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> Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day. In

> Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day. In my instagram marketing last decade thats what we did. While others were imagining that people "buy likes", or actually were dealing with bots, we were doing this for our clients. Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private, and all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands. when you unprivate the account, only like 100 of them get approved to follow you at once, so it adds up like a currency you can spend whenever you want. to mass approve you have to toggle private and unprivate over and over again, or approve the requests yourself or via API. either way you can only pull a list of 100 or so at a time, but you can keep them in the "requested" pool forever until convenient. So you can grow an account with like a few hundred followers to a hundred thousand+ real followers very quickly. But engagement is more important for the utility value of the account, and so you can also post an image with all the hashtags and location tags while the account is private, and let your new followers begin engaging with it. And then unprivate the account and even more new followers begin engaging with it, and then it becomes the TOP image in the hashtag. In prior versions of instagram it would also be in the activity section in a large web of followers of followers. For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them. If you have a popular account its a night and day difference. I don't even attempt to match with them on the dating app, I just message them on IG straight away from the popular account (30K+ followers). Real dates and intimacy off of that, even in San Francisco. Skips the queue.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago
I just vomited a little in my mouth
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here.
papeda 6y ago
> Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private, and all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands. I'm confused, why is it easier to get people to line up to follow a private account based on...nothing?
- sincerely 6y ago
  Based on an endorsement from a page they already follow. Private meme accounts with tens of thousands of followers or more are not uncommon, so it's not especially suspicious
- vmception 6y ago
  Curiosity. Intrigue. Boredom - well not necessarily, it is a form of entertainment for the instagram culture. There is also silly user experience on instagram where you can share photos from a private profile to your friend but your friend can't see it at all unless they request to follow the profile too. Some content types get this behavior, more like animals, tropical landscape photography. Sometimes women/models, but thats more of a personal fawning.
Xorlev 6y ago
> For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. :|
paulryanrogers 6y ago
So this is a strategy to meet women who value popularity first and foremost? Sounds like a lot of work to "skip the queue".
- austhrow743 6y ago
  Sounds like they were doing the work mostly as work, and the women were a side perk. Women who value popularity on instagram tend to be pretty hot as well.
  - vmception 6y ago
    > Women who value popularity on instagram tend to be pretty hot as well. hot, yes, and another important factor being: fun! the combination is anomalous in SF since the demographics do not select for it, so the evolutionary pressures are non-existent. but here and everywhere you see them on dating apps and they don't see you at all and won't respond to you at all on the gram as this is their way of passively increasing their follower count and engagement. But when you show up with a lot of the thing they value? It is disingenuous to find this perplexing. Its wealth, social proof, and ingenuity in a tough market all in one. This has been attractive to our species for a very long time. The profiles can be about anything even scantily clad women (maybe not actual memes though, but maybe), and they don't even know what I look like and they come through at least to the cafe. No different than any other date, just all the exceptions you ever wished for, and with fun and hot people that otherwise ignored you. Its more about getting a response than anything and recognizing that you are incapable of being the strangest or most precarious circumstance that many women have ever been in, just offer and invite. You are already rich, in followers, and recognize that this is a currency, just like they do.
    - obiye 6y ago
      And what kind of fun hat do you wear for peacocking?
      - vmception 6y ago
jlarocco 6y ago
That's a great summary of why social media is a dumpster fire. From buying fake likes down to plain old sleaziness, you seem to have covered all the bases.
