What do you hate most about SEO services on BHW?

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alwaysinvisible said:
I have never bought anything from the marketplace. However, I can tell you why: I have an aversion to bullshit.

I read through an entire thread before deciding whether or not to purchase a service. It doesn't matter if it's 55 pages - I read through all of them. I want to know how you handle people who complain about your service, how many complaints you've had and whether or not your quality of work has slipped. It's very easy to go above and beyond for the mods or for those who ask for reviews, and even your first few clients. But after you get slammed/overwhelmed, that's a real test for what kind of business person you are and what kind of products you provide.

In the end I see 99% of services are about making money. The cheap $3 for 250 PBN posts are all about getting stuff done en mass, versus taking the time to give each customer the attention their order deserves. The small 1% that seem legit have prices that reflect the fact that they are going to give you quality work. I'm willing to pay for quality. If you're telling me you charge $1 per article, I'm going to avoid you like the plague. If you tell me you charge 5-10 cents per word, I'm going to seriously consider you, because I believe in paying for a top-notch service. You get what you pay for.

I see the Marketplace is just a mess, and I'm new here. It doesn't change the fact that BHW is a great place, but I'm not putting down my money to pay sellers who are obviously only in it for the money. I earned my money through hard work, and if I give it up it's going to be for someone else who is going to work hard for me.

That being said, I'm not going to chance it when so many people are using the same old tactics. I see too many threads where people fail to deliver services, treat their customers like crap, act completely unprofessional, flat out lie about the problems they're having, and still won't do the ethical thing like close the thread until everything is sorted out. The TAT especially bothers me - if it's going to be late TELL THE CUSTOMER IT'S GOING TO BE LATE. Don't just make up excuses or avoid them or only answer them when they publicly call you out on your shit.

I think we need to have a business ethics class on BHW. Seriously.
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This is one of the best posts I've read, today. Excellent feedback, and I completely agree. It absolutely sucks to be on the receiving end of a crappy service, only for said crap ( poor quality of service / turn-around-time excuses ) to even be acknowledged, when I call the seller out on his BS.
 
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alwaysinvisible said:
I have never bought anything from the marketplace. However, I can tell you why: I have an aversion to bullshit.

I read through an entire thread before deciding whether or not to purchase a service. It doesn't matter if it's 55 pages - I read through all of them. I want to know how you handle people who complain about your service, how many complaints you've had and whether or not your quality of work has slipped. It's very easy to go above and beyond for the mods or for those who ask for reviews, and even your first few clients. But after you get slammed/overwhelmed, that's a real test for what kind of business person you are and what kind of products you provide.

In the end I see 99% of services are about making money. The cheap $3 for 250 PBN posts are all about getting stuff done en mass, versus taking the time to give each customer the attention their order deserves. The small 1% that seem legit have prices that reflect the fact that they are going to give you quality work. I'm willing to pay for quality. If you're telling me you charge $1 per article, I'm going to avoid you like the plague. If you tell me you charge 5-10 cents per word, I'm going to seriously consider you, because I believe in paying for a top-notch service. You get what you pay for.

I see the Marketplace is just a mess, and I'm new here. It doesn't change the fact that BHW is a great place, but I'm not putting down my money to pay sellers who are obviously only in it for the money. I earned my money through hard work, and if I give it up it's going to be for someone else who is going to work hard for me.

That being said, I'm not going to chance it when so many people are using the same old tactics. I see too many threads where people fail to deliver services, treat their customers like crap, act completely unprofessional, flat out lie about the problems they're having, and still won't do the ethical thing like close the thread until everything is sorted out. The TAT especially bothers me - if it's going to be late TELL THE CUSTOMER IT'S GOING TO BE LATE. Don't just make up excuses or avoid them or only answer them when they publicly call you out on your shit.

I think we need to have a business ethics class on BHW. Seriously.
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I think the biggest thing is that IM, perhaps more than other fields, is full of dreamers whose moms told them they can be anything they want to be. That's why we constantly have people coming in wondering why they're not on the first page of Google for some godawfully competitive KW, and then expecting that some $5 service is somehow going to change that. Meanwhile, people with that same mentality start offering services they know nothing about. Seriously, at least once a week we see someone stroll into the Blackhat SEO or Making Money section asking us how to do SEO now that they've somehow convinced a handful of clients that they can do it.
 
neverquitting said:
I think the biggest thing is that IM, perhaps more than other fields, is full of dreamers whose moms told them they can be anything they want to be. That's why we constantly have people coming in wondering why they're not on the first page of Google for some godawfully competitive KW, and then expecting that some $5 service is somehow going to change that. Meanwhile, people with that same mentality start offering services they know nothing about. Seriously, at least once a week we see someone stroll into the Blackhat SEO or Making Money section asking us how to do SEO now that they've somehow convinced a handful of clients that they can do it.
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I absolutely agree with this. People don't seem to understand that running a business takes work. There is a way to run a business in order to keep clients returning, and most of the people in the marketplace don't know how to run a business. They just see the fact that they can make some money and they dive in head first. It's like jumping off a diving board when there's no water in the pool. If you do that, you're going to have a bad time.

