Ok this isn’t a smash at Fiverr – it’s a shot at the mindset.
When it comes to websites, actually a lot of the battle that comes in later down the line is borne out of poor initial implementation.
There are things that can be easily changed down the line, some images here, some CSS code there – no problem.
But when it comes to implementing WordPress it’s easy for a “Cheap” source to miss out some key points in the initial implementation that basically setup a structure that’s VERY difficult to change later down the line.
Some of these Fiverr gigs are so cheap, the people servicing them are likely to have barely more experience than you with WordPress (or ANY website builder for that matter), so you’re in the danger zone.
One of the few, but highly impacting things they can get wrong is the Permalink Structure. This is literally a check box setting in WordPress – and is massively overlooked.
Why not to use a Fiverr website builder
Security
Another thing that these Fiverr gigsters are unlikely to understand is GPL and Security.
As a result of not understanding the world of Plugins and the security risk that some practices can pose, they could be exposing your site to long term pain.
Without going into tonnes of detail, there are “cracked plugins” that get shared around many of these “Fiverr” gig circles. That way, you, the purchaser think you’re getting an even better deal as you get all these “Premium” paid plugins for free when you get your site built by this guy on Fiverr.
The big problem is that these Plugins are a cesspool of crap. They harbour viruses and all sorts of malicious code.
Not to mention the fact that in many cases these people are breaking trademark law by taking a free plugin and “Cracking” it so it’s “free”.
The cost of “Free” is far too high for any worthy website builder – which these guys on Fiverr are NOT.
Breaking the rules from Day 1
Many of these sites might also to profess to be compliant with Amazon ToS (affiliate programme) but in actual fact they appear to have never read or understood them, A complete lack of appropriate policy pages with clear cookie controls and most importantly correctly worded and placed FTC and affiliate disclaimers are highly likely to be overlooked.
The “Sold it 50 times” issue
Many of these gigs will sell you a website for DIRT cheap – and that should raise suspicion in itself.
The reason the site can be sold for “Dirt cheap” is because they’ve created 1 site, and then they’re literally just replicating the website in it’s entirety and selling it on.
That means there are a bunch of other websites out there that look EXACTLY the same
Custom Code Issues
Then you have the Fiverr Guy who recently took a PHP or HTML course they stole from someone and is keen to use it on this project. Instead of finding a legitimate way to make the website do what they want it to do using the provided settings in the Theme and the WordPress CMS, instead he decides to edit the code manually.
Face-palm-slap
Now you’ve got non-standard code in your site which, at best, gets replaced at the next theme update, or at worst isn’t coded well and breaks the theme when viewing on different devices (very common!).
SEO Issues
As Michal points out in this Podcast interview with Jaryd Krause over at buyingonlinebusinesses.com, it’s pretty common for website builders to be mis-used. If you don’t use a great tool correctly, you’re not going to get great results – and it’s NOTHING to do with the quality of the tool.
One great example of this is the use of Tags and Category pages on WordPress, if not configured correctly, these pages can be a real pain in the but as they start fighting and competing with other pages on your site for space in the SERPs. Also when it comes to crawl budget, these pages you’re not even trying to rank in Google are eating up your crawl budget.
We’ve worked on sites that have more category and tag pages than they do content pages (in excess of 500 pages)! What a huge mess, and what a way to just waste all of the site’s potential and chew through Google’s crawl budget hampering the speed at which changes in rank can be reflected in the SERPs for your site.
Conclusion
There are a bunch of other things that can also get your site in the Google Bad Books. Mixed content is a no-no, but is something that can happen regularly when the implementation of an SSL certificate has been done poorly (or not been done at all!)
Basically, I could go on bashing these guys and gals. It’s not their fault (maybe letting them off too easy), but it is our responsibility to be diligent buyers also.
These services wouldn’t exist if eager clueless buyers didn’t fuel the demand.
Get off on the right foot, don’t cause yourself more cost and pain down the line in having to hire a very well paid professional to fix the issues created by the poorly paid “amateur” (being kind even calling them that, cowboy is probably more appropriate).
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