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SocialKik Review: Is Buying Facebook Fans Worth It?
- Categorized in: Social Media
There are a number of services out there that will let you buy Twitter followers or Facebook fans. We decided to try one of them, SocialKik.com.
In our experiment, we decided to buy 1000 Facebook fans for an Australian fan page, and 2000 Facebook fans for a United Kingdom fan page.
Within days, we began to receive new fans, as promised. But there were some problems.
- We paid extra for the "targeted fans" option, and clearly specified that we wanted Australian fans and United Kingdom fans respectively. However, it became clear early on that all fans were from the USA. When we replied to SocialKik.com to ask them why we weren't getting geographically targeted fans, they did not reply. Unfortunately this did not improve and we ended up with almost exclusively USA fans.
- Some of the "fans" began to leave weird comments on our fan pages. Things like "hello" or "i feel bad today". That's no big deal, but the thing is, some fans made identical comments on both of our fan pages. This leads us to suspect that many of the fans (or at least the ones that comment) are either junk profiles, or perhaps paid to join our page and comment. Why else would they join both pages and make the same weird/random comment on both of our seperate fan pages?
- The fans don't interact, or seem interested at all. This is no big drama, as we expected this. We can't be exactly sure how SocialKik.com find the fans, but you can be pretty sure that they're not joining your fan page because they are genuinely interested. So don't expect much out of the fans, it's really more about boosting numbers.
- We had some issues getting the fans in the promised amount of time. For our UK page we were told that we would get 2000 fans in 21 days. In fact it took several months to get that number of fans, and only after several emails and complaints that it was taking so long.
We have also conducted other experiments by paying people at www.fiverr.com to recommend our Facebook pages to their Facebook friends. We have tried this method around 5 times and unfortunately on all occasions the amount of fans we received were minimal.
The only service we have found that is worthwhile, and guarantees country specific targeted fans, is Blumpo.
So what's our recommendation after all that, about purchasing Facebook fans?
Sometimes when you've started a new Facebook fan page, and you want some fan numbers to make it look more reputable, then you may wish to consider purchasing some fans. For example, you may feel that when someone visits your Facebook fan page, they are more likely to interact or join if they see 1000 fans instead of 3 fans.
But because purchased fans will never be as loyal as real fans, you should view them as just number builders (that is, just there to make your initial page look better). For that reason, you should source them as cheap as possible.
And you certainly shouldn't hope that purchased fans will interact with the same interest as real fans.
Have you ever purchased Facebook fans? What's been your experience?
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Yes Graeme, I'm also running a web based project and thought that social media would be great to do. I used a fairly expensive process to encourage fans on board, and they certainly came on board, but at around $2 a fan, I'm not seeing them perform as well as I'd thought. It's still early but I'm scratching my head about whether this is a great way to grow my business. 3 months from now I'll be able to say whether it was a fairly costly way to start a great business, or a too costly way to kick start a great big lump.
Dave, I think the biggest value of having a lot of fans on your page is psychological. When people see that your business has a lot of fans, they're psychologically predisposed to have more respect for you and that might increase conversions. It sounds silly, but I think thats just human nature. Thats where I think that services such as GetMorePopular are actually valuable.
Regarding the socialkik review, it is without question an outright scam. I am shocked that PayPal hasn't put them out of business. I paid 100 dollars for some fans as a test and didn't get any response and had to fight against them with Paypal to get my money back. :(
well...whatever you do...do not use socialkik. I have tried several times to contact them an i have yet to get someone to respond. this is just one problem
I think there is some merit to the fact that people might be more eager to join a facebook page if their are more people following. I have 88 for my business page and it is a nightmare to get more! I am considering a "pay for Friends" model to see if it works. Also, has there been any analysis on how Friends, fans, etc. effects SEO and website rankings. I cant imagine this is not a factor!
Graeme
The process cost us in the order of $2 per fan and we think in the long run that we'll be happy with that, from here we intend to grow the base by being interested in our clients and genuinely engaging with them, but it's a long road.
As a guide, fulfilling the offer was a drain on our time and we won't be doing it that way again, maybe putting a prize of the same value up by closing day, we'd only have had to spend the same money, but we'd have sent it in one envelope instead of 100.
