Thank you to everyone who has followed the progress of this project over the past 30 days.
Similarly, this article was excellent value for money, based on the price
$5 will get you a bizarre and random greeting, that you could use for birthdays, or as a personal message to a friend - the possibilities are endless
The sign I had sent to me from Hollywood was worth the $5.
It gave me a little anecdote to open up a presentation with in Bucharest, and as it was to the biggest audience I have ever presented to, I was glad I commissioned the photo
This final gig comes from elitetrainingss wearing his slightly disturbing horse head.
I've also put up a Pinterest board with all the different gigs at: http://pinterest.com/dirktherabbit/the-fiverr-project/
Thanks to fiverr hosting everything, the whole process was so, well, normal.
2 - Buying likes and followers is laughably cheap.
Last year I paid $30 for my 10k Twitter followers. That buys six 'gigs' on fiverr.
In fact, for the price of a pint, here are just some of the things you can buy:
145 genuine votes by real people to any contest
Reshare any video or photo on a Facebook wall 300 times
2500 unique visitors sent to a website via Twitter (you know…just in case anyone is questioning the effectiveness of your social media marketing!)
Or, if you want to go really big, this seller will give you 20,000 Instagram followers
Be it traffic, likes, comments, or followers - if you want it, it is there for you.
3 - It's easy to get away with
The fake follower industry has become more sophisticated.
One of the things I noticed on fiverr, was that a number of sellers are now offering "slow likes". For instance, the 10k+ YouTube views I ordered were spread out so as not to arouse suspicion.
Other than me telling you that I bought them, there is nothing to suggest that these views aren't actually genuine, and that I didn't somehow send them to the video based on my undoubted PR genius.
(Above image - from London In Flames via Creative Commons)
Day 29: Two weeks and $40 got me a Klout score of 60
Back in April I had a Twitter conversation with @wildebees about fake social media followers. I mused whether I could artificially acquire a Klout score of 60 in a month, for less than $50.
How I did it
Here is how I increased my Klout score from 22 to 60 in a fortnight:
I bought 12,000 Twitter followers
I bought 500 Instagram followers and 500 likes (this gig over-delivered and I ended up with 1000+ followers)
I bought 5500 retweets
I ordered another 10,100 retweets and favourites from 10k+ accounts (all of which as it turns out have zero followers and exist purely for this job)
I then bought in a single retweet to 100,000 followers
I bought another 6000 Instagram likes
I then paid for 25 custom Instagram comments (which bizarrely came with no accompanying likes meaning my pic has 25 comments but no likes)
And finally, on Thursday I ordered a gig promising 8000 retweets from individual accounts (see above image) This was the job that pushed me over the finishing line
Actually getting from 22 to a respectable 50 was easy.
I faced a slight challenge in getting those final ten points. It gets more difficult to game the system the higher you get, though as I've proven it can still be done with moderate effort.
My Klout score has since dropped slightly over the past 12 hours back down to 59, but if I was really bothered, I'd obviously be keeping a closer eye on things and would make sure it stays up.
I also think that with a bit more effort (such as making @dirkfiverr tweet more) and smarter shopping I could have ended up with a slightly higher score, at a cheaper cost while also shaving off a few days from the process.
Why does this matter?
Sentiment scoring systems like Klout do matter. For example:
"Influencers" get access to all sots of goodies ranging from NBA passes to 4G phones through schemes such as Klout Perks
It could impact on your chances of getting a job (read the first part of this Wired article)
Various travel perks are on offer. In theory I could get into an American Airlines lounge with @dirkfiverr's score
Klout scores are built into social media management tools such as Hootsuite used by a lot of brands. If you kick up a fuss on Twitter, the person at the other end can see whether you have a high Klout score or not
Indeed, according to this ABC News piece (Klout CEO Joe) "Fernandez imagines a day when your Klout score will automatically prompt the usher at a show to come pull you out of line and take you to a VIP area or have a hotel upgrade your room."
At this point I should say that I personally don't think that sentiment scoring and influence systems are useless, quite the opposite actually.
In line with other marketing agencies, we use them to benchmark work and campaigns.
As an internal resource (seeing if a score has increased or decreased on a month by month basis) and in reports, I find systems like Klout very helpful.
However, as I've shown, if you use Klout as an ego metric, you can buy your way to the top without too much fuss, and if ever you see a Klout score on someone's CV I would treat it with a pinch of salt.
What about Kred and Peerindex?
Finally, I worked on my Klout score, because it is by far the market leader.
What about competitors Peerindex and Kred? Peerindex as yet hasn't analysed my most recent tweets (i.e. the ones that had 10k odd retweets) so its too early to tell.
