Brief and Match is Fiverr‘s version of the more common bidding model found on other freelance marketplaces. It’s a great way to get qualified sellers knocking on your door if you use it correctly. Surprisingly, not many buyers know how to write a great brief on Fiverr. Don’t make the same mistakes – follow this guide to making a great seller brief instead!
Key Takeaways and Personal Opinions
- Fiverr’s Brief and Match feature allows buyers to create a project brief and get quotes from suitable sellers. However, it has its flaws and may not connect you with the best seller.
- Choose the right categories when creating your brief so it reaches qualified sellers. Be clear on your budget range in your description if using the flexible pricing option.
- Write a detailed yet concise brief. Avoid being vague or sounding demanding. Good communication attracts the best talent.
- Briefs that hint at potential long-term work without paying a fair rate upfront come across negatively. Compensate fairly for a test project.
- Customize any brief templates you use so sellers know you’re serious. Copy-pasting a template seems low effort and easily spotted by veteran sellers.
- Thoroughly vet any sellers who respond before choosing one. The algorithm may match you with some unsuitable ones.
- Consider also browsing listings or trying Fiverr Neo. A brief on Fiverr’s Brief and Match by itself may not connect you to your ideal seller. Put effort into finding the right fit.
How to Create a Brief on Fiverr
Before you can write a brief, let’s talk a bit about how to find and use it. If you’re already briefed (sorry – Ed.) on the basics, skip ahead – there’s still plenty of great stuff I have to share with you, including a Fiverr briefing template you can use. It gets straight to the point and tells sellers exactly what they need to hear and positions you as the type of client all sellers want to work with.
Now, let’s look at how to to actually start making a brief. Fiverr has made it as simple as possible to create a brief, starting with putting it right at the top of the homepage.
If you’re planning to order a lot of gigs or create multiple briefs on Fiverr, it’s also worth setting up the ‘Tailor Fiverr for your needs’ section. It’s essentially a short questionnaire where you fill out some basic details about your business.
How does it help? I believe that it feeds into the Fiverr algorithm, checking your information against its seller database and gigs to optimize your browsing experience by showing you recommended services that you might potentially need.
It’s completely optional, so if you prefer, you can just ignore it and start creating a brief instead.
Once you click on the ‘Create a brief to get proposals from sellers’ button, you’ll be taken to this page:
Fill out the details of your project and click continue to get to the next stage of creating your brief on Fiverr:
This is also a simple page to fill out if you know your budget and timeframe. If you’re not sure, then set a longer time frame and select ‘my budget is flexible‘ (but please write out a more precise budget!).
And with that, you’re pretty much done. Click ‘Review Your Brief‘ and you’ll be taken to a brief summary page:
Make Sure Your Brief Doesn’t Violate Fiverr’s Terms of Service
It’s a good idea to proofread and check that all the details are correct before submitting your brief on Fiverr. You should also make sure that your request is complies with Fiverr’s Terms of Service and Community Standards or it will be rejected. In some cases, you may be warned.
Yikes!
Fiverr is super-strict when it comes to its TOS, so you will want to get familiar with it before doing anything.
If you just want to jump right in, TOS be damned, just remember the following:
- Don’t request or offer contact details (email, phone, websites, social media, etc.)
- Don’t ask for illegal stuff (“Can someone help me photoshop this dollar bill?”)
- Take care if you’re in a “dodgy niche” like gambling, porn, or get rich quick
Most of this is common sense, but it’s worth checking the Fiverr Terms of Service or checking with Fiverr Customer Support if you’re not sure that your request is allowed. Tedious? Yes, but my policy is always better safe than sorry.
When you’re happy with everything, click ‘Submit and get matched‘ and Fiverr will send your brief to sellers. All you need to do now is wait for the offers to roll in.
I filled out my brief on Fiverr with a made-up job. It’s not real and it was never posted, but it does let you see what what the end result looks like. This is almost exactly what the seller will be able to see, bringing us neatly to the next part of this guide.
What Sellers See When You Send a Brief on Fiverr
Fiverr won’t send your brief to all sellers, just the ones that Fiverr identifies as the best fit for your gig. Nobody knows how the process works, other than it is driven by Fiverr’s algorithm. The algorithm will look at the categories you pick, then find sellers who match your keywords and your budget. As a side-note, sellers who accept briefs can set a minimum amount accepted. If your brief on Fiverr is for a $50 project and the seller’s minimum brief rate is $100, that seller will not see your brief.
Typically, sellers who receive briefs on Fiverr will be established with a track record for you to look through. If you want to give new sellers a chance, then Brief and Match isn’t the best choice. The algorithm will go through everything, finally picking out viable candidates and sending them a notification.
This notification is the first thing a seller will see of your brief. As you can see, it’s not very informative.
