Instagram Marketing Services - Journey to $10,000 Per Month

[Ziad]

Hello!

I am new to FLF but I have been surfing around for quite a few days now. I made an account so I could engage with this community and learn more about Instagram (read through a couple of threads).

I've been in the Instagram game for a couple of years. I ran 100 accounts but most of them got banned/deleted. I made a come back a couple of months ago. Thorough testing allowed me to realize what Insta's limits are and how to grow accounts more effectively.

I decided to offer my services when a random tshirt brand on Insta DM'ed me and asked how I'm gaining so many followers so fast. I told him "I can do it for you for $500 a month". His tshirt brand grew about 1,500 followers per month and he made about 125 sales accross 3 months. That was the first time I actually made money off Instagram. $1500 USD in 3 months off 1 account. Not bad!

That's when I decided to market my services in my best possible way. Only yesterday a client signed on with me to grow his Instagram for $600 USD per month. His brand is in the e-learning niche.

I am creating this thread to track my progress, get tips from all the pros in here and also offer my piece of advice for Instagram marketing. PS: I am still learning myself therefore I am no "Instagram Guru"

My goal is simple. Make $10,000 a month from this and invest in a digital marketing business I have been interested in for quite some time now. I actually invested $2000 in that business and only realized I need more funding and growth. That is for another progress thread

I am currently only finding clients for Instagram marketing through Upwork. I've never cold called, but now would be a good time to start.

 

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[Thiago Machado]

 

[Ziad]

Ive been banned 4 times while not botting. There are plenty of little rules you must follow to not be banned. Most likely, if you do things 100% organic growth, then you should do fine. However, i'd be intrested to see how fast an accout grows from zero followers if you do things organically.
It was not till I grew to 10,000 followers that I saw consistent organic growth(maybe 10-20 followers/day, strictly organic.)
Most people do not want to do S4S with smaller accounts, unless they are a small accounts as well. Those with smaller accounts will more likely then not generate you some pretty low numbers in terms of follwers recieved.
Do you plan to hire a new VA for every 5 customers you recieve? If you dont use a bot, then I would assume you are not using proxies to cover your IP address? So hypothetically, you can only work with 5 accounts at a time.
Another question that has still not been answered on this forum, and I dont plan to figure out any time soon is, how long(if not indefinate) do you have to be inactive on an account before Instagram allows you to take on a new account after youve already used 5 accounts.
So basically my question is. When you have 5 clients and one of them doesnt need your service, when will you be able to pick up another client? What happens if you get the timing wrong, does all accounts get banned or just the "6th account?"


Essentially I want you to know that there are a lot of unanswered questions about Instagram. To take on clients without knowing the answer to all these risks is essentially placing your clients in unnessary risk.

Maybe your solution is to buy a new iPhone for every 5 accounts - this is an expencive option.
Rooting your andriod is also an option, but the steps to rooting a phone is unanswered on this forum --> would be great if we had someone figure this out! Totally plausiable and could be a great way around the problems I stated above.
Using programs lime MassPlanner --> costs $20/month and is considered a bot so maybe you won't use this option

Thank you for your post. I read through your thread and it was good inspiration.

1. I won't be handling clients who have 0 followers. If I do, I will bot them to gain a few followers in the beginning. I tell anyone I approach that under 10,000 followers, it will be a slow process and will take time. However, I haven't had such a client yet and like I said, I'm new and only learning as I go along.

2. When I scale up (I only have 1 client right now), content posting is already handled by Schedugram. Organic growth will be handled by my VAs who already have good knowledge of Instagram.

3. I currently own 3 phones. Therefore I can handle 15 clients at once. But I wont. Each of My VA will handle 5 clients (1 phone per VA). I will handle 5 clients myself. If a client stops his service and you have a free slot open, you will need to evaluate the new client's instagram account and see how old it is. If it's a fresh account with 0 followers, like I said before, I would put it up on a bot (with a dedicated proxy) and grow it slowly till I get at least 5,000 followers. This could easily take 2 months. If It's an aged account with a few followers, I'd wait a couple of days. If it gets banned, I can recover it easily. But I've never had an aged account banned just like this, not saying it will never happen. I have churned and burned a lot of accounts on bots therefore I have enough knowledge to prevent any banning. Besides, if the account is at 0 followers, I doubt the client would worry too much for a ban. I'm currently botting 10 of my own accounts (not any client's) all from scratch and all of them are going fine so far.

