Flaming Undies? Just what is "Brief and Match" on Fiverr?
Depending on your current status as a seller on Fiverr, you may have seen a new little toggle switch appear near the top of your Gigs list page, that says, "Get Briefs." For everybody who thought this referred to ordering underclothing, since Fiverr hasn't explained it very much yet.
If you think Fiverr's new "Brief and Match" feature sounds a little like it's intended to set someone's shorts on fire, you're probably not alone. What's it really all about?
First off, if you go to your Gigs list page and don't see the little toggle near the top, don't worry. Fiverr is rolling this out slowly, and I suspect it's mainly going to the more established sellers so far. In fact, as of the time of this Gig Doctor, it's so new that there isn't a whole lot of documentation out on it. Fiverr does have one page explaining it to buyers though, and one page explaining it to sellers. I've also spoken to my Fiverr success coach about it, and taking all those things together, here's what I can tell you about it so far.
The best way to start is to put it in perspective a little. Another Fiverr feature, Buyer Requests, has been around for years. It's a fairly wild-west, undisciplined area where anyone needing services performed can fill out a form indicating the category of service, an asking price, and giving a description of what they need. I say "wild west" because what these folks request is sometimes bizarre or outrageous, and often what they expect to pay amounts to hiring on as slave labor. Needless to say, a lot of sellers are less than thrilled by what's listed on there...though a patient person with some time on their hands CAN find some good opportunities on there if they take the time to really look, and answer as many as they can find that are a good match with their abilities and pay expectations.
Fiverr knows as well as we do what a mixed bag Buyer Requests is, and their new "Brief and Match" service is designed to help elevate the experience for both buyers and sellers. Not in place of Buyer Requests, at least not at this time but as a service that runs parallel to it.
Here's how it works.
Let's start on our end. If we have access to the "Brief and Match" service as a seller, we can make ourselves available to the service by turning it on on our Gigs list page, and typing in a minimum payment amount we're willing to work for. That amount is not set in stone, by the way. It's just a starting point for discussion with the buyer. That's all we have to do. Our end is done.
A buyer who wants a service fills out a form, similar to a buyer request form, but a little more detailed...and submits it. Rather than our having to stumble upon that request in a lengthy list, we're actually notified directly that the buyer is interested in someone like us, and we're then given the chance to respond in one of two ways: We can either respond with a custom offer right away, or we can answer them with a message. In either case, it becomes a communication between you and them that happens in your inbox, the same experience as we have when someone contacts us directly to request information on our services through the inbox. The only difference is that it starts with a big notification from Fiverr that starts with, "Your Service is a Match!" and then supplies the information provided by the potential buyer.
When buyers submit a brief, and you’re a match, it’s a great opportunity as it’s a tailored lead that caters to your skillset, service, pricing, and availability. As buyers are only matched to the highest quality services and most relevant sellers, this narrows down the enormous competition in the marketplace dramatically.
This doesn't mean we're the only one under consideration, of course, so it's a smart idea to respond as fast as we possibly can if one of these comes our way...the early bird tends to get the worm on this kind of thing.
During the course of the Brief and Match communication with the seller, we'll see various status indicators.
Opportunity: This means that a buyer’s brief is currently active, and accepting offers (Time to send your offer!)
Canceled: This means that a buyer has chosen to stop getting offers for their brief (Too late to send an offer!)
Accepted: This means that a buyer has accepted your custom offer for their brief! (Get cracking!)
Closed: This means that a buyer has accepted another seller's offer (Try again next time)
Offer created: This means that a buyer hasn’t accepted any offers received but you have made an offer (You have a chance of being chosen!)
It's important to note that we aren't obligated to accept a match with a buyer. We can decline it for any reason we choose. Fiverr does plan to ASK us why we declined though, probably because the answers will help them refine future matches. Hopefully our declining offers like these won't affect our gig rankings in search...I'm not sure what the answer is to that yet.
At least on its initial rollout, Fiverr's intention here is to match higher profile Fiverr sellers with higher profile Fiverr buyers...so when the requests do come, they're going to be more lucrative, and we'll be dealing with a higher caliber of buyer, so less nonsense, and more of a professional experience can be expected. In particular, on the buyer side, the focus will be on larger companies that have project teams, rather than individuals, from what I understand.
When I spoke with my success coach the other day, Brief and Match was still not available officially to buyers yet, so apparently Fiverr is focusing initially on just getting sellers signed up and in their system, so that when they do turn it on for buyers, there will be sellers they can match them to. As a result, again, as of today, no offers are coming to sellers yet, but we can expect that to change. How often these requests come our way, and how many we will be competing with, are things probably not even Fiverr knows for sure quite yet.
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