Is LinkBee LNK.Co A Scam?

Linkbee better known as LNK.co are a linkshare company who provide a facility for users to shorten links and post them on social networks such as Twitter. They offer to pay for certain clicks to links that have been created. But is it all just a big scam?

I have been following LNK.co for a number of days now, and I am getting the feeling that something is not quite right. But this feeling could just be because there seem to be a massive problem with joining the forum to sort out support issues (constantly not sending confirmation emails), to link figures not tallying with website analysis figures. This could be technical glitches at LinkBee.

Another analysis has been my own forum figures from traffic directly from Twitter in relation to the traffic shown to links at LinkBee.

Since I have used my forum I regularly get at least 20 - 40 people visit an article at any one time from Twitter tweets. But a link that has been created at LinkBee seems to only push 4 to 10 at best, with one paid click. Something just does not compute here.

There are certain countries that links clicked by internet surfers will pay at LinkBee LNK.co, in the main these are USA, Canada, France, Germany and The UK. Now given that 90% of my forum traffic is from the UK, USA, Germany and France you would expect the click rate for paid clicks to be very much higher, let alone traffic figures being much more related to that of my forum.

Another note I made was traffic I directed to my forum directly from a LinkBee link, they did not register as visits on my forum figures, yet they did show in the Website Stats. And something else that I have found significantly important is that those links into my forum, do not tally with the stats at LinkBee. My stats are much higher. As soon as I take down the LinkBee link and retweet, the figures go back to normal - it does not look good for LinkBee at this point.

I have tried to contact support, without any response as of yet. But it does seem that everybody who has taken issue for the last couple of years with payments and figures in LinkBee's own forum, have been told it is down to a Website glitch by support. 2 years is long enough in my book to address a technical glitch such as this.

LinkBee I am sure are a valid and reputable company, but there are some huge issues that seem to need addressing. I am not the only one who uses the service to hold massive unanswered questions.

I am not going to say LinkBee are a scam company, I can't say that just yet and maybe there are some genuine problems with the company website and features.

I do however invite LinkBee to discuss in the comments below the problems I have encountered above. And address the concerns of other LinkBee members.

The only way to resolve a problem and not get tagged with the Internet 'Scam' tag is to prove your company and be transparent with your users. Until this happens then a company will be looked at with eyes of suspicion by web traffic and members alike.

In conclusion, you will have to judge for yourself if LinkBee are a scam company from what I have presented in this article.

Myself I am giving the company until the end of the month before I can write a full conclusion; I am just giving you the lowdown as I see it currently.

I'm giving LinkBee a chance to disclose any problems here, or at their forum.

Current Rating: 1/5

*UPDATE 5th March 2011*

I have still not had any response from the LinkBee team with regards to my questions. I would have thought that a month is well enough time to answer my questions regarding stats and why I was unable to sign up for their user forum.

Although on 2nd of March 2011 there team announced in the forum:

"It looks like our server keeps having problems with email activations when registering at the forum. Hopefully we have permanently fixed this issue, if not, please email support@lnk.co to notify us that email activations are not working. Thanks."

As for the money making side of the company - I'm not going to waste my time with it. Put simply I would have to be making about 10-20 links per minute and have 100% USA web traffic (visitors to links) to stand a real chance of making an hourly wage. It is just not possible at all, the LinkBee API is too slow for starters.

I cannot say whether you should try the service, it may work for you it certainly did not for myself. None of the stats I have been monitoring tally anywhere near those of LinkBee - so they must STILL be having program issues.

On January 16th 2011 to be fair to LinkBee this is what they stated in their forum regarding the service:

"With the recent success of the LNK.co launch, we have decided to increase our rates for many different western countries. We are now paying as high as $10 cpm on countries like USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and many other European countries. We have also increased the rates of our top banner, as much as double for many countries. I'm sure our loyal users are going to LOVE this.

We are also trying to do some major re-hauls of our website, so any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Tell us what you want and we will deliver it."

But this was back in January - I saw no such increase and nor did a friend of mine who also reported similar issues to myself.

There are stories of success in the LinkBee forum, I have to be fair you can view these successes here: http://lnk.co/forums/viewforum.php?f=6&sid=99f80527f7d59c956cf78fa8c4322b3e

I still rate the service low - 2/5 An extra point for addressing email issues in the forum.