Case Study: $100 on Fiverr for Link Building

[Andrew S]

The other night I spent about an hour buying up 20 of the most popular link building gigs on Fiverr just to see what kind of affect it would have on my two sites.

I will keep this thread updated with the progress - I imagine it will be about 2-3 weeks worth of results (or lack thereof) to report.

After the case study is complete and all the reports are in I will be grading each gig individually and make available each report from each gig so you can download them and check them all out for yourselves.

I thought this would be a fun little case study to do and I think you'll get some value out of it.

If you want to see the 20 gigs I ordered I've went into more detail in this blog post.

It's a solid mixture of comments, profiles, link wheels, blog posts, forum sigs, and some other stuff mixed in. Could be interesting.

Questions, comments, predictions?


UPDATE Part 2 - July 08:

I have compiled everything here - gig grading, report downloads, and some of my observations on each gig.

Also be on the lookout for my Microworkers and Mturk case study coming next week. It's going to be a doozy.

[Dan2008]

This should be interesting, looking forward to see what results you get. How is your competition for the keywords you are targetting? and how many exact monthly searches?

[Andrew S]

It's just 7 keywords across 2 domains, from a low 1,000 to 12,000 exact matches.

I will give all the data on the next update, I haven't gotten it yet (should have, thanks for reminding me)

[mmsearch]

This is a cool idea- subscribing to thread!
I have used a few gigs for backlinks in the past- but for me its been kind of hit and miss.

Really looking forward to seeing how this works out and to see which gigs are of the most benefit.

Thanks for posting.

[bhuff85]

Are these new sites or are they both aged? Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing what the outcome will be.

[brendan9971]

thank you!
i love this idea and the fact that your going to the extent to individually report on each gig will help me and many others!

really looking forward to the results!

cheers,
brendan

[SerKur]

Interesting! Good luck with with.

[Rys1976]

What was the outcome of your case study? I would love to know the results.

[NRC1983]

I've also been going through the gigs and am wondering how yours will turn out. If you are successful, could you post the sellers you used? Thanks!

[jaspast666]

pretty interested in what you will find... im pretty sure you wont find any IMMIDIATE effects but in the long term you will see some.

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by bhuff85

Are these new sites or are they both aged? Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing what the outcome will be.

These are brand new sites I'm pointing the gigs too which I am kind of worried about haha... but hey it's worth it in the name of research

Originally Posted by brendan9971

i love this idea and the fact that your going to the extent to individually report on each gig will help me and many others!

Definitely. I'm going to let you download the reports too so you can really get a good idea.

Originally Posted by Rys1976

What was the outcome of your case study? I would love to know the results.

The reports are just trickling in now, nothing to report just yet.

Originally Posted by NRC1983

I've also been going through the gigs and am wondering how yours will turn out. If you are successful, could you post the sellers you used? Thanks!

Yes certainly. I am going to give a grade for each gig for what it's worth. Definitely not going to keep anything a secret here

[areoo]

COOL ... will be subscribe but i have to agree there are some great people over at fiverr

[frogman]

It's amazing what you can get done on fiverr.
The quality is usually low, but for some tasks that's not a problem.

[markowe]

Way I see it, it's up to the seller to just do a decent job of the submission, whatever, but it's up to you to choose which type of linkbuilding is going to be beneficial. So if you ask, "Is this AMR gig any good?", what you are really asking (apart from, is the seller going to do a competent job) is - does (e.g.) AMR work as a SEO method? And of course it matters how you apply the method too, like what anchor links you order etc.

So Fiverr is just cheap outsourcing of repetitive tasks, or for services you do not otherwise have access to, it's still YOU 'doing' most of the SEO. That said, it's a way to diversify your links and try out different methods. For example, I would never have a chance to try out a Linkvana submission on a site otherwise (5 days, plenty of trackbacks, NO movement ). For $5 it's definitely worth a try. I don't doubt you will get SOME results from 20 different services at once!!

[TBInternetMarketing]

Originally Posted by Andrew S

It's just 7 keywords across 2 domains, from a low 1,000 to 12,000 exact matches.

Sounds very interesting, however the one issue I see is that it will be tough to get a true quality gauge if you are using them all against only 2 domains.

I.e, let's say your 1 domain ranks well, how can you tell which Fiverr service is performing and which one isn't?

Wouldn't it perhaps be better to narrow it down to 5 top Fiverr services and then run each one against a different domain? Then once you have established a pecking order as such, you could test out combining a few of the top performing services against one domain.

Just my thoughts, but sounds good either way.

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by markowe

So Fiverr is just cheap outsourcing of repetitive tasks, or for services you do not otherwise have access to, it's still YOU 'doing' most of the SEO. That said, it's a way to diversify your links and try out different methods.

