NEVER buy website traffic gigs - Sellers' Dirty Tricks Revealed

[willpower_hk]

I’ve come up with an idea of writing a blog post after I got involved in another discussion thread concerning a buyer complaining about buying a illegitimate traffic gig. I post it as an image without any mention or link to my blog, so I won’t break the rules here in Fiverr Forum.



For sellers providing similar services, you’re welcome to air your opinions. Of course buyers with bad experience can also come and join this discussion.

[omniversal]

Yeah, most of the traffic gigs are just bots. And all of them say “REAL human visitors” and “no bots!” which is a lie. Honestly you can’t tell me dozens of real people each day are coming to my site from the exact same locations, with 20+ at a time all of a sudden. And then adding items to the cart but not one of them checking out.

I’ve tried them on a few sites, and it was a bad idea. Even got banned from Adsense because of one.

I’d suggest sticking to the regular methods like Adwords.

[bigvee]

100% agreed, purchased one such last month & got huge traffic without any conversation.

[david388]

Hi @willpower_hk,



Thanks for posting this! As someone who is still a relative “newbie” in the world of web traffic, etc., it’s helpful to see your post. What are your thoughts about old-fashioned posting flyers? There are gigs for those - they could even put the website address on the paper flyer!



David

[willpower_hk]

@david388,



I really don’t have much to say about posting flyers, as I’m not familiar with using this method. I guess flyers will help local businesses better than web-based businesses. Better focus on white-hat SEO and high quality content if you’re having an online website business.

[henric69]

Good and helpful article. I have to read before I also buy a “get traffic” gig. I agree wit everything. It is only scam.

[pxlstudio]

That’s a bad impact for seller’s…we shouldn’t do that.

[adsensewizard]

Valid points, but not all traffic gigs are like that.



If someone sells you 10000 website visitors, it’s obviously either bot, fake or junk traffic if it’s that cheap. And many networks don’t allow bot traffic, so there can be problems also. Quality costs. So if you want it to be quality traffic, like what you’d get from adwords, 10000 visitors would cost like $500, not $5.



So take a look at the amounts the gigs offer.



One of the gigs in your list offers 10000 total visitors for $5 and another 100 total for $5. Don’t you think quality could be explaining the difference? If you take that approach, almost ALL gigs in the traffic category would fall under your crusade against them.



At least people have reported conversions and sales from the 100 visits gig, which happens to be mine. But I haven’t heard someone getting conversions from unlimited traffic gigs. I also don’t approve fake/bot traffic, so I always warn my buyers about purchasing it.



To prove it, I offer a satisfaction guarantee. That basically means I’m so confident that results will occur, that if none do occur, I continue to work for free until results occur, or a buyer gets a refund. All sites are different though, so no seller can guarantee results, so shouldn’t purchase gigs or traffic in general in order to expect profit. Especially if the offer costs something, as not everyone has $ to spend or is even interested in spending $.



So far only a handful over the years have reported no free conversions, though. And those sites have been HORRIBLE, so it’s not a surprise. (Most of those ask people to give an email address without any privacy policy or no-spam guarantee)



And a quick traffic buying guide:



★ Does your site sell something?

Do SEO or use adwords. You often need quality AND quantity.



★ Do you want your website to mainly look popular?

Order cheap traffic.



★ Is your site free to use and does not sell anything?

Order targeted traffic. More expensive, so you get less. (Make sure the gig does not offer thousands of visitors total and contact the seller to make 100% sure it can lead into conversions)

[dexter5]

A good heads-up for newbies online. Whereas I wouldn’t consider myself a newbie, I have fallen for this sort of scam twice, on fiverr,i had to ask for a refund after non of the “23,000 invisible visitors” subscribed on my high converting squeeze page. The seller was quick to refund because I threatened to reveal the loopholes in his gig. The other was from a site that promises 1000 hits for people who “NEEDHITS” for $9.99. I always varify traffic sources to my squeeze pages and blog when I pay for it using a special software, It’s easy to tell real from scam traffic.

[mgjohn78]

Reply to @david388:
Flyers can do wonders provided that you have a simple catchy domain name that easily sticks and the flyer is posted where your target audience will see it.

