None of us have the time to figure out how to make online advertising work. It's like my car breaking down and trying to figure out how to fix it myself. I can pay $500 or experiment with the car for a week and then pay the $500 because I still would not have it fixed.
Online ads are complicated. If you make errors, you can pay $50 to $100 for a lead, whereas a pro can generate leads for $5 to $20. Plus, they will have your ads working in a few weeks where it might take you months to figure out how to make it work. So I hired an expert.
But I thought hiring one of those $250-a-month guys offshore from Fiver would be clever.
Here is what happened to me.
In January, I hired a FB ad guy in Spain. To do Facebook ad work, they must have total access to your FB account with all passwords. Within a few weeks, I started getting random friend request from all over the middle east. People who would never do business with me. I did not accept them, but I could not figure out why it was happening.
Then after two months, my FB ad account was locked down and canceled. I logged on one morning and saw ISIS flags all over my company page. A few minutes later, everything was a black screen.
When I talked to my Spanish guy about it, he played dumb and asked me to send him another month's fee so that he could fix it. I was a little wary, so I said no. FB let me keep my page but restricted all adv. associated with my name or business or credit cards. It has been six months, and I’m still kicked off from running any ad anywhere.
During this debacle, I also wanted to run more ads on LinkedIn, so once again I hired a Fiverr from Bangladesh. I did not get weird friend requests this time, but after two weeks, LinkedIn canceled my account and deleted me from LinkedIn. This was a disaster. I had a 10-year history of contacts (over 5,000 followers) and one hundred endorsements from my work. All gone.
I am a ghostwriter for accountants, tax preparers, financial planners and other personal financial service companies like mortgage brokers. The most aggressive marketers in these categories are on social media. Getting canceled has resulted in a 50% drop in new sales leads. It has been a disaster.
My conclusion.
I will never provide my passwords or access to my accounts to anyone not working in my office. I will never hire off the Internet again for anything sensitive. I did not know the offshore people would get me into trouble. I could not get FB or LinkedIn to reverse their decision.
KC Truby
520-834-0011