Have you heard of CrockPotGirls? Chances are 20 of your Facebook friends “liked” the page in the last day or so.
Seeing so many of my Facebook friends like the same page in a short amount of time, I posted a status update, “It appears many of my friends like crockpots.” Admittedly I’m not a crockpot lover. I got my sister’s crockpot when she got a new one for a wedding gift, but I gave it to my mom. When you’re single, you don’t need to make 6 pounds of chicken.
My concern with so many liking a single page was it was a virus.
Finally, I looked at the fan page. I didn’t get it. How did three housewives in Texas have nearly 300,000 fans because of crockpots? I clicked through to their website and saw one blog post, a hard to use drop menu with maybe 20 recipes and a sidebar of ads. Hrm. Advertising.
Was this the work of a company made to look like a homegrown blog?
One friend offered that she liked the page as a reminder to check the site for recipes because she recently made a crockpot recipe and it was delicious. Okay maybe a handful of people share that thought, but thousands upon thousands?
Looking at the fan page again this morning, I noticed people excitedly sharing recipes. Still not getting it. I LOVE my toaster oven (I make two cookies at a time) but I’m not starting a fan page about it and asking for recipes. Besides, I thought I already had a basic website and fan page for lunch packing. While I was thrilled to see it featured on Lifehacker, it doesn’t even have 500 fans and I’m almost certain it has never been mentioned on a scrapbook or military wives message board (and I would think someone, adult or kid in that household is packing a lunch). This isn’t a pity party just admitting I do not know what would compel people to fan a site that isn’t about the sexiest thing around 🙂
Still curious but at work, I asked a friend to look up the Whois for crockpotgirls.com (not linking because their server can’t handle the traffic anyway). The site was registered on August 26, 2011 to Chase Shelby. Based on a quick search and cross reference, I learned he also owns the domains ChaseMarketingProfits.com and StephenvilleIternetMarketing.com and on related message boards he identifies himself as an Internet/affiliate marketer.
Possibly they hired him to create their website and as payment he gets whatever money he can make via affiliate ads?
Note to future bloggers: get your URL in your name and avoid GoDaddy (I can say that as a former customer). Also, as a blogger who uses and discloses affiliate ads on my sites, I’m not against it, but neither of my sites have blown up overnight making them seem like income generators. Read on Chase’s site how he writes posts for upcoming products so that when people search for them, they hit is site and make him money.
Meanwhile over at Twitter, 313Nick uncovered the same name and information I did.
DineandDish noticed that many of the fans do not have much wall activity, which could mean they joined Facebook in order to access the page.
But it is a public page, so why not just bookmark it and browse when in need of a recipe? Or do people feel compelled to share their best crockpot recipe by first and last name? These crockpot fans intrigue me!
For all of Twitter’s social media gurus/experts/specialists, none of them seem interested in knowing how three women (or one guy, I’m not sure who to give credit to) created a Facebook page that amassed 750,000+ fans in 10 days and a website with nearly no content. I suspect that will change and be populated with recipes from their eager fans.
As I wrap up this post, I still do not under the crockpot fan and why they have been so eager to post this fan page or site all over other sites and message forums. By comparison, Taste of Home has 200k fans, Foodspotting has 16k and America’s Test Kitchen TV show has about 28k, but a fan page about a small kitchen appliance that can be bought at a drug store has 800k fans. Is that the answer? It is because it’s accessible to all and requires little skill?
One thing is certain ~800,000 fans (I finish this post) has only resulted in 100+ Twitter followers. Maybe it is because they’re auto-publishing their Facebook statuses to Twitter?
I look forward to the social media guru/expert/specialists interviewing these ladies (or Chase) and helping us understand how they came to have so many eager fans in such a short amount of time.
Dawn
August 31, 2011 at 7:56 pmand the avatar is still the egg?!
