You may have seen some of the websites or some ads for those websites that sell Followers for the various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google + and so on. You may even be wondering if they are legitimate or just a complete ripoff. Well, to answer your questions regarding that: it all depends.

Some deals are better than others, some are just a ripoff and some are good for certain things. Some of those sites will not give you Real Followers. What they do is set up a bunch of fake, inactive accounts that they use to follow you from. 

One example is a site that I had gone to myself that gave me a number of Facebook followers that were fake accounts that they set up. The giveaway was the fact that many of those accounts did not have a profile photo. So if you really want to make a good impression by having people think that you have a lot of followers, you might not be so convincing if all of your followers don't have a profile pic. Shortly after I received those follows, they were gone because Facebook probably discovered that the accounts were fake and deleted them. So I was back to square one.

Now some will deliver real followers but not all of them may be active on a regular basis. Some might just send out a Twitter tweet once every week or once every month or so. So chances are, they probably won't be paying much attention to your tweets. However, it may help in some ways, in the sense that others are more likely to follow you if they see that you are already being followed by a lot of other people. This principle works regarding all social media sites, whether it is Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.

So let's say that you find a site that sells Twitter follows. Let's say that you Purchase the package that gives you 1,000 followers. Let's also say that they are real followers. But how active are they? Are they on every day? The ones who are on every day are the ones who will see your tweets. The rest will only do so on rare occasions, since they are rarely logged into their account. 

So how do you prevent yourself from being scammed? First of all, check to see if there are reviews for the sites you are checking out. See what others are saying about it. Then, always purchase the cheapest plan they offer. See how it works out. first, check if they actually have a profile picture. Then, look at the accounts to see how active they are. If they are Twitter follows, see how often they send out a tweet. The same with Facebook. See how often they post. That will tell you how active they really are.

Now, you may find a lot of inactive people. However, you may also have a great deal of active people. But if as many as half are active, it can still be a good deal. Let's say I purchase 1,000 followers dirt cheap but 500 are fairly active. That's not too bad. Now if they are all fake accounts, that's a total ripoff, obviously.

So, those are some things to look out for. Always purchase the cheapest plan first to see how it works out. If it works out, then purchase a bigger plan. If it doesn't, never purchase from them again. Always start small to test them. Some you may not  even need to test if you can find some bad reviews of them online. Just do your research and test things out before you spend a lot of money on things that may not yield any real results. Good luck. I've included the latest comic strip with this post. Just click on the picture to view at its full size.

Bob Craypoe, also known as R. L. Crepeau