- vmception 6y ago
  Big dumpster fire. A lot of people need the challenge of the dopamine hits, and become less interested once they know how to undermine it, or how fake or unfulfilling "success" is. High engagement can be used as a currency though, its common attribute being that you can trade it for goods and services in a predictable way. I actually keep a very personal profile with maybe around 100 followers. I watch some of the women there - long time friends - chase fame and other guys with shiny things - and I have to laugh about it because its I always can present that way if I want to, but I watch to see if they ever mature to wanting more substance. I have some criticisms for Facebook Inc about this though. They should really broker these transactions. There is a lot of sleeziness in the transactional side of growing these accounts. So instead of just ignoring it, they could really be getting a cut of this in so many ways.
Kaze404 6y ago
This started as a great comment but I don't understand the non sequitur into casual mysoginy.
- vmception 6y ago
  There was no dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women in that paragraph. Please don't dilute real issues with your general awkwardness and discomfort.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    > In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them. If you have a popular account its a night and day difference.
    - vmception 6y ago
      Can you elaborate on how you would acknowledge that valid reality? Is there a different wording you would use if it was indeed common and accurate outcome? From my perspective there is no contempt, only circumvention and the reason why.
      - goblin89 6y ago
        Before claiming that group X does Y to cause outcome Z that is unpleasant to someone, it is worth considering: 1. Is Y really a behavior exclusive to group X? 2. Is behavior Y fair to generalize across members of group X? 3. Is outcome Z the intended purpose of behavior Y, or is a side-effect that someone might take painfully? For example, the sentiment of “In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them” might read like at best someone low-key thinks women owe others attention. Using a dating profile to promote another social media profile is something any attractive person might reasonably consider, and (barring some extraordinary looks, etc.) reaching out to them from a social profile with a lot of clout could be a way to get attention—clout likely being what that person respects, as they themselves are purposefully trying to acquire it.
namanyayg 6y ago
What content category are these accounts posting in?
- vmception 6y ago
  Travel & Lifestyle Models / Scantily clad women Celebrity Fanpages Funny, Memes (quotes overlaying images) Motivation (derivative of travel & lifestyle but with quotes overlaying the images) Fitness (derivative of motivation) Oh yeah, I run my own fanpages for my own pages. lol. Thats another technique. Fanpages are just downgraded main pages when another account grows up or is acquired in the similar category (and rebranded back to my brand, with the lesser account being rebranded - often as a fanpage - sometimes as a business providing non-social media goods and services).
  - namanyayg 6y ago
    That's down right amazing. I've been working on a software to get and repost images to a suite of IG accounts using InstaPy, but IG has too many account blocks and throttles. You have shared some very insightful information here -- especially about buying accounts and engagement rates. And have definitely executed something that I have only thought of. I'm working with a client right now to find influencers in 1m+ range to do 24h posts for their apps. Maybe I'll get to retry automation soon.
northern-lights 6y ago
It's clear that you are trying to sell something here. Might as well be obvious about it. Direct marketing works best in some cases (and definitely yours going by your other posts).
- vmception 6y ago
  Im not trying to sell anything, I'm done with growing Instagram accounts and am satisfied with the women in my life so I don't care if these industry techniques have diminishing usefulness when too many people start trying them, and which post, the Goorin Bros one?
throa2213 6y ago
Thanks for the information! Could you share how much does it cost to create "one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women"? E.g., let's say I wanna create another meme account with 5k followers, how much shall I pay for other meme accounts for a promotion on average? And I was always thinking that the engagement ratio is low for meme accounts, any information about it?
- vmception 6y ago
