Instagram Journey to $100K

So when will you start the monetization ?

950,000 Followers

authorityjourney said:

So when will you start the monetization ?

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Setting up my e-commerce store now. Looks like launch will officially be in a month, August 1, 2016

Just hired today a:
1. Graphic Artist to design Front-Page rotating banners
2. Creative Writer to help fix titles and writing on the site


Also,
Woo Importer AliExpress Plugin Support team claims they will have additional features available in 1 week to import Variable products - A product where a customer has to select which version (Small, Medium, Large + Black, Green, Yellow, etc). At the moment the plugin only downloads the first product, ignoring the other variations.

great journey
where did you buy your instgram accounts ?

I know you've already invested in your wordpress setup, but you may want to look at a shopify plugin called Oberlo. It works really well with AliExpress and does most of the importing work for you, as well as markup calculations and ePacket shipping filters. Also sorry if this was asked already but do you mind sharing your follow/unfollow settings again?

and what level VPS did you get from greencloud?

kronin said:

I know you've already invested in your wordpress setup, but you may want to look at a shopify plugin called Oberlo. It works really well with AliExpress and does most of the importing work for you, as well as markup calculations and ePacket shipping filters. Also sorry if this was asked already but do you mind sharing your follow/unfollow settings again?

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Thanks for that! I never heard of Oberlo. But I'll put it on the list of possibilities. I'm not against Shopify if I see benefit down the road (Ie if their server-bandwidth is superior to give fastest access worldwide)

Theres a few reasons I went with Wordpress.
1. Private Server. My server has a certain amount of resources that are ALL MINE, muahahahaha.. But really, it means that nobody else can use those resources like shared hosting (Shopify, or cheap shared hosting plans for $1.99)

2. Scaleability - I have one of the cheapest plans right now $10 /month. I can scale the server up as my business grows. Eventually I can move to a dedicated server.

3. Plugins - Theres always new wordpress plugins being developed. In the case of Dropshipping - I have my eye on one that will fill out the order form on AliExpress. They think it will take 1-minute of manual labor to process each order. This will save me hours every day if this is true.

4. Payment Gateway... every shopify sale goes away from your server to a shopify.com payment gateway then back to your website once the transaction is completed. This is considered a little bit shady by many customers and might prevent them from buying.

5. Bootstrapping Costs - I'm always looking for the frugal cheap method. Don't drop all your money into one idea. Instead test many ideas as cheaply as possible. I suggest reading The 4-Hour Workweek, and The Lean Startup. If its going to cost $5,000 to fully build out your business, but you can test the idea as cheapy as $100 - then you have a duty to yourself to test first.

Your duty as an entrepreneur is not to jump in and take big risks - thats called gambling. An entrepreneur's duty is to go into the unknown and eliminate as many risks along the way as possible. But what do I know about business or entrepreneurship... I only got an MBA from one of the top-10 ranked schools in the world

6. I plan on hosting at least 5 stores. 5 Stores on Shopify will cost at last $180 /month. 5 stores on my server will still cost the same $10.



Follow Settings....
Right now its:
Automation/Delay 12min -20min
Follow 500-600
Delays 20seconds - 30 seconds

2 months ago I got dingged for going above 400, so my settings may not work for you. A simple rule... when following or unfollow, start slower (increase delays by a few minutes and seconds, AND reduce Maximum by 100)... Then scale up a few times by 25 or 50 every few days until you meet your safe maximum.

It might be ok to increase the safe maximum by 50 every cycle (a full 7500 follow and unfollow).... I no longer pay attention to people's settings in the forums. Find a rhythm that works and stick with it.

kronin said:

and what level VPS did you get from greencloud?

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Budget US5

BTW, I give greencloud 8/10 stars... They're pretty good. Not perfect, but solid.

The server node went down last night, and nobody bothered to fix it, until I couldn't log in this morning and filed a ticket. Their customer server is fast, within 5 minutes I had a response that they're working on it.

In the last 9 months of having this VPS, the server has restarted or shut down around 6 times, and has been completely inaccessible twice (including today).

