Unfortunately, its been weeks and I haven't heard back from this guy. I ordered a "custom package" which was essentially a bundle of his Keyword plus the Authority package of this thread. So, instead of giving me whatever Amazon keyword he would have normally used, I paid around double and got one from his keyword sales thread + the authority package here.
I know he was getting busy and swamped with orders.... so I told him that a TAT of 10 days would be fine. I think in 10 days he delivered a website, it might have been 1 extra, but fine with me. I'm not here to bitch about a slow TAT so I can get fully refunded . Several days later after requesting the domain to be pushed and full access to the 1 year of hosting, I was pushed the domain name.
I believe the hosting is through Vultr, but without being transferred ownership, I have no idea if the site will be up past this month lol.
Pretty much dropped off the face of the planet after I was given the log-in details. Now it looks like his website if offline as well.
My concerns:
(BESIDES THE CONCERNS LISTED ABOVE)
- Because I wanted the site to be professional and not to look "review blog-ish," he chose to use only pages and no posts. This is ok, but without categories that means two "category" pages were created. Both were set with Visual Composer to auto-add all new page links. So, any pages created need to be removed (manually) from one or both of these pages.
- When I created a blog, I discovered the "read more" link & pagination was broken (theme issue?).
- The theme has a plethora of additional problems. Although premium, almost no back-end control options for changing functionality and although it was designed for my broad vertical, the theme has 80% company features which I don't need.
- Huge issue with the theme is that I can't edit the sidebar. Nothing I do changes it, and its stuck with a default title + empty.
- The contact page contained several fields that were auto-set by the theme that should have been removed. Very 'personal' fields that would have been noticed during a one-over of the site.
- All of the pages meta-data was broken. I had to install yoast and reset a few things in order for social cards to show up.
- It took me a bit to notice this one as well, but the website was set site-wide to "<meta name="description" content="*************************** WordPress Theme" />" - So, yeah, lol.
- The logo, although pretty monetarily insignificant in all reality, was a big disappointment. The theme came with a logo in 5+ color options, and that's what I was given as a logo. Took me a bit to notice this one, only discovered it after I researched the theme I was having issues with.
- The privacy page covered all bases for Amazon, but I generally assume a privacy page/tos will be longer than 200 words. It was the required statement from Azon plus some info on cookies.
- The about page was about 120 words, pretty generic, no big red flags.
- Almost 0 interlinking of pages. Inner pages contained no links, internal or external unless they were an Amazon review page (which contained a button link). One of the two links on the homepage (I believe the only page with an internal link) was broken.
- And, as mentioned earlier, the premium package comes with a year of hosting. I was expecting to be given the account details or cpanel access. I was given FTP details when I asked, but I need to enable email forwarding and weeks later still haven't heard back. Personally, I like to use @domain emails for social accounts, outreach, whois, etc.
Looking specifically only at the main "money page"
Bad:
- 4 images included. 1 image was used 2x in a row. None of the images were edited in any way.
- The money page contained 2 <h1> tags.
- A 3 word phrase present in the H1 tag was repeated in 5.37% of the content (3k words in total).
- The page only linked to Amazon
Good:
- Amazon link nofollowed
- Decent copy (better than most Amazon sites from this forum)
The good:
- Overall, the content was good. I can't complain, this was technical stuff and the writer wasn't too off-base.
- SSL seems to be good, easy domain transfer to my account, site loads quickly, server speed good.
-------------------------------------------------------
So far, I wouldn't say I got my moneys worth, but I wouldn't say I was scammed.
The biggest issue with buying a site like this is not being intimate with the way the seller "did" things. All I know is that it WILL take me hours to replace the theme and transfer content over.
Still holding out for him to show up and right some wrongs.