Unlike Klout, Peerindex doesn't link with Instagram where I concentrated a lot of my efforts, so arguably its not a like with like comparison anyway.
Kred, which also doesn't pull in Instagram, has two scores - influence and outreach. My 'influence' is a high 784/1000.
However, my outreach is stuck at 1 out of 12, which is accurate as my fake @dirkfiverr account engages with no one.
Over the past ten days, I've concentrated a lot on the buying followers side of fiverr - and on that I have some more posts in the pipeline as I wind this blog up.
But, that is only one side of the site. Just as big, if not bigger, is what you might call the random and bizarre jobs side.
His name was singer
and he owned a Rabbit
He had a gift for words
and pictures
and people
He had a name neither common nor unheard of
He had a profession neither unheard of nor common
He had a curiosity about the creativity of others
one might say
he wondered
about everyone else's rabbit holes.
Thanks Sherlock Madame! Her other gigs include writing you an uplifting and encouraging letter and posting it via snail mail, every week for a month.
I've already bought 'Dirk Fiverr' some Instagram followers and likes, so I thought it was time to get in some comments about how amazing his collection of spoon photography is.
Have you made a complete mess of your job, to the extent that no one will give you a reference? No problem, there are people on fiverr who will sort that.
After creating a LinkedIn profile and acquiring 25 connections, I needed a recommendation for "Dirk Fiverr".
And unlike the pretty suspicious looking connections I got yesterday, the endorsement I got sent back would look good on any CV:
"I had the opportunity to work with Dirk Fiverr and I believe it is vital to let everyone know what an exceptional professional Dirk is.
I have been astonished with the consciousness and willingness to go the extra mile so that it is made sure that the client is left satisfied, whether it is a big or small project!
Dirk is a signature for success, being a really hard-working, polite and innovative expert.The value for money is definite and I highly recommend anyone to give Dirk a chance and produce awesome results!"
Well thanks "Anna"!
I guess strictly speaking Anna is telling the truth, about 'working' with Dirk Fiverr, as he paid her to do a job, which she delivered.
Still, Anna must be an incredibly good judge of character to have discerned that Dirk Fiverr is an 'exceptional professional', and a 'signature for success' from the brief contact she had with him.
NB - This job was actually a bit more expensive than the other gigs, $5 got me an excel spreadsheet of people to connect with on LinkedIn and an extra $5 got me the recommendation.
As I posted yesterday I'd like to see if a completely fictitious (and realistic looking) LinkedIn profile could be created with all connections and recommendations bought, and if I could get to job interview stage with it.
Last Friday I posted the 'puppet dance video' I ordered from fiverr. It got less than 10 views on YouTube.
Interestingly, I've also noticed a number of sellers offering 'slow likes'.
Basically to avoid you getting banned or making your page appear suspicious to your peers and competitors, they stagger the likes over a series of days.
That way you can pretend that all those likes are completely natural and down to your amazing promotional skills!
Anyway, I ordered one of those a few days ago. At time of writing I'm on 8500 odd YouTube views, with the other 1.5k still due to arrive.
The other week I paid someone $5 to come up with some fictional company names. The suggestions? 'The Big Chilli', 'Rad Ads' and 'The Paper Trail.'
That seemed like a good starting point for 'Dirk Fiverr's' LinkedIn profile, as I could use these as 'jobs.'
$25 duly got me 25 contacts. OK, so they are of a pretty variable quality (Did you really go to Oxford University Rane Seema? And why are you only following me?).
But the point is, you can acquire them and had I shopped around a bit more carefully I probably would have got even more 'realistic' looking contacts.
Anyone who comes to my Dirk Fiverr LinkedIn page can clearly see it isn't serious, but it does beg the question.
Now that I know I can buy LinkedIn contacts, would it be possible to create a half way real profile, buy in contacts and endorsements and actually apply for jobs? That might be another experiment further on down the line...
Going into the 'human billboard' section of fiverr, gives you a variety of unusual and sometimes bizarre advertising gigs. Like 'jhnbnk' from Romania who will smoke your name or message for $5.
Fiverr's social marketing section includes gigs to buy website traffic, friends, followers, Facebook fans....and retweets.
I've bought two lots of 10,000 retweets / favourites. For one, I included a link to the Rabbitgram (a daily social media newsletter we produce at Rabbit) so that I could track any sign-ups.
The RTs were duly delivered. But, given that they all seem to have come from accounts with zero followers, I am sure you won't be surprised to hear that they resulted in no additional subscriptions.
