And Bogi
Junior Member
- Dec 9, 2018
- 197
- 190
Hey BHW, I hope you’re having a wonderful start to the week.
I’ve been a long-time lurker on this forum. Thanks to the guides and journeys in this place, I’ve managed to gain knowledge and skills that landed me multiple jobs and gigs in the past. I now feel it is time to provide some value back to the community.
This will be a bit of a lengthy thread, but I want to share as many details with you as possible.
I hope you guys and girls will find something useful in this journey.
For the past 2 years, I worked for a PPC company but finally decided to leave the job and start my own project with my current business partner. I’m starting this journey so we can track our progress and feel more motivated to meet our goals in time, as well as provide some value back to the community that gave us so much in the past.
The setup consists of hundreds of slave accounts, each doing around 150 follow actions at their full potential. Our slave accounts are profiled to look like regular people, depending on the niche of the store and the audience that we want to target. For example, say we want to have a cat store - then the profiles would have a bio of a cat owner, a profile picture with a cat, or a faceless person with a cat, the feed will have images of cats and we’ll repost stories from cat-relevant profiles to simulate real-person activity. You get the gist.
The slave accounts scrape the most recent followers of niche-relevant profiles with 5.000-100.000 followers. We try to avoid big profiles since they tend to have tons of bot followers. We manually search and verify the source profiles (the profiles whose followers we scrape) and currently have a list of thousands of niched sources totaling something shy of 100.000.000 followers. It was a tedious task, but from our own experience, it is inevitable to do it.
Once the people our slaves followed follow them back, the slaves reach out to them with customized spintaxed DMs. Since these people already followed our slave accounts, our DMs end up in their primary inbox, not in requests. In the DMs, we funnel them to the official Ig profile of our e-commerce brand, promising them an exclusive offer available only for the people referred by our slaves.
We then wait for people to message us on our main profile and give them the code for the offer that the slave account has promised them.
It’s important to note that since we are actually trying to build a brand, we try to avoid spamming people in any of the steps above. We don’t send messages to non-followers, we send personalized messages relevant to the users’ interests (of course, there will be exceptions here, but they comprise less than 10% of all the users that follow us back) and we answer manually and considerately to everyone that contacts us on the main profile.
The final step is to create a multichannel marketing approach while utilizing the Ig traffic as the basis. Since we’d be getting 300-400+ daily sessions on the store, out of which 10+% leave their contact information, we’ll be using Email flows (2 pre-purchase flows totaling 5 emails and 1 post-purchase flow with 2 emails), SMS flows (2 cart-abandonment SMSs) and Facebook/Instagram + Google search/GDN retargeting. If this setup proves to be successful, we’ll be adding retargetings on TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
We already proved to ourselves that this variation of the mother-slave method can work on its own and we want to see how much we can scale it with an multi-channel approach. We already launched a store with around 50 accounts a couple of weeks ago and managed to get $250 in revenue. Due to issues with audience targeting and product costs, we decided to stop that store, and start from scratch with a different, more easily targetable niche and products with much more competitive prices.
Most cost-efficient
I’ve managed Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and Google campaigns totaling over $1m in combined ad spend. I found that the mother-slave method is at least 10 times cheaper than Facebook/Instagram ads, where getting a follower from a first-world country costs at least $0.2 while getting targeted followers with the mother-slave method costs us $0.02 or less. The same goes to click costs/store sessions - first-world country (US, EU) cost-per-click costs us between $0.35 - $1.15 on broad targeting in the past year (narrower targeting costs even more), while with the mother-slave method we’re getting around $0.05 per targeted click when taking into account all the setup costs. Yes, Snapchat traffic (among some others) is much cheaper, but their conversion rate is shit 99% of the time, especially after the iOS updates last year.
Real people and targeted sessions
The sessions we get are as real as they can be, and on top of all, they are genuinely interested in the content of the main profile, otherwise, they wouldn’t follow it in the first place or visit the store. If the main profile doesn't produce quality content or the website doesn’t look legit and lacks a decent offer, this method won’t do magic. We’ve seen a drastic difference in the performance when the profile didn’t look legit and once we revamped everything and put effort into creating top-notch content, the results immediately improved.
