We paid £4,549 for our website www.thetoysroom.co.uk with estimated returns of £49,582. The account manager Steve Smith assured me throughout the period that I was considering purchasing the website that it was incredibly easy to set up and administer and that my lack of knowledge an experience would not be an issue, encouraging me to purchase the website and also mentioning other benefits such as being able to claim tax benefits as our home would become our workplace.
I was told that 1-2 hours per day would ensure that I would achieve the estimated returns, this seemed perfect as my partner was on maternity leave and the success of the website would hopefully mean that she would be able to give up full time employment to look after our young children administering the website every evening, saving on childcare costs and providing a much needed second income.
We spent many, many hours setting up our website writing endless product descriptions, category descriptions all 400 words and trying to make each description individual and utilizing keywords. Added to that we were blogging, tweeting, researching, trying to link to other relevant websites and providing product reviews for other online retailers. It soon became obvious however that the effort we put in made little/no difference to the site traffic.
It would have been virtually impossible for us to achieve the required 250 individual visits per day required to qualify for the refund (as I am sure YOS know) at best we were achieving 30 visits and that was during the 90% optimization period of our website.
We were complete IT novices so followed the training to the letter, which was easy to follow but probably as useful as trying to teach me to juggle, to run a successful website I am sure that you need good knowledge of SEO, backlinks and analytics far more advanced than the training provided.
I am extremely angry with both YOS and myself, YOS because I believe though within the law they sold me a product knowing that I did not have the knowledge or experience to run a successful affiliate website. Their estimate of returns are wildly optimistic designed to attract people looking to change their lifestyle. I am also annoyed at myself for allowing myself to become a victim of a legal scam such as this.
We borrowed the money to purchase this website thinking that it would provide the second income that we need.instead my partner has now had to go back into full time employment and we not only receive no income from our website (no longer running as we would now have to pay for our UltimateDemon) but we also have to find additional money to pay back the £4,549 that we borrowed. Funnily enough the £15 that we have earned so far doesn't go very far towards repaying the debt.
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