DO NOT GO PREMIUM ON KILLERSTARTUPS.COM IT’S A MAJOR RIPOFF!
A little while ago I submitted my new website nowtorrents.com to killerstartups.com for a normal review. Straight away I got a phone call from one of their sales people asking if I wanted to go premium. I got overloaded with information by a VERY fast talking sales person. He promised me lots of great things as a featured post on Mashable.com and TheAlarmClock.com, amazing exposure on their site which has over 40.000 unique visitors per day, 2 gold memberships to their site worth $12000, free SEO software and more.
The rep said “Going Premium would give an Amazing Traffic Boost to Your Site”. So I asked how much exactly, that he couldn’t tell me. Now I understand why… I told the rep I would have to think about it and discuss things with my partner. The following days I received emails and phone calls every day from that sales rep asking me if I had made up my mind yet… something I found very annoying!
Eventually I agreed to go along with the deal and paid the $400 via PayPal.
They promised to review my site in great detail which they didn’t do. When my review came online I was shocked with what I saw. All they had done was COPY and PASTE a few lines of text from my FAQ (frequently asked questions) page, which is not writing a custom review… And the review even contained a few things that weren’t correct because my FAQ page was outdated. But if they had done only 2 minutes of research they would have easily spotted that. So I ended up rewriting the whole review myself and sending it to them via email.
After having had my review live on killerstartups for 1 day + 3 days featured on the main page I received a total of 326 HITS from them. That works out $1.22 per click. Of course I expected WAY MORE hits than 326, especially with the promise of a great featured post on Mashable!
Also they promise over 50,000 daily impressions to your startup, as great as this might sound, they actually mean that they will display a tiny link to your startup review which gets displayed 50,000 times. This wouldn't be so bad if people would actually click it... which of course isn't the case.
To Sum Up, What I Didn’t get…
1. 2 Gold Membership accounts worth $12000. *
2. Free SEO software (which I later found out on their site is just a 1 month trial). *
3. An amazing traffic boost to my site, as the sales person told me.
4. Post On TheAlarmClock.com.
5. Featured post on Mashable turned out to be just a tiny link in their banner on Mashable with a link to my review hosted on Killerstartups.
6. Submission to Reddit.com
7. A decent review….
8. Over 50,000 Daily Impressions on my startup!….
Of course I asked for a money refund because clearly I wasn’t happy… but that was not possible I got told. So people I would like to warn you all about killerstartups and their shady way of doing business!
* UPDATE: After a few angry emails to their support I did get the 2 Gold Memberships, and some kind of code for the Free SEO software, but with no details on how to use that code or how to actually get the software.
If you have bad experience too with them and want to share it you can reach me on nowtorrents [AT] gmail.com