reach the popular page

Does anybody have some insights on how to reach the popular page?

I suggest it is a mix of

* getting several k likes on a pic very fast
* follower count > X
* user engagements on older pictures > X

I bet there are many more factors out there, what could they be?

It's such an hard thing to know... before the "explore" page update (where you can see a mix of popular page pics and pics based on what you like) there were the possibility to be featured on the popular page with 300 likes out of 500 followers. Now the algorithm has been f*cked up by instagram dudes, and no one is even close to understand what's the actual ratio... I've seen youtubers with 100k followers and 35k likes (only vips with young audience have this absurdly high ratio) not in the popular page. By the way, you can check it on iconosquare, where every pic who made it to the pop page has a little star on bottom left.

Hope this can be helpful
Zangar

Three months ago, a photo I posted on my fashion niche IG account made it to the popular page at 1.7K likes and 35 comments in 15 minutes. I got the notification precisely 15 minutes after it was uploaded. It was about 10:00AM on a weekday. A few weeks later, another photo of mine made it to the popular page at exactly 2k in 15 minutes. That photo was uploaded at around 12:30AM on a weekday. A few days later, I posted another photo that garnered about 2.2K likes in just 15 minutes, but it never made it to the popular page. That photo was posted in the evening, on a Sunday. I assume it didn't make it to the popular page because evenings are peak times, especially on Sundays, and there are other bigger accounts getting way more than 2k likes in their first 15 minutes. P.S. I have 180K+ followers.

Note: Making it to the popular page is not all pots of gold. For each time my photos have been featured, I made about 400 more followers than my average daily total. The photo however ends up with about 8K likes and over 400 comments. But that is all. Keep your expectations modest. Your account isn't necessarily going to inflate significantly overnight. Good luck!

So there's a higher change of reaching it when there's no peak time. Does that mean there's only space for X pictures every day for the popular page?

For me it felt like I could scroll infinitely on the popular page.