I enjoy testing out the various tools and products that are offered by SEOs to see if I can boost my online income from my niche sites. We all know that gaming Google is a short-lived thing, but it is still a fun game to play. In fact, I signed up for RankHero back when it was first announced and enjoyed almost a year of sweet profits from one of my sites thanks to the links that I got from it. I knew that it was only a matter of time before Google penalized sites using links from RankHero, but it was almost a full years of epic earnings for me before RankHero and other public PBNs were penalized.
As soon as that happened, I started looking for services that did not get hit so that I could test them out. Only one of them stood out among the rest – Private Inc. from Glen at ViperChill. I’ve followed that blog for a few years and always thought that Glen was a decent guy delivering real value when most other gurus in IM deliver shit stacked upon shit that is glossed over with sugar and puppies.You see, Glen claimed that only a teensy portion of the Private Inc network was hit. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to part with my $300 to give it a test drive.
Honestly, I wish that I had better things to say about this experience. Sadly, it didn’t take long for the sugar and puppies to fade away and reveal the tower of shit that is Private Inc. But, let me break down the good and bad about this service so that you can decide if you want to give it a try or not. Before you read ahead, know that this is all my personal opinion and it is based on paying for this service and actually seeing some of the sites that my links were placed on. How did I see the sites? They showed up in my GWT account under sites linking to the site. Since I’d built no other links to the site, and my requested anchor text was used, it was easy to concluded that I was seeing Private Inc. sites. And about 10 minutes in Google and ahrefs led me to hundreds of other sites that seem to be Private Inc. sites. That being said, the information below is based only on the sites that were linking to my money site.
The good: your backlinks come from sites that average around DA25, the links are powerful and I was able to quickly gain page one rankings, customer service is good if you have any questions for them. Basically – the links work as advertised.
The bad: several of the sites linking to my money site were actually deindexed, many of the domains were things like “oxy735.com” or foreign language words (with a foreign language history on the domain), the sites were painfully obvious that they were PBN sites, not niche-relevant sites, easily identifiable footprint as all the sites linked to the same people’s money sites and all sites had the same number of posts and all on WordPress. Basically – not exactly as advertised and very easy for Google to find/know it is a PBN site.
Conclusion: I don’t think this is worth the cost if you want to use it on a money site that you intend to keep and nurture. If you’re looking to do a churn and burn niche site, then this is a great buy as the links are quite effective. For me though, the footprint and large number of deindexed sites are just not worth the price when it’s a site that I want to earn from for a while. It’s too bad too cause I’d have no problem with the $300 recurring monthly fee if the links were rock solid from high quality sites that were niche relevant (or close to it) with no obvious footprint and not all on WordPress.
This is based on my experience, so know that yours might not be the same. Just something for you to consider if you’re weighing the pros and cons of spending this kind of money on backlinks for your money site that may or may not be questionable.
Hey Henley, I was looking into Glen’s Private Inc. too and glad I read this. What are you leaning towards now?
Do you have skype?
Hey Connor, Sorry for the long delay in response but I’ve been traveling for a few months. Honestly, I’m stilling buying up expired high DA domains and building out my own PBN. It is still the safest way to get a rankings boost.
Hey Henley,
so I’ve tried the Private Inc in the past. Unfortunately I had no chance to see any result of it since my site was hit within the next 2 months with the Panda 4.1 release.
Now its difficult to say it that was a the PBN links (I found around 10 of them in GWM), site content problem or both. The thing is that wa are is in the index but under the Panda filter. One of our main keywords survived though and this is the only one that generates us organic traffic.
So I’m curious if you experienced similar issue. Filter instead of de-indexation?
Sorry to hear about your site bro. I know someone who got their whole site de-indexed, but I had built lots of other links to my site and it managed to not get any type of hit.
I was just about to sign up until i did a quick search on google and found your review
totally glad i did
i agree,, if it was a decent service then i wouldn’t mind paying the $300 a month
to be honest i would prefer to spend my $300 a month on getting infographics done ,, and guest posting
I’ve had a good experience with link rental at Diggity Links via Diggity Marketing – if you’re still interested in link rental. These days, I just build by own PBNs though. Good luck in the SERPs!
This is soooo disappointing. I’ve been reading Glen’s blog for years and he comes off as one of the most honest, hardworking people in SEO. From this post – http://www.viperchill.com/private-link-network/ – it sounds like he builds amazing networks.
Thanks for writing this review. Yours is the only thing out there for the search ‘Privateinc review’.
I’m sure he means well. And it’s possible the service is better now than it was for me. I rented some links from Diggity Marketing for a while last year and they performed well. Might want to check it out if you still need to rent links instead of making your own PBNs. Good luck!
Someone sent me a link to this today.
I want to make it clear that I have not been involved in this link service for a year now and the new owner promised to remove my branding and name from all parts of the site.
Sadly this was not done in an agreed timeframe but appears to be done now.
Re this:
“easily identifiable footprint as all the sites linked to the same people’s money sites and all sites had the same number of posts and all on WordPress”
This should definitely not have happened. Only around 60% of our sites were running WordPress (and getting lower every month) so only finding those ones is a good sign.
The problem we had with scaling quickly may have been quality control but I certainly didn’t witness or notice this myself. Sorry if that happened to you.
“the links are powerful and I was able to quickly gain page one rankings”
Excellent to read!
Thanks for the honest review and to Raymond who sent me here.
Private Inc as far as I know is being ran better than ever (I caught up with the owner in person two months ago) but just wanted to make clear that it is not something I run, and would appreciate that being written in the article.
Thanks!