Rent-A-SERP
POS:
Would be a good idea for anyone who has a targeted site that already gets thousands of hits a day.NEG:
For everyone else its a total waste of money.Today Im doing a review of a new WordPress theme called Rent-A-SERP Rent-A-SERP is a product that Im very sure will be released to a ton of hype and fan fare. You see it is made by a product creator who has had some real success in the past. Also the creator of this product […]
Today Im doing a review of a new WordPress theme called Rent-A-SERP
Rent-A-SERP is a product that Im very sure will be released to a ton of hype and fan fare. You see it is made by a product creator who has had some real success in the past. Also the creator of this product is giving away some huge prizes and bonuses to affiliates who promote this. Because of these two things a lot of people are going to be pushing this theme to their contacts. In fact chances are if have not heard about Rent-A-SERP yet from someone other than me, you will soon.
Ok so I decided to take a look at this theme because I know its going to get such a huge push in the IM world. Now Im very sure that if I just ‘went with the flow’ and recommended it to you guys I could make a few hundred dollars in profit for myself easy. The problem is that this is not something I would even think of buying myself so how could I suggest it to you? So to heck with the easy money I could have gotten, Im going to say it how it is.
The basic concept behind Rent-A-SERP is website rental. In case you dont know what website rental is, it is where you rent out a part of a site to different clients. As in each client / customer gets one (or sometimes two) pages on a well ranked website. The advantage to the customer is the fact that they get a piece of a very well ranked site. The advantage to you is that you make a killing by charging monthly fees to each customer (some times as high as a couple hundred dollars a month). Sounds great right? Well not really.
First of all the key to making this work at all is that you have to have a well ranked and established site. This is not something that happens over night. I dont care what theme your using or what SEO pack you have or whatever. There is no way your going to start ranking super high or get great page rank fast for the type of general terms that local business’s are going to want in order to pay you a high monthly fee to have a spot on your site. You need to have a well seasoned site that was started years ago, with hundreds of back links, high page rank, and tons of incoming traffic before you can convince anyone that they need to pay you a monthly fee just to have one page on your site. Do you really think your going to instantly get that because of some WordPress theme? No way.
The second thing is that the market for site building is getting saturated in itself. What I mean is that just about every business has a website, or a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or all of them. Somehow now you are going to convince them to abandon their own website, or social media following and pay you a monthly fee just to get a page on your site? As I said the only way that’s ever going to happen is if your site has a ton of traffic. Even then its going to be a tough sell for most people.
A lot of you know about my online work history but what most of you dont know is that I also have brick and mortar business experience as well. I own (or have owned and sold) several different types of physical business’s, including Computer Repair Shops, Ice Cream Parlors, a Sandwich Shop, a Pawn Shop and a Thrift Store. Ill tell you first hand as a brick and mortar business owner. If someone walked into one of my shops and told me they wanted to sell me a page on a new site for $100 a months there is a 50% chance I would laugh at them and a 50% chance I would yell at them for wasting both of our time. Really its just silly when you think about it.
Sure some people and business’s have made money doing site rental. But those are sites with one word domain names, that where founded years ago (like 10+ years) and have hundreds of back links, 5+ page ranks, and thousands of hits a day. You know, all the things that you are not going to have.
The theme itself seemed ‘ok’, not great but not terrible. The pages are kind of bland and really are just designed to be landing pages for your clients that buy space on your site (if you can actually find someone to buy space). Below is a screenshot of the demo that was shown to the affiliates.
Rent-A-SERP claims that the pages are SEO optimized. But honestly I didn’t see anything special about them. Just the basics, <h> tags, keywords, description, some text and a video. Nothing supper special. Mostly just standard practice stuff. Noting that anyone should have to pay a premium for.
Honestly if you had a site that was on a one or two word domain name in the target niche, had tons of back links, was aged for years, and got thousands of hits a day it might make sense to put Rent-A-SERP on it and then try to sell some page space. But unless you already have those things your just throwing your money away by purchasing this theme.