It's still interesting to see how we make facebook worthwhile, give that we were already interested in the client, there's no extra time in a small business.
its a pity i didnt do enough research to come across your post early.
similar experience for us:
10 days after we submitted our order for 2000 targetted fans
- no response from socialkik to our enquiries
- addition of 14 non targetted fans (not of the country we wanted). we contacted them to check this, and as mentioned above no response.
our intention is also to boost numbers first, and monitor it if the fans could really be useful. So it seems we were far too optimistic.
I paid socialkik.com for 1000 targeted fans. I asked them twice if they could provide me fans that where from the USA and Interested in Real Estate and the said no problem. Well all the fans I'm getting are from other countries and between the age of 18-25. I have been emailing them everyday for the past week and no response. This is a complete scam. If anyone has had a goog experience with a company please share as I would like to hire a service that can deliver. Thanks.
I read this post and comments before I purchased fans - I wasn't expecting much to say the least! However, I used GrowYourFans as they were the cheapest for 1,000 targeted fans. It took about 10 days but I recieved the full thousand fans, they all seem decent quality too. It is a bit of a cheat, and obviously not everyone will be interested in my page, but I recommend them @Lisle.
Hello. I bought the bronze package from this site and wrote them an email immediately after paying. No response. Today is 24 hours later, and I just sent them another email. Still no response. Would you happen to have a different email adress for them aside from the one on their website? Your help would be appreciated. I am worried I have been scamed out of 80 dollars.
I started a campaign with them for very targeted fans for our market: US and Canadian hunters and people who fish. So far, I've received almost nothing but fans from India, Pakistan, Burma and many other countries that I didn't target. I have NOTHING against these fans and, of course, gladly welcome anyone from anywhere. However, these are clearly not "interested" fans. Nothing in their profile indicates any interest in our product demographics. They are clearly spam accounts.
Socialkik is delivering new fans but they are NOT targeted. I paid more for targeted fans. These fans clearly fall under Socialkik's description of "non-targeted" fans.
I would not recommend Socialkik for buying new leads. They do not care about their customers or delivering what was promised.
Interestingly, I've been informed that my campaign had not begun at the time of my previous posting. We shall see if Socialkik delivers what was promised; I'll post a follow up after their campaign ends.
Placed my order with Socialkik for 1000 Twitter and 1000 Fb fans. The automated thanks email said, "we will start your campaign within 1-2 business days." Two days on, nothing - and no reply to my email asking when the campaign will start. So far, not so good. Will post back on progress.
OK, so I said I would give you an update on my order. Nothing was happening, and no direct communications from socialkik. All I got was the automated email when I changed my Twitter logon asking for the details. I currently have a dispute open on Paypal to get my money back. Disappointing. I recommend anyone here to use fiverr.com - way better service providers with good communications, and a lot cheaper!
At the beggining of September I purchased 1000 targeted fans from Socialkik. I followed their instructions and emailed support letting them know when the payment had gone through. The very next day i recieved an email from them stating things were getting set up and the fans will start appearing within 3 days. Now a month later, and many emails and even a phone call or 2 later ( answerphone) still NO activity and NO fans other than myself and 3 friends.
I have now set the wheels in motion to get a refund via paypal and inform them that this seemingly is a scam.
I tried to log into socialkik with my details and shock horror, apparently they have no user with my details. So i registered again, and this time sent yet another support message complaining and also took time to post on their forum! you can read my thread here
https://socialkik.zendesk.com/entries/282262-to-sc...
providing its not been deleted yet!
Not happy at all, definately feel like ive been scammed!!!!!
I paid for a 10'000 Facebook Fans Plan and Socialkik never did something to grow up my fans.
I tried to contact them by email to pay back the 300 USD, and never received any response.
Hi, Usocial is a scam too. Just like SocialKik seems to be.
I have tried 4 websites offering the same services as this one, but all of them failed to deliver what they advertised. Then, I tried my last one www.FBpopular.com and was skeptical about this one too but I was able to talk to a representative on the phone and that gave me more confidence so I went ahead and ordered the gold package and more than what I ordered. I really recommend this company for facebook fan services.
Strange that Mike Browb does not seem to exist on FB, considering that he forked out for a "gold package". Unfortunately some of the comments are written in such a way that I would suspect that they are promoting their own service.
@Michael: Woooh :) Good One.
I'm still wondering is it a right idea to use facebook fan buying since it sounds to me like unethical, buying fans for your business. It's hard to really say how any of these fan buying companies get to these "so called" targetted people to like a particular page on fb. I tried fb ads and it cost me $1.5 approx for each like; but I am sure in this that the fans are loyal and will respond to any promotions or post that I do.
