The next time before you pay Facebook to advertise your site, THINK TWICE.
Small and big businesses these days prefers to market their products with “Pay per click advertising” on Google Ads, Facebook, etc. which is a good way to quickly get visitors to their web site.
However, are these performance-based deals really effective and free from SCAMS? As competition increases, people are using every trick to increase their incomes.
Internet companies in developing countries have found a new niche market in selling Facebook likes known as “click farms”.
It is extremely common on Facebook, where the clicks are regularly directed to the site’s “Like” button. Page owners can increase the number of “Likes” their pages get by paying for ads.
In a secret investigation, journalists have found that these “click-farms” offer over 150,000 likes in 2 or 3 months for a fixed price! That means companies are not getting the most out of their paid ads anymore. They are paying to outsource “Facebook likes” from states such as New Delhi.
I researched that a basic package of 2,500 “likes” could costs around AUD85.67, which were generated by teams of low-paid workers armed with multiple fake Facebook profiles. Their sole job is to stay online and click “like” on as many paid Facebook Ads as possible, thereby destroying the purpose of digital marketing by generating lots of fake “likes”.
Many people have gathered that Facebook’s advertising model is deeply flawed. Watch this video to see how a page got 80,000 useless Facebook likes from developing countries who did not care about the contents in the Facebook Fan Page at all!
Virtual Cat was created to “test” if Veritasium is really paying click farms for “likes”.
Virtual Cat is a virtual pet like none other. Here we’ll post only the worst, most annoying drivel you can imagine. Only an idiot would like this page.
The click farms trend is also found mostly in developing countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Indonesia, etc. where wages are extremely low by Western standards. Workers typically make a dollar per thousand clicks, totaling up to as little as $120 a year. This is unethical, and needs to be curbed. Not just to save these poor workers, but also saving companies that are paying these scammers to market their companies online.
Digital Lounge 
My experience with facebook advertising has been quite positive, even when it comes to tying to get more likes. I found that the key to getting the best ‘bang for your buck’ is to limit your audience and be specific with the adveriting criteria so that you target who you want your audience to be, or in my case, the people within a 15km radius of my business.
The best advertising I have done on facebook through comes from promoting posts to the friends of people that have liked my page. That has also helped generate more likes, and by the people seeing their friend has liked the page already, it gives us more credibility rather than a random ad that pops up
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That could be the reason why so many FB pages are getting likes from “click farms” in developing countries. It may be an obvious answer to narrow down your search, but desperate people (like me) had wanted to get the world to “like” their pages & turned a blind eye to specializing in targeted audiences. Guess I know what to do next time when I wanna pay FB. Thanks for the tip!
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I have realised that Facebook does not have a real way for customer to contact them. They have a portal where you can leave your questions but the probability that Facebook is going to reply is relatively low.
Back to the click farms, I’m totally agree with it. I saw some of the users’ profiles that ‘LIKE’ my fb page, they are just weird like those shown in the video. However, what domtallon says is also true, we can set the target market to be more specific and avoid countries that mentioned above. Occasionally advertise on Facebook is great, but I would not recommend putting too much money on Facebook advertising.
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Yeah, narrowing down your audiences seem like an obvious way to resolve the situation. However, like I mentioned to @Domtallon, people wanted their page to be “liked” by the world, so turned a blind eye to filtering out their targeted audiences. There should be a way to reach out to everyone buying paid ads to do that if they don’t want their money ending up in click farms!
However, I also feel that Facebook marketing has become quite saturated these days. People will definitely “like” your page under the Suggested Posts column, but there’s a slim chance people may take the next step to buy something from that company page. It has become a trend of the past imo. So yep, we shouldn’t spend too much money on FB advertising as well.
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Great video about click farms, in light of this brands should stop using the number of ‘likes’ as a benchmark for success among their target market. Rather they should focus on the level of engagement with users instead. I have spent money to try and promote a sporting group that I manage and got 2 likes out of a 1 week campaign. The best organic reach I get out of posts is when I post things that are engaging and relevant to the people that matter, and the best way to have engagement is to get users to share it among their networks.
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I’ve recently tried paying for facebook ads campaign for 3 days and didn’t get ANY likes on my page at all… I followed @domtallon’s advise; limited my audiences and was specific with my advertising criteria when targeting who I want my audience to be. Turns out all the likes I got were from individual Facebook groups which I have shared my page on. In my conclusion, facebook marketing has saturated and firms should move on to find new platforms such as Instagram or SnapChat, where many potential areas of advertising ideas are still untapped.
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I’ve actually never heard of click farms but frequently hear the term “buying followers”. And it has always make me wonder how could you buy followers? This is really interesting. Thank goodness I didn’t suggest my manager to pay to promote their page.
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Yeah what a scam huh? Otherwise you could suggest to your manager what @domatallon did; limit your audience and be specific with the adveriting criteria so that you target who you want your audience to be, or in his case, the people within a 15km radius of his business. That could prevent ‘invisible’ people from click on your paid ads!
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Personally I don’t see the point of buying likes. The point of a facebook page is to engage and communicate and if you’re paying people to like your page their obviously not your target audience. The number of likes on a page should not be considered a benchmark for brands since its so inaccurate. That money should be spent on something more useful and effective….like an interesting and engaging marketing campaign.
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i dont get it why would brands buy likes and followres? they are obviously not the real customers. unless probably they want to be sseen as a more “famous” and “recommended” brands that many people love. a smart way in a glance but still i personally think, they should focus on a more important issue rather than this one and s pend money on a more important issue .nice blog btw!
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