Bridgett
August 31, 2011 at 7:57 pmI am a recent “fan” of their page. I will say I went to their site a week or so ago and it looked like a homemade old Geocities type site. I didn’t inspect it too much as I wasn’t suspicious at the time though. Now I’m wondering. I guess we’ll have to see if they start pitching recipes with acai berries. 🙂
Tony @ Stuff Boys Do
August 31, 2011 at 8:01 pmIt’s amazing to watch, and has me wondering all the same questions. You can sit on the facebook page and refresh every 10 seconds, and about 50 new fans have joined. Which makes me wonder… is there something to the “facebook snowball” effect? Meaning, if you hit it right and get a relatively large chunk of likes all at once in the beginning, will it spread faster because so many people are seeing multiple friends “like” it at once? Doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal, but I can’t imagine there was all this pent-up demand for crock potting. lol
Stormy
August 31, 2011 at 8:07 pmCorrect me if I’m wrong..
Unless your privacy settings are up, when you like a page is allows access to your info?
By having all these people become a fan, they are essentially giving out their names, locations, emails, phone numbers, etc to a marketing team……in exchange for some recipes you can google or get from recipe.com?
Stormy
August 31, 2011 at 8:09 pmAlso, please overlook all my grammatical errors. Thinking + typing didn’t work out well.
Heather @ Family Friendly Frugality
August 31, 2011 at 8:09 pmI’ve been watching this page since about, oh….500,000 fans ago (I guess that means yesterday?).
Bought and paid for fans. It’s almost embarrassing actually. He’ll be laughing all the way to the bank though!
It’s definitely viral now though. He made a good investment in those initial fans I guess.
I love my crockpot, but wow…
Michelle
August 31, 2011 at 8:20 pmI love my crockpot because it requires very little thought on my part. Dump stuff in and go away. 😉
I suspect someone invested a tiny bit of money (maybe $50/day for a week) and ran a facebook targeting a rather specific demographic. The FB ad probably has a Like button built right into it.
People are seeing the ad, going “Oh cool, recipes” and clicking the Like button without ever leaving their Facebook stream.
It’s just a thought, but it’s how I grabbed over 1000 followers in a rapid period for my company (and full disclousre, I see our affiliate ad over to the right) . Now, I hadn’t expected that effect when I ran the ad, but I was happy. The problem with that method, as I’ve learned, is that those ad-clicking fans rarely interact with the Page once they’ve like it.
Just some thoughts. 🙂
Jennifer Mitchell
August 31, 2011 at 8:26 pmI have another thought on this (though Heather’s comment makes sense, that initially at least these were paid for fans).
I’m wondering how much the name has to do with it. It doesn’t sound like a business, it sounds like a title. I realized today that I had somehow become a fan of a fanpage simply titled “texting”. I can see me, reading through my stream, seeing a friend liked “texting” and thinking, “Oh, I like texting!”, and then, weeks later, realizing how much spam their putting in my stream.
So, Crock Pot Girls could in part be a lot of people seeing it and feeling like it’s more of a description of themselves than a business they are linking themselves too.
Pretty clever, really.
CincySteve
August 31, 2011 at 9:00 pmIt amazes me how many people “like” something that they don’t even look at simply because they see other people doing it. The site has little content and a blog entry saying the site is still being designed. Sounds worthy of 800,000 fans to me!
I think it’s unfortunate that nefarious marketing methods are apparently worth more than quality content.
Michelle Smiles
August 31, 2011 at 10:35 pmI saw a good number of my friends “liking” this page over the weekend so I clicked over to see what it was. I saw a bunch of people talking about loving their crockpots but no real content so I clicked away. But funny that you looked into it because I was wondering about it too.
Andi
August 31, 2011 at 10:53 pmCrock-Pot (TM) has 70k fans.
They posted they didn’t want people posting links to their websites, because they did not promote their page in this manner when starting out. It appears some links are deleted while others are left. If you’re following 313Nick on Twitter he mentioned that it seems like a software package that allows bombarding blogs with spam comments in which some stick, some don’t was used. Didn’t post to other fan pages, but possibly spammed sites.