As I said your probably going to get a lot of emails from marketers about this. Those emails are going to promise you all sorts of things. But really the people who are making those promises are really just thinking about a new Rolex. (the top prize for affiliates who sell the most of this product is a Rolex). I’m going to pass on the couple hundred dollars I could have made by saying this was a good thing and tell you flat out how it is. If you buy this you are most likely (as in a 99% chance) just throwing away your money. You might as well just take a $50 bill out of your wallet and burn it.A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
About the Author
Brett, you’re one of the increasingly few IMers i respect. Integrity speaks volume in your reviews. And good to know that you had real retail experience too. Looking forward to ur products. Ty
Brett,
I agree on your review completely. They are trying to sell you that local markets are easier to rank in which is somewhat true however you are not going to do this overnight.
I would be curious on what you think about the 2nd part of their claim that you can lay an iframe onto your high ranking site and the site will not lose any rankings. I am not so sure about this. I think Google is better at crawling iframes but I have read that the bot can get caught in the iframe and may not crawl the rest of your site where the iframe is installed. If that is the case your high ranking site will not be high ranking for long.
Thanks for your honest reviews, they are great.
Rick
Honestly I didn’t check int the second part of the claim (the IFRAME part) because the whole concept on this is dependent on you having a site with tons of ranking and traffic, since the vast majority of people wont have that, their was no real need to look into the second claim.
Yes you can do it overnight. Google rules are not what you think. We can even rank without content.
No you cant.
As always thanks for your honesty. Very valuable coming from someone with both experience and integrity.
Just saw this today, email promos that is. Thought it looked pretty good….again, just the promotional stuff.
Ran into your review and it brought me to my senses. Great job, really appreciate the reviews and your honesty.
In the new world of IM where honesty, support and reality is thrown to the side your thoughts and insights are much appreciated! I love it when I get a copy and paste email with the same misspelling or grammar errors 🙂
I was watching a video where you were being interviewed for your facebook product….I think…. Now I’ll have to go back and check it out 🙂
Take care,
Scott
Thats called ‘swipe’ Scott. Its pre-written emails that the SELLER wrote and gives to the guy promoting it so that they dont even have to know anything about the product they are recommending, yea its crazy!
Thank you for choosing to loose money for your ethics, I personally appreciate it. I love the “Take a $50 bill and burn it”
In fact, you should put a big image of a burning $50 bill on your negative reviews for greater impact. That would be awesome thank you!
I am sorry! i just saw the burning $50 bill on the front page.. That is Awesome!! 🙂
WOW Brett…. Thanks for the heads up as I was really dialed into purchasing this product. I’m very happy that there has been a delay in launching this product as it gave me time to read this post. It’s really nice to read post like this. It gives me a reality check that I needed. Really though.. I already knew that I probably should leave this product alone but then I start thinking that I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve type situation and end up getting it anyways. It pays to do a little research before buying anything and I’m happy to be a subscriber of yours and have been for some time. Thanks for saving me from throwing my hard earned money away and bringing me back to reality. Thanks again…
I hate that Rent-A-Serp product how dare I sell it!
😛
Well Devin, this is one of the better responses I have had from a product creator that I gave a bad review to. At least you didnt tell me you where going to “punch my head off”, “shoot me”, “send your friends after me”, or “put me out of business”. I have had different marketers say ALL of those things. I still dont like Rent-A-Serp and still would not recommend it. (nothing personal by the way). But at least your response was calm and cool so +1 for you.
By the way I did notice some strange things. If the theme is totally on ‘auto pilot’, if you dont have to do anything but ‘put it up’ and if the payments are accepted through the theme itself and go right to your PayPal then where did the checks come from in the sales page and why did you show them?
Also I noticed your demo site on Mikes site: siptexpanels.com this is just an unranked demo? If people are making such gobs of cash and getting easy rankings why would you link to a fake / demo that is unranked and not link to a real live site that has rankings etc?
Brett,
Appreciate your valuable opinion on this product. My inbox has been over flowing today with marketers pushing Rent-A-Serp. I remembered you had reviewed it earlier this week (I actually think the launch got delayed for some reason) and gave it a “thumbs down”. Integrity is important in everything we do, and it is great to see you put that front and center to how you transact your business. To quote some lyrics by The Alternate Routes “We are how we treat each other and nothing more.”
