You see all these people on ebay and all over the net promising 500 customers from around 500$ to 1000$. They guarentee they will get you 500 customers or your money back.

I have heard all kinds of different answers, but im curious as to if anyone on here has tried these before and what they got out of it. I am also curious as to how this works.

There are quiet a few on ebay selling this and some of them have 100% feedback, with no complaints.

I would stay away from ads like that. Reason is if they can get 500 clients why not get 500 clients for them selfs? I mean if they are charging $10 per client that is $5000.00. So why make 1k instead of 5k?

Could you link to a few sample auctions? This is the third time I've read about this on WHT and I am curious what this is about.

Hello,
Maybe they cannot keep up with all of the clients.

Originally posted by Torith
I would stay away from ads like that. Reason is if they can get 500 clients why not get 500 clients for them selfs? I mean if they are charging $10 per client that is $5000.00. So why make 1k instead of 5k?

I agree that it would be a scam of some type, but I don't see your logic with them keeping the clients.

If they sell something for 1k, they have limited work to provide for that return. If they took the clients on themselves for 5k, then they have to provide the hosting so there is time/money involved with that as well.

I don't see any right now, but im sure there are a few people on here that know what im talking about.

Here is one i just found:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=46689&item=7508424370&rd=1

looks fishy to me maybe if someone has bought it they could reply here with what the results where like

I can only imagine it to be a scam, but I can't comment because I have not tried it.

No refunds, sounds like a scam

From the auction:


We have many methods of working it consists of targeted traffic and well managed placements we also have a huge database of leads and your site will be advertised to them you will see a massive jump in your sites traffic and alexa rankings you may think why dont we do this for our own hosting business well we did and we were huge till we decided to sell the business for $13 thousand you will get the monthly payments we could easilly use them ourselves and be very wealthy but quite simply this is not our business that is why we sold our old business so we instead offer this oppertunity to you.


That part sounds okay, but this part has me worried:


No refunds on this auction we do not gurantee all clients will stay with your business we will do the work to get the clients there it is your job to keep them with you


They really should have some sort of guarantee, when they're being paid $210. I personally wouldn't try it, too much of a risk on fraud on their part. If somebody does try, please let us know how it goes.

.No refunds on this auction we do not gurantee all clients will stay with your business we will do the work to get the clients there it is your job to keep them with you

Depending on what they term as "get the clients there" they could just send you x amount of untargetted visitors and tell you that you didn't work enough on converting the sales.

Could be an idea for a place like webhostingtalk.com, Go on ebay and offer 500 hosting clients for x amount of money.

The traffic would be sent to x hosting companies website view a advertisment on this website.

Thats the only thing I can think of, they are advertising to targeted traffic and expecting your website to do the rest.

Originally posted by JaysonH
Could be an idea for a place like webhostingtalk.com, Go on ebay and offer 500 hosting clients for x amount of money.

The traffic would be sent to x hosting companies website view a advertisment on this website.

Thats the only thing I can think of, they are advertising to targeted traffic and expecting your website to do the rest.

They say that have a large leads database, so maybe they're running some host quote service?

Go back a few of their listings and they mention the following:

Note to ebay this listing is for not just information but an actual product being downloadable software please do not remove this listing as it does not infringe new listing rules


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=46689&item=3875215782

Edit: Further down it states:

One of the option to get client for your hosting business is selling websites right here on ebay this is very simple way to get clients and you can also make additional profit on the final sale price you will get all the scripts templates software to do this upon winning this auction this in itself is worth $2745 you will list the site here on ebay for sale at $1 no reserve and whomever purchase also takes up the hosting at $your price per month to encourage bidder you can also offer a month free hosting. The other methods listed are promotion site especially for hosting business's were you can get clients daily and all my other methods they have worked for me and will for you to.

Yeah, these are all either:

1.) Files with suggestions on how to advertise.
2.) Advertising accounts - they send a bunch of visitors, and tahts about it.

They are probably running a free hosting service. So they have 1000 registered accounts and they are selling it to you for $1000. Great business.

You'll more than likely get spamvertized and then you'll end up getting your site blacklisted everywhere. Quoted on that ad, "we also have a huge database of leads".

I know a person who responded to one of these ads.

They asked them if the money could go in escrow, and pay out once the clients were received. Needless to say, the offer was declined, as the seller apparently needed the money asap; to use it as advertising to get the clients.

I would stay away from any of these scams that sound too good to be true.

I would stay away from those advertisements if i were you ;)

Its funny you should bring this subject up, lol
it was only about say 5/6 hours ago i was looking at that exact ebay item :emlaugh:

I think its a scam myself personally, i was just looking on ebay seeing if anybody had any banner advertisements for sale on there websites ;) (Trying to get a little business)

BTW. I think this is my first post, cant quite remember, ive been lurking round for quite a while now just reading posts.

(My edit was a typo)

And they don't accept PayPal so that people couldn't file a claim and get the refund. 100% scam.