It takes training to run a business. If people tried the crap that they pull in the Marketplace irl, they would go out of business. It used to be common sense to cater to your customer and be courteous to them, but now it's like this is a foreign concept. Are you really that dense that you don't understand that lying to your customers isn't appropriate?

I feel like I should write an eBook and give it away for free on how to run a Marketplace thread - and an internet business. Except that might be a complete waste of my time, because people probably wouldn't even download it, let alone read it.
 
janist said:
If you run a real business within the EU you need proper documentation, a PayPal receipt won't cut it with the tax office.
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Not sure what EU country you're in but I'd have to disagree with this point. I have a LTD Irish company and PayPal receipts have always been more than enough for the tax man there when companies don't provide a formal invoice.. if the PayPal receipt states what the purchase is for there is no issue. A good accountant will be more than able to take care of the rest..

I get what you're saying though.
 
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The thing that pisses me off the most is being scammed. There is no control on BHW and anyone can throw in for a VIP badge and pull thousands out of people. James Franklin (aka labs8vivek) is prob the latest to pull money from me and not deliver anything. So many assholes in BHW to be honest, I wonder how many millions were lost from this forum alone not having any quality control.
 
There are people selling $200, $500, $1500+ single links on here, so there is certainly a market for higher priced services. Those of us running higher end legitimate sites, are the buyers of those kind of services. Think about the kind of clientele you want to work with, the kind of people who buy $5 links, or $500 links. Can you make more money selling the $5 links, maybe, but then you have to deal with the kind of people buying them.
 
t0mmy said:
Not sure what EU country you're in but I'd have to disagree with this point. I have a LTD Irish company and PayPal receipts have always been more than enough for the tax man there when companies don't provide a formal invoice.. if the PayPal receipt states what the purchase is for there is no issue. A good accountant will be more than able to take care of the rest..

I get what you're saying though.
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Sorry for being unclear. It's enough to justify the purchase to the tax office, that's true. But keeping the new EU VAT regulations that have been implemented in 2015 in mind, to get VAT back/deduct VAT you need a formal invoice. In the end, we all hate to pay more taxes than we have to, right? ;)

Having said that, I know that this is most likely not applying to most people on here and that we are in the minority, it's just a big pet peeve of mine. Guess, we Germans just love rules and structure.
 
Fake Review, Panda Penguin Safe, Matt Cutts Approved, Google Loophole and rank your site in #1 within 3 days and then tell, the loop hole got fixed :D
But, it will display on #1 until the month end.
 
I wouldnt say marketplace is full of shit as mentioned by some here. Marketplace does have good services too. I have tried some SEO services with higher budget obviously and they have been fruitful to me. If you expect page 1 rankings at $5, you should better read about SEO first. There are good services and I would say there is no thread which would be difficult for you to judge before making a purchase. You can read and know if its a good service or are just fake reviews. Also, lurking around the forums help you to recognize people and when you see their reviews, you could know the legitimacy of the thread.

It has scopes to be made better and I wouldn't say we have a better marketing brain than Damien and other respectable mods here, LOL. They know the pros and cons and they know how to drive the forum and make it a better place. Recently, I saw many threads slammed. So, I think there are periodic clean ups too. Also, I think if we want to make BHW a better place, we could come up with suggestions rather than having a complaining tone. I have used freelancer and if we could have ratings as them, it would be great but some part of me thinks it wouldnt suit here.

Yeah, again those trendy catchy designs are good to look at but grab the juice from your brain rather than your eyes when purchasing :D
 
NO report because they don't wanna expose their network.

I don't get. Expose it to who, your customers? Are we gonna tell Cutts about your network? I bought a few services, but the more I buy, the more I realize that I just threw my money into the wind. There is a few good ones, but nothing special.
 
I also have another bad gripe with sellers.

Those that refuse certain niches, I am working in about 10 spaces at the moment and finding links are hard. The niches are:
- Earthquake resistance office equipment
- Austism self defence
- Penis implants
- self adhesive flooring
- nudist casinos
- lonely swingers
- how to get AIDs
- black people protection vests

Sellers just flat out refuse these niches, why?

They are gimps
 
Not Ste Hughes said:
I also have another bad gripe with sellers.

Those that refuse certain niches, I am working in about 10 spaces at the moment and finding links are hard. The niches are:
- Earthquake resistance office equipment
- Austism self defence
- Penis implants
- self adhesive flooring
- nudist casinos
- lonely swingers
- how to get AIDs
- black people protection vests

Sellers just flat out refuse these niches, why?

They are gimps
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Sellers are keeping those lucrative niches un-saturated so they can bank themselves. That's how they can afford getting sponsorships from the latest movies.

To be serious, I agree with others on how silly and unprofessional it looks violating copy rights to market your product. Doesn't make me think those sellers are in it for the long term.
 
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Not Ste Hughes said:
I also have another bad gripe with sellers.

