BIG DOG Instagram Journey

Don't worry I'm not a reincarnation of Zso, but you clicked on my journey, so my tactics worked .

I've only started one other journey, which was 100k social media followers in 100 days, that's buried somewhere here, but anyway I abandoned the thread, not the journey. It actually was a great success, and in one year I had an automated system that gained me over 400k Tumblr followers by simply clicking one button a day (PR Traffic Booster). I built an Adsense site that was pretty good quality and let other Tumblr influencers drive traffic to it, the site ended up grossing over $38,000 in revenue until it was randomly banned form Tumblr. Almost all of my accounts were banned too. Sad story. Anyway I learned Tumblr is NOT a long term platform because of their automated banning processes (very unpredictable, an engineer told me himself), some people here rock at spamming Tumblr (what I consider short term), I don't like to spam much though.

So I spend most of my days coding now, that's what I'm best at. But it's always nice to try a few social or SEO projects once in a while. I kind of want to start publishing iOS apps, so an Instagram audience sounds appealing to me. And now that Instagram is more popular than Twitter, it is the logical network to try.

Prior to this journey I've had some experience with Instagram. I previously owned @notcommonfacts before selling it to an inactive member here. Long story short that was a huge mistake as now it's a massive, money-making account.

Now I'm back, I've seen many mediocre Instagram journeys here, and I've noticed one thing they all have in common. There is very little investment, most people buy a bot and start from scratch with some accounts, I'm looking to make a respectable initial investment. The recent bannings of Instagram account do have me concerned though, I'll

The Logic

Why should people follow and engage with some random account like @funny__picslol? Wouldn't they be more likely to follow @funny? Or @hilarious?

Usernames are important, IMO. So what I've done is bought some one word, OG usernames from other forums (BHW doesn't have much of a @ market). They cost me $800, $30, $300, and $15. I had planned to spend another $400 on 2 other usernames, so I would have 6 accounts to start with, but it didn't work out.

Why should people follow an account who is following 6000 people but only has 500 followers?

Authority is another important metric. So I purchased a text post account for $65 that had a crappy username but around 14k followers on it. It gets a decent amount of likes per picture. The idea is that this should help me gain followers as opposed to starting from 0.

The Plan

Account 1
This is the $800 username account, let's just say, this username is ridiculous. Rarely are usernames like this even on the market, so when I saw it I just snatched it. I'm too scared to put this account on FollowLiker, and to be honest, it doesn't need to be. It's growing insanely fast on its own, and I can take the time to manually follow/unfollow a bit. I'll be manually posting content and following/unfollowing for this account.

Account 2
This account has a $15 username, but has the textpost account to help it get going. So it is starting out at 14k followers, I will probably keep it in the text post niche though. I will put it on FollowLiker.

Account 3
This account has a $30 username. It will be starting from the big 0, so it may take more time to grow, also getting put on FollowLiker.

Account 4
This has a cool $300 username. Unfortunately it doesn't pertain to a particular niche, but it really makes sense for a personal handle. So I'm going to try to make myself Instagram famous, pretty much, this will run on FollowLiker as well.

The Questions

Is investing in an OG username worth it when it comes to growing an authority Instagram account? Is buying an IG with 10k followers or so on it already worth it in the long run? Basically does a bigger initial investment in Instagram really pay off down the stretch?

The Answers

We'll see

The Goals

1,000,000 followers by 2016.
This may seem lofty, but I predict my follower counts will be very lopsided to my $800 username account, so I'm banking on it growing fast.
I will update this weekly.

The Money

So far I have $1300 invested (accounts, usernames, FollowLiker). So I still have a small VPS and proxies to pay for as well. If more usernames pop up that I like I may by them and add them to this journey, but I don't want to spend too much more, and taxes are coming up so yeah...

The Other Stuff

Do NOT PM me with questions.
I will periodically be posting some things I have learned.
I'm still finalizing my configurations for FollowLiker and my proxy provider. This journey will officially kick off this Sunday, March 8th.

The Mentalist said:

Don't worry I'm not a reincarnation of Zso, but you clicked on my journey, so my tactics worked .

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Damn you got me with the BIG DOG in the title

Good luck on the journey

IMO, the name doesn't matter. You can still make as much if not more using accounts that have targeted traffic with a high engagement rate.

Good luck on your journey though!

Paper-Boy said:

IMO, the name doesn't matter. You can still make as much if not more using accounts that have targeted traffic with a high engagement rate.

Good luck on your journey though!

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The name doesn't dictate how much you make, but how fast you grow, which technically, probably dictates how much you make.

If @soccer or @soccerfans_lyfe followed you, which would you more likely follow back?

The Mentalist said:

The name doesn't dictate how much you make, but how fast you grow, which technically, probably dictates how much you make.

If @soccer or @soccerfans_lyfe followed you, which would you more likely follow back?

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I guess you have a point.

Just don't lose that $800 account. Would probably buy shoutouts on it instead of using FL.

Or maybe buy a custom bot so it doesn't leave the same footprint that all FL bots do. Just my 2cents.

I see that account @notcommonfacts has a verified badge on twitter also. It sux man that you sold it.

Paper-Boy said:

I guess you have a point.

Just don't lose that $800 account. Would probably buy shoutouts on it instead of using FL.

Or maybe buy a custom bot so it doesn't leave the same footprint that all FL bots do. Just my 2cents.

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The $800 account will never go on FollowLiker. It will have lots of manual work. Because of the username captions are 10x more efficient than shoutouts, so that's the route I'll probably go if I get promotions.

mladja3 said:

I see that account @notcommonfacts has a verified badge on twitter also. It sux man that you sold it.

