As I wrote about last week, I’ve finally come to the realization that I need lots of Twitter followers. Since then I’ve been using @BigRichB’s Brute Force Twitter system, and here are my results so far after just one week, according to TwitterCounter:
In case you can’t read the fine print, that’s a prediction of 24,103 followers in 30 days (that’s an increase of about 20,000) if I continue at current rates.
In the process of getting all these new followers, I’ve received dozens of auto-DMs promoting “Twitter Traffic Machine”, claiming that it will get you 16,000 followers in 90 days and help you make money in the process, so I thought I’d take a look and see what all the buzz was about.
Now, the creator of the program, @BillCrosby, has a fairly impressive track record:
But the real test of a system isn’t whether it works for the person who created it, but whether or not it works for the other people who use it. So I thought I’d start looking at the results of people using the Twitter Traffic Machine system and comparing them to my own.
Well, see for yourself. Below are links to TwitterCounter graphs comparing my results for the past month to the results of the last 30 people who’ve sent me an auto-DM promoting Twitter Traffic Machine. I’m not listing the names on this page, because I’m not trying to embarrass anybody – just doing some objective research. Draw your own conclusions.
1 (showing the best one first) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Well, you get the picture. That’s just 30 out of over 60 I’ve received, all of which look basically the same. And that first one above is the best out of the bunch.
I could easily write this off as “well, like most other internet marketing things, people just aren’t working the system,” except that Twitter Traffic Machine touts itself as "The Completely Automated Twitter Growth & Money Making System for People That Want to Set Up A System ONCE, Forget About It, and Have it Grow and Make Money EVERY Day!"
If it were completely automated and as effective as it claims, the vast majority of those people would be seeing results similar to mine.
I will tell you that the system I’m using is not completely automated – it takes work. Not a lot of work, but still work. I’m spending about half an hour a day on it. But you do literally get followers in your sleep. For example, when I went to bed last night, I was at 9,863 followers. This morning I’m at 10,036. My graphs are already out-of-date! 🙂
I think my main issue here is this: how can someone tout a product that’s supposed to be generating results when it hasn’t generated those results for them yet? Or, apparently in this case, much of anybody else either? I mean, if you’re supposedly using a system that generates more followers, don’t you think the first thing people are going to do is look at your stats? And when they don’t back up the claim of “16,000 followers in 90 days”, who in their right mind is going to buy it?
Prove me wrong. If you’ve been using Twitter Traffic Machine and getting great results, show me. Let’s compare numbers.
P.S. I forgot to mention the fact that wasting your welcome auto-DM on promoting this is missing an opportunity to a) brand yourself and b) invite further conversation. I’m not against auto-DMs in general. You can learn a lot about someone by what they choose to say in that first 140 characters. What does it say about you to a new follower if the first words out of your mouth (fingers?) are an affiliate promotion? And worse, it hasn’t even worked for you yet! Think about it.
I don’t see anything wrong with promoting the system right away. I went from nothing to over 100 followers in 2 days using this system with a brand new account (and that’s without even implementing half of it yet). I have another account I am also using this system with that does not promote the affiliate link, and it seems to be working very well for that account too (again without even implementing the whole system fully).
Thanks for sharing your feedback Kym. Let me play counterpoint:
1. At 50 followers per day, it would take more like 10 months, not 3 months, to hit 16,000 followers.
2. I readily admit it is easier to grow your numbers once you already have a larger number of followers. So I tried Brute Force Twitter on another account, @AmerGuitarAcad. On the one day I worked it, I got 329 followers in ONE day for about an hour’s worth of work. TwitterCounter doesn’t seem to want to update their numbers, but I’ve got that account to 1,344 followers in a week.
The automation idea certainly appeals to me, but I’m just not seeing the evidence. When comparing it what I’m doing, it falls WAY short. Given the rapidly closing window of opportunity as I see it, I can’t afford to wait on a system that’s not living up to its hype.
Actually, there are non-automated methods that are mentioned in the system as well. I’m not doing these yet because I don’t want my account to grow too big too soon–I’ve heard of accounts being disabled because of this. You’re right, though, the automated processes alone will not be enough.
Does the Brute Force Twitter system allow you target your twitter followers as narrow as The Twitter Traffic Machine does?
I want targeted followers and TTM allows me to target followers as narrow as I want.
This would also account for the lower numbers you see in the charts you show.
In all fairness, I haven’t reviewed the Twitter Traffic Machine materials (Bill – you’re welcome to send me a copy). What I can say about Brute Force Twitter is that there are some methods that are highly focused (and produce less followers) and others that are less focused.
The thing is, if it takes an hour to get, say, 50 targeted followers, and an hour to get 500 untargeted followers, of whom 50 are your target, which makes more sense to do? There’s ZERO cost — time or money — to having a follower, once you’ve got them. And in fact, there are benefits to having more followers, even if what you’re after ultimately is targeted followers (see my previous post).
And if that’s what the system does, then advertise it that way — “5,000 targeted followers in 90 days”. There are several of the people I saw who are on target for 5K followers, but NOT 16K, which is what’s being advertised in over 100 auto-DMs I’ve now received.
I’m not saying the system’s bad. I’m just saying the advertising claims aren’t supported by the real customer experiences. It falls WAY short of what it promises.
There is no replacement for relationship building.
thanks a lot for this blog. I was searching all over for an unbiased look at that “Twitter Traffic Machine” but there are a lot of spammy fake review articles about it. It was nice to find yours which was actually real!
I just started a twitter account to promote a site that I really don’t feel like tweeting too much on my own. I will try this and see how it works. I have another site about surfing that I like to tweet about but maybe on that one I can focus on those supertargeted methods.
You’ve got a good point there. If it doesn’t make sense (cent$) then it is not common sense :). I’ve just had a whole bunch of my followers hacked away and I would really build them up again. Any ideas?