Scam. Stay away. Everyone knows you have to do the work to get clients in the industry. If it was that easy everyone here would be doing hosting and buying clients on ebay. Yeah right.

This is akin to those claims to provide 10,000 "targeted" customers for only $40.

If people really knew how to find so many customers they would not be selling them so cheaply.

Ironically, we are sure it is a scam.... yet, a bit of curiosity bites us!

The above link to ebay isn't the only one, there is a new one selling based on my recent checking in the last few days, but looks like a copycat.

Looks like this guy is selling both materials and the supposive customers.

Here are a couple threads, one of which is a warning and the other, semi-related, but interesting as another member claims that it worked (not sure whether he bought from this same source though)... but then again, a couple of us questioned but never saw a response.... so you be the judge.


A warning thread (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=395826)

A related thread (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=394389)

in the meantime, someone fork over the dough and find out!!

james..s auctioned 50 clients the other day too, but with 20 bids, that one only went for $56.55... so not everyone thinks it's a scam... but enough do or no one is finding the auctions!!

DO NOT BUY FROM james..s!!!

I won an auction from this seller back in feb. Not only has he not provided a single client, but he has been proising a refund for over a month.

I don't know about the other sellers, but you see the see the same sellers who keep relisting the same auction as soon as one ends, so I'd say it's not a good idea.

If you consider to bid, read this first:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=395826

Sorry, but anyone who falls for this kind of scam deserves what they get.
To buy and get rich quick scheme off of ebay shows questionable judgement at best.

Why don't you read the feedback for the seller before buying the item? The last 2 messages from buyers claim that the promised goods weren't delivered.

I was going to purchase this for $700 off the eBay auction after contacting the person. I had a bad feeling and decided not to go through with it! I am glad that I didn't!

VP-Sandip / happy to hear about this decision. There better investments for a growing hosting company.

It was really common sense. Their CPA worked out to about $2.00 per customer... and the leading hosts are paying up to $150, some $300 per customer acquisition... that is the main reason why I said forget about doing that!

$700 in local ads have done us very well!

I like your website layout ;)

$700 on google Adwords can also make it :)

related threads have shown this to be a very dishonest deal. Those ebay ads are actually selling "free hosting .01 cent" customers that were previously acquired on ebay and promised free server for a month or two before they had to pay $7.95 or 9.95/mo.

You're being sold these free webhosting clients just as their agreement to pay $7.95 is about to go into effect, so these aren't qualified customers, and you're likely to lose a huge portion during the transfer and request for payment.

it's pretty dang close to a scam, but more along the lines of a fool and his money are soon parted.

Originally posted by VP-Sandip
It was really common sense. Their CPA worked out to about $2.00 per customer... and the leading hosts are paying up to $150, some $300 per customer acquisition... that is the main reason why I said forget about doing that!

$700 in local ads have done us very well!


http://www.vistapages.com/


why does your special always end 1:14:35 after you refresh the page..

Originally posted by tonyolm
http://www.vistapages.com/


why does your special always end 1:14:35 after you refresh the page..

I noticed that earlier as well. :rolleyes:

and if you watch the good feedback on is feedback list, you will see that all buyer come from merseyside UK. look like hacking/friends to making fake good feedback.

it's hard to say but I was in the wrong forum!!! 8 /

another type of scam!
I don´t believe that they can give away their "paying customers"


We have many methods of working it consists of targeted traffic and well managed placements

I noticed that james..s on ebay has made his feedback private now so no one can see the negative feedback from selling hosting clients that were never delivered. Beware!

I think if you read the ad (at least the one linked here) it becomes obvious that they are just using a hook to get the customers and then hand the results over to you. Unless a client has actually paid for hosting (at the rate advertised) you are buying thin air.

The scam part of it is not the idea but the numbers. If someone has actually done hosting they know that clients are worth more than $2 each. If he were offering3-5 customers for $150 then he could reasonably deliver but of course the offer would not be as spectacular.

As for why someone legit would sell their customers? Thats easy. No time for support

Seeing as affiliate programs for some hosts pay up to $100/customer why would they sell customers for $2 each?

If they had that kind of clout they wouldn't be nickle and diming, they would be rich.

And I particularly like the statement about how they did this for their own company until they were "huge" then sold out for a whopping 13k.

At the end of the auction it says "Email us at: admin@host-xperts.com". If you go to the domain there's pretty much nothing there but a link to two domains. The links point to "suspended account" pages. Not a good sign.

Sounds to much like an internet version of an old magazine money making ad I see all the time.

"Make $1000.00 for stuffing 500 envelopes at home in your spare time"

If this ebay hosting offer was legit, they would have run out of leads in the first hour. Everyone here knows or at least has a good sense of what it takes to gain clients and if all it took was $2.00 a client, I could be on a year long vacation using the money I already wasted. :eek:

on january 29th I bouth this : http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3868922194

... and I lost $2500...