Preface
In early January, I get involved in a new hobby [sub niche in luxury]. I only tinkered around, and instead of sharing my hobby on my Facebook page (I didn't want to come off as a braggart), I decided to make an anonymous IG page and only share it with my friends who would appreciate it. I never set out to build an IG empire and have ten's for thousands of followers. I posted content every day, used 30 hashtags, which changed daily according to what my image was and thus had fairly solid engagement numbers. My followers hovered around the 200 mark for most of that time.
Me being the entrepreneur that I am, decided to start a new project to "self-fund" the hobby, in other words for it to pay for itself. I start to purchase a bunch of items and sell them for profit. Through doing this, I had almost an endless supply of stock photography for my IG account to keep the content nice and fresh
. . . again, I didn't really have any goals here. I started to notice, a lot of boutique shops on IG selling their own items, so then I started to think.. if I could build a following, surely, I could do the same, right?
This is where I started to research building up IG accounts.
At the end of march is when I started.
The beginning of the Journey
At the end of March, my IG account had 208 followers, I was following 75 and had about 45 posted high quality images all with solid engagement.
I first purchase FL to test it out. My initial setup with FL was driving home about 50 new followers per day, my re follow rate was what I would consider low, it was around 10%. And to top it off, my FL got really buggy, nothing more annoying then leaving for 12hours, check your IG on mobile and realize nothing new is occurring.. get home just to find out FL is failing. So from here I purchased Instagres.
I immediately felt the GUI was more more friendly, less options which meant easier management for a rookie. Once I setup my instagress, I started to get REALLY good results, I was pushing about 100 follows per day, my re follow rate's started to pick up into the high teens and lower 20s (in terms of percents) I quickly ramped up to about 1,000 followers and still have 10%+ engagement! I think my high engagement is due to my very targeted audience.
All this time I was working with FL support to fix the issue, I was not ready to "throw it away". So once I wound up following around 4,100 people I started to feel I was looking a little spammy, and so therefore I started my unfollow routine. I initially used instagress for this, it was able to unfollow about 450 per day on fast, but thought this was too slow, as I feel my account could handle a little more aggression.
So now that FL support has helped me with the issues it was having, I decided to test it out. With the stats I was using, I was able to unfollow about 700 the first day and 1000+ each subsequent day with no issues (so far).
I have not started my follow routine yet, but this weekend I will once I'm done unfollowing everyone, so that's my story so far. So far so good.
Software I've used:
Followliker (FL)
Instagress (IG)
Which do I prefer? Well.. I REALLY like that I could control IG on the fly, from mobile or from computer. I like the simlicitiy of it. I only wish there was a more aggressive option other than "FAST" which DID generate 100 followers per day which is exceptional, i just wish the unfollow was better.
With FL, there are hands down tons more options. I just don't totally trust it, as it gets buggy sometimes. A few times it did stop running due to my own settings, but the problem is, if you're remote you can't make the appropriate adjustments. I could always use a VPN, but it's not that serious for what I'm doing.
IG settings: FAST
I plan out my strategy, so I have a picture of a blue widget, then i found all those people who are authorities in blue widgets and set it up to follow their follwers. And I also like while following. So I get about 20% "organic followers" from pics I've likes, and 80% of my followers are from re-follows..
FL:
Currently I'm running an unfollow routine which is 1000 daily unfollows
4-5secs and 4-6min delay. This has been working pretty well.
I do not follow / unfollow same day. Soon I may start to try that, providing I can get FL to be consistent, I will set it up to follow 500 unfollow 500. That should give me around 100 daily followers and keep my following stats from looking to spammy. (In theory!) I do run like routines though.
I'll update my stats and settings as time goes forward.
My account:
When I started, my account most would consider as "Aged." It was a very good history of posting content, good engagement, I have a link in bio (since day 1) and I've just had fun with it. So I think that's why I have not had any issues so far, my daily limits appear to be relatively high.
My photos. I use my Sell phone (Note5) to take the photos, I make the images "POP" in the google photos setting as a filter, as it just ..makes them pop.. so the images are REALLY nice, i always get compliments on them.
Next Steps:
Next I may start shout out sharing or buying shout outs. I probably won't get much action to my website until I have 10-20K so that's what my goal is in the coming months.