I am confused who is promoting what here? and if I really want to use what is the right company
I was also skeptical about buying facebook fans. I tried socialpromotionz.com for a trial package of 500 targeted USA fans ($40). Although the fan quality wasn't the greatest, overall I was pleased. They responded quickly to a question I had, the price was reasonable, and they delivered the fans in the amount of time they said they would. I'd say give them a try if you are looking for site to puchase facebook fans from. (Just FYI, socialpromotionz.com sells twitter followers and YouTube views as well, but I have no need for either, so I didn't purchase any obviously, but they may be a good choice for those as well). Hope this helps!
Sharon Izzo
would just like to warn people about
http://facebook.getmorepopular.com/
They claim to be able to provide you with targeted Facebook Likes as part of your marketing strategy and claim a full refund if you are not satisfied.
I contracted them to get me targeted UK residents "likes", but I only received "likes" from US residents.
I requested a refund but they refused and stated that they were trying to target the UK and it wasn't their fault if only US people were "liking" my page.
They took payment for a service they could not provide and then were unwilling to accept that this was the case and refused a refund.
I strongly recommend avoiding this company and using an alternative.
I used http://facebook.getmorepopular.com/ over 5 times already and every time they were very quick and delivered what i ordered. so im not sure what problem you ran into, but they've been good for me so far! in fact, i've recommended them to my friends and they haven't had any issues either.
Our review of getmorepopular.com is that they are a scam, no results, no communication, no refund. Do not use getmorepopular.com they are fraudulent and nothing but lies. They write fake reviews to flood out real opinions and experience such as ours and this post from "Jessie" is no duubt one of them.
I don't know Kevin. I tried GetMorePopular out for a few different businesses I'm running in different parts of the United States and they were always able to get me pretty targeted fans (more than 95% of the fans were from the US). Granted, I've never tried using them for a UK campaign, but they've always done the right thing for me. I would suspect that either there's more to the story than you're letting on, or you are an employee of a competing firm writing a nasty review on purpose. As somebody that's been burned by some companies using this tactic against my businesses, I always try to review companies that i had good experiences with.
Thanks for posting your experience, I was just looking into this company. I guess a telltale sign is that the website is one page, has a single phone number, and displays no physical address at all. It has a prominent warning on in their terms of use link (hard to notice at the bottom of the page) cancelling any program if staff gets abused. Well they must get abused a LOT then! I am starting to think that their is no easy and quick way. I use and pay for the FB advertising at around $100-150 a months, targeted towards people that are interested in beading and get around 10 - 20 real followers this way every month linking to http://www.facebook.com/Benjamins.Crafts . I know it is expensive but there are follow up sales and do hope that this will improve with better content and over time. Also consider google ads to promote your website (forget yahoo). The main tip is, you do the hard work don't leave it to others that say they will do it cheaply for you (mind you I have seen some expensive services that also don't deliver).
URGENT WARNING: DO.NOT.USE.SOCIALKIK.EVER.
SocialKik is an absolute scam. I read all the positive forum reviews and now believe (as someone else suggested above) that the positive referrals are posted by SocialKik themselves.
I paid for 1,000 FB Likes and a few days later, faceless Facebook fans with empty profiles and no profile image started appearing in the hundreds as Likes on our FB page. The looked immediately suspicious so I promptly deleted them. For weeks now, I have been deleting an influx of hundreds of fake IDs daily. Even worse, after making a complaint to SocialKik, the influx temporarily died down and I started receiving what seemed like legitimate Likes from real users, only to realise that some of the names doubled up exactly with different profile images but virtually identical profiles. In other words, within a preview of 6 or so Likes on our FB page, two full names were identical and total scams. Ridiculous! All of my supposedly real Facebook users happen to be from Austin, Texas and have EXACTLY the same taste in music. If you are going to fake FB IDs at least get creative about it so it seems legitimate. I complained and complained via email to SocialKik and requested that they STOP this process which was bound to do more harm than good to our reputation on FB. I totally regret using them. I thought the worst that might happen is that I might only get 50 genuine Likes despite their guarantee claims but this ongoing issue of fake IDs is WAY WORSE. It's like a virus I can't stop. I would have rather built a few hundred genuine FB Likes more slowly that waste time and money on this SCAM. Hilariously, after one of my complaints SocialKik claimed that they were limited in how they could help build my genuine user Likes without me granting them access as an administrator to my Facebook page. Can you believe it?? As if I'd grant these scammers administrator access!