Yep Patrick I knew lots of people would be pushing this one. Everyone is after that Rolex (except me it seems).
This product has a very cool sales video but there are so many things that dont make sense.
1) Why dont they give a demo to a real site that uses this and is ranked and getting customers?
2) Why do they show paper checks in the sales letter if this takes payments via PayPal and requires no interaction? Its seems that these checks are not from profit from this theme so why show them then?
3) Even their example of the surgeon. Do you really think that a surgeon is going to be searching around the internet looking for sites that rank for keywords related to their business, looking to pull out their credit card and send someone $300 a month without contact? Besides the fact that this is silly in itself I tend to think the surgeon will be doing other things .. you know like running their practice.
Just had to let you know that what you’re doing here should be commended. In the IM world it really takes some balls to take a stand against any launch, let alone one like this that all affiliates are lining up to promote. True colors always shine through Brett and yours are the truest of all.
Thanks for what you’re doing, I know it can’t be easy for you.
Marc
Thanks Marc, and your right its tough sometimes. I have been told flat out by some other marketers that if I just shut up and ‘played the game’ I would make more money. But you know what? Money isn’t everything.
Dear Brent:
Thank you so much for your honest and insightful appraisal of Renta Serp.
I am just getting into Kindle writing and researching how to set up a Blog,
Website and such.
I was reading numerous raving reviews on Renta Serp and being a Doctor
for many years in the health care field I could not see how Professionals
with a web site would hop over to Renta Serp that easily. Usually for the
professions there a numerous vendors who will work with the web site
that has been created to help bring more traffic. Many times the vendor
will work with the Professional-Doctor to develop the web sight from inception
to actual online installation and monitoring.
Again, thank you for your honesty about Renta Serp.
Best Wishes,
Steven Block
Hi Brett,
I found your site today from a referral from a Skype group I’m in. I have to say it is refreshing to see someone else in the IM / MMO world who puts integrity above profits. I have tried to be the voice of reason in this crazy niche too. Calling bullshit when I smell it. I’ve always been a tell it like it is kinda guy and have made a few enemies myself in this niche for calling people out and naming names.
There is so much garbage being pumped out in the IM space daily. I have created products and I’m also an affiliate for products and services I know and use. It’s nauseating seeing the good ole boy network that has come together in this space over the last few years. All the pump and dump, that is push this or that for maximum profit then in a few months or less abandoning the product to move on to the next one, rinse and repeat, I’m also tired of all the, “I’ll promote hard for you, if you promote hard for me”, with the same groups of people pumping out crap and all these top marketers promoting each other’s garbage, all at the expense of mostly newbie marketers desperate to make money online and end up wasting more than they make.
It’s great to find a source such as this site to come to, to get honest reviews from a guy who has no problem standing up to people he even calls his friends who are ripping people off. I give you big kudos brother. Keep on fighting the good fight. I’ll be sure to start referring people here your solid reviews and info. Way to go Brett!
Hey Brent
Interesting review. I agree that this product oversells the ranking elements of it’s functionality. Let’s face it, no theme or plugin will give you instant first page rankings, making the plugin quite useless until you’ve gone about a lot of SEO.
Aside of that, I also agree that renting out a webpage may no be the most enticing option in the ‘saturated’ market for site building, BUT you do miss one key feature of the plugin. And that is that it allows your client’s site to be over-layed onto the page you have ranked. So, if you can rank a page, you can sell this spot to a prospect by promoting the fact that their own site will achieve high ranking for a given keyword. Quite neat, wouldn’t you say?
As for the theme – agreed, it’s basic at best and it won’t propel the site to the top of the SERPs.
Just thought I’d add a bit more detail to the product review. Go check the latest demo video.
