They say you can’t buy your friends but you certainly can buy some fans for your site. Buying Facebook likes is something that can be done quickly and easily but should you do it for your site? Yes and no. I purchased some fans to see what would happen and here’s my results.
WHY WOULD YOU BUY FANS?
The big question is why? Obviously it’s better to have natural fans, people who find your content through whatever means and then become fans because they actually like it but that’s not always possible initially. The big reason to buy Facebook fans or Twitter followers is if you have a new site or are just starting out in the social networking arena for your site. People like to go with a crowd- nobody wants to be the first to do something. If people come to your site and see you already have a few hundred Twitter or Facebook followers,
tod's outlet, they will want to follow you too. Same with RSS,
tods men, it’s not recommended to show your feedcount if it’s low but once you hit 100 or so, definitely put it on your site.
WHERE TO BUY FANS:
Now you’re probably wondering where can I buy Facebook or Twitter fans? If you frequent any of the webmaster forums like Digitalpoint, Warrior Forum or others there are frequently offers there. I used Fiverr, a site where people will do various tasks for $5. The advantages there was that it’s only $5 and there are actually many reviews of some sellers so I could find an appropriate seller.
Looking through the seller reviews I found someone willing to recommend my site to 5000 of their Facebook followers. A lot of the seller reviews mentioned that the people who fanned their sites were foreign based or other less desirable (to me) factors. I found someone who seemed like his followers would be relatively compatible with my site. $5 and a few days later, the likes started coming in.
MY RESULTS
I tried this with two of my sites. The first one is quite popular and although relatively new to Facebook,
tods sneakers, had a decent following. You can see those results above- note the bump in August of about 100 fans. Since that time the rate of new fans joining has increased but really this bump did nothing other than pad my stats a little bit. My second experiment was with an established site I purchased that did not have a Facebook presence. Here’s the chart:
I put up a post inviting the readers to become a fan of the site. After about a week with virtually no signups I decided to buy the fans to give it a little push. As you can see in the chart, within 2 days I got about 100 signups. Since that time the rate of new fans has been slow and steady- nothing major but still better than it was before I bought the likes.
CONCLUSION: SHOULD YOU BUY FANS?
In summary the new fans I purchased have not really interacted or recommended the site to others. They mostly just “liked” the site and then moved on. Looking at some of their profiles, I can see they have hundreds of “likes”, so my site is just one more on their list. The only reason you should buy followers is to make your site appear to be more established than it is. This is useful if you are just starting out or if you are prepping your site for a future sale. It’s a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy there; to get popular you should already look like you are popular. And buying fans can help you look popular.