Besides, as @LleixG said, unless I upload porn/adult/nudity/spam/anything stupid on Instagram, I can easily recover my account back. Over a month ago I recovered an account on Instagram which had ~ 6,200 followers. It's one of my old accounts. All they asked me to do was write the account username and a unique ID (which they give) on a piece of paper and take a picture of me holding it. Here is proof of me recovering an account:

I will be writing a step by step guide on recovering your account in my thread here soon. Probably in a couple of days. I didn't bother recovering my other accounts because they were spam. Don't post porn and don't spam your account with links and you should be able to recover it.

Finally, yes, it's risky but what's business without any risk? I've been on Instagram for a while now and I've learnt from my mistakes. If I didn't learn and move on I'd be a quitter. And I refuse to quit.

 

[Ziad]

In the future, do you see yourself having your own branded instagram account? Would your clients success inspire you or is it easier to provide the service instead?

I will definitely have my own branded Instagram account. That is something that will happen within a year for sure, it's my goal.

However, my service would never stop. And speaking of my service, I have successfully started earning well over $10,000 and have found a potential buyer who is willing to buy the entire business.

Throughout my Instagram journey, I found several ways of getting more natural, organic followers to my clients without ever having to use a bot, follow people, use hashtags or any of that. I tested these ways out with a couple of clients, and they have gained well over 20,000-30,000 followers in the span of a month.

Over the next few days I will sell my automated Instagram growth business and focus solely on premium, high quality Instagram marketing and management where no bots are used and I don't have to follow, unfollow, like, comment or hashtag anything on my clients' accounts. I have charged the 2 clients $800/month each so far and they have said it's worth every penny.

Going to launch a website on this service soon and aim to grab at least 15 clients before the new year.

 

[Ziad]

Submitted Proposals on Upwork today. Shoutout to @SinisterLex your threads on this forum are pure GOLD!

 

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[Ziad]

Subbed to see progress.

Seeing as how you don't use bots, how do you see yourself scaling your business if you're doing everything manually by yourself?
Manually handling 20 different business pages will be a large undertaking.

Also how do you plan on handling unhappy customers if you promise great organic growth but they fall flat of your goals?

Will be hiring VAs once I scale up

Edit: Answer to your 2nd question, unhappy customers won't get a refund but will have their services stopped. If somehow an account gets banned, I will offer full refund for the months they paid. I just don't see how an account can get banned if it's not being botted.

 

[Mikkel]

I just don't see how an account can get banned if it's not being botted.

Ive been banned 4 times while not botting. There are plenty of little rules you must follow to not be banned. Most likely, if you do things 100% organic growth, then you should do fine. However, i'd be intrested to see how fast an accout grows from zero followers if you do things organically.
It was not till I grew to 10,000 followers that I saw consistent organic growth(maybe 10-20 followers/day, strictly organic.)
Most people do not want to do S4S with smaller accounts, unless they are a small accounts as well. Those with smaller accounts will more likely then not generate you some pretty low numbers in terms of follwers recieved.
Do you plan to hire a new VA for every 5 customers you recieve? If you dont use a bot, then I would assume you are not using proxies to cover your IP address? So hypothetically, you can only work with 5 accounts at a time.
Another question that has still not been answered on this forum, and I dont plan to figure out any time soon is, how long(if not indefinate) do you have to be inactive on an account before Instagram allows you to take on a new account after youve already used 5 accounts.
So basically my question is. When you have 5 clients and one of them doesnt need your service, when will you be able to pick up another client? What happens if you get the timing wrong, does all accounts get banned or just the "6th account?"


