Beware of Fiverr Scammers

I have been using Fiverr for a few things and decided to try out some services out there to promote some of my business dealings. For the most part, I have had some great results.

Then, the following happened:

I saw what seemed like a good opportunity.

So, I signed up. It seemed honest and the user put together an account for me to monitor my tweets at Message Broadcaster. Once settled, I started monitoring the tweets sent out. The Message Broadcaster even has a Tweet history where you can see where, what, and when your tweet was published.

For me, because I wanted to make sure, I clicked on the link to the apparent message and lo and behold – it was not my tweet!!! It was someone elses. So, I went through that person’s twitter stream and skimmed through to see if my message even published. It did not! So, I was like… maybe it was a glitch?

After checking 5 others, I was a bit miffed. None of them had my message. When looking at the accounts, message after message was published from the Message Broadcaster and no conversation or engagement whatsoever. Which concludes one thing – a spam account. And on top of that, only 4 clicks for my link. How and who? My own twitter stream performs better on clicks for sponsored or paid tweets.

The 120,000 followers are mini Twitter accounts with very little or no click value, nor even any influential value in social media. Why would you click on someone’s link if all they do is spam you back to back?

I have to say this was a brilliantly concocted plan. While I am sure a lot of people who have taken the same opportunity may have seen the tweet history, they may not even have gone as far to investigate if it was published or what kind of accounts were involved.

Edit: Apparently, at least 1 of my tweets went through according to the user, but as to the others, is it an error on Message Broadcast, or what?

I gave them a negative feedback as well as a negative letter. While they say the accounts were real, they are not… not if there are no real people engaging in conversation. Every single one of those spammy followers that were obtained have no real value.

By the way, shortly after my account with Message Broadcaster was deactivated so I could not go back and get screenshots for proof, which is another step in the negative for user fullviewmedia.

It might be $5, but I am blogging about this to make people be careful of what they are getting into on sites like Fiverr.

What can you do that I should have done before I took this failed opportunity?

1. Ask some examples of Twitter users that will be tweeting your message through their streams.
2. If there are any negative feedbacks, try contacting one and asking them what happened in their experience.
3. While Fiverr allows anonymity, social media marketing relies heavily on company and businesses to be more transparent. Make sure you trust them before going into the transaction.
4. Ask to have your messages manually tweeted instead and that a copy of the tweet is sent to your transaction page. If they cannot do this instead, then do not take the transaction. Just because they put the opportunity to have a way for you to have an easy method to view your tweets history, does not always mean it is true… especially in what happened in my case.
5. Use bit.ly or Tinyurl or another URL shortener site that allows you to monitor your links clicks.

Have you had any bad transactions on Fiverr? What did you learn that you can share with others?