Only sellers who have opted-in to the Brief and Match program will get this notification.
Many sellers have opted out since the feature does not work very well (and tends to spam, making it hard to find other, more useful notifications).
Another problem with briefs on Fiverr for sellers is that they are often badly-written without enough details for sellers to offer a quote.
Not you, though. You’re going to write a great brief.
Despite these hurdles that Fiverr has strewn in the path of online matchmaking, many talented sellers keep Brief and Match turned on since it can be a useful source of leads. I am one of them, but in over a year of using it, I have only seen five that were aligned with my skills, worth my time, and informative enough for me to make an offer.
To put that into context, sometimes I get 10 notifications a day from briefs on Fiverr that I almost certainly know are a waste of time. When I click through, I almost always click ‘not interested’ and end up complaining about the poor quality of the lead in feedback to Fiverr.
Ultimately, I can’t stress this enough: If you want to attract the best sellers, you need to make a great brief!
Even with a great brief on Fiverr, the perfect seller for you may not be a part of Brief and Match due to the notification spam of unsuitable briefs from Fiverr.
Even those that are may not see your request. Many days, I don’t even look, because I know it’s probably going to be a waste of my time. I am probably not the only seller who does this, so it’s something to bear in mind if you find the feature isn’t performing as you hoped it would.
Despite these hurdles, you’ll still get plenty of visibility because a lot of newer sellers use this feature – and some are incredibly talented and experienced, despite their newness to the platform. What will they see next? Let’s imagine that a seller clicks on your notification:
This is a real brief on Fiverr, censored for the buyer’s privacy. As you can see, it looks like your final brief before you submit. There are a few small additions:
- Sellers can click ‘Not Interested’ to ignore your brief
- Sellers can click ‘Create Offer’ to give you a quote based on your details
- Sellers can click ‘Message buyer’ to ask for more details
- Sellers can turn off the whole feature in frustration in ‘Update your settings’
Why the Brief Above Is Not a Good One
The buyer has been clear in his description. However, there are several issues from the seller side:
- What does “flexible” mean here? Is $5,000 a minimum, maximum, or ballpark budget? This isn’t clarified anywhere
- The buyer is in the right category, but did not choose the eLearning content development subcategory. As a result, sellers in Writing and Translation who are not in this subcategory are being notified as well (I know this, because I am one of them)
- The buyer didn’t specify his niche when creating his brief on Fiverr, which means that the matchmaking feature is not focused on sellers offering gigs specialized in educational/curriculum writing.
- The deadline is set for November 2, which is today (at the time of writing). This is likely a misunderstanding of when the buyer would like to start work
This brief will most likely be cancelled (update: it was. Nobody was hired).
Unfortunately, this is the typical seller experience for Brief and Match: receiving completely unsuitable briefs. I am a writer, but I do not offer any gigs in eLearning and am not familiar with anything he is asking for. This is just one of many I will get today, and I know that all will be suffering from similar issues – unless I get lucky.
Perhaps, in the end, Brief and Match on Fiverr is no different to a romantic matchmaking app!
But it’s not luck. It’s simply buyers not filling out their brief on Fiverr correctly to their own detriment. Imagine sending out a brief where most of the sellers who see it are not competent to do the work because you didn’t take the time and care to fill it out correctly.
Whether you realize it or not, professional sellers will simply reject this brief as a poor fit, leaving opportunists to salivate over the budget with ChatGPT in hand to handle “the difficult bits”. They may even do some fact-checking, too.
After all, it is a “flexible $5,000”.
In respect, it’s like a job listing anywhere. To which I should add that no buyer should be copy-pasting their job listings onto Fiverr. Scammers do this a lot to give themselves a thin veneer of respectability, making them a red flag for the experienced and professional sellers you’re looking for.
Please, please take the time to make your brief accurate and unique to Fiverr’s quirks!
As a buyer, you should soon receive notifications that sellers have messaged with offers or requests for more information. Unfortunately I don’t have any screenshots of this, as I do not need any services at the moment, and Fiverr doesn’t offer any screenshots from the buyer side.
Outside the US? Briefs are always shown in USD on Fiverr
If your currency is not USD, the default currency for the platform, then Fiverr will automatically convert your budget into USD, which can result in prices like the one shown in the cancelled brief below.
This isn’t an issue, but it is something to be aware of. You may want to switch your currency (on Fiverr) to USD, which you can do at the very bottom-right corner of the desktop version of the website. In my opinion, a round number looks much better, especially if you want to use the ‘flexible’ option for budgeting in your brief.
Be Careful Communicating with Multiple Sellers At Once
One word of caution: there are strict spam filters, even for buyers using briefs on Fiverr. Many would-be scammers use this feature, so to protect sellers, Fiverr monitors the volume of response (i.e. how many sellers you message/respond to and how fast). If you veer into what Fiverr considers spam territory, it may block, restrict, or even disable your account.