Essentially I want you to know that there are a lot of unanswered questions about Instagram. To take on clients without knowing the answer to all these risks is essentially placing your clients in unnessary risk.

Maybe your solution is to buy a new iPhone for every 5 accounts - this is an expencive option.
Rooting your andriod is also an option, but the steps to rooting a phone is unanswered on this forum --> would be great if we had someone figure this out! Totally plausiable and could be a great way around the problems I stated above.
Using programs lime MassPlanner --> costs $20/month and is considered a bot so maybe you won't use this option

 

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[Ziad]

Closed 3 more clients today. Took me a week to close. Never give up!

 

[YungBuck]

Closed 3 more clients today. Took me a week to close. Never give up!

Hey new here been watching your thread, very interesting approach you took but I like it you will be making top $ in no time.

To respond to one of your points, you don't want to use Bots as they may like/follow/comment on porn accounts there are bots out there what you can blacklist from Following/Liking/Commenting certain accounts or certains posts with # for eg you would set it to not follow all the major porn sites pornhub etc and all the major pornstars. You would then set it to not like/follow any accounts what associate with pornographic #s such as #Porn etc.

As for the limits and not getting your account banned using these bots here are the precautions you can take
- One Dedicated Proxy
- One Sim Card Per Account
Collect all the data of what you are doing manually on the account at the moment.

For eg. You are active on the account for 4 hours a day
within them four hours you like 100 posts
follower 400 people
comment on 12 peoples post

Let's suppose that's what you do and you get no bans as you are a human.

Now import all that data into the bot many people have the misconception that a bots a bot and cant be changed.
You can customize it automate the process for looking after the instagram accounts
Then eventually hire/get affilates for new customers.
All you will be doing is managing everything making sure everything is ok

In the contract you are sending to the clients state in the T.O.S you are not held responsible if the account is banned to cover your own back (Dont have to but rather safe than sorry)

If you are worried about getting customers accounts banned using IG or people don't know how to convince people on how to hand over the passwords remember... there are many stores out there ran by old people whos only idea of marketing is through TV.RADIO.Leadflets contact them and create them a Instagram if they dont see value offer them to create one for free and set the bot to work come back in a few weeks show them the growth etc and they will be more likely to buy.

When creating IG accounts dont create them.. New accounts get banned .. So what do you do make one leave it for a while then post? No that will take to long.. There are many people who sell Aged IG accounts (3-6Months) for as cheap as $2

Sorry for the spelling mistakes I as typing fast ... Anyway good luck let me know how it goes

 

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[TheKing]

I've been in the Instagram game for a couple of years. I ran 100 accounts but most of them got banned/deleted

Why should someone trust you with their account if most of your own accounts get banned?

If someone is going to give you $600 a month to grow their Instagram, I think you need to take safety into account. Getting your clients accounts banned won't be good for business.

I understand that you think you've gotten a feel for how aggressive you can use a bot on Instagram, but all it takes is for Instagram to change their algorithm a bit and you can have all your accounts banned, again.

 

[Ziad]

So you don't use a bot like followliker, instagress, etc.? Interested to hear about your process. Do you use proxies?

I don't bot. The only automation I use is Schedugram, which costs ~ $20/month and lets you schedule your posts.

I comment and DM to other accounts manually, and carry out shoutout for shoutout with other similar accounts. Follow/unfollow usually drops your accounts engagement. It's better to DM and comment/like photos manually.

You should hire a VA instead of using a bot. You don't want your bot to like/follow porn accounts by mistake and lose a client because of it.

I don't bot. Right now I only have 1 client I'm working with. Once the numbers go up, I will definitely hire a VA or 2 to manage everything for me.

 

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[CycleGuy]

Subbed to see progress.

Seeing as how you don't use bots, how do you see yourself scaling your business if you're doing everything manually by yourself?
Manually handling 20 different business pages will be a large undertaking.

Also how do you plan on handling unhappy customers if you promise great organic growth but they fall flat of your goals?