Bridgett, I’m curious is the Geocities styled site didn’t matter because all he needs if for people to click through on the ads because they don’t see anything of interest?
Tony, interesting theory.
Stormy, many of these latest fans appear to have no activity on their public profiles except a photo and liking the page. Some of them remind me of my over age 70 computer class and are baffled by the Intertubes. Could that many people love their crockpot and want to join a site to tell everyone??
Heather, I agree. At this point no matter the number of fans a good chunk have clicked through the affiliate ads and helped his bottom line.
Michelle, I haven’t seen anyone mention seeing an ad, but you bring up a good point for a fast way to build a fan page.
Jennifer, will be interesting to see what Crock-Pot makes of this since its a brand.
Steve, I might see a page on my phone, but I won’t like it until I see check it all out on a computer.
Rachael
August 31, 2011 at 11:37 pmOkay thank you for writing this! I found their fanpage via another friend a couple of days ago and immediately noticed how rapidly they were growing. As the recent founder of a “Support the Troops” I am seriously irked at the fact that 800,000 fans are supporting a page based on as you say ‘a small kitchen appliance’ and we are barely squeaking by on 200 fans! I don’t get it!
313Nick
August 31, 2011 at 11:41 pmIt’s definitely a bit sketchy but he did something that works and didn’t get caught. I hope he can find a way to make money off of it. I just found it odd that with no real recipes and 2 Amazon affiliate links for products they were able to jump from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of likes, seemingly overnight. It piqued my interest so you just do what any nerd does and research. There are many who would like to have the same time of success. Especially marketers who are willingly given HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of contacts for free. I know I would.
Reality check: He didn’t plan for it to become a smashing success and thus didn’t have an infrastructure to support a crush of visitors to his website. You can’t have hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to a shared HostGator site. They will shut you down. This is why the website doesn’t work now.
I laugh at Americans. There are people posting on the wall like this is a Fortune 500 company. How the heck are they going to answer so many questions? Do you have diabetic recipes? Where is the chicken recipe I saw someone post on here the other day? Get the point? FB is NOT a good place to present data to the masses.
Back to the site. Hosting on a dedicated server is going to cost money. Updating recipes is going to take time. It is a WordPress site. You can’t have a community sharing recipes in comments of blog posts. Recipes.com has plenty of Crock Pot recipes and you can upload, store, review, see pictures, etc.
People are sheep and Mr. Shelby knows how to shear them. I’m happy for him, sad for all these gullible people who live for quasi-celebrities like those on reality tv shows.
Can’t wait to keep following this story.
Andi
August 31, 2011 at 11:45 pmIt is bothersome or intriguing, Rachael, but don’t give up on your page, which will be organically grown with an authentic voice.
Just noticed a twitter account for jshelby10 which I would venture a guess is the wife of Chase Shelby (based on the photos from his myspace page) declaring it isn’t a scam. Other might have said that, I’m not. But I’m not totally sure it is just three ladies who started a fan page and/or who weren’t approached by an Internet Marketer who saw $$ potential. Besides this twitter account is following about 30 big name media outlets and only has 1 follower, which isn’t even the CPG twitter account.
Andi
August 31, 2011 at 11:50 pmNick, I do look forward to following this story and seeing where he/they hope it goes and the reaction from those who are looking for nutritional information from CPG!
Michelle
August 31, 2011 at 11:51 pmHi. First of all, Chase is one of the girls’ brother in law. I am a new friend to the girls, having offered some basic marketing and publicity advice. We’ve talked for several hours on the phone, and they are just as shocked as the rest of the world is about their number of “Likes”. No one understands it. Their goal was to have 30-40 friends in their community exchanging recipes. They, and I, are scrambling to manage it all, make a better user experience, and yes, monetize it, (who wouldn’t with that many fans?). I didn’t know them from Adam 12 days ago, but I can tell you that one of their goals is to help charities and children, not just make a buck. They are small town, sweet, southern girls that happened to get very lucky, and are trying to deal with all the “growing pains”. Their success is only going to make a better world for those that they want to help.
