My first Instagram journey!

[nicb34]

Hey guys, I decided to recently start my first Instagram journey. I decided to go into the animal niche and it has been exactly a month from now. I just wanted to report my general feel, accomplishments etc. I started off by finding good quality pictures off of tumblr and such and followed around 200-300 people per day. This lead to a slow growth but all my followers are real. I u followed on Wednesdays or Thursdays at 100 per hour for maybe 4-5h per day. I only in followed the people who weren't following me and I will soon un follow everyone once I hit 5k followers. Here are my stats for the first month (Oct 18-nov 17)
followers: 4113
Following:3815
Posts:66 (averaged 2-3 per day)
Engagement : currently getting atleast 500 likes per picture sometimes more (highest with 730) and give or take 7-11 comments per picture (some have a lot more around 30)
I'll be updating my journey every week or so or perhaps monthly.

 

[Thenub]

Goodluck on journey and looks like you have a great engagement %, which is nice!

 

[aligeek]

Good luck on your journey hope you find success, I'm thinking to try insta too

 

[DunDidIt2X]

Hope you make a lot of money monetizing it...

 

[Dutch Masters]

Goodluck on your journey! Nice engagement my engagement is shit on my 5k car account (80/130 likes)

 

[nicb34]

Thank You everyone!
My plans for this account is to build a good follow base as organically and naturally as possible, and once I hit 20k+ I will try to sell shoutouts, and maybe at one point affiliate with animal products. As of right now I spent the day un following a lot of people, therefore I didn't see much growth around +70 organic followers, Tommorow will most likely be an unfollow day as well, but my pictures are still 500-600 likes so it's not too bad.

 

[nicb34]

Hey guys, It's been a while since I've updated my journey. It has been a total of 2 months since I started (one month since my last update) here's what I've been doing. I sort of slacked off a bit midway through the months as I was in my finals and had to rush for school but I did maintain my 100 follower goal per day. A lot of my pictures were scraped from bigger users who had posted them 2-3 months ago. I haven't thought about monetizing it yet as I want to increase my follower count and interaction. I did see a big fall in interaction when I didn't post for 1-2 days and when I decided to unfollow a lot of people (2k in 3 days). However my interaction is still at a decent place so here are my stats as of now:
Followers: 7550 (+3500)
Following: 2550 (-1300)
Likes: around 700 (+200-300)
Posts: 122 (+56)

 

[edwinmichal]

Good luck OP, you are on the right way btw why you unfollowed 1300 profiles?

 

[nicb34]

Thanks guys, I unfollowed 1300 accounts because it turned out that I was posting my update the day after my iunfollow session. I'm here top update you on my 3rd month, it's been a slow growth because of the holidays and I had less time but I'm trying to increase my activity and growth and in the last few days I've seen a good improvement.
Followers: 9300 (+1800)
Following: 2225 (-225)
Likes: around the 700-800 range (+50)
Posts: 168 (+46)

It's obvious that my interaction hasn't budged that much and this is what I'm currently working on by posting higher quality pictures and increasing my follower base, I started to monetize it and have sold 2 shoutouts to date at 15 and 10$ each. My goal is to continue to keep a good interaction rate of 7-10% and increase my follower # to 50k in 2-3 months!

 

[angreee]

well done!! I have just started with Instagram and like to see journeys like yours
About the shoutouts, did you contacted other profiles or got the offer from them?

 

[hoyganazo]

good luck!
i'm also starting with Instagram and trying follow liker, already got 2k followers

 

[hoyganazo]

btw, it's a very good engagement, any theory? maybe the animal niche? I'm around 80-90 interaction with 2k followers, niche phrases

 

[nicb34]

Thank you very much! As for the shoutouts I joined a site called shoutcart where you can post your profile, the system gives you a score and you categories yourself into a specific niche (mine is pet). You choose your rates and if people are interested they can order a shoutout from the site, they act as a middleman therefore take a 10% fee but it's not a huge deal for me as I'm not actively looking to monetize. This gives me a way to monetize it without much effort while focusing on growing my page.

 

[nicb34]

Thank you, good luck to you too! I think the interacting does come part from the niche, people are likely to tag or like cute pics of animals, but I also thing that it's very important to have high quality pictures of animals people enjoy! I had some lower quality picture do terribly dispite my efforts to push the engagement

 

[nicb34]

Small update, it's been a month since I last posted and I have been more active on my instagram. These are the results for my 4th month!
Followers: 12k (+2700)
Following: 925 (-1300)
Likes: 900-1100 (+200-300)
posts: 229 (+61)
So I'm somewhat dissapointed about the growth, I thought I could have achieved atleast 3K new followers this month. Regardless I still did a lot better then last month which is good! And I'm happy that my engagement increased by using a high quality picture strategy. I sold a 3rd shoutout for 5$ more (2h shoutout) So that increases my revenue to +30$
I'm going to try and get atleast 3k new followers this month, and I'll try to keep my engagement as high as it is. Going to do a SFS tommorow, with a 30k account, I'll see how it goes maybe it'll help increase my follower count. Let's get to 20k!!!

 

[AdamsSixEcho]

Good Luck!
I have an animal niche (pet) website and made an instagram to generate traffic, but unfortunately I left it alone with around 1k followers. Now I completely redesigned the site and I'll work on the instagram too. Your journey is an inspiration for me, thank you!:thumb:

 

[Cherry]

I've always wanted to grow an animal related account but was too afraid the niche is saturated already.

Keep growing and hope you sell more shoutouts soon!

 

[SkyNeT2000]

Good luck man !

 

[nicb34]

Thanks for the support guys I'm currently at month 4 and 1/2 (will make a Stat update of the account after month 5) just wanted to let you know that I have been happy with my engagement, consistent 10% and decided to go ham on the follow/un follow technique to grow my following, I've done 1-2 sfs as well which helped a bit and will probably be aiming for 1k per week growth!

 

[mattrecc]

Thanks for the support guys I'm currently at month 4 and 1/2 (will make a Stat update of the account after month 5) just wanted to let you know that I have been happy with my engagement, consistent 10% and decided to go ham on the follow/un follow technique to grow my following, I've done 1-2 sfs as well which helped a bit and will probably be aiming for 1k per week growth!

Great to hear man! Keep it up