REPEAT: DO.NOT.USE.SOCIALKIK.EVER.
I tried socialkik twice. The first time I ordered 1000 targeted fans and had no difficulties and they seemed like actual humans that were joining my page. So a few months later I ordered more and I made it so that my page would only accept US fans. Well weeks went by with nothing. I contacted socialkik and they informed me that their "marketing people" are usually in other countries and they could not access my page until I made it public to other countries as well. When I did, I started to get more fans claiming to be from the US but are obviously not. Many fans have the same profile pictures and their names are ridiculous. Things like Light Bulb or I'll have a fan named Bob Smith and the next one is named Bill Smith and they have the same profile. I sell products in the US and many of the fans I'm getting our international which makes it obvious they can't possibly be genuine fans. I didn't expect interactive fans but I had at least hoped for ones that could pass as real ones. I've emailed socialkik many times with no response.
Definitely try Blumpo. I know they are reputable and will deliver as promised. Getting a bunch of fans to boost your numbers gives you credibility, if nothing else.
Graeme, I have found Blumpo.com good too, used them a few times. Most of the other guys are simply taking people for a ride. Unfortunity it leaves a bad taste in people mouth about buying facebook fans.
Nice article. Well, maybe you'll want to try again, this time using more micro jobs sites not only fiverr
Try http://fiverrway.com/top-20-best-micro-job-sites-december-2010/
Thank you
Christian
I am back to report on my latest findings. Just completed an order with Blumpo, really impressed. The delivered as promised. SocailKik was a waste of money as per my previous remarks. Blumpo got it right straight away. Highly Recommended.
Hi,
I also speak from experience. I tried www.socialpromotionz.com and I did receive what I ordered as far as number of fans goes. I think you have to have the expectation that what you are really buying is a number and not necessarily future clients/customers/contacts etc. You are making your "like" number higher, which in turn makes your site more "likable" for those "good fans" that you are really after. I know there are probably some scam sites out ther, www.socialpromotionz.com is not one of them. He sent me a confirmation email after I placed my order, and received what more than the number of fans I actually ordered. This post isn't a plug for socialpromotionz.com it is more just a heads up for those who are interested in purchasing fans, as long as you realize that you aren't going to get high quality fans, but you are increasing the liklihood of getting more "good fans" (by having a higher "like" number) than you won't feel like you were worked over by the site your purchase from.
We tried socialkik out and they actually worked well despite the skepticism ive been reading about. For all you people that say your targeted fans don't work the state that they can only provide targeted fans only from US and Canada. Anyway we got fans starting to come in about 4 business days after the order and they are still in the process of being added, and at a good rate as well (100 in 5 hours).
As for real users, I don't the majority are actual people, but more likely are just bots. The fans are more to build credibility and encourage others to join rather than get actual customers, but for the price we think its worth it.
I actually came upon this website after putting money into Socialkik as well. Reading through the comments, I identified with many of the complaints posted here. I took action and decided to give Blumpo a try after reading up and as of right now, they have not delivered my fans (not even 1). I've gotten a few emails with some excuses, but again promises seem empty. I hope they redeem themselves in the next day or two. I guess that's what I get for trying to buy fans, right?
I have never had any problems with Blumpo and must have used them 3 - 4 times now. It took awhile for the fans to come through initally but they did. I noticed that changed their delivery timesframes and I have heard on other forums that they are very popular and I think their resources get stretched. I am sure they will fix it up. The fans I got are really good.
I hope you are right, Jess. More time has passed and I still haven't seen an increase in fans.
I think most people he are having problems because people are just looking at price and not a what quailty they are getting. Interesting to note too I have used a few fans services, usocail and Blumpo are really the only ones worth it. However they are both quite expensive, Blumpo sent me an email tonight that they had to raise prices and increase timeframes again. It seems that people are shifting away from "cheap" and want quality. There is not point buying a facebook fans page if the fans are not going to respond. Marketers also need to get away from the "if it works" mentality and know that my page has over 22K fans when I send a CPA offer I normally make $1500 on the first day. Sure I paid a bit for my fans but they have paid themselves back, well and truely. Facebook Marketing works you just have to be willing to invest in it, if you can't, rethink buying facebook fans because you might aswell throw your money away. Look really checkout the more expensive ones then look at the difference, it's obvious that the quality services won't offer a delivery timeframe of under 2 weeks because common sence knows "it's just not possible" without scripts etc. Next look at who they have worked with for example Blumpo have worked on campaign for FairFax Media (who are they? google them) and Usocail for many large sites. Biggest lession in Business, buy cheap (socail kik), get cheap (useless fans)!
