Buy Blog Comments: Buyer Bewareby Teli Adlam

by Teli Adlam

Buy Blog Comments

Caveat emptor is the only thing that applies when dealing with the Buy Blog Comments service because you will not get what you paid for. Let me back up and explain.

Last year, a new service was announced. Basically, this service was akin to paying people to manually spam blogs on your website’s behalf in order to build back links. The service’s creator, Jon Warass, vehemently denied the comments would be anything but legitimate. That was later debunked when I managed to track down a few of the allegedly "high quality" comments and they turned out to be little more than gibberish.

Well, that discussion lead to a heated debate with one commenter about the viability of such a service and whether I had a right to badmouth them without actually using their service. In essence, giving them a review without actually experiencing their services first hand. I concurred with this commenter.

So, I decided to see how well their service would perform with a Lazy Affiliate style website. (I decided on this style site simply because they tend to be quick and easy and I didn’t want to invest an inordinate amount of time with this site considering I was diving into murky waters.)

I registered my brand new domain name, set up a new hosting account, added some content, modified my theme, and configured the website. After making sure everything was in order and I had a content site I would be proud to show a Google representative–to make certain they couldn’t fall back on the blackhat site excuse–I headed over to BBC and purchased their 100 comment pack for $24.99.

The BBC confirmation page explained that I would receive an automated welcome email within 5 minutes. There was no such email 15 minutes later, but I figured no problem since the page also explained a human being would be in touch within 12 hours to discuss my project after reviewing my order.



Buy Blog Comments Thank You Page

Thanks for your order

Thank you for your order, you should get an autoresponder in your email within 5 minutes. I will than[sic] personaly[sic] go over your order and make sure everything looks good. I will than[sic] personaly[sic] email you within 12 hours telling you when we will get started on your order.

That thank you page should have been a huge red flag considering how poorly crafted it is. Basically, I’m paying someone who can’t even get their own one paragraph thank you page grammatically correct to leave comments on my behalf. But, let’s not dwell on that–this is, after all, supposed to be an impartial review.

Since I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, I waited a full 7 days before sending a status update request via the BBC contact form. The thank you page, again, assured me that someone would get in touch shortly.

Thanks!

We will get back to your email as soon as possible. But for sure within 12 hours.

I also decided to take an opportunity to see what progress the site had made in regards to each search engine. Google, despite not having a single back link, had indexed more than half of the website, however, Yahoo! and MSN still showed no results. (I accidentally pinged the update services once when I started the site, otherwise, no other marketing or link building had been done.)

In all that time, not a single human visitor had arrived at the site either–I made sure to set the stats across the board to 0 so I can see whether anyone from BBC or otherwise, found their way to the site.

Fast forward another week, 10 days actually, and still no response from BBC. Not even a "we received your order and will process it shortly, but we’re a little behind schedule, sorry" email. That’s when it was time to bring out the big guns. Usually when threatened with a PayPal or credit card dispute, most merchants’ ears will perk up and they’ll get the job done because you’d be nicking their pocketbooks. Not BBC, however.

I contacted BBC yet again through their contact form and explained that I would be filing a credit card charge back if I hadn’t heard from them or received an order status update within 3 business days. But, they did not yield.

In the end, it took over a month and the only way I was able to get my money back was to file a credit card charge back (and I still heard nothing from BBC). Frankly, a whole lot of trouble for $24.99, but I figure it’s money that could have been better spent elsewhere.

Please, let my little misadventure serve as a cautionary tale for you if, despite my original advice, you’re thinking of hiring BBC. Don’t do it unless you have money to waste and the patience of a saint.

In case you’re curious, since all of the events above transpired, here is where the website stands:

* It contains no back links according to Google or Yahoo! (that’s using both link:site.com and "site.com" domain searches).
* It has been fully indexed by Google, however, it does not rank for any keywords.
* It has not yet been indexed by Yahoo! or MSN Live.
* The site has received 0 human visitors since going live.

Total initial cost of this little experiment: $44.23 + my time (I did get back my $24.99 eventually, so it really just boils down to my domain registration and hosting expense: $19.24 and my time.)

All things considered, it could have been much worse. In fact, I was planning to have the domain blacklisted for spamming, which is why I started with a completely new one on its own hosting account. At least the site is still salvageable and it’s a good niche with a decent profit potential.