to panic about bad ratings. After all the back-and-forth, I simply can't be bothered to panic about such things anymore. Panic is useless; it's much better to move on, and to keep delivering the best work I can. In the end, the results will show, which is another thing that this experience taught me: one bad rating, or even several bad ratings, don't destroy someone's business on Fiverr. They make it a bit more difficult, but if the sellers explains their side of the story, reasonable buyers will still work with them.
And another, very important thing I've learned from experience with this buyer and several others: never, ever accept to work on the order without enough information. I've tried to improvise, or to write general pages about this or that type of business, but the buyers who are unwilling to provide me with enough information about their businesses (see what kind of information I need) tend to be unsatisfied no matter what I do. It's better to initiate the cancellation immediately with a list of questions (cancellation can be aborted once the buyers sends the answers), so that the buyer either sends the info, or accepts the cancellation and moves on.
Live and learn. I've survived, learned something, and got a story to tell.
All right, not exactly petrified, but every Fiverr seller knows what I'm talking about: the first negative review, which happened while I was still fairly new. The ARS (the 5 stars system instead of thumbs up and thumbs down) was also new, and everyone was desperately trying to keep their 100% rating. People kept saying that everything lower than 100% rating was a complete disaster for a new seller, and being new, I believed them.
Now, on other freelancing sites, a rating of 95% is excellent. I believe that time will come when the same will be true for Fiverr. However, that time isn't here yet, and while I know now that one negative rating would have just slowed me down, not ruined my business on Fiverr, back then, I was worried. Saying that I experienced fear and loathing would be exaggerating, but hey, I'm a writer and a blogger, so I'm allowed to exaggerate.
Anyway, here's what happened: I discovered that I got a 1 star rating for an About Us page I've written for a client. No explanation, no modification requests, nothing. My first impulse was to answer his feedback with my own 1 star rating, explaining that the buyer never even tried to communicate after placing the order, and that he sent me very little information to begin with. I calmed myself down and messaged the buyer instead, asking about his reasons and why he didn't request me to revise the page. He said he thought about asking for a modification, but the page was terrible, it had numerous grammar errors (actually, there was a single typo), the vocabulary was terrible, it was useless to his company (all of this written in not so good English). So, I do the next smart thing and initiate the mutual cancellation, apologizing for wasting his time and offering a refund because my writing was useless to him. That would be it, i thought.
It wasn't. He refused the cancellation. They were going to use some parts of the page I sent him, he said. Some parts of a 296 words page? I didn't ask him that, of course; that would have been unprofessional. Instead, I asked him to remove the negative rating, because the page wasn't so useless, after all. He accepted, but discovered the option to do so was gone. So, I asked him to contact Fiverr Customer Support (I did the same myself), because at that point, that was the only way to remove the bad rating. He did, and I sighed with relief, thinking that it was over.
It wasn't.
He rated the work I sent him with 4.5 stars. It's not a bad rating as such, but it still lowered my overall rating and decreased my chances at success, or so I thought at the time. So, I patiently explained to him what the problem was, and he agreed to contact the Customer Support again. They removed his rating. Then he demanded that I write him a better page than the one I sent him. He did so much for me, he said, he deserved a flawless page. And, he would rate me based on the page I sent him. This time, he sent me more information, as well as some examples of the pages he liked. I did the page again, and I got 5 stars.
Finally.
This entire story went on for a few days. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it taught me a few things. One was not to panic about bad ratings. After all the back-and-forth, I simply can't be bothered to panic about such things anymore. Panic is useless; it's much better to move on, and to keep delivering the best work I can. In the end, the results will show, which is another thing that this experience taught me: one bad rating, or even several bad ratings, don't destroy someone's business on Fiverr. They make it a bit more difficult, but if the sellers explains their side of the story, reasonable buyers will still work with them.
And another, very important thing I've learned from experience with this buyer and several others: never, ever accept to work on the order without enough information. I've tried to improvise, or to write general pages about this or that type of business, but the buyers who are unwilling to provide me with enough information about their businesses (see what kind of information I need) tend to be unsatisfied no matter what I do. It's better to initiate the cancellation immediately with a list of questions (cancellation can be aborted once the buyers sends the answers), so that the buyer either sends the info, or accepts the cancellation and moves on.
Live and learn. I've survived, learned something, and got a story to tell.
Monday, November 24, 2014
Gig Time: Video Scripts
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| A sample of an AV script |
Just like with the gig for writing About Us pages, I had some surprises with the clients. I have assumed that the clients who wanted video script had at least some idea what the AV script looked like, and that they would know, since every video has both the audio and the visual part, that they needed to tell me what they wanted for the both parts. What kind of video did they want? What did they want it to look like? What did they want it to say? It turned out that many have never even seen an AV script, or that they only thought of the audio part, or that they haven't thought about the matter at all.
Fortunately, once they received the script, everything was pretty much self-explanatory.
Another thing that surprised me was that some clients expected the script writer to make the video. While I have no doubt that some script writers also know how to make a good video, it's far from common. I've changed the gig description to add that I only write the scripts, I don't make the actual videos.
Just like with the About Us pages, I had to change the gig description several times in order to cover the most frequent issues. Live and learn.
A Fiverr buyer gave me the first opportunity to write a script for a whiteboard animation video. It was fun. It was interesting. I've learned something new, which is, in part, why I enjoy Fiverr so much. Opportunity to learn and to apply what I've learned.
These days, I write scripts for various types of videos. Whiteboard animations, animated cartoons, green screen videos, explainer videos, commercial videos, promotional videos, voice over scripts for the already shot videos... You name it (with enough information), and I'll write it. And I'll have fun doing it, which shows in the script and makes the final product look good.
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