Ultimately this is a fun project. I'm able to sell my items on eBay so it's all good. Push come to shove I just love taking pictures of these things and sharing them with the world
In early January, I get involved in a new hobby [sub niche in luxury]. I only tinkered around, and instead of sharing my hobby on my Facebook page (I didn't want to come off as a braggart), I decided to make an anonymous IG page and only share it with my friends who would appreciate it. I never set out to build an IG empire and have ten's for thousands of followers. I posted content every day, used 30 hashtags, which changed daily according to what my image was and thus had fairly solid engagement numbers. My followers hovered around the 200 mark for most of that time.
Me being the entrepreneur that I am, decided to start a new project to "self-fund" the hobby, in other words for it to pay for itself. I start to purchase a bunch of items and sell them for profit. Through doing this, I had almost an endless supply of stock photography for my IG account to keep the content nice and fresh
. . . again, I didn't really have any goals here. I started to notice, a lot of boutique shops on IG selling their own items, so then I started to think.. if I could build a following, surely, I could do the same, right?This is where I started to research building up IG accounts.
At the end of march is when I started.
The beginning of the Journey
At the end of March, my IG account had 208 followers, I was following 75 and had about 45 posted high quality images all with solid engagement.
I first purchase FL to test it out. My initial setup with FL was driving home about 50 new followers per day, my re follow rate was what I would consider low, it was around 10%. And to top it off, my FL got really buggy, nothing more annoying then leaving for 12hours, check your IG on mobile and realize nothing new is occurring.. get home just to find out FL is failing. So from here I purchased Instagres.
I immediately felt the GUI was more more friendly, less options which meant easier management for a rookie. Once I setup my instagress, I started to get REALLY good results, I was pushing about 100 follows per day, my re follow rate's started to pick up into the high teens and lower 20s (in terms of percents) I quickly ramped up to about 1,000 followers and still have 10%+ engagement! I think my high engagement is due to my very targeted audience.
All this time I was working with FL support to fix the issue, I was not ready to "throw it away". So once I wound up following around 4,100 people I started to feel I was looking a little spammy, and so therefore I started my unfollow routine. I initially used instagress for this, it was able to unfollow about 450 per day on fast, but thought this was too slow, as I feel my account could handle a little more aggression.
So now that FL support has helped me with the issues it was having, I decided to test it out. With the stats I was using, I was able to unfollow about 700 the first day and 1000+ each subsequent day with no issues (so far).
I have not started my follow routine yet, but this weekend I will once I'm done unfollowing everyone, so that's my story so far. So far so good.
Software I've used:
Followliker (FL)
Instagress (IG)
Which do I prefer? Well.. I REALLY like that I could control IG on the fly, from mobile or from computer. I like the simlicitiy of it. I only wish there was a more aggressive option other than "FAST" which DID generate 100 followers per day which is exceptional, i just wish the unfollow was better.
With FL, there are hands down tons more options. I just don't totally trust it, as it gets buggy sometimes. A few times it did stop running due to my own settings, but the problem is, if you're remote you can't make the appropriate adjustments. I could always use a VPN, but it's not that serious for what I'm doing.
IG settings: FAST
I plan out my strategy, so I have a picture of a blue widget, then i found all those people who are authorities in blue widgets and set it up to follow their follwers. And I also like while following. So I get about 20% "organic followers" from pics I've likes, and 80% of my followers are from re-follows..
FL:
Currently I'm running an unfollow routine which is 1000 daily unfollows
4-5secs and 4-6min delay. This has been working pretty well.
I do not follow / unfollow same day. Soon I may start to try that, providing I can get FL to be consistent, I will set it up to follow 500 unfollow 500. That should give me around 100 daily followers and keep my following stats from looking to spammy. (In theory!) I do run like routines though.
I'll update my stats and settings as time goes forward.
My account:
When I started, my account most would consider as "Aged." It was a very good history of posting content, good engagement, I have a link in bio (since day 1) and I've just had fun with it. So I think that's why I have not had any issues so far, my daily limits appear to be relatively high.
My photos. I use my Sell phone (Note5) to take the photos, I make the images "POP" in the google photos setting as a filter, as it just ..makes them pop.. so the images are REALLY nice, i always get compliments on them.
Next Steps:
Next I may start shout out sharing or buying shout outs. I probably won't get much action to my website until I have 10-20K so that's what my goal is in the coming months.
Ultimately this is a fun project. I'm able to sell my items on eBay so it's all good. Push come to shove I just love taking pictures of these things and sharing them with the world