Personally i have posted flyers with success and had even better success by creating around 1k flyers that i distributed directly to targeted mailboxes in my own area.

With online seo and advertising i usually generate one sale per every 5k views and with my 1k flyers i made 5 confirmed sales.

Edit: uh just noticed this topic was raised from the dead (note to self always check date before posting).

[Guest sofiefatale]

Dear @willpower_hk,

in my opinion it is quite “poor” what you are doing here.

It is completely wrong that you simplify and say all “cheap” traffic is fake traffic. For sure lot´s of offers are, but not all.

You wrote a SEO optimized article and you are promoting it here on Fiverr. Everybody is free to make his own conclusions about why you did that - some research in the Internet may help to find out why…

About traffic.

We are talking about the cheapest human traffic you can get and for example 5000 visits for 5$ don´t need to be crap. For sure it can be human, but the specs are for sure completely different than Adwords e.g. , where you get some handful visits for 5$.

Cheap traffic, “real” traffic (not keyword targeted, no fake referrers): high bounce rate, low time on page, few conversions - so what?

Expensive traffic: (highly targeted with lots of parameters): low bounce rate, high time on page, some more (never expect “high”) conversions - so what?

That makes absolutely sense imo.

There are for sure reasons for website owners to buy this kind of cheap traffic, all depends from the goal they want to reach, the kind of webpage they have and so on.

If you expect from 5000 / 5$ conversions - you are wrong - not the seller necessarily.

For sure traffic with faked referrers / keywords is senseless and for sure partially faked. But in my opinion it is up to the customer to think about that.

If you connect your webpage with Google webmaster tools / analytics / adsense, and then you “tell” Google that the thousands of visitors are coming from Google… Captain obvious.

That´s all, folks!

[willpower_hk]

Reply to @sofiefatale:

Didn’t know why this thread has revived recently. Probably it’s a good read! 🙂

I welcome your opinions, but I really beg to differ. What you mentioned seem like excuses for those low quality gigs.

1. I didn’t say ALL “cheap traffic” = “fake traffic”. I only mentioned Fiverr traffic gigs are mostly social exchange traffic and fake bot traffic.

2. I wrote an article with good content, be it SEO optimized or not. I have my own right to write and share any article. I was not “promoting” my article or blog, and I didn’t attach any external link. Sharing and chatting are what a forum is for, right?

3. You’re ignoring the cost-effectiveness, or so-called CP ratio of buying traffic. What worries me more is some ignorant buyers are purchasing these traffic gigs for a larger sum of money, let’s say $50, $100. A pile of crap is still crap.

4. Yes, indeed it’s all about the buyers. I’m just giving some tips so they can have a second thought before they blindly order these gigs. If they’re looking for increasing alexa rank, self-satisfaction, increasing bounce rate, or more dangerously, adsense clicks, they’re welcome to do so. But if I were a small business owner looking for branding, promotion, conversions, leads and sales, I’d rather spend time and money targeting audience and paying for legitimate ads.

5. There’s a reason why Fiverr is shifting its editorial focus away from these gigs, right?

6. Transparency is another problem. You seem like a “cheap human traffic generation” expert. How about telling us exactly how you or those traffic sellers on Fiverr generate traffic step by step, so that we can evaluate the effectiveness of the process? The more detailed, the merrier. I’ve asked about this to some other sellers in forum before, and the answers are all vague and shady. Are they dark secrets? How can a buyer put trust in them?

[Guest sofiefatale]

Reply to @willpower_hk:

Dear willpower,

you would have had the opportunity to „welcome other opinions“ as you say - but you don´t welcome any other opinion.

You start applauding yourself for this forum thread, then you give yourself five stars for the article you wrote, and instead of referring to what I wrote you start talking like a teacher - a real lack of soft skills, especially when you talk about yourself you say „we“ - come on man!

In your article you also say that the people, giving good ratings are not knowing what they do - more ignorance is nearly impossible.