Infinitely scalable (in theory, but in reality, we're limited by the number of available profiles on Instagram)
We could be getting 10.000+ followers or website sessions per day with this method. The only things that prevent us are resources and infrastructure. If we see promising results within the first weeks/months, there’s no reason to double down on this method, either with the initial store or diversify in different niches.
Expected time to reach - end of September.
How to get there:
Store metrics:
Revenue: ~$70/daily, $2200/monthly
Profit: $35/daily (50% profit margins)
AOV: ~$28
Sessions: 150/daily
Conversion Rate: 1.5%
Botting metrics:
Slave accounts: 450 at half potential
DMs: 2.500 daily
Total follows across slaves: 31.500 daily / 70 per account
Expected time to reach - mid-end November.
Revenue: $165/daily, $5000/monthly
Profit: $83/daily, $2500/monthly
Conversions: 6-7/day
Sessions: 500/daily
AOV: $28
Botting metrics:
Slave accounts: 450 at full potential
DMs: 6.500/daily
Total follows across slaves: 67.500/daily, 150 per account
That’s all I have for now, I’ll be back at least once weekly to update you on our progress, or more frequently if there are any more notable changes.
Feel free to ask any questions and I’ll be more than willing to answer.
Good luck with your journeys!
I’ve been a long-time lurker on this forum. Thanks to the guides and journeys in this place, I’ve managed to gain knowledge and skills that landed me multiple jobs and gigs in the past. I now feel it is time to provide some value back to the community.
This will be a bit of a lengthy thread, but I want to share as many details with you as possible.
I hope you guys and girls will find something useful in this journey.
About me:
I’m a guy from the Balkans, an art fanatic who recently turned 27, with the ultimate ambition to focus entirely on film and photography 10 years from now. I’m not naive to expect I’ll become a millionaire doing art, so I’ve spent my 20s doing media buying and growth hacking to get there first, and then relocate the wealth on long-term investments and my previously mentioned ambition.For the past 2 years, I worked for a PPC company but finally decided to leave the job and start my own project with my current business partner. I’m starting this journey so we can track our progress and feel more motivated to meet our goals in time, as well as provide some value back to the community that gave us so much in the past.
The Project:
We’ll be using the mother-slave method on Ig to bring people to our Shopify store, convert them into customers and eventually build a brand.The setup consists of hundreds of slave accounts, each doing around 150 follow actions at their full potential. Our slave accounts are profiled to look like regular people, depending on the niche of the store and the audience that we want to target. For example, say we want to have a cat store - then the profiles would have a bio of a cat owner, a profile picture with a cat, or a faceless person with a cat, the feed will have images of cats and we’ll repost stories from cat-relevant profiles to simulate real-person activity. You get the gist.
The slave accounts scrape the most recent followers of niche-relevant profiles with 5.000-100.000 followers. We try to avoid big profiles since they tend to have tons of bot followers. We manually search and verify the source profiles (the profiles whose followers we scrape) and currently have a list of thousands of niched sources totaling something shy of 100.000.000 followers. It was a tedious task, but from our own experience, it is inevitable to do it.
Once the people our slaves followed follow them back, the slaves reach out to them with customized spintaxed DMs. Since these people already followed our slave accounts, our DMs end up in their primary inbox, not in requests. In the DMs, we funnel them to the official Ig profile of our e-commerce brand, promising them an exclusive offer available only for the people referred by our slaves.
We then wait for people to message us on our main profile and give them the code for the offer that the slave account has promised them.
It’s important to note that since we are actually trying to build a brand, we try to avoid spamming people in any of the steps above. We don’t send messages to non-followers, we send personalized messages relevant to the users’ interests (of course, there will be exceptions here, but they comprise less than 10% of all the users that follow us back) and we answer manually and considerately to everyone that contacts us on the main profile.
