Instagram advice if possible

So a few months ago I decided to start an Instagram page after reading some journies here. I bought FL and posted my first image on December 6th 2015, a few months later I am at 23k followers. I am not trying to get 5 billion followers a day or anything, im taking it steady and am very very happy with the progress. I am roughly averaging about 185 followers a day, with about 2k likes an image and 5-15 comments an image. I am estimating to hit about 65k followers by the end of the year at current growth rates, I know its not huge or anything, but I am happy with the steady growth

I dont use a VPS and dont have FL running 24/7, I have it around 8 hours a day and I found that works just fine for me, at the same time I started a FB page thats associated with the IG page and thats at 1.5k likes, this was only started a month ago.

My question is about monezitation. I have been asked to do a shout out a few times and every time I say a price of like $10 I never get a response back, or the response is that they are broke and have no money. So I am finding shoutouts atm dont work, maybe when I get bigger they will. I wanted to try go the tee shirt route, and was woundering if anyone had any experience around promoting tshirts on Instagram and how I could use Teespring to design and promote the tshirst and the IG page. Should I wait to hit 100k?


thanks

Hey Notanz,
Thats a awesome journey so far!
What are your FL settings? how many images do you post daily?
Do you use FL to help you post or do you do that manually?

I have read a few threads and they all say shoutouts aren't going to generate you income unless you are at like big numbers 70k+ even then it wouldn't be as much as you think. $10 is fair price but people are stingy. If i were you id create a product maybe apparel for the niche when your name brand gets big enough.
PM me
maybe we can bounce ideas off each other.
if not, thats cool too.
Your journey is just getting started.

Hey thanks for replying.

I am just using the standard Imristo website, I forget the username they go by here settings, nothing fancy at all. For the first month I was doing the follow/unfollow method. I have stopped that now for the past 2 months as I am finding my page is growing withouot following anyone. The only thing I use FL for is to comment & like. I manually upload images.