 

[Ziad]

Since you have a lot of experience getting banned from Instagram, can you tell us some not so obvious reasons that accounts banned? I know typical reasons like doing too many follow/unfollow, doing too many likes, spamming comments or DM, etc
Anything else we should watch out for?

The one thing I noticed was, never start botting immediately on a fresh account you just created. If I create a fresh account, I'd log it on the proxy and let it sit for at least 24 hours, then follow max 100-200 a day for 3-5 days, do 2-3 posts a day. Keep it VERY slow for the first 7-10 days, and then you can slowly speed things up. Very slowly. Personally, I wouldn't follow more than 250-300 a day for the first month.

 

[Ziad]

So I proposed an idea to an investor who has a significantly large audience on Instagram. I suggested Instagram automation services to him. If he can get the market, and I manage the accounts, it would be a huge plus. Fingers crossed!

 

[Ziad]

Awesome, what was the strategy to acquire them?

Cold calls.

 

[Ziad]

Hey man, I've read through the whole thread and I see you haven't written anything in more than a month. How are things now? You were close to 10 000 per month? I bet you reached it. Also you said this : "If you bot, you shouldn't be liking anyway. Liking doesnt help you gain followers as much as it used to. " Do you like when doing it manually or do you just follow?

Hey man, hope you are well.

In short, I haven't reached $10,000 per month yet but I am very close. I have 117 clients now who are paying me monthly on IGBrander.com

To give you a quick update. Liking is good for engagement, as long as you don't overdo it and keep it relevant.

Anyways, I am pretty sure now that I have all the experience and enough client base to go over $10,000 per month with this.

Clients are always satisfied. I've given some clients over 350 targeted followers in a single day, only through my strategies. Plenty of potential clients in the pipeline, I am crossing my goal of $10,000 per month very soon!

Edit: for those wondering if I had more clients before and I have less now: I was charging less earlier on and therefore grabbed a ton of clients through influencer marketing and cold calling. However, with my value and experience growing significantly in this industry, I raised my prices and I only target clients who are determined to get results and get sales for their brands/businesses.

My price only went a bit higher, but my value has at least 10x over these last few months and I have client testimonials to back it up.

If you have questions, feel free to ask away here. I'm back on this thread and will be checking the forums often.

 

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[Ziad]

Why should someone trust you with their account if most of your own accounts get banned?

If someone is going to give you $600 a month to grow their Instagram, I think you need to take safety into account. Getting your clients accounts banned won't be good for business.

I understand that you think you've gotten a feel for how aggressive you can use a bot on Instagram, but all it takes is for Instagram to change their algorithm a bit and you can have all your accounts banned, again.

This is why it took me a while to get back and study Instagram's limits. None have been banned since I started again a few months ago.

 

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[LleixG]

If an account gets banned you just need to contact Instagram and you'll get it back (unless you were spamming porn, etc...). If he's doing it manually and not going extremely fast the chances of getting banned are almost 0.

 

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[Ziad]

Closed a client, but for a cheaper $90/month. Says he will promote me and reference me once things get going.

 

[JSM]

3. I currently own 3 phones. Therefore I can handle 15 clients at once. But I wont. Each of My VA will handle 5 clients (1 phone per VA). I will handle 5 clients myself. If a client stops his service and you have a free slot open, you will need to evaluate the new client's instagram account and see how old it is. If it's a fresh account with 0 followers, like I said before, I would put it up on a bot (with a dedicated proxy) and grow it slowly till I get at least 5,000 followers. This could easily take 2 months. If It's an aged account with a few followers, I'd wait a couple of days. If it gets banned, I can recover it easily. But I've never had an aged account banned just like this, not saying it will never happen. I have churned and burned a lot of accounts on bots therefore I have enough knowledge to prevent any banning. Besides, if the account is at 0 followers, I doubt the client would worry too much for a ban. I'm currently botting 10 of my own accounts (not any client's) all from scratch and all of them are going fine so far.

I thought your ip was wifi, not phone. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

In my opinion the best way to scale this would be using proxies and followliker. It's $100 for unlimited accounts. You won't have to worry about underperforming VA's and you won't have to pay anybody else. With the 3 free days on instagress I gained more than 200 followers between two new accounts.

