First of all I want to say I don't necessarily agree with this thread, kind of just throwing fuel into the fire.
jamielamister wrote: Fri Jun 08, 2018 6:49 pm
ok fine you may not be a shill but thats not my point here. Tony is obviously paying for the ad because the ad costs more than referrals. Therefore Tony has bots to make fake reviews.
Jamiel, you state the cost of host this ad is between $1-2 per click which is FALSE. Upon a quick look up of your statement I've found that is the average CPC (Cost Per Click) for Google Adwords BUT it can however be less. The article on it I'm reading states CPC is set by Keywords, Bids (auctions) & Quality Score, Keywords such as Insurance/Loans/Mortgage are between $44-55 CPC, this is likely due to the amount of bids that include those keywords, which the topic we are talking about shouldn't have any issues as it's an illegal market & reddit generally does not deal with money to have a reason to advertise. Quality Score may have an effect on the CPC such as increasing it due to the unfriendly nature of it, however I don't know what factors into this but having a better score causes less of a CPC.
The article gives an example with a CPC of 25 cents, creating a possible x4-x8 difference of the example you've given. The only person can confirm how much the Ad costs will likely be the one hosting it, and therefore we are just playing another guessing game. (Looking at google ad words official page, you're able to set what your CPC is)
But lets do your example to get an idea of how plausible it is for another user to be paying for the Ad.
$1 CPC, $20/day advertising limit, 20 people click giving the refer 20 chances at say 2% (think it may actually be 5 for CW), the average sale of CW will likely be $300 due to the 35% mix & match, 2% of $300 = $6 per sale, this would mean roughly a quarter of people clicking would have to purchase for them to break even or profit, don't forgot about returning customers if the referral still stands after first purchase than everything on top is gravy. (Return Customers likely spend more)
Now if it is 5% only 1-2 of the 20 would need to have purchased, another example is if it's 25 cents CPC that's $5/day & requiring only 1 of the 20 to purchase. If both are true they would need 1/60 to keep this up, this sounds more than realistic for someone to do besides Tony.
Hopefully this clears up some of the vagueness around the claims.
Source:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015 ... words-cost
Source:
https://adwords.google.com/home/pricing/
As for the Bot remarks... If Tony has a bot that realistic for posting Reviews he's surely in the wrong business. These reviews are posting pictures of strains in different environments that look similar to other users pictures of the strain from that MoM, they are giving detailed information & responses that make sense & search out other threads not related to CW and comment something that is related to the thread, defend themselves & others...etc. If you're talking just up-voting & creating threads with that copy paste response CanadianTrees is doing than sure it's possible but again no proof that it's Tony's doing.