Just take things slowly, mix your brief up a bit, and try to act like a machine thinks a human should act. To be really safe, you may want to contact just one or two sellers a day. If Fiverr gives you any buttons to use instead of responding, use those buttons instead.
Think of your brief on Fiverr as approaching a new relationship in a slow and steady fashion, rather than speed-dating. After all, you are only going to hire one person in most cases.
How to Write a Great Brief on Fiverr that Attracts Top Talent
Choose the Right Categories
If you get the service category wrong, then your brief on Fiverr will be matched with unsuitable sellers. This happens a lot and is one reason many sellers turn off briefs on Fiverr. Brief and Match is only as smart as its input, which means if you make a mistake in your choices, your brief won’t be shown to the right sellers.
Inevitably, this results in disappointment and cancellation of your brief. Unlike the eLearning brief above, this buyer has filled out his niche (‘Industry’) – but chosen the wrong category (‘Service’):
Now, it’s OK if you are not sure what category to use for your brief on Fiverr. You can guess, but you’re just going to get bad results (update: this buyer also ended up cancelling his brief).
I would strongly recommend taking a bit of time to figure this out properly. ChatGPT can be useful here – give it your brief and ask it which Fiverr category works best for your job. Don’t take its word though: check the category first! This is a simple, easy, and smart way to make sure you get your category/sub-category for your brief on Fiverr correct.
Be Careful with Flexible Pricing
If you’re not sure what your budget is, you can select ‘My budget is flexible’ option in your brief on Fiverr. It’s a good idea to mention in your brief description your actual budget range, as Fiverr unfortunately displays your flexibility as just that: your price with a “flexible”.
This does not help sellers. We need your brief on Fiverr to also tell us what ‘flexible’ means for your budget. Mentioning a lower and a higher flexibility in your brief on Fiverr helps sellers to better tailor their quote to meet your needs, and also increases seller trust that you are a ‘good buyer’ who knows what they want.
Many sellers, including me, pass on a brief on Fiverr where the budget is a vague “flexible”. It translates into “I don’t know what I want,” which is always off-putting, since Fiverr only works if the buyer knows what they want so the seller can deliver it. Help sellers to help you: tell them what you want!
Which brings us to the next part – how you write your brief.
Don’t Be Vague or Demanding (Or both!)
When you brief on Fiverr, you’re essentially asking sellers to send you a quote and timeframe for delivery so you can pick someone. A vague brief simply means that many sellers will ignore your offer or outright reject it, leaving you with messages from other sellers who have a lot of questions or may (un)knowingly be more confident than competent in their ability to do the job.
For the best results, take some time to consider what you need and make sure you add that information to your brief on Fiverr. Think of the project basics, expected deliverables, and any other essential information that sellers need to know.
Another thing to avoid is being overly demanding. Many sellers consider these to be red flags:
- Using any phrase similar to: “Please use the exact phrase ‘XYLOPHONE GECKO BOP$’ at the top of your response so I know you read it” buried in the text
- Including a long list of don’ts. It’s OK to specify that you don’t want a few things, such as AI-generated content, but when a brief on Fiverr is half stern rules, few people will want to work with you
- Mentioning prior bad experiences on Fiverr is also a no-no. Be positive – it’s the beginning of a relationship!
- Creating a “job listing” using ChatGPT – this is not only obvious, but also clues in talented sellers that you may not be a communicative or serious buyer, or even that you are a middleman
This is not a comprehensive list for red flags found on briefs on Fiverr. That would require a book! If you keep things straightforward, friendly, and concise, you can’t really go wrong.
An Example of a Good Brief on Fiverr From a Seller’s Point of View
Focus on writing a friendly and clear brief that details what you want in normal English and you’ll be fine – remember, your brief on Fiverr goes out around the world, so keep it simple!
Of course, that’s not terribly useful advice by itself. Let’s take a closer look at what I wrote in my fake brief on Fiverr in the screenshots at the top of this article:
I am looking for someone with fluent or native English writing skills who can produce blog content that is optimized for SEO and engaging for readers.
Ideally, the writer should know a lot about travelling and life as a backpacker, or be prepared to research the topics they write. I will provide topic clusters, keywords, and outlines. You are free to choose any title from the article list I will provide for this test article.
Since this is a long-term project, this brief is for one test article of 1,000. I have a flexible budget and I can pay up to $100 for each article of 1,000 words.
Please let me know your price for one 1,000 word article and your discounted rate per 1,000 words for long-term work, if you have any. Ideally, I would like this test article to be completed and ready to publish in 7 days maximum: I am looking for quality over quantity.
Please do not apply if you use AI to write your content – I am OK with using AI to research and ideate, so long as you fact-check. If you have any questions, please send me a message.