Totally agree with you there.

Originally Posted by TBInternetMarketing

Wouldn't it perhaps be better to narrow it down to 5 top Fiverr services and then run each one against a different domain? Then once you have established a pecking order as such, you could test out combining a few of the top performing services against one domain.

Hell yes it would be way better doing it like that. This is in fact what I did when I did a case study on 6 different article syndication services (UAW, AMA, etc..). Each was on a different domain and targeted the same exact keyword that I made up. The case study was ultimately worth it in the end because I unsubbed from the service that performed the worst and I'm still subbed to the best.

But, I'm not going to do that for a handful of $5 fiverr gigs though. It is a lot of work putting together the content, making sure the density is the same, regging the domains, and then targeting an arbitrary keyword that nobody searches...in the end its all dust in the wind.

But you have a point, it will be impossible to know which service provides the benefit if there is any gained. However, I'll still be sharing reports with everyone and from that we can sort of gauge what's up with the providers.

[Dubturbo]

So if things go well are you going to rely on fivver for all your link building??

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by Dubturbo

So if things go well are you going to rely on fivver for all your link building??

No - I am still building c-class seo networks, doing syndication to services like UAW, AMA, AR, etc...plus guest posting and some other tricks up my sleeve which Fiverr doesn't offer.

IMO fiverr has the potential to be a cheap link supplement but probably shouldn't be relied on 100% in the long-term.

[masterjani]

These days UAW not give best indexing.I don't know how it affects anyway looking forward to your casestudy

[fluffythewondercat]

Great blog post, Andrew. I'm going to link to it from my site.

Glad to see you didn't buy too many tweet gigs -- those have never turned out well for me.

fLufF
--

[olivergrand27]

Very well thought and a interesting way to spend $100. I think their are some very good sellers at fiverr but i never bought backlink services so i would also be looking forward to get this report. Btw thanks for taking such a great effort and sharing it with fellow warriors.

[limon2009]

You took a risk i think, but would be very helpful for us. Thank you very much.

[MikeFriedman]

Only problem with this case study is that the only thing you will really be able to grade for these gigs is whether or not the seller completed the work. With ordering so many gigs, there is no way you can make a judgement with any kind of reliability what effect each gig had on your rankings.

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat

Great blog post, Andrew. I'm going to link to it from my site.

Glad to see you didn't buy too many tweet gigs -- those have never turned out well for me.

fLufF
--

Cool, thanks

The twitter gigs seem overpriced when you can buy tweets on the microgig sites for less.

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

Only problem with this case study is that the only thing you will really be able to grade for these gigs is whether or not the seller completed the work. With ordering so many gigs, there is no way you can make a judgement with any kind of reliability what effect each gig had on your rankings.

There are a ton of ways to judge the quality of links.

[tchung]

Very interesting idea. Have any results come in yet? Generally how long do the fiverr gigs take to do this?

[Andrew S]

So far I've gotten 13/20 reports.

I will post some SERP results on Friday.

[markowe]

Originally Posted by tchung

Very interesting idea. Have any results come in yet? Generally how long do the fiverr gigs take to do this?

Fiverr SEO gigs tend to be listed as taking 3-4 days, and the providers usually deliver at least a day before that.

[owenlee]

Awaiting your updates..

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by markowe

Fiverr SEO gigs tend to be listed as taking 3-4 days, and the providers usually deliver at least a day before that.

It taken some of them some time, hopefully by Friday I will have the 6 in progress orders delivered

[shmeeko69]

Originally Posted by Andrew S

The other night I spent about an hour buying up 20 of the most popular link building gigs on Fiverr just to see what kind of affect it would have on my two sites.

I will keep this thread updated with the progress - I imagine it will be about 2-3 weeks worth of results (or lack thereof) to report.

After the case study is complete and all the reports are in I will be grading each gig individually and make available each report from each gig so you can download them and check them all out for yourselves.

I thought this would be a fun little case study to do and I think you'll get some value out of it.

If you want to see the 20 gigs I ordered I've went into more detail in this blog post.

It's a solid mixture of comments, profiles, link wheels, blog posts, forum sigs, and some other stuff mixed in. Could be interesting.

Questions, comments, predictions?

That's a great mixture of paid gigs you have on that list and you should be knocking the the door of page one on Google in a couple of months, which is a small price to pay for the potential returns.

Mark

[Heavenstorm]

I used fiverr for my seo too...but the problem is I bought many services and I am not sure which ones are giving me the great result I am seeing lol

[tsgeric]

what an awesome idea! Thanks for doing this. I often browse fiverr and see so many SEO-related offers, but not sure what would really move things in the SERPS or how it would fit into an overall strategy. I am looking forward to seeing the results.