Those that refuse certain niches, I am working in about 10 spaces at the moment and finding links are hard. The niches are:
- Earthquake resistance office equipment
- Austism self defence
- Penis implants
- self adhesive flooring
- nudist casinos
- lonely swingers
- how to get AIDs
- black people protection vests

Sellers just flat out refuse these niches, why?

They are gimps
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Sigh, it was going so well. I'm starting to think you have a timer in your head that toggles "hyperactive mode" whenever you've been sensible for too long.
 
sam3724 said:
I wouldnt say marketplace is full of shit as mentioned by some here. Marketplace does have good services too. I have tried some SEO services with higher budget obviously and they have been fruitful to me. If you expect page 1 rankings at $5, you should better read about SEO first. There are good services and I would say there is no thread which would be difficult for you to judge before making a purchase. You can read and know if its a good service or are just fake reviews. Also, lurking around the forums help you to recognize people and when you see their reviews, you could know the legitimacy of the thread.

It has scopes to be made better and I wouldn't say we have a better marketing brain than Damien and other respectable mods here, LOL. They know the pros and cons and they know how to drive the forum and make it a better place. Recently, I saw many threads slammed. So, I think there are periodic clean ups too. Also, I think if we want to make BHW a better place, we could come up with suggestions rather than having a complaining tone. I have used freelancer and if we could have ratings as them, it would be great but some part of me thinks it wouldnt suit here.

Yeah, again those trendy catchy designs are good to look at but grab the juice from your brain rather than your eyes when purchasing :D
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Much appreciated. Ideas are always welcome - some aren't workable but there have been some genius suggestions that get implemented wherever possible. I won't shut down criticism as long as it's honest and helpful but when threads become abusive or devolve into a rant, it's not just affecting us, it affects all the reputable sellers who work hard to provide good-quality, reliable services.

I think your point about knowing the basics first is a good one. We do our best to help out newbies - we were all new once - but using these services does depend on having a core knowledge and an interest in the subject that makes you want to experiment, tweak and play around. Uninterested newbies who think this is an get-rich-quick scheme won't ever develop the critical thinking to make informed judgements and there's only so much hand-holding we can do. For example, I've told too many people that throwing a 100k spam blast at their brand-new, much loved money site is not a good idea but many will do it anyway because I'm not saying what they want to hear or they think they've got a different angle.

The balance we aim for is one where the buyer gets accurate information on the purchased service and it's up to them to decide if it's suitable for their needs.
 
Apricot said:
Much appreciated. Ideas are always welcome - some aren't workable but there have been some genius suggestions that get implemented wherever possible. I won't shut down criticism as long as it's honest and helpful but when threads become abusive or devolve into a rant, it's not just affecting us, it affects all the reputable sellers who work hard to provide good-quality, reliable services.

I think your point about knowing the basics first is a good one. We do our best to help out newbies - we were all new once - but using these services does depend on having a core knowledge and an interest in the subject that makes you want to experiment, tweak and play around. Uninterested newbies who think this is an get-rich-quick scheme won't ever develop the critical thinking to make informed judgements and there's only so much hand-holding we can do. For example, I've told too many people that throwing a 100k spam blast at their brand-new, much loved money site is not a good idea but many will do it anyway because I'm not saying what they want to hear or they think they've got a different angle.

The balance we aim for is one where the buyer gets accurate information on the purchased service and it's up to them to decide if it's suitable for their needs.
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This is a huge one! One that myself and I've seen a few others turn clients away for especially in the blacker services.. For example some new folks will come along looking to buy 100s of high metric sape links to their new money site or worse still to an important clients site.

If we even get a sniff of that scenario they are swiftly told to go educate themselves first before purchasing! This may cost a seller some business but an educated buyer will save a seller a lot of headaches on down the road!

Sadly there is but a handful of sellers here that play by those rules.
 
Using Terms such as Penguin Safe, Google Safe, Panda Safe, 100% White Hat, etc etc!
 
Just thought I'd leave my 2-cents and say I 100% agree with the observations and recommendations everyone's made. The BHW marketplace has the potential to be awesome, but it's currently a minefield.

Unfortunately, I remember a thread not too long ago where people aired their grievances, but nothing ever came off it. Here's hoping this latest 'movement' will some spur some real changes.
 
+++ Your posts would be the best to start reading for a noob, very detailed and descriptive and touching exact points one needs to know. When Apricot mentioned about the forum doing much to help noobs read, your pile of posts would be at the front to be compiled into an SEO ebook :D I would love them coming, a charm to read :)

t0mmy said:
This is a huge one! One that myself and I've seen a few others turn clients away for especially in the blacker services.. For example some new folks will come along looking to buy 100s of high metric sape links to their new money site or worse still to an important clients site.

If we even get a sniff of that scenario they are swiftly told to go educate themselves first before purchasing! This may cost a seller some business but an educated buyer will save a seller a lot of headaches on down the road!

Sadly there is but a handful of sellers here that play by those rules.
Click to expand...
 
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