Please offer input on my Fiverr experience

[bcweir]

Please note, I have changed my Vendor’s name so as not to negatively impact that vendor’s Gig.



FROM ME (posted to Fiverr vendor one week after ordering their Gig):



Vendor,



First the good news. After only a week of doing business with you, I have seen a 193 percent increase in the number of unique visitors to my website, according to my webcounter, which ONLY counts unique visitors. My visits totalled 1,503 before I purchased your gig and now stand at 4,397. As far as strictly traffic counts are concerned, excellent job!



However, I have also noticed two very odd things about my increased traffic. First of all, despite 2,894 unique hits on my website, I have had ZERO interactivity on the page. I have a free guestbook link on the front page, and I am surprised that almost 3,000 people(?) provided no feedback on the site.



Along with that, I have received 0 added sales on my website. That’s another oddity that may or may not be connected with the unusual numbers that generated lots of click traffic, but no feedback, no sales. Even just ONE percent return of click to sales ratio would have generated around 30 sales (around $240 of sales on my site).



Please tell me you’re not using an automated script or “clickfarms” on this gig. This is prohibited by search engines and Youtube and would get my site banned if I were using them.

22:09 September 28, 2014



FROM VENDOR:



Hi,



Let me explain how you receive these views:



This is an advertising network, which works similar to Adfly advertising. They have over 500 websites in their network. I’m a member with a monthly subscription and buying credits for the links I submit. Once I submitted your link, your website will be displayed in hundreds of different websites in this network within a frame with a countdown timer (same as Adfly displaying webpages). Those who visit a website in this network will see your webpage in full and the visitor need to wait until end time in the countdown timer to visit the webpage where he/she intend to go.



The frame has developed to act like a browser and pass the visitors’ data to your tracker those who see your webpage in full through the frame (E.g. When you type a website address in your browser, the browser displays the webpage in your screen and browser pass your IP and other info to the website tracker and tracker count you as a visitor).



FROM VENDOR:



The views are 100% real so it will not affect your SEO nor get banned from Google. These views are untargeted and worldwide so the reason we don’t guarantee sales or opt-in even some people reported they got sales. But these views will help you to improve your website traffic and ranking (Alexa, Quantcast etc) while advertise to an untargeted audience.



However, if you are not happy with the views I still can cancel the order and refund you.



I’m looking forward to hearing from you

Thank you



Vendor 23:10 September 28, 2014



FROM ME:



Vendor,



Kudos to you both for your transparency and honesty. I wouldn’t feel right requesting a refund when you did TECHNICALLY deliver on your promise to deliver more traffic to my website.



I don’t know much about this Adfly network, but it does prompt a few questions on my end. As I never saw or approved an ad for my business on this network, it begs the question on whether or not my business was promoted fairly, accurately, and competitively. If I had known my business URL would be submitted to an advertising network, wouldn’t it stand to reason that I should have a say in how it is presented?



My other concern is whether or not this system even ALLOWS visitors to interact with my website. You said this “frame acts like a web browser,” but if it presents it as a read-only window, it’s not even allowing these users to interact with my site even if they wanted to.



I have no problem provided needed assistance for you to deliver what I paid for, and again, I appreciate your honesty & transparency. I would have appreciated knowing from the start that my webpage would be submitted to an advertising network, so that I can be sure that my “ad” was competitive. 3 stars out of 5.



FROM ME: 14:00 September 28, 2014

I hope I didn’t come across too harshly in my previous response. I would hope that if you had a brick and mortar retail business in which 3,000 people came in, looked around, and never bought anything or asked questions from store staff or management, I’d like to hope you would ask the same questions I would.



Thank you again.