 

[Ziad]

Awesome stuff. Are you still liking pictures, commenting, etc. by yourself?

Yes. My price is high therefore I'm not interested in quantity. I want to provide the highest of qualities to limited clients. If this grows then so be it, I'll hire a team. But so far all on myself

 

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[Ziad]

I've been following your progress and things seem to be going well - great work!

On your website, you mention monthly 1 hour Skype consultations, what do you talk to your customers about?

I'm also curious as to what sort of posts you do. If you take on, for example, a customer who sells cupcakes do you just post related images? Where do you get the images from? Sorry to smash you with questions.

In the first consultation I ask customers what they are looking for, research their business, inquire as much as I can about their Instagram page and tell them how everything will work out and how many followers they can gain and how that will help them or their brand. From then on, I catch up once a month with my clients for feedback and to see if they are satisfied with my service. If they would like anything improved etc.

The posts I do, 99% of the time are given to me by the clients themselves. In one case, I handle a client who just wants to grow his personal account and wants to be famous. He is an entrepreneur so I curate motivational and luxury posts for him. If it's a brand who I'm working with, I highly recommend that they send me content they'd like to be posted on their page.

Hope this helps and no worries, you can ask me anytime

 

[Ziad]

I meant in the sense of them feeling secure in giving you the password to their business or the IG that represents their business. Is it just a "hey look at the website, pay the money and give me your password" type transaction?

I guess I'm really asking how you inspire confidence in your clients that you are trustworthy etc.

Thanks.

If they need to, we can sign a separate contract asking permission for access to their IG account.

I've signed 2 more clients today.

My goal is to get at least 150 clients.

 

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[Ziad]

167 clients currently. Im looking at my goal of $10,000/month I wrote in the title and I'm reaching it soon enough I hope!

 

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[Ziad]

Obviously the professionals would do a better job and would bring higher value clients to the table but would require payment w/out any guarantees. If you are doing affiliate based revenue for college students there is no harm as at the end of the day theres no payment unless you get revenue.

I dont know why, sometimes I feel like college students are much more driven than professionals. Not only does it save me $ but they overall have brought in more clients for me, even for IGBrander haha.

 

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[GuestUserX09]

I offer similar services to these within a company I recently started. I'm not sure your end of the day intent is so positive with the banned accounts and all. For Instagram specifically, I push for organic growth and engagement- not by testing the spam limits of Instagram. What you are doing may not carry long-term results. Nonetheless, goodluck. It's definitely a space where you'll want quality over quantity.

 

[Ziad]

I offer similar services to these within a company I recently started. I'm not sure your end of the day intent is so positive with the banned accounts and all. For Instagram specifically, I push for organic growth and engagement- not by testing the spam limits of Instagram. What you are doing may not carry long-term results. Nonetheless, goodluck. It's definitely a space where you'll want quality over quantity.

Thanks for the tip! I don't bot and spam and churn/burn accounts. I use a more organic approach as well now. I'm confident in my services. Just need to find the clients now

 

[Ziad]

I think accounts getting banned has something to do with the number of accounts on your IP address.

Can login on accounts using insta proxies then.

 

[GuestUserX09]

Just wondering, how do you generate organic growth? (Ignore the obvious "generating good content").
Do you use certain tactics?

Honestly, I'm pretty much spamming in the most strategic way without hitting limits (liking and commenting only) with similar pages followers. But, I'd like to hire someone to do this full time in the near future. There are some grey hat ways to grow accounts organically as well but I'm just experimenting now with finding the fastest A-Z path but having the results still be organic. I think it can be optimized much further than how we are doing without getting sketchy but I'm just not sure yet- The manual labor needed makes it hard to scale.

 

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[Ziad]

If an account gets banned you just need to contact Instagram and you'll get it back (unless you were spamming porn, etc...). If he's doing it manually and not going extremely fast the chances of getting banned are almost 0.

This. I have recovered accounts from Instagram before.