Originally Posted by Astrophsx

Which means the thousands of dollars spent just to advertise his YouTube videos (not even factoring the cost to produce them) does not lead to a significant increase in website traffic which might lead to more app clicks.

So why would someone pay for likes and views?

1) Bragging rights... Which is how this whole discussion started. In celebrating his 6th he made the claim of how well his social media accounts were doing as a sign of success. I pointed out paying for those numbers isn't really a benchmark of success. TPG is big on bragging rights. Though ctownflyer hasn't released the evidence... TPG went on a drunken rant via social media on an Emirates flight of who was the most successful travel blogger (targeted at Lucky).

2) There were a few major jumps in numbers in Facebook (50k,100k, 500k). They probably started out at a lower number to see if the like "farm" could deliver the numbers. The major 500k jump happened around the time TPG TV was announced. So he could be fluffing the numbers trying to get a TV show. Bankrate might be paying for TPG TV hoping that if Brian gets a TV show it will lead to increased traffic to the website.

3) Potentially TPG had an increased number of likes after his editor was on the media flight with Qatar that had some issues. It had a decent amount of press. Not enough press that would allow for a 500k jump in likes (his YouTube account only had a marginal increase in subscriptions).

4) Brian Kelly is an employee and maybe as an editor he has to hit certain numbers? Not likely he'd pay out of pocket for fake likes to show his continued success with the website.

Personally I don't care for Brian Kelly that much, but I'm interested in seeing how his website and other travel blogs are doing.