  Buy the account and rebrand to similar content. Don't grow the account from scratch, let teenagers in eastern europe and malaysia do that. Try not to get scammed when buying the account. Anything you do from then on is to offset the decline in followers. De-risk and break even on doing promos for other people. (lets say you bought a $5k account for $50, do 5-10 promos for other people, done. Start with more capital and get a more compelling account, don't go too big though, 30k is a sweet spot.) Engagement ratio of 1% is bad, 2% is ok, 3% is great. Not super important when talking with individuals. Only when trying to charge more for a promo, or selling the account.
  - throa2213 6y ago
    Thank you so much! You seem to be a person who actually knows what they're talking about.
  - wahnfrieden 6y ago
    How do you source these accounts to buy?
    - vmception 6y ago
      Thats just for my patreon subscribers. No I'm kidding, I don't have a patreon, but I don't want to give my favorite markets up. Ebay has accounts and some rudimentary price discovery there. You can also just message existing pages on IG. My primary procurement accounts are just anonymous blank accounts that just send out a direct message with an offer. Money talks. Emailing is usually possible too. The main thing you want is price discovery, understanding how things are priced or understanding value. Its some formula between followers and engagement. If I were to guess I'd say (Followers/100) x (Engagement x 100 x 1.75) Engagement is a percentage so it has to be by 100. Eh and the multiplier for engagement is probably nlogn. after 1, 2, and 3% engagement would have a large delta in prices between them, but 3+ wouldn't.
anon9001 6y ago
A couple of quick questions if you don't mind, since I don't use ig but I'm trying to understand your post: > Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private Is this as crude as looking for large accounts on socialblade and sending them DMs? Or is there some kind of marketplace? Are there popular forums or something I should know about? What kind of pricing are you looking for? > all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands Why would people follow a private profile anyway? I don't see what the user gains from that. Maybe this is an instagram culture thing that I'm out of the loop on? > For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. What kind of content would your accounts post? Do you have some kind of feed of popular content (imgur maybe?) where you can copy content and repost? Do you automate that?
- vmception 6y ago
  Think of it as an economy. The venues for communication are definitely all of the above, but there are also group chats in instagram where meme and large accounts hang out and like each other's post and reshare each other's content. So for getting started there are cold DMs, there are forums, there ARE marketplaces mostly for the buying and selling of accounts, and there are also DMs. The otherside of this economy is the ROI of the account. If you paid money for the account, or for promos, or analytics tools, you should be able to know how fast you can break even doing your own promos. Can you account charge $10 or what. When YOU want to do promos for other people, you should already be in a position to DM meme accounts and individuals directly. The individual market has its own tiers, anyone under 10k followers is out of the loop, but is doing okay at the social popularity game which is the crux of instagram: A follower casino where few people actually win. Many will pay $10 for a promo. More will do a reciprocal promo for free. Regarding private profiles, people want to know what they are missing. Is it explicit and erotic tantalizing content that will be short lived before it gets taken down!? Is it hilarious content that only the cool people get to know about!? Maybe there is a sneaker or consumer electronics promo happening on this secret page, maybe a secret society that conveys long lasting advantages if you happen to be there. Yes its an instagram culture thing. Yeah what to actually post on the account is hard work. But you don't actually have to do it much if you just want a profile with authority and power in direct messaging or real world trading for free stuff (you promise exposure, real luxury businesses give you their service). But for active posting, there are various tools to automate it, but it is really hard work either way. If you want to create a very valuable account to generate cash flow from more expensive one-off promotions, to funnel many users to a real subscriber business of your own or something you partner with, or selling the account at a revenue multiple, then you have to figure this out. You have your niches and you can have original content or not. Being able to quantify 3% engagement is a gold mine. Higher? Palladium.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