Andi
September 1, 2011 at 7:01 amMichelle, thanks for the comment. The ability for simply homegrown page to amass that many fans in such a short time is nothing but intriguing, especially for people who been blogging for years, have used social media to promote their site and know a little bit about sitting up websites. But the fans, the fans are who interest me.
I look forward to seeing a fleshed out website and information on their charitable giving, they’ve certainly been able to capture a large fan base and should be able to do something tremendous with it.
Crock Pot Girls Gain 800k Facebook Fans in 2 Weeks | She Posts
September 1, 2011 at 2:22 am[…] Brofft from udandi noticed that her Facebook friends were liking “Crock Pot Girls” en masse. My concern […]
Crock Pot Girls Facebook Page - Viral Hit or Black Hat Crock | MomCrunch
September 1, 2011 at 5:12 am[…] even Chase Shelby, one of the girl’s brother-in-law, who blogger udandi reports registered the domain http://www.crockpotgirls.com August 26, 2011, hardly appears to be the […]
Kelly Trush
September 1, 2011 at 5:53 amAndi, this is FASCINATING! Way to be a super sleuth. Can’t wait to see what you uncover next. On the edge of my seat… 🙂
Andi
September 1, 2011 at 7:20 amThanks Kelly, like I keep saying it’s the fans and how they converged on one fan page that interest me. CWC is a trio of ladies who host a popular, weekly Twitter chat and have a Facebook page, yet, fans aren’t falling over themselves to give you content. What is it about a slow cooker that makes people so eager to share?
Lindsay
September 1, 2011 at 9:09 amThis is such an interesting post, Andi! I join the chorus in saying that many of my personal FB friends – like 25 last time I looked – showed up in my FB stream saying that they liked Crock Pot Girls. I clicked over to see the page, and like everyone else, was a bit confused about what was so great. I mean, I like my Crock Pot, but really? Some of these are people that liked them were folks that I never would have thought would like a site about Crock Pot recipes.
Anyway, I clicked over today after reading this post to see if it was still the same types of things on the wall, and FB tells me that “3 of your friends like this.” So, did 22ish of my friends like and then unlike this page within the past 2 days or is something odd going on? Things that make you go hmmm….
Tom
September 1, 2011 at 9:49 amJust goes to show that the Internet is lightning in a bottle.
Sarah Kimmel {Tech4Moms}
September 1, 2011 at 10:52 amYeah, this has been perplexing me as well. I had my FB stream say that several of my friends “liked” it, and I happened to be skype chatting with several of them and they had no idea what I was talking about. I looked at the site and only one of my friends actually liked it. My friend that I KNOW FB said liked them in my stream had never even heard of them! Definitely suspicious!
Andi
September 1, 2011 at 11:50 amInteresting Lindsay. I wonder if others are seeing that unliking activity?Â
Sarah, that might explain why only one of my friends answered my question about why she liked the page – my other thought was many of them are not on FB as frequently to see my post. Possibly they don’t know they’re fans?
Casey Redfield Berberich via Facebook
September 1, 2011 at 4:48 pmI’ve been wondering the same thing. I just don’t get it. It seems like there’s nothing there, and I like my crockpot.
udandi.com via Facebook
September 1, 2011 at 6:04 pmI know many are saying, it’s just the culmination of perfect timing. I like those rose-colored glasses, but they don’t look good on me 🙂
Audrey
September 1, 2011 at 9:25 pmThere is definitely something very fishy going on with this page. I think that there is some kind of BOT that has generated all the LIKERS and made it look like it was viral. I have unLIKED it.
Andi
September 1, 2011 at 10:03 pmThat seems to be what others are thinking, Audrey, with the vast number in a short time along with public, but incomplete user profiles. Plus, the way some real people have become fans without knowing it.
On the other hand some are saying it hit at the right time, back to school busy families, no American Idol or Dancing with the Stars on TV and an easy to use, back to basics product and the need to tell all your friends you saw this page first.
