Hi! I'm not sure if this fits under "scams," but I couldn't think of another place where an odd topic like this would belong, so I thought this would be a place to start. I read the rules and don't think that what I'm about to discuss is an illegal transaction by standards other than Facebook's terms of service, but if it is actually illegal, I'm sorry in advance of potential ban.
So, a bit of a background on this – in 2009 I was 16 and in high school, and I was just making the transition over to Facebook from MySpace. Facebook was of course super different then, before the advent of The Algorithms, and the timeline was pretty much a chronological constantly-running feed of everybody's activity in real time. This gave rise to the popularity of a lot of these "like if you relate!" pages, or pages that were just quotes from movies/TV, memes, etc., and the "like" was used very much in the same way that the Tumblr reblog or the Twitter retweet is still used. This meant that liking one of these pages often resulted in all your friends seeing it and liking it too, the likes would just mount up exponentially, and the next thing you knew these pages had over 1 million likes.
I was one of the many people who made one of these "like if you relate" posts. It hit over a million likes overnight, and although it was cool I didn't have anything to do with an audience that big. I was a dumb high-schooler and not a marketer and didn't view those likes as a potential audience for advertising shit. The page sat unused, and when Twitter/Tumblr became super popular this whole trend completely died.
The page now has 760K+ likes, probably because a lot of folks have left Facebook and more still have gone back through their "likes" and removed these dumb-ass pages (I un-liked my own page a long time ago). But the page gets messages daily from shady-looking Facebook accounts – mostly with no personal information, contrived "Western"-sounding names, and stolen profile pictures. The language of the messages varies, but I can tell the senders don't speak English natively, and I'm guessing (based a lot on stereotypes, a little on my ability to read into what a person's native language group might be based on the errors they make in English) these kinds of outfits are mostly based in South Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa, or China. Basically these people want to "buy" the page from me, presumably to use its audience for marketing purposes. The verbiage is identical in the hundreds of messages the page receives, so I'm pretty sure they're all originating from the same few... firms? Companies? The offers are mostly either (1) they want me to sell my entire Facebook account to them and give them full control of the page, or (2) they want me to just make them the admin, or they want me to post links and ads and shit to the page in return for money. I've gotten offers from $2000-5000 per post, to $5000 per 10K likes on the whole page. Suggested payment options have ran the gamut from PayPal (no) to Western Union and bank transfer (very no) to Venmo (could be legit?), cash, and check. And, of course, Bitcoin.
I have always ignored these messages because I've thought this sounds too good to be true. I mean, not everyone is sitting on a Facebook page with that many likes, but I also just don't trust these people. I don't believe that they, whoever they are, work for companies that even have upwards of $350K they could send in my direction. I don't even think they have $2000. And I don't trust any of the methods they're guaranteeing to get said money to me. But every now and then the thought of whether or not it's *actually* possible comes back around, and I thought it would be worth putting out there to see if anyone would be able to weigh in on this topic. I work a job that involves a lot of PR, so I do understand the value of a big social media audience for peddling things and advertising events, and can see why the page is desired. But I have my Very Big Doubts too. I also feel like Facebook could find out and sue me so hard they'd need to repossess my organs.
tl;dr I'm sitting on a completely dead Facebook page with 760K+ likes. I constantly get offers to sell my page to marketing companies abroad. I would consider doing that if I didn't think I would (a) be ripped off, (b) be sued by Facebook, (c) all of the above. Is selling your Facebook page actually a thing people do? I understand the value of a big FB audience, but don't see how I could turn mine into profit though without shady dealing. I wouldn't mind earning some money this way if there actually was, you know, any.
Thanks to anybody who has input on this.
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