I just vomited a little in my mouth

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dang 6y ago
Please don't do this here.

papeda 6y ago

> Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private, and all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands. I'm confused, why is it easier to get people to line up to follow a private account based on...nothing?

sincerely 6y ago
Based on an endorsement from a page they already follow. Private meme accounts with tens of thousands of followers or more are not uncommon, so it's not especially suspicious
vmception 6y ago
Curiosity. Intrigue. Boredom - well not necessarily, it is a form of entertainment for the instagram culture. There is also silly user experience on instagram where you can share photos from a private profile to your friend but your friend can't see it at all unless they request to follow the profile too. Some content types get this behavior, more like animals, tropical landscape photography. Sometimes women/models, but thats more of a personal fawning.

Xorlev 6y ago

> For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. :|

paulryanrogers 6y ago

So this is a strategy to meet women who value popularity first and foremost? Sounds like a lot of work to "skip the queue".

austhrow743 6y ago
Sounds like they were doing the work mostly as work, and the women were a side perk. Women who value popularity on instagram tend to be pretty hot as well.
- vmception 6y ago
  > Women who value popularity on instagram tend to be pretty hot as well. hot, yes, and another important factor being: fun! the combination is anomalous in SF since the demographics do not select for it, so the evolutionary pressures are non-existent. but here and everywhere you see them on dating apps and they don't see you at all and won't respond to you at all on the gram as this is their way of passively increasing their follower count and engagement. But when you show up with a lot of the thing they value? It is disingenuous to find this perplexing. Its wealth, social proof, and ingenuity in a tough market all in one. This has been attractive to our species for a very long time. The profiles can be about anything even scantily clad women (maybe not actual memes though, but maybe), and they don't even know what I look like and they come through at least to the cafe. No different than any other date, just all the exceptions you ever wished for, and with fun and hot people that otherwise ignored you. Its more about getting a response than anything and recognizing that you are incapable of being the strangest or most precarious circumstance that many women have ever been in, just offer and invite. You are already rich, in followers, and recognize that this is a currency, just like they do.
  - obiye 6y ago
    And what kind of fun hat do you wear for peacocking?
    - vmception 6y ago

jlarocco 6y ago

That's a great summary of why social media is a dumpster fire. From buying fake likes down to plain old sleaziness, you seem to have covered all the bases.

vmception 6y ago
Big dumpster fire. A lot of people need the challenge of the dopamine hits, and become less interested once they know how to undermine it, or how fake or unfulfilling "success" is. High engagement can be used as a currency though, its common attribute being that you can trade it for goods and services in a predictable way. I actually keep a very personal profile with maybe around 100 followers. I watch some of the women there - long time friends - chase fame and other guys with shiny things - and I have to laugh about it because its I always can present that way if I want to, but I watch to see if they ever mature to wanting more substance. I have some criticisms for Facebook Inc about this though. They should really broker these transactions. There is a lot of sleeziness in the transactional side of growing these accounts. So instead of just ignoring it, they could really be getting a cut of this in so many ways.

Kaze404 6y ago

This started as a great comment but I don't understand the non sequitur into casual mysoginy.

vmception 6y ago
There was no dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women in that paragraph. Please don't dilute real issues with your general awkwardness and discomfort.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  > In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them. If you have a popular account its a night and day difference.
  - vmception 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on how you would acknowledge that valid reality? Is there a different wording you would use if it was indeed common and accurate outcome? From my perspective there is no contempt, only circumvention and the reason why.
    - goblin89 6y ago
      Before claiming that group X does Y to cause outcome Z that is unpleasant to someone, it is worth considering: 1. Is Y really a behavior exclusive to group X? 2. Is behavior Y fair to generalize across members of group X? 3. Is outcome Z the intended purpose of behavior Y, or is a side-effect that someone might take painfully? For example, the sentiment of “In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them” might read like at best someone low-key thinks women owe others attention. Using a dating profile to promote another social media profile is something any attractive person might reasonably consider, and (barring some extraordinary looks, etc.) reaching out to them from a social profile with a lot of clout could be a way to get attention—clout likely being what that person respects, as they themselves are purposefully trying to acquire it.

namanyayg 6y ago

What content category are these accounts posting in?

vmception 6y ago
Travel & Lifestyle Models / Scantily clad women Celebrity Fanpages Funny, Memes (quotes overlaying images) Motivation (derivative of travel & lifestyle but with quotes overlaying the images) Fitness (derivative of motivation) Oh yeah, I run my own fanpages for my own pages. lol. Thats another technique. Fanpages are just downgraded main pages when another account grows up or is acquired in the similar category (and rebranded back to my brand, with the lesser account being rebranded - often as a fanpage - sometimes as a business providing non-social media goods and services).
- namanyayg 6y ago
  That's down right amazing. I've been working on a software to get and repost images to a suite of IG accounts using InstaPy, but IG has too many account blocks and throttles. You have shared some very insightful information here -- especially about buying accounts and engagement rates. And have definitely executed something that I have only thought of. I'm working with a client right now to find influencers in 1m+ range to do 24h posts for their apps. Maybe I'll get to retry automation soon.

northern-lights 6y ago

It's clear that you are trying to sell something here. Might as well be obvious about it. Direct marketing works best in some cases (and definitely yours going by your other posts).

vmception 6y ago
Im not trying to sell anything, I'm done with growing Instagram accounts and am satisfied with the women in my life so I don't care if these industry techniques have diminishing usefulness when too many people start trying them, and which post, the Goorin Bros one?

