I’m sure you’ve all come across businesses selling Facebook likes. Usually, they promise you’ll receive a number of likes to your page – real likes from real profiles – and depending on your target audience, you may ask for profiles from a certain location or of certain gender/age.

I know that a number of pages I follow have jumped up by thousands of followers overnight so they are almost certainly “bought likes.”

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. 

I decided to carry out an experiment to find out whether the buying of Facebook likes is worth the money. So I bought 68 Australian likes, which were promised to be genuine people and watched the results. Sure enough, I watched my number of likes start to grow.

Honestly, it did feel a little exciting even though I knew they were paid to like my page.

It didn’t take long to see that the profiles were fake.  Each had the same posts on them and only a few had profile pics.  Of the total, only three were from Australia.

Hmm, well that didn’t work, did it?

Soon, though, the number of likes starting declining.  They vanished like puff of steam the same night they’d all arrived.  Shortly I was back almost to my original number.

So what was the point of buying likes?

I asked the question on my Facebook page, “What are your thoughts on the buying of likes and why?”

Wendy from GASP Personalised said, “Well I used to think it was a great idea to make my page look popular or “professional” by having more likes (which is good too) BUT in fact it’s a waste of time really if your after sales because the likers are usually just other actual businesses trying to get more likers too which doesn’t equate to sales.”

When I asked if she thought it was important that your page looks popular through the number of likes, she said “Yes as people tend to be more confident in buying from someone who has more likes as it appears that they have been in business for longer & seem a little more trustworthy with their sale.  But in saying that a lot of people do buy their likes too so it could also be false & misleading too.”

Wendy is spot on the money.  Page owners buy numbers so their page looks to be popular.  We know that humans love to follow each other, and if everyone else seems to be on that page, we’d hate to be the only one that wasn’t.

But I feel dirty.

The clearest result from my experiment was the dirty feeling I was left with.  Unclean!  Unclean!

I have strangers on my page – people who aren’t even real – and I feel as though there are intruders lurking there.  I think there might be 5 likes left there now, hanging around since the experiment, and I don’t like it.

Would I ever buy likes again?

Never! I’d rather you tied me to my chair and put my glass of champagne just out of reach.  (And that’s some serious torture.)

Buying Facebook likes may look an easy way to develop a Facebook page, but it is certainly useless. Although looking attractive, the offers for ‘genuine’ Facebook likes are just a sneaky way for people to make money and certainly an unwise way to spend yours.

The path to success is to regularly publish original and interesting content, gradually building your followers so you can develop a real relationship with them.

I want my $5 back.