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I actually tried selling it to the owner of the Twitter account, he wasn't interested, but that was right before Instagram took off.

hey mate,

Great all the best for your journey.....

We thought Facebook pages are good to make money but they make changes and we ended up thinking.
We thought Pinterest is good to make money but they too made changes and we ended up thinking.
What I mean "1,000,000 followers by 2016." good to read but in reality we can't say, so Go for Small goals. IG is for sure going to make changes and we will end up thinking

Be carefull before using FL as a lot of accounts are getting banned

The $800 would be better spent on shout outs but if you've got that sort of money to spend it is possible to hit 1m in 2016. Will follow this.

Good luck on your journey, will follow. My only real concern about Instagram and building a long term business there is that it's Facebook owner website...Look what they did to FB fan pages, the reach is total crap and falling. They might do the same on Insta too, especially now with all those new spam pages popping every 3 seconds. It's good for churn and burn tho, I have no complains

Dante12 said:

Good luck on your journey, will follow. My only real concern about Instagram and building a long term business there is that it's Facebook owner website...Look what they did to FB fan pages, the reach is total crap and falling. They might do the same on Insta too, especially now with all those new spam pages popping every 3 seconds. It's good for churn and burn tho, I have no complains

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It's likely Instagram could end up this way. The reality is no social media route is a guaranteed. Why? Because you don't actually own your account, Facebook, Twitter, etc, they own it. According to their terms they can do whatever they like to your account. The same sort of applies to websites and SEO, without another company's product your social media account or website is worth very little (or simply doesn't exist). That same though process is why I spend more time trying to develop my own products that aren't dependent like this journey is.

The thing is once my initial expenses are finished with, there really isn't much more to do. There will be a lot of autopilot on FollowLiker (going for conservative settings), and just manual posting on the $800 account. Just a few minutes a day, and only a few bucks a month for VPS/proxies. This is just a backburner type of thing that is low maintenance, but hopefully will be of benefit to me long term.

I also found another username I'm bidding on, if I get this one I'll probably stop acquiring usernames and go with 5 accounts.

What forums do you use to buy usernames?

I like your journey. I will subscribe to it(I rarely subscribe to anything), I believe I will learn a lot with following you here.
I am on a twitter journey, but my plan is after I succeed to get to 1M followers to start with Instragram.

I was thinking somebody else also get Big Dog flu. lol

interessting guide man

So I might as well share what I've learned so far...

How to buy things and not get scammed

So before this journey I went on a bit of a social media username binge buy. Most went to Instagram, but some Twitter usernames also were involved. Basically I have been scammed $500 in the last 2 months trying to buy things from forums like hackforums or forumkorner. These are the primary places I've found usernames to be sold. I don't feel bad referring people from here to there since BHW doesn't really have a social username marketplace. And those forums are mainly for cryptography, hacking, etc, non-BHW stuff. Besides that, those forums are useless and political.

Rule #1: Never deal "offsite".

So when you are dealing with usernames you have to make sure you are laying down the deal via PM for proof if they do scam you. Don't do deals over kik or skype or whatever (when originally dealing on a forum). Each forum has rules about scam reports and what not, make sure you understand them.

Rule #2: Try to get personal identity.

The biggest leverage in a deal is identity, try hard to get personal identity. If you know anything about the internet, knowing a person's full name is powerful. If you scam me and I know your real name, I can make your life a living hell. Just think about it, ruining people's social media profiles isn't hard. Every employer google searches names of potential employees. It wouldn't be hard to rank some really nasty stuff for people's names. I only use this as leverage though, I mean it's really not worth the time and energy and bitterness to do this to someone after they scammed you. Use this as a bluff.

Rule #3: Use a middle man.

Find a trusted middle man for the transaction, just do it. All my successful transactions get done this way now. Make sure they are well vouched for in the forum you are on or wherever.

Random Notes:

- Most transactions are done in Bitcoin, if they accept paypal always pay with paypal though. But never accept paypal in your own sells. You can always chargeback on paypal, even if it's sent as gift and everything. Paypal never sides with the sellers when selling stuff like usernames. Never.

- If you meet someone who is selling on Instagram or somewhere and your only mode of contact is through kik, it's going to be hard to find a middle man, but you're going to need to do it somehow. There are some services that are a bit more official that offer middle man services for a fee, just pay the fee.

- When buying an Instagram account make sure it is not linked to a Facebook account. When buying a Tumblr account make sure the blog is not ghosted (does not appear in Tumblr search).

- After buying an account DO NOT switch usernames without a turbo'r. Lots of people have software called "turbo'rs" which runs 24x7 constantly trying to register a username on Instagram, Twitter, etc. So when you buy a username people will try to turbo it from you as you switch. Use one yourself to quickly change the username if you need to, but wait a week or two after the initial purchase if you think other people know that the account was for sale.

- Always get a background/history of the user you are dealing with prior to doing the deal. The worst scenario I got scammed in was when I knew the user had a previously bad rep, but he had a username I just HAD to have. Also beware of false vouches/kudos, like I said it all can kind of be political.

- Trust your instinct, when people you are dealing with are irrational about not using a middle man, or don't want to do the deal in a way that is safe for you, just say no, you have to be able to walk away even if you really want a cool username or something.

Hopefully that helps prevent someone from being scammed. Just use a trusted middle man or escrow, never accept paypal, and be aware of exactly what you are buying/who you are buying from.

Unfortunately it took me $500 to figure this all out. Even nice people will scam you when you are dumb enough to do deals offsite with no middle man, because you have no evidence against them.

Such a solid plan , good luck

Also does anyone have any VPS recommendations? I will be running 3-4 accounts simultaneously.