Blendra
September 1, 2011 at 10:49 pmI’ve been looking at this for 3 days now and I just can’t figure it out. I keep going back and forth. Right now I’m back to where I started. Ugh, I love the drama too much. Can’t wait to see where this ends up.
Andi
September 1, 2011 at 11:04 pmha Blenda!
There was no trackback for this post, so I’m dropping the link here
http://blogs.babble.com/momcrunch/2011/09/01/crock-pot-girls-viral-hit-or-black-hat-crock/
And thank you Saving Lifestyle for letting me know that one has already dropped and the other two are making a business of this
http://bit.ly/p8Cijl
Deb
September 1, 2011 at 11:24 pmThere is definitely something fishy about this. There is just no way this can be happening without some other reason… Some facebook pages grow quickly, but this is unheard of. They have figured out something that all of us haven’t yet.
Jenn
September 2, 2011 at 9:17 amSo if you don’t use godaddy, where does one go to get a website “in there name?”
Thanks!
Andi
September 2, 2011 at 11:28 amHi jen, I’ve had a few people ask where I’m hosting and why not GoDaddy so I wrote a post. Whether my choosing a local (cincinnati, ohio) host company works for you, I can’t say but I’ve been very happy with the customer service and load time for both sites.
Read more about my host company, DomainIt and my wordpress theme, thesis at
http://www.udandi.com/2011/09/01/hosting-by-domainit-thesis-theme/
Crock Pot Girls a CROCK??? « Tarte Advertising Blog
September 2, 2011 at 9:51 am[…] • Want to thank @Udani for posting the original blog that inspired me to start looking in to this! • Overnight, their Facebook page gained over 33,000 […]
Jennifer Stevens
September 2, 2011 at 10:36 amI actually “liked” them in hopes of finding some crock pot recipes that don’t contain soup mix packages or condensed soup. But I do think it’s bizarre the explosion of interest. AND it has basically made it unusable because there’s now too much to wade through.
CincySteve
September 2, 2011 at 11:04 amI agree with 313Nick, except for wishing these people success and money off these tactics.
I don’t want them to make money (though I know they will, how can they not with all the eyeballs they are generating to their affiliate links). I think it sucks, because others will see this as an easy way to make some easy money and try to mimic it. All that means is my inbox and facebook feed will get cluttered with even more spam and BS than it already does.
Heaven forbid people earn money by actually making or improving something, not by generating hype about nothing. But I guess I’m the asshole for having such idealistic thoughts.
Andi
September 2, 2011 at 5:49 pmI agree with you, Steve, but we probably have been raised with the notion that you hustle, work hard and you earn your reward, no easy street.
For those who don’t understand why this bothers some people, it deflates you when you see someone employing shady tactics for a get rich quick scheme, you also lose your faith in people when they follow along without question. Although blogging is a hobby, not my only source of income, I don’t want to be viewed as one who is doing it without integrity.
just a mom
September 2, 2011 at 11:27 amI have heard a few people mention the deal where, “if u click on fans’ fb pages all they have r crockpot girls info”…. that could b b/c of security. If someone has their settings on, u can’t c their wall except for the stuff u share in common (unless ur friends of course). Not saying that’s it but it could b!
Andi
September 2, 2011 at 6:08 pmWhat people are referring to (and you have to click through a few CPG fan profiles to find ones that are public) the wall activity shows a) Sally just updated her profile photo b) Sally just liked CPG and that’s it. So that’s raised some questions of why did Sally feel compelled to join FB just to like a fan page WHEN other pages on the same subject exist?
Gregg
September 2, 2011 at 11:59 amHAHAHA!!! Beautiful. I’m a designer and developer and bought CrockPotGuys.com on a whim when my wife told me about the girls(around the 200k mark). I do this for a living, legitimately, mind you. To get 30 – 50 likes per second for crock pots is very crazy, I thought….. I’m going to give these girls a run… We have a busy family and I REALLY do cook with the crock pot and I really do have buddies that share recipes.