Thank you for your time – I look forward to hearing from you!
This is a clear template for a brief on Fiverr that lets sellers know a lot of things, even without knowing who I am or exactly what I want, preserving my privacy. Let’s go through them. They can see that…
- I am looking for people who read and write English at a high level
- I have a specific niche and sub-niche, without me giving away too much
- I understand SEO from my use of terms like ‘topic clusters’ and ‘keywords’
- I do a lot of the work for them (keyword research and outline)
- I let them choose a test article subject from a list to be provided
- I prefer niche expertise, but that it isn’t a deal-breaker
- I have a flexible budget up to $100, no higher
- This is a serious, paid test for potential long-term work
- I am friendly to the use of AI for research, but not for the content itself
- I am open to further questions if my brief is missing any specifics
Could this be improved?
Almost certainly!
But speaking as a seller, almost all briefs fail to include these details by being vague, but do include passive-aggressive comments about poor work in the past!
With this brief, I would expect messaging asking me to share my website among other more specific details, as well as providing me with rates and even samples. What is clear is that I am a client who is prepared and ready to start, giving freelancers the opportunity to showcase their skills in a paid trial that could lead to long term work.
Long-Term Work briefs: Don’t Make This Horrible Mistake
Incidentally, phrases like…
“if I like what I see, there’s plenty of long-term work for you”
A.N. Obvious-Badclient
…should be avoided like the plague, especially if you’re fishing for cheap one-off work on a false promise. This is the reality most of the time – which means freelancers are very sensitive about working with buyers who utter this phrase in their brief on Fiverr.
If you’re serious about long-term work, put your money where your mouth is and start the relationship professionally. Pay their full rate for a test then discuss the details of long-term work if you like what you see!
Be Careful When Using Template Briefs on Fiverr
Feel free to use this template for your own brief on Fiverr, but make sure to adapt it so that it is yours – using a template only really works well a few times; sellers notice if too many buyers are using the same template and this will put them them off applying.
Why?
It can seem as if you’re not serious about the job, or are not a good communicator. A client who doesn’t take the time to explain his job clearly and uses a template with minimal editing is a liability; without clear communication of expectations for deliverables, the job can only go wrong and leave everybody unhappy. Experienced freelancers will simply skip your brief on Fiverr.
Taking a little time with your brief on Fiverr can help you to save time and make sure that you’re not alienating good candidates. You will still get unsuitable candidates replying to your brief, but you will get more high quality sellers showing interest. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to stop unqualified people messaging you in the hope you choose them. It’s best just to ignore them, reporting them if they persist after you’ve been clear that you are not interested.
That’s really all there is to it! Hopefully, you’ll find a seller who is a perfect fit for your project. If you don’t, then searching or browsing the Fiverr marketplace is your next best bet. The good news is that you already have a brief, so if you have some questions to ask or want a chat before ordering, you can copy and paste your brief into the message box.
Wrapping Up: Briefs on Fiverr Are Useful, But Flawed
Brief and Match is the replacement for the old Buyer Requests and it serves its purpose – being better than Buyer Requests. It’s a great way to quickly get bids on your job without having to trawl through Fiverr’s exensive catalog. It’s definitely a lot easier to make a brief on Fiverr than spend hours clicking through various gigs.
However, due to the way it is set up and works on the seller side, the best seller for the job may not see your brief on Fiverr at all. Top sellers more often than not will not have the featured turned on, which means they will never be notified. Sellers who haven’t optimized their gigs for the algorithm may not be notified. New sellers who are not eligible will not be notified.
Your brief on Fiverr may sound like Fiverr is going through the entire seller catalog to find the best talent, but the reality is much more nuanced.
Even when notified, experienced sellers tend to very quickly look at briefs on Fiverr. If there’s just one thing that looks amiss or makes you seem like “hard work,” they will skip the offer (since they are already busy and can afford to be picky).
This leaves you with less picky sellers who may not be right for the job, but will try to convince you that they are. And, of course, sellers who are the perfect fit for the job will see your post, but you need to put in some work and vet sellers to make the best final choice. Fiverr’s sellers are very flighty if there’s a hint that you might be the notorious “bad buyer” of their nightmares. Don’t make your brief on Fiverr give them an excuse to take flight into the sunset.
For even better results, I would also recommend searching for sellers through the listings. If you have access to it, Fiverr Neo (Fiverr’s brand-new AI matching chatbot) may also be a good pick. If you choose to brief on Fiverr, it should just be a small part of your overall Fiverr buying strategy.
In the end, Brief and Match is as much a job interview for the buyer as well as the seller. Like all tools, the more effort you put into learning how to use it the right way, the better the results you will get. If you’re a buyer on Fiverr and have any tips that can help others to create a fantastic brief on Fiverr, please share them below – I’d love to hear them!