Fiverr includes a number of copywriting gigs, so I decided to give one a go.
In particular, since this week I am buying 'Dirk Fiverr' likes, retweets, friends etc for $5, I thought why not get Johnnyvick to write 500 words about the whole phenomenon.
For $5 / £3.50, I have to say, what he did is pretty good. His post is below:
On Fiverr in particular there are some that promise to deliver thousands of followers for only five dollars. The questions is how realistic is this, can one actually purchase legitimate followers and likes for a price?
You get what you pay for
It turns out that in a sense yes, you can buy followers and likes. Unfortunately, the way it is often done is through the use of fake accounts.
Many users on the Fiverr forums report that they initially will get all of the followers they were promised, but within a week they are gone. This is because Facebook and Twitter have software in place that detects and flags accounts it expects to be fake and eventually deletes them.
So the majority of accounts generated to follow you after you make your purchase will be flagged and deleted. The general consensus is if an offer seems to good to be true it probably is.
Realistically, if one wants to buy followers and likes it is probably going to be in much smaller numbers than the thousands. It can be argued even this is a waste of money.
In the case of businesses buying likes and followers it might not actually increase any substantial business. This is because the followers purchased have no real interest in the business so they are not likely to buy any of the products or services advertised.
Benefits of “fake” followers
Not all share the sentiment that fake followers are a waste of resources. Many argue the fake followers are worth it for the added credibility they add to an account.
People are more likely to follow a person who already has a some people following them. It is human nature. Buying likes on Facebook has an even bigger advantage.
The software used on the search engine for Facebook ranks pages with the most likes higher on the results listing. This will then allow the business to potentially reach more customers who may be “real” fans and actually purchase the product or service being sold.
Advertising to boost fans
There is another strategy being used by companies that have more resources available in order to increase their followers and likes. Rather than using the direct method of using an agency or individual from a site like Fiverr companies use the indirect method of advertising.
This is more applicable on Facebook and is even encouraged by Facebook.
Companies can purchase add space from Facebook that targets individuals who may actually be interested in what the company is offering. The pros of using this method are obvious and the only con is it is much pricer than directly purchasing likes and followers.
Considering the pros and cons
One can see it is in fact possible to gain followers and likes in exchange for money, but it is not as simple as paying five dollars and waking up the next morning with thousands of legitimate new fans.
Companies must weigh the pros and the cons and decide how much they want to budget before deciding on whether or not they want to purchase followers and what method they wish t utilize.
In addition to buying followers and 'friends', fiverr has plenty of gigs offering to send visitors to your site. So I gave it a go, using this blog as a test.
Well, close enough I suppose. Two further observations:
1 - The vast majority of "visitors' came from China / Taiwan. My top five cities for this blog are now Beijing, Taipei, Guanzhou, Shanghai and Shenzen. huān yíng!
2 - That wasn't a surprise, but what did surprise me was the bounce rate and time spent on site. In normal circumstances, I would use these two metrics to assess whether anyone actually hangs around to read the content.
In the event, my bounce rate according to Clicky is 20% - that's low. And my average time on site is two minutes nine seconds - that's high. Consider that on average most visitors spend less than a minute on a website.
Sure, I know full well that my 4,000 new Chinese visitors are not 'real.' Still, I had expected to see a bounce rate of 90%+.
I guess the people selling these gigs realise that this wouldn't look too good on someone's site stats - in plain English, they are out to help you cheat.
What does $5 buy you on social media these days? How about 12k Twitter followers?
For my latest gig I asked Viviann29 to send them my (or rather @dirkthefiverr's) way. Apparently they stay (we'll see) and they are "real look. " At least there is no pretense that they are actual people.
My fake account already had 6k followers after an earlier experiment. Now that I'm up to almost 20k, let's see what I can do with my new fan base.
Yesterday 'Dirk Fiverr' had four Facebook friends. Today he has 57 courtesy of a gig I bought.
Fiverr features a number of sellers who will make you look more popular by having people friend your personal account. For example, 'Nucamsuper' will give you 60 Sydney / Melbourne friends and "all are women."
So let's have a look at my new 'friends'.
First of all we have the imaginatively named "Yuk Philip." Yuk has 283 friends, 21 of which she shares with me! Funny, that right?
Yuk's posts essentially consist of a series of one line cod-psychology sayings. For example on Friday we had "love is fragile, and we're not always the best care-takers."
Yuk likes an awful number of pages, 2987 to be exact. Which makes me think that I may be seeing Yuk again in some of the other follower gigs I'll be buying over the next week or two.
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
stormborns
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
vaporwave