Considering the nature of facebook and the “social media” thing, I thought, why not post my page link on their page to have a friendly show of strength “for the guys” I wasn’t intrusive in the least. They immediately banned me. Hmm… really? Was I a threat? At that time they already had over 500k fans. I had 100. LOL…. So I just paid attention to my fans and the website. and tasty recipes…. I really found some really nice people and as a programmer, I enjoy providing a service to folks. This has been a fun week to say the least. I’ll share this link on our page…
Gregg
Look In Your House Blog | The Unprecedented Popularity of The Crock Pot Girls on Facebook—and What's Really Going On
September 2, 2011 at 12:15 pm[…] forward a few days and I noticed another friend’s post about a separate website calling the instant popularity of the Crock Pot Girls page and its viral growth into question (this is a wonderful post, incidentally, and the commenters raise some interesting points). Since […]
Are the Girls a Crock? The dust is settling. | Crock Pot Guys
September 2, 2011 at 12:30 pm[…] http://www.udandi.com/2011/08/31/the-crockpotgirls-popularity/ […]
megryansmom
September 2, 2011 at 2:14 pmWonder how long it will take before the Crock Pot Girls are exposed as a Crock of $hit?
TMG Daily
September 2, 2011 at 3:26 pmWe have an exclusive story which exposes the Crock Pot Girls using seedy tactics to keep the competition away. Shameful! Please spread the word and help the little guy.
http://tmgdaily.com/2011/09/02/tmg-news-alert-crock-pot-girls-ban-crock-pot-gorilla-from-their-facebook-page/
Lisa
September 2, 2011 at 9:42 pmAndi, thank you so much for looking into this and posting your thoughts and findings. I couldn’t agree with you more. I find it upsetting that many people don’t seem to care if this was done with integrity and ethically as long as they get some “free” recipes. It both saddens and disgusts me. Have we become that numb as a society that we don’t care how something is done as long as we get something out of it?
Andi
September 3, 2011 at 12:36 amThanks for stopping by Lisa. Having read comments on a message that are along the lines of, if it’s not taking money out of my pocket and I get a benefit, what does it matter?
What those comments fail to understand is what Sarah addresses in the last paragraph of her post http://www.tech4mommies.com/2011/09/my-2-cents-on-crock-pot-girls-for-what-its-worth
That gimme attitude devalues the value of Facebook fans.
Andi
September 3, 2011 at 1:40 amhey Steve, you mentioned others will mimic it the nefarious fan gathering method of Crock Pot Girls…check out the Skinny Crock Pot fan page (no link on purpose) and watch the fan number dance.
49,985
Take note their are two associated fan pages, which combined have a ~10k fans. Again, new fan page (website created on 8/30) and it now has 50,021 as I finish this comment
Andi
September 3, 2011 at 9:48 amIt’s 9:48am EST (6:48am PST) and the Skinny Crock Page has 53,670 fans.
3,649 fans in the 8 hours between 1:40am and 9:48am EST.
Facebook fluke?
GeekMom » Blog Archive » Crock Pot Girls: Cooking the Books With a Bot?
September 4, 2011 at 7:02 am[…] author of this post notes that while the Crock Pot Girl’s actual website is sparse and hard to navigate, […]
kelly
September 4, 2011 at 5:21 pmI’ve been fascinated by this entire discussion in a variety of posts and continue to keep an eye on new information. Since Crock-Pot is a trademarked name I’ve been wondering how that all factors into their success of their FB page in so short a time. It just so happens that the company has an affiliates program. https://secure.crock-pot.com/Affiliates.aspx — The company also has its own “community” where others can share their recipes, be a star, receive new info on products before anyone else — all with only 72K Likes on FB in comparison. It makes no sense.
More perplexing to me is that each time I’ve tried to access their website, it either looks different, is crashed, or is sporting only advertisements with a promise of further developments — like a dedicated server which shouldn’t be an issue for anyone. The site up now after a struggle to load and I see a widget for a crock pot on Amazon…more affiliate income. Plus, they’re asking everyone to email them with content for each of their categories which is a lot easier than having to write it yourself.