You also ignored completely that I am a buyer not a seller, and I am very happy with several sellers here, that offer this cheap traffic, what is perfect for the needs of some projects I have and each of this Gigs is worth the 5$ starting price. (oh yes - I tried a year ago to also offer a traffic Gig, but then I made the decision to be again just a buyer, as I was not able to handle that in a reasonable way and I prefer to buy instead of sell)

In „point 5“ you are wrong - lots of trash Gigs lost visibility, others are stable - and there are reasons for that, eh?

„Point 6“. Come on again - full of arrogance: Inventing nice things like „You seem like a “cheap human traffic generation” expert“. Yes I am one of these people you depreciate - I trust these sellers - they do a job as good as you do as a seller - and if the traffic comes from traffic exchange - as you have it sooooo clear - I don´t care where the traffic comes from, if the traffic is useful for me.

I also saw that in another thread here in this forum, where I postet something you quoted my answer simply with “LMAO” as you do not agree - quite poor that, really!

So at the end, dear willpower, yes people have different opinions, different needs and all these people can find on Fiverr great sellers! It is really worth to think about!

[willpower_hk]

Reply to @sofiefatale:

What a pity this world is without any humour and irony!

Are you expecting me to embrace, to preach, and to promote your opinion when I was saying “welcoming”?

Also, if others are interested in another thread @sofiefatale is talking about, it’s here: http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/78894/selling-traffic-soon-forbidden. Probably we need to be super formal when chatting on forum, if a little irony and online slang can make somebody feel extremely upset.

By the way, glad that you’re very happy with sellers here offering cheap traffic, and I like how you don’t care about whether the traffic is useful. It’s all about matchy-matchy when it comes to buying and selling. You can definitely speak for traffic sellers here on Fiverr, but I can also argue, so does the opposite. Good luck on your future ventures!

P.S. This reply may not make sense if the author above has edited his message.

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[babibalubi]

Ok. now we edit all our threads till we/I/you are all the same 🙂

[babibalubi]

We´ve edited that!

[willpower_hk]

Reply to @silberma1976:
Indeed. I’m sure you’ve learnt a lesson from your experience. I’d rather spend that on some quality content instead.

[dukanu]

You can’t do anything about that. These are our days. Anyone can have a business, a blog, a site but most don’t know anything about SEO.
People are free to do their research before buying any service.
About the sellers as long as they follow Fiverr rules I don’t see any point to argue about the quality.

[multimaker]

I have also ordered couple of such gigs couple of days back. I am a newbie to the online marketing, I can see the traffic but bounce rate is nearly 100% so it really seems like fake and now I am worried, should I ask the seller to stop sending traffic to my website o is it ok if he keeps continue as i don’t want to spoil my website’s reputation in search engines.

I only ordered because they mention it’s white hat.

Please advise.

[willpower_hk]

Reply to @multimaker:
First, just that the seller mentions ‘white hat’ doesn’t mean it’s 100% ‘white hat’. Second, a poorly executed white hat strategy is still useless, if not harmful.

Bounce rate as a ranking factor is controversial. I could only tell you that anything unnatural or artificial will do nothing good on your site.

Whether you should ask the seller to stop sending the traffic depends on yourself. I think this forum thread has given quite good insights from both sides. It’s now time for you to judge.

[fastcopywriter]

There’s another reason you should never buy traffic, Google Adsense hates it, and without your google adsense account, your blog is basically dead.

[whitehatseo10]

Oh… hello! Buyers found that Fiverr is full of scammers who are delivering fake traffic. How long it will take until they will find the SEO services are sold by spammers?

[fonthaunt]

Reply to @whitehatseo10: They are systematically removed but that process is slow and there are many people creating traffic gigs that appear legitimate but are not. I would not be surprised if Fiverr gradually removes all traffic gigs from search and/or denies traffic gigs.

[edume]

There are many fakes services. Here’s a link to our previous posts with a further list of fake services… Also watch out for pyramid links.

http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/comment/282105#Comment_282105

http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/48453/tested-another-seller-which-ended-up-to-be-fake-again/p1

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[jamescotter879]

It is mostly from hitleap.com and auto rotator, I got 10 traffic gig buys just to check it out, all 100% fake, no coversions, no downloads, no replys. It is complete BS! Basicly faker than Hollywood!!!