throa2213 6y ago

Thanks for the information! Could you share how much does it cost to create "one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women"? E.g., let's say I wanna create another meme account with 5k followers, how much shall I pay for other meme accounts for a promotion on average? And I was always thinking that the engagement ratio is low for meme accounts, any information about it?

vmception 6y ago
Buy the account and rebrand to similar content. Don't grow the account from scratch, let teenagers in eastern europe and malaysia do that. Try not to get scammed when buying the account. Anything you do from then on is to offset the decline in followers. De-risk and break even on doing promos for other people. (lets say you bought a $5k account for $50, do 5-10 promos for other people, done. Start with more capital and get a more compelling account, don't go too big though, 30k is a sweet spot.) Engagement ratio of 1% is bad, 2% is ok, 3% is great. Not super important when talking with individuals. Only when trying to charge more for a promo, or selling the account.
- throa2213 6y ago
  Thank you so much! You seem to be a person who actually knows what they're talking about.
- wahnfrieden 6y ago
  How do you source these accounts to buy?
  - vmception 6y ago
    Thats just for my patreon subscribers. No I'm kidding, I don't have a patreon, but I don't want to give my favorite markets up. Ebay has accounts and some rudimentary price discovery there. You can also just message existing pages on IG. My primary procurement accounts are just anonymous blank accounts that just send out a direct message with an offer. Money talks. Emailing is usually possible too. The main thing you want is price discovery, understanding how things are priced or understanding value. Its some formula between followers and engagement. If I were to guess I'd say (Followers/100) x (Engagement x 100 x 1.75) Engagement is a percentage so it has to be by 100. Eh and the multiplier for engagement is probably nlogn. after 1, 2, and 3% engagement would have a large delta in prices between them, but 3+ wouldn't.

anon9001 6y ago

A couple of quick questions if you don't mind, since I don't use ig but I'm trying to understand your post: > Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private Is this as crude as looking for large accounts on socialblade and sending them DMs? Or is there some kind of marketplace? Are there popular forums or something I should know about? What kind of pricing are you looking for? > all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands Why would people follow a private profile anyway? I don't see what the user gains from that. Maybe this is an instagram culture thing that I'm out of the loop on? > For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. What kind of content would your accounts post? Do you have some kind of feed of popular content (imgur maybe?) where you can copy content and repost? Do you automate that?

vmception 6y ago
Think of it as an economy. The venues for communication are definitely all of the above, but there are also group chats in instagram where meme and large accounts hang out and like each other's post and reshare each other's content. So for getting started there are cold DMs, there are forums, there ARE marketplaces mostly for the buying and selling of accounts, and there are also DMs. The otherside of this economy is the ROI of the account. If you paid money for the account, or for promos, or analytics tools, you should be able to know how fast you can break even doing your own promos. Can you account charge $10 or what. When YOU want to do promos for other people, you should already be in a position to DM meme accounts and individuals directly. The individual market has its own tiers, anyone under 10k followers is out of the loop, but is doing okay at the social popularity game which is the crux of instagram: A follower casino where few people actually win. Many will pay $10 for a promo. More will do a reciprocal promo for free. Regarding private profiles, people want to know what they are missing. Is it explicit and erotic tantalizing content that will be short lived before it gets taken down!? Is it hilarious content that only the cool people get to know about!? Maybe there is a sneaker or consumer electronics promo happening on this secret page, maybe a secret society that conveys long lasting advantages if you happen to be there. Yes its an instagram culture thing. Yeah what to actually post on the account is hard work. But you don't actually have to do it much if you just want a profile with authority and power in direct messaging or real world trading for free stuff (you promise exposure, real luxury businesses give you their service). But for active posting, there are various tools to automate it, but it is really hard work either way. If you want to create a very valuable account to generate cash flow from more expensive one-off promotions, to funnel many users to a real subscriber business of your own or something you partner with, or selling the account at a revenue multiple, then you have to figure this out. You have your niches and you can have original content or not. Being able to quantify 3% engagement is a gold mine. Higher? Palladium.