[areoo]

i guess you site should be ranking real good by now?

[Caper224]

Wow, I got to start paying more attention to fiverr. great share. I am anxious to see your results.

[RW]

Fiverr is definitely a hidden gem for seo services. I like to buy the high pr xrumer profile pyramids and blast my pumper sites with them, it works like a charm!

[paulgl]

You may be interested in this thread:
Warning from Google Webmaster Tools on Artificial Links

Paul

[Andrew S]

I have posted an update here.

[timpears]

I am wondering how you determine the results for each gig? How do you know how one gig did as opposed to another if the process was done simultaneously.

[JoelWong]

Great post mate! Thanks for the great investment and report. I have ordered some gigs already, hope it goes well!

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by timpears

I am wondering how you determine the results for each gig? How do you know how one gig did as opposed to another if the process was done simultaneously.

There wouldn't be any way unless I had equal strength domains to test each one on or purchased brand new domains.

It is not too difficult, however, to judge the general value of a service from the reports they deliver.

There is a lot of noise on Fiverr and I think this case study helps to identify the few gigs that may actually be worth investing it. At least, that was what I was hoping to accomplish.

[NRC1983]

Thank you for sharing this info, will be reading your blog post! I love Fiverr.

[dagaul101]

Fiverr is fantastic, you'd be surprised how much (in most cases) you could get for a fiverr

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by dagaul101

Fiverr is fantastic, you'd be surprised how much (in most cases) you could get for a fiverr

i was surprised by a couple of them

[Heidi White]

Originally Posted by Andrew S

UPDATE Part 2 - July 08:

I have compiled everything here - gig grading, report downloads, and some of my observations on each gig.

Also be on the lookout for my Microworkers and Mturk case study coming next week. It's going to be a doozy.

Be careful with Mturk - they've been terminating accounts recently for 'human intelligence' activities such as blog commenting, or asking for Diggs or other strategies designed to increase traffic or get backlinks or ad clicks.

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by MostlyHarmless

Be careful with Mturk - they've been terminating accounts recently for 'human intelligence' activities such as blog commenting, or asking for Diggs or other strategies designed to increase traffic or get backlinks or ad clicks.

Yeah I've already had a couple of my jobs killed like that

[amiramin]

hi Andrew S
also wanted to purchase some gigs, i think i will do that after you detailed report. And your feedback about those gigs.
I am keeping an eye on this thread.
And yes, Good Luck

[Heidi White]

Originally Posted by Andrew S

Yeah I've already had a couple of my jobs killed like that

Chances are your account termination notice is just around the corner then.

[RevSEO]

Nice job on the test, I've always wanted to conduct something similar with Fiverr gigs. Although instead of sending them all to my money site, I'd build a nice linkwheel.

Keep us updated on the Mturk one as well, I've used MTurk extensively before so I'd love to hear about how you set it up.

[fluffythewondercat]

Andrew, I read your followup. Thanks!

It wasn't without a tiny bit of irony, though. You complained that several Fiverr sellers used edu blogs that had already been thoroughly trashed by other comment spammers -- and yet isn't the only difference between that and the xrumer/senuke types you gave an A to is that the latter managed to poop on the blogs first?

I'm hoping next time you do this case study -- if there is a next time -- you'll hire some Fiverr sellers who leave relevant handwritten comments. It would be interesting to see which stands the test of time.

fLufF
--

[Andrew S]

Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat

It wasn't without a tiny bit of irony, though. You complained that several Fiverr sellers used edu blogs that had already been thoroughly trashed by other comment spammers -- and yet isn't the only difference between that and the xrumer/senuke types you gave an A to is that the latter managed to poop on the blogs first?

Haha that is correct

However, the one's that received A's delivered a high volume. They gave a lot of crappy links for the money.

The .Edu blog seller sent a fraction of the links under the pretense that they hold more value since they are edu. I don't think this is the case since the pages have already been shredded.

But this is of course just my opinion and my grades should be looked at with a grain of salt really.

Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat

I'm hoping next time you do this case study -- if there is a next time -- you'll hire some Fiverr sellers who leave relevant handwritten comments. It would be interesting to see which stands the test of time.

This is something I am looking to do with the crowdsourcing sites, so far I am getting better luck with them.

Originally Posted by RevSEO

Keep us updated on the Mturk one as well, I've used MTurk extensively before so I'd love to hear about how you set it up.

I sure will !

Originally Posted by MostlyHarmless

Chances are your account termination notice is just around the corner then.

I hope not