The final step is to create a multichannel marketing approach while utilizing the Ig traffic as the basis. Since we’d be getting 300-400+ daily sessions on the store, out of which 10+% leave their contact information, we’ll be using Email flows (2 pre-purchase flows totaling 5 emails and 1 post-purchase flow with 2 emails), SMS flows (2 cart-abandonment SMSs) and Facebook/Instagram + Google search/GDN retargeting. If this setup proves to be successful, we’ll be adding retargetings on TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
We already proved to ourselves that this variation of the mother-slave method can work on its own and we want to see how much we can scale it with an multi-channel approach. We already launched a store with around 50 accounts a couple of weeks ago and managed to get $250 in revenue. Due to issues with audience targeting and product costs, we decided to stop that store, and start from scratch with a different, more easily targetable niche and products with much more competitive prices.
Why this method:
Considering our backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences, we considered doing PPC for testing products and niches, and building the brand, but then decided to go with this route because of the following reasons:Most cost-efficient
I’ve managed Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and Google campaigns totaling over $1m in combined ad spend. I found that the mother-slave method is at least 10 times cheaper than Facebook/Instagram ads, where getting a follower from a first-world country costs at least $0.2 while getting targeted followers with the mother-slave method costs us $0.02 or less. The same goes to click costs/store sessions - first-world country (US, EU) cost-per-click costs us between $0.35 - $1.15 on broad targeting in the past year (narrower targeting costs even more), while with the mother-slave method we’re getting around $0.05 per targeted click when taking into account all the setup costs. Yes, Snapchat traffic (among some others) is much cheaper, but their conversion rate is shit 99% of the time, especially after the iOS updates last year.
Real people and targeted sessions
The sessions we get are as real as they can be, and on top of all, they are genuinely interested in the content of the main profile, otherwise, they wouldn’t follow it in the first place or visit the store. If the main profile doesn't produce quality content or the website doesn’t look legit and lacks a decent offer, this method won’t do magic. We’ve seen a drastic difference in the performance when the profile didn’t look legit and once we revamped everything and put effort into creating top-notch content, the results immediately improved.
Infinitely scalable (in theory, but in reality, we're limited by the number of available profiles on Instagram)
We could be getting 10.000+ followers or website sessions per day with this method. The only things that prevent us are resources and infrastructure. If we see promising results within the first weeks/months, there’s no reason to double down on this method, either with the initial store or diversify in different niches.
What we have so far:
- Sourcing agent (very cheap shipping to US/UK/EU in 8-12 days)
- Shopify Store
- A main account with original content
- Slave accounts and automation software
- 1 Email Flow + 1 SMS Flow
- Google & Facebook pixels gathering data
Current Monthly Costs:
- Shopify/Apps - $50
- VPS - $30
- Botting software - $150
- Proxies - $680
- Scrapers - $190
GOALS:
First Milestone
Get to $1100 monthly gross profit, to cover the costs.Expected time to reach - end of September.
How to get there:
Store metrics:
Revenue: ~$70/daily, $2200/monthly
Profit: $35/daily (50% profit margins)
AOV: ~$28
Sessions: 150/daily
Conversion Rate: 1.5%
Botting metrics:
Slave accounts: 450 at half potential
DMs: 2.500 daily
Total follows across slaves: 31.500 daily / 70 per account
Second Milestone
Get to $2600 gross profit, i.e. $1500 net profit.Expected time to reach - mid-end November.
How to get there:
Store metrics:Revenue: $165/daily, $5000/monthly
Profit: $83/daily, $2500/monthly
Conversions: 6-7/day
Sessions: 500/daily
AOV: $28
Botting metrics:
Slave accounts: 450 at full potential
DMs: 6.500/daily
Total follows across slaves: 67.500/daily, 150 per account
That’s all I have for now, I’ll be back at least once weekly to update you on our progress, or more frequently if there are any more notable changes.
Feel free to ask any questions and I’ll be more than willing to answer.
Good luck with your journeys!
Last edited:
) made a thread with same method & goal back in 2018! for sure its been hard since last API IG (july2019) decrease update, but sure still working! good luck! 