JOURNEY My journey starting at 10k. (update: currently at 95k)

[Minimal_scapes]

You sometimes appear on my feed and it is nice to hear about your success my friend! So good to see that we are getting new stuff in this niche.

My advice for you at this point is networking.

Start contacting big accounts. Start commenting their photos a lot. Start replying to their stories. I know it looks a bit stalkish, but eventually they will notice you. And then, opportunities will arise. I have some ig's that do the same style as you with products, and I will be in touch to send them to you.

 

[wildkarrde]

How is your engagement doing? and are you doing any engagement groups?

Engagement is kind of varied depending on the photo. In the last couple of weeks I've had a few posts with 1000 likes and 12 comments, but some others will dip down as far as 265 likes with only a few comments.

No engagement groups yet, I don't really know where to look for my niche.

 

[wildkarrde]

You sometimes appear on my feed and it is nice to hear about your success my friend! So good to see that we are getting new stuff in this niche.

My advice for you at this point is networking.

Start contacting big accounts. Start commenting their photos a lot. Start replying to their stories. I know it looks a bit stalkish, but eventually they will notice you. And then, opportunities will arise. I have some ig's that do the same style as you with products, and I will be in touch to send them to you.

That would be great! I'm running Massplanner that automatically posts my photos from 2-3pm everyday, and last time I used my phone to comment on photos while it was running, it forced me to verifiy by phone which made me nervous. So sadly, I think I either automate everything, or do everything myself (including commenting).

 

[Minimal_scapes]

At this point I would stop automation in this niche honestly. Networking is way more important since it isn't viral content, and if the only solution is networking without automation or vice versa, I would opt for network.

 

[wildkarrde]

Just an update since it's been a while.

I'm currently at 30k, and have switched fully over to Follow Planner. I've started experimenting with some engagement groups, but they aren't in my niche, and the comments have been pretty spammy. I think I'm going to stop with those groups, and maybe try to start my own with more relevant profiles.

I've also just started another account that I'm going to see how fast I can grow in the UI design space. It's so much easier to get content, but there is definitely way more competition. We'll see how it goes.

 

[wildkarrde]

Things have been pretty much moving at the same pace since the last update until about a month ago when I tried switching things up.

I decided to post 2x a day with optimized timings and things have been going much better. I've stopped all automation, and I'm currently growing anywhere from 300-700 followers per day.



I also decided to run a 2 week test last month with and without powerlikes, and I figured I'd share my results here. For the cost ($20-30 per month) it's not looking to be worth it very much for my account. You can see the posts with powerlikes are on the left, and the posts without are on the right.



I've also discovered through looking at analytics, that hashtags really don't get much response, most of the views are coming from this "other" category. Anyone know what that is? Here a screenshot from a recent post of mine that did well, you can see that the majority came from that category.



Monetization is going really well lately, mostly selling shoutouts to similar accounts. I'm going to be experimenting with some more ideas this week, and I'll keep you guys update.

 

[thatbritishguy]

Things have been pretty much moving at the same pace since the last update until about a month ago when I tried switching things up.

I decided to post 2x a day with optimized timings and things have been going much better. I've stopped all automation, and I'm currently growing anywhere from 300-700 followers per day.

View attachment 578

I also decided to run a 2 week test last month with and without powerlikes, and I figured I'd share my results here. For the cost ($20-30 per month) it's not looking to be worth it very much for my account. You can see the posts with powerlikes are on the left, and the posts without are on the right.

View attachment 579

I've also discovered through looking at analytics, that hashtags really don't get much response, most of the views are coming from this "other" category. Anyone know what that is? Here a screenshot from a recent post of mine that did well, you can see that the majority came from that category.

View attachment 580

Monetization is going really well lately, mostly selling shoutouts to similar accounts. I'm going to be experimenting with some more ideas this week, and I'll keep you guys update.

I believe that "other" is things like people sharing and saving your posts.
I might be wrong though.

 

[wildkarrde]

Yeah that's kind of what I was guessing. I wish they weren't so vague.

 

[wildkarrde]

Things have blown up since my last update. I'll be hitting 100k within the week!

Someone I was talking to on this forum started to scrape my account and copy all of my research, so I'll no longer be posting updates.

 

[MasterSplinter]

Thanks for sharing your journey up until this point.
Definitely was an interesting read!

Sorry, this might be a noobie question, what does scrape your account mean?

 

[wildkarrde]

The grabbed all of my photos, used my hashtag research and just spun up an account that's posting the same thing as me.

 

[photoking]

How much do you follow unfollow currently ? And do you comment on the accounts that you follow ?

 

[Mr.Fantastic]

what was your follow/unfollow (bot) number on the first day . i started 30-40 but my acc got action blocked for 5 days