While not perfect, I understand other company's VPS's go down weekly or every other day, so I'd rather stick with greencloud.

Nice tips man. I'm running 100 accounts myself, I've decided to go a different direction than you and put all 100 accounts in the same niche (comedy) and try to use them to build 1 authority account. The only problem I'm running into is that the follow back ratio is sooo low. Like 15%. :/. Imo all of my accounts look professional and non-spammy. Also I have my targeting very precise, so I'm not following inactive or bad accounts.

I don't know if you have any accounts in the comedy niche, but if you do, how does it compare to your other niches? I'm going to be adding more accounts, but if my low followback ratio is because of my niche I might make the new accounts I add in another niche.

Edit: Also just wanted to add that I use solidseovps as my VPS, it's cheaper than greencloud (the 6gb on greencloud cost just as much as the 8gb on solidseovps). I haven't had any problems with it so far, I'd recommend switching to them if you ever need to upgrade your VPS.

logic7 said:

Nice tips man. I'm running 100 accounts myself, I've decided to go a different direction than you and put all 100 accounts in the same niche (comedy) and try to use them to build 1 authority account. The only problem I'm running into is that the follow back ratio is sooo low. Like 15%. :/. Imo all of my accounts look professional and non-spammy. Also I have my targeting very precise, so I'm not following inactive or bad accounts.

I don't know if you have any accounts in the comedy niche, but if you do, how does it compare to your other niches? I'm going to be adding more accounts, but if my low followback ratio is because of my niche I might make the new accounts I add in another niche.

Edit: Also just wanted to add that I use solidseovps as my VPS, it's cheaper than greencloud (the 6gb on greencloud cost just as much as the 8gb on solidseovps). I haven't had any problems with it so far, I'd recommend switching to them if you ever need to upgrade your VPS.

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Thanks I might check em out! I'm starting to run out of diskspace on my servers. Primarily because all the Campaign Posts are cached (about 5,000 photos)

The only advice I can give with having many accounts in a single niche, make sure in MassPlanner you have selected - follow different users. Otherwise the same account is getting requests from 100 accounts at the same time and it will more than likely piss them off. I forgot to do this myself once, and my own personal account got hit by 10 of my MassPlanner ones in a day. Quite annoying.

971,000 Followers

5 of my accounts (about 1 or 2 a day this week) have been hit with password resets and one with a very weird IG error about my post not being in line with community guidelines. Most likely there is a copywrited image somewhere inside my 5000 photos that is already flagged. Account is back to normal. no harm done.

Hmmm, doing a cost-benefit analysis of going with Shopify + Oberlo. Will return with thoughts

madblackhatter1000 said:

971,000 Followers

5 of my accounts (about 1 or 2 a day this week) have been hit with password resets and one with a very weird IG error about my post not being in line with community guidelines. Most likely there is a copywrited image somewhere inside my 5000 photos that is already flagged. Account is back to normal. no harm done.

Hmmm, doing a cost-benefit analysis of going with Shopify + Oberlo. Will return with thoughts

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Weird notification about this flagged picture. I'm really looking forward to seeing the monetization plan
All the best

I just started out with IG recently and 100 accs sounds like a lot, but your journey is definitely going quite smooth. Thanks for the inspiration and good luck!

990,000 Followers

Do I smell 1 million around the corner?

997,000 Followers ....

waiting patiently

1 Million Followers!

According to MassPlanner, I have followed 2,400,000 people (I did use FL for maybe the first 100K-150K followers)...

4 Million Likes in MassPlanner too

No Accounts lost. 104 Accounts in Total, all since October/November 2015

Now onto the monetization!

Great journey bookmarked of course.

Wish you best of success dude!

Regards,

Finn

madblackhatter1000 said:

1 Million Followers!

According to MassPlanner, I have followed 2,400,000 people (I did use FL for maybe the first 100K-150K followers)...

4 Million Likes in MassPlanner too

No Accounts lost. 104 Accounts in Total, all since October/November 2015

Now onto the monetization!

Click to expand...

Congratulation on 1 million mark...Looking forward your monetization part Bro!

Interesting journey. I will for sure follow along!

Congrats on 1 mill !