Ras,
The key there is IF YOU CAN rank the page. Without that the overlay is useless. 99% of people wont know how to rank a page and will not be able to. Also this theme claims that you dont have to do anything but install it, which is obviously not true since as you just said, you need rankings and as you also said no theme is going to give instant first page rankings. You basically agreed with me. Unless you have a lot of SEO experience, this is a useless plugin. Which as I said is about 99% of the people who wasted $47 by buying this. Oh just a FYI , my name is Brett (its in the domain name 🙂
Really appreciate the honesty of your reviews (and decision not to engage in pushing stuff in which you don’t believe for the sake of some affiliate bucks). Must admit you’ve had me cringing already at some purchases I’ve made in the past…
My thoughts are based on what the theme and plugin can possibly do, I’ve been interested site rental since 2011 and never had the time to set it up and I saw this as a system to follow and I bought, plenty of training videos and new ones every day, my business partner is an ace at getting local KW sites ranked pretty fast. The main concept is you a domain such as {link removed} get it ranked to close to #1 on page one for a few plumber KW say in Tampa Fl. when a Plumber checks his site ranking from time to time you’re site shows up at the top of the page he goes to it and a popup appears and says Rent This Spot or try it for 5 min if they do try it for the 5 min you grab their email and phone# or they rent it. You then overlay his site on your site via an algorithm not an I frame, but similar It does not affect the current ranking of either site except the renter just moved up several spots once it’s overlaid, if they cancel rent to some one else . If they don’t have a Website and you advertise yourself, build them a site and rent it on your site space, kinda of like renting a billboard in the best spot I town.
You are right ranking isn’t all that easy but the site/theme has silo option, but doesn’t appear to be Responsive, but with so many Smart Phones that might not be much of an issue. I also don’t know if the renters site that has moved or copied to your space and still remains in their old space at the same time giving them possibly 2 spots o page one.
Hope this helps
They key here in your post Norm is ‘my business partner is an ace in gettling local KW sites ranked pretty fast’. Which as I said if your a SEO expert and can get high ranking sites this may be worth using. However most people are not.
Nice tutorials and videos are cool, but they dont make a product. People are not buying something because it has nice videos. They are buying it because they want to make money with it.
Also the sales video claims you dont have to do anything to make money, just put the theme up. Let me ask you something. The sellers of Rent-A-SERP claim they made cash within hours (while they where baking a cake, lol). How much money did you make so far?
Good point Brett, I was just explaining what I found on the inside, how it’s “suppose” to work after purchase and what prompted me to give it a shot. I just purchased it, and my business partner hasn’t even looked at it yet so no I haven’t made any money and have no idea if I will.
I have been burned plenty over the last couple of years, from the likes of (excuse any name misspells) Ricky Mataga (Quake Mix closed the data base after 7 mo. which worked well for me by the way) Precious, Todd Gross one of the best fast and smooth talkers on the net, J. Knight, and even Mark Thompson on one of his expensive themes, of course there is more that’s why guys like you are so important these days giving un biased reviews. I do buy things just looking to get some info on subjects that I’m unfamiliar with or looking for a golden nugget in pile of crap, not expecting anything else, If these guys made the money they claimed they wouldn’t need to sell Anything, just watch the money pour in, I never pay any attention to their earnings in the sales pitch.
Well keep up the great work you are doing.
Norm
I have a couple of comments to make on this. First – I agree that the theme is nowhere near SEOoptimized, but it took only a few minutes to rewrite it to get rid of the clunky (and HTML intensive) numbers on the para headings and then to make the three paragraphs , and plus a couple more minor changes.
I specialize in local SEO and I’ve found it possible to get local phrases on Page One inside a week or two {URL REMOVED} for example – check the domain registration date.
I would appreciate your views on the wisdom of overlaying one site on another in this way just in cast there is a significant nimber of people like me who ARE succeeding in ranking local keywords on Page One without taking years and thousands of backlinks.
I did not appreciate the plugin being so US-centric that the only currency offered was the ‘yankee dollar’ which makes the plugin more or less useless in Europe. My support ticket was never answered, so I had a look at the code – you only need to change 3 line of PHP code to get it to use “£”, “GBP” or whatever currency you use. Why couldn’t the seller have done that? Including reading through the code the changes took me about 30 minutes work.
Please – can we have a view on the plugin and any possible penalyies?
Hi, does anyone know of a plugin that is an alternative to Rent-A-Serp?
SEM Double Agent
X-Ray Serp