It seems funny that if they’re buying people to be fans that someone who gets it wouldn’t have had the website set up and ready to go.
Just think of all the money FB is making on those ads running on that page. Wow.
Andi
September 5, 2011 at 12:15 pmYes, Kelly, moving to a dedicated server could have been done in 72 or less with most hosts, but they probably weren’t expecting the associated costs.
Looking at the WHOIS again, it looks like they’ve been able to take the first step in untangling themselves from Chase Shelby (aka brother in law) who originally registered the URL. Possibly they’ve realized his “help” has not be up to snuff and while they are real people, they’re might be viewed as pawns.
People claiming to be close to the Girls have commented on other blogs that the Girls can barely put a contact in their phones, so there’s no way they employed a FB bot to gather fans (real or fake to) increase the page’s popularity and visibility. I believe that (although I cringe on their behalf that the Girls are being tagged as not even being able to use their phones), but it doesn’t answer if their page had initial, homegrown interest and 1) caught the eye of someone who offered to “help” or 2) they asked someone to help and this website “helper” found a way to up the fan count thus further increasing the visibility/drawing fans because he planned to register the URL and create a bare bones site with only advertising.
Why? The original URL owner wasn’t concerned that the Girls didn’t have content or recipe to populate the site since he owns the accounts for Google Adsense and Amazon Associates, he’s probably banking on a percent of the people funneling through the fan page to this site, clicking around looking for recipes and eventually hit an ad. If it’s an Amazon ads, it places a 24-hour cookie on the visitors computer – place an order now or in 24 hours, he gets a percent of the sale. The more fans funneled to the website, the more potential to advertising click-thrus, which leads to money.
The site was registered on the 26th, I wrote this post on the 31st. in order to make approximately $6600 in those five days, he would have only needed 3131 products at a price of $25 to ship. Nice business startup or charity money (as I’ve only seen mentioned by the Girls new friend Michelle, who previously commented 8/31 11:51 pm on this post).
Please note: there is nothing wrong with using affiliate ads to support a content-filled site or blog, it is how quickly you grow an audience and direct them to your nearly empty for a week, but filled with affiliate links site that might catch the eye of some and ask how or why.
Andi
September 7, 2011 at 12:07 pmThis discussion at CPG looks to be an eye opener, it is long but since it started little things have changed (ads are gone from site, mention non compliance with FTC might do that) Possibly the ‘girls’ are learning and trying to make things to legit?
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=149885375096697&topic=1372&perpage=30&post_index=121&start=120&post_id=6295#topic_top
The Crock Pot Girls Get Over 1,000,000 Facebook Fans in Just Two Weeks — BlogWorld & New Media Expo Blog
September 7, 2011 at 11:58 am[…] The Crock Pot Girls Popularity […]
WowWow
September 8, 2011 at 11:06 amOMG, this has turned into an absolute witch hunt! What is wrong with you people??? One person’s small “suspicion” seems to have turned into an angry horde calling for blood?? Here’s something new to ponder:
1) On 8/30, I saw on my fb newsfeed that my sister-in -law had “liked” Crockpot Girls
2) On that same day, I clicked on over to the Crockpot Girls fb page, and after perusing for awhile, I “liked” it as well.
3) The following day, I shared a link on my fb wall, with kudos and encouraging comments regarding the page.
Let me TRY to address each of these points individually:
First, my sister-in-law REALLY and TRULY liked their page willingly and thru her own volition. I know this as fact.
Second, I liked the page, REALLY and TRULY liked it willingly and thru my own volition. I also know this as fact.
Third, after sharing the link on my wall, TEN of my friends, REAL friends that I know PERSONALLY, also like the CP Girls fb page. No they were not random fb friends and YES, they were ALL people I would have expected to like it. Additionally, I do know for a FACT, thru conversations about food and crockpotting that they did actually like the page willingly and thru their own volition. It’s not like the random likes came from my husband, kids or my first boyfriend from high school.
