There is no doubting that having a higher follower count or more views on your videos will make you look more established. Have a look at the sample below for the YouTube search “how to trim curtain bangs”. Two of these videos have well over two million views and one video has barely 20k views. Which one do you think is going to be a better choice?

How Much Do Fake Engagements Cost?
I think a better question is, “How much would you pay to be at the top?” The price of views, follows, likes, and subscribers might surprise you. Below is a simple price list for how much you can expect to pay for these engagements. This screenshot was pulled from a forum post by someone who is selling these services.

Social Media Management Panels, or SMM Panels, are used to fake your way to the top. If you have the kind of following that has a herd mentality, then you might see some benefit to faking your engagements. There is a huge drawback to doing this, though. You won’t get any more sales, and your real audience will be polluted with spam.
Today, there are many automations in play to help your channel to find the right audience. These automations are fed data from your existing audience. By polluting your existing audience data, you can significantly harm your organic discoverability. In the worst case, your account might be terminated for abusing the terms of service.
It’s also worth mentioning that these engagements don’t “stick”, meaning the accounts used for liking and following you are always being terminated and your engagements will be removed. For example, if you paid for 10,000 followers, you might get 10,000 followers, but over the course of a few weeks, you’ll lose most of them.