The fact of the matter is, if you buy good fans, they will convert and make money. They may even pay for cost of getting the fans in a single post. It will all be worth it then.
Hey "GUY" who are you using how did you get to 22k fans with what legit service?
Is everyone saying that its only a numbers game no real conversions will happen? Even if i use usocial, or blumpo.com
Thanks
No exactully sure what your gettting at, I used both usocail and blumpo for fans. I have also used FansBullet, SocailKik, Socail Promotionz, Getty Fans, Bulkfans all of which for various reasons I would not recommend. I must admitt that some joined naturally by themselves but it has taken 12 months to get that many fans. Mine convert at around 2- 3% depending on what it is. Yes, it also looks good to have 22K fans on your page for reputation but if you want to market something to them then you need them to be "active" and "ready to buy". Many Facebook Fans Services are simply supplying "inactive users or fake" users.
Its a matter of fact that not evey guy can bring you 50,000 fans just like that. For that you have to pay. Whether you buy worldwide or targeted fans. You will surely get a good ROI.
Chears!
Yeah, I'm lucky that I found http://www.facebookfanville.com. They're prices are the lowest and they explain the process better about inviting real people. It's really hard to get cities and states, and if you can they're going to be really expensive.
When I first heard of being able to buy fans for your Twitter and FB accounts I signed up because it was cheap and a quick way to boost numbers at the start. Of course I knew they were mining profiles, paying out a few pennies for every member who liked our fan page. Still, I was let down by how few signed up and the lack of communication post-sale. Luckily, Paypal tends to side with the customer. And our site www.dirtyoldcoins.com deals with Roman coins and ancient history which isn't everyone's cup of tea but at least it should be of marginal interest to most people (as opposed to, say, an unsigned garage band or a flower shop in dubuque!).
I'd say your money is better invested in getting targeted ads from Google --- or even Facebook itself.
Interesting post here, I have heard similar reviews about Socialkik. I think it all depends on what your facebook page is trying to promote. For a local "bar band" for example, this service would not be worth it. But for an ecommerce site or a B2B service, it could certainly be useful. If nothing else, consumers tend to trust sites with more fans than not.
In my experience I have found that www.buyfanscheap.com offers the best service. Their "targeted" fans are actually targeted (whether in USA or not), and they seem to have pretty good turnaround time compared to others. Either way, best of luck to all of you!
I am very satisfied with the work done by Gilservices.com. Although their prices are not the lowest, I really recommend them because at least they get the job done just how you want it. This company even provides a phone number for you to call if you are in doubt of something so definitely try it out.
SOCIALKIK.COM IS A SCAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THEY ARE CON ARTISTS WHO STEEL YOUR $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Do NOT USE getmorepopular.com they don't give any results, they lie about giving refunds. I've lost over $1000, and in my opinion they are a scam. I couldn't find bad reviews about them when I looked before I went with them, only to realise now that they flood every place they can find with false positive reviews. They try to put you off, promising refunds that never come - I am writing this to hope that other people don't loose money to them like I did.
I have ordered serveral services through Socialkik in the past and had good service. This was around 6 months ago. The last 3 months they have fallen off the planet?? I have 12 orders that are in a pending status over the past 2 months. I have submitted trouble ticket after trouble ticket with no response. I'm now going to have to go through PayPal to dispute all of these transactions as Socialkik won't reply to any of my emails. I've talked with several other business associates in the Social Media arena and they all say that Socialkik is probably shutting down shop since they are not responding to anybody. Stay clear of Socialkik if you want to keep your money and save some heart ache, I wish I did.
GetMorePopular are total scam artists. When I asked them why the page we ordered for was getting no fans, their reps told me it could take over 6 months to complete my order. After our site gained less than 200 fans in a 2 week period (we are assuming largely due to our own local PR efforts), I asked them for a refund. They told me to get bent.
DO NOT work with GetMorePopular.com, it is a scam. You can't really buy Facebook fans, most services that promise as much are simply takign advantage of an easy way to steal peoples money and run.
Hey Guys, Feedback on gettyfans and buymorelikes. Both services delivered as promised and on time. However dont expect great customer service... they both lack in that department... took about 2 weeks for buymorelikes to respond and gettyfans never got back to me at all!