Fourth, the reason I took the time to actually “like” the page is because, there is actually “content” there. Just about every other post is a REAL new recipe posted by a real person. I don’t understand the comments here about how there is no real content on their fb page? I also don’t understand how this makes it a “scam”? No $$ is being exchanged between myself and Crockpot Girls, and if you are really concerned about Internet Advertising, then perhaps you should rethink every time you click on a Zynga Game?
Fifth, and this is one of my most important points: IF YOU CLICK ON THE NAME OF A POSTER ON THE CPG WALL, AND NOTHING COMES UP BUT THEIR CPG POSTS——DID IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU THAT THE HAVE THEIR SECURITY SETTINGS SET FOR YOU TO ONLY SEE WHAT YOU HAVE IN COMMON?????? Hello??? It does NOT MEAN they are a bot, it means they have restricted you to only see that!!!!
And finally, I just want to point out that, I have used their web link http://www….. crock…..pot….girls….com, numerous times, and have NEVER had a problem. If you are having a problem, then try clearing your cache/cookies and/or using a different browser.
In my opinion, this is taking paranoia to a whole new realm.
WowWow
September 8, 2011 at 11:12 amOh, and one more thing, if you are suspicious of CPG’s fb page b/c you can’t really see any “content”? Perhaps you need to revise your own fb security settings in order to actually “see” the content. Just a thought.
Is 1.2 Million Facebook Likes In Three Weeks A Crock?
September 12, 2011 at 11:21 am[…] also posted links to posts by udandi and Tarte Advertising Blog, both of which reached the same conclusion that Goldfarb reached after […]
Is 1.2 Million Facebook Likes In Three Weeks A Crock? – Facebook Is Down
September 12, 2011 at 12:20 pm[…] also posted links to posts by udandi and Tarte Advertising Blog, both of which reached the same conclusion that Goldfarb reached after […]
Is 1.2 Million Facebook Likes In Three Weeks A Crock?
September 12, 2011 at 1:03 pm[…] also posted links to posts by udandi and Tarte Advertising Blog, both of that reached a same end that Goldfarb reached after conference […]
Deadbeat Millionaire » Blog Archive » Is 1.2 Million Facebook Likes In Three Weeks A Crock?
September 26, 2011 at 4:17 am[…] also posted links to posts by udandi and Tarte Advertising Blog, both of which reached the same […]
Magdalena Donovan
December 11, 2011 at 10:07 amI am a new friend to the girls, having offered some basic marketing and publicity advice. Heaven forbid people earn money by actually making or improving something, not by generating hype about nothing. ha Blenda!
Still Believe It?!
December 24, 2011 at 1:15 pmMonths later and they’re still working that blasted website?!
They switched to a new Facebook page claiming they were threatened by Rival EXCEPT Rival said that was never the case and were willing to work with them. If they were savvy business ladies they would have stepped up at that opportunity. Instead their new FB page (which I won’t link to or give publicity to) only has about 500k not million fans.
Their YouTube channel only has about 500K views total on all videos. Surely if they 2 MILLION fans on their first fan page it would have translated to more video views and more fans on their second fan page.
Bakemeier70
December 29, 2011 at 9:58 amNice, just bookmarked ya under Digg under “Popularity Crock Pot Girls Facebook Fan Page”. Cheers!
Mcclay398
December 30, 2011 at 7:48 amTerrific work! This is the type of info that should be shared around the internet. Shame on Google for not positioning this post higher!
Lois Hanson
March 4, 2012 at 7:14 amMonths later and they’re still working that blasted website?!
Is 1.2 Million Facebook Likes In Three Weeks A Crock? - AllFacebook
April 11, 2012 at 10:26 am[…] also posted links to posts by udandi and Tarte Advertising Blog, both of which reached the same conclusion that Goldfarb reached after […]
Tomoko
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