I wanted to see what it does for your image/followers/numbers if you buy followers. So I bought followers and likes on Instagram. It cost me 20 dollar. And what exactly did I get?
YES, I knew I was buying fake accounts (but not certain) and YES I knew this was a risk and not good for certain reasons, namely:
– my reputation (OMG she’s SO fake, she BOUGHT her followers)
– my love rate (that’s the percentage of number of average likes on your pics divided through the number of followers)
THE PROCES
I had 990 followers on Instagram.
I bought 1500 followers on a website I found through Google. I cannot find it again now (they probably come and go), so just Google ‘buy real Instagram followers’ and you will see a lot of services. After paying 15 dollars (it said ‘best option’, for 25 dollars I could have bought 2500 followers, was that no good?) and within the next 24 hours, I got all these 1500 followers. Three weeks later and I now have 2712 followers.
These are indeed fake-accounts. They don’t ‘live’, aka they do not like nor comment, but they look real. You can still recognize them: these accounts have weird names, they do have an average profile pic and follow a lot of people. So far the same as any account. They do not have (m)any followers, mostly 0 to 5, they do not post pics, mostly no more than 1 tot 10 pics already there. These pics are randomly picked from the web.
After I bought the followers I wanted more, more! I thought that if one of my pics got on the popular page, I would get more fans. After all, the pics on Instagram’s popular page are not the best ones, right? So I bought 500 likes for 5 dollars from the same service for one of my already popular pics (60 likes, which is a lot for me). The likes came within a couple of hours. I got 562 likes in total on this pic from my son Mauro and his friends.
THE RESULT
– Buying followers worked a little bit for my image: I got more followers faster than before. In the past 3 weeks I got 200 new followers where as I got a dozen in this same time slot before.
Note: I also gave a presentation to over 200 (starting) bloggers from which I got more followers than usual.
So when people see that I have 2500 followers they think it’s worth to follow me more than when I had 990 followers. Mission one accomplished.
– My Klout score went up from 67 to 68 and it looks like it stays there. Klout can’t determine they are fake accounts. A failure from Klout, in my opinion, but very difficult to undermine. (Update december 2014 > maybe Klout also examines engagement rates from Instagram, like the love and the talkrate)
– The likes did NOTHING. To get on the popular page you need thousands of likes so I should have bought much more than 500. Will do that if I have the guts. (Update: the popular page is the explore page now and totally controlled by an algorithm of Instagram, hashtags are your only way now to have control over new followers).
– My loverate and talkrate a.k.a. engagement is lower than before, because these fake-account don’t like and comment. Not that good, but not a terrible thing.
– I haven’t got any bad comments from people (yet) nor have I been banned from my beloved Instagram (yet).
Am I happy? Yes? Would I recommend this strategy? No, but I would not lie that it could work for your image. Are there any REAL services to get more followers that you know of? Let me know! There was an article about Instagram scams from the Android app Instlike, check it out on Mashable.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Update june 2104:
Testing the tool Instagress that promisses REAL followers.
Buying followers got me new followers faster, but it also brought down my love- and talkrate. When I followed an Instagram Marketing webinar, they recommended the tool Instagress. I tested it. It is a tool that will like and/or comment automatically on accounts you don’t follow yet based on hashtags you choose. You can also choose the option that you will start to follow accounts automatically. And agreed: it is pretty scary. Instagress is free for 3 days and after that you have to pay.
In the three days this was the result:
– Likes done 3041
– Comments done 811
– Follows done 974
Number of people that followed me because of the above actions (in the period of a week) 250
So was it worth it? The accounts following me are real. Some even engage with me. But the automatic commenting option was a bit scary. I got one comment back saying: thanks, but this is a video. Apparently the comment ‘nice pic’ was placed under a video. OOPS. And there are a lot of crap pics now in my timeline, so I am unfollowing the ones again who do not follow back and that is a lot of work.
Decide for yourself: https://instagress.com/
Update november 2014
There are a lot of apps now like ‘Get followers‘ where you receive coins for following people and spent those coins when people start to follow you through the app. So those are real followers and you earn them by following people. But you can buy coins too, for real money. And you can also receive coins by doing things the app tells you so, for example looking at a video from an advertiser or clicking on a link. It also says that if you unfollow the persons you just started to follow within the next 6 days you loose your coins again. Smart. Interesting. But small chance that those new people are actually interested in you, so bad again for your engagement rate.
Update 18 december 2014
Instagram deleted my 1500 fake followers and they did so with every inactive and/or spam account, so a lot of people have less followers now. I have to come up with a new killer blog post on buying followers. Curious as to when Instagram will do a clean-up again. Most people that got hit, still have loads of followers, because they bought them a while ago and they grew faster with real followers after that. @Negin_Mirsalehi lost less than 100.000 followers and Justin Bieber lost 3,5 million. But they’ve got loads so that did not hurt much.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Want me to review your tool and publish a link to it? Go to this page >
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Want to hire me for your Instagram Strategy or a wokshop?
Contact me on Instagram or though email kirstenjassies@gmail.com
Check out my other popular articles in english:
Visual and Social Commerce through Instagram and Pinterest
10 tips to become an Instagram PRO
How to become more popular yourself (personal branding online)
Pins that work best on Pinterest: what do you have to do to gain more followers on Pinterest?
990 is quite some following to begin with 🙂
This strategy is widely used by a lot of marketeers and wil eventualy burst like all hot air filled bubbles released by marketing strategists, it wil be the end of online advertising based on these fake numbers and statistics.
Nice article and experiment! Makes my pragmatic programmer brain think, would it be possible to make fake accounts that do like and comment, using bots/ai? It would blow up the bubble out of proportion and blow over even more systems when it would eventualy burst.
If I was a marketer I would not do this at all with my brand! But offcourse there are those that would do anything. Very interesting to think about creating users that do like and comment (from a developers point of view), but also scary for the whole lot, it’s probably already happening somewhere.
I actually think that this tricks will work for still a long time. You can also do it on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for years now and not a lot of people are wondering if those views and followers are fake. One (dutch) website about hiphop is checking it. http://statemagazine.nl/nieuwsartikel/3732 Sometimes they found that some views aren’t right. Of course the artist is losing some credibility but I don’t think people can recall it months later. So to be honest I don’t think, if you can do it in a smart way, that it will be bad for a marketer to do it. It also worked for Kirsten 😉
True. A little bit sad but true. But hé, looks who’s talking. I can’t give the fake followers back i guess. But i will keep on telling I have 1500 fakers and 1200 real ones! People like the story and what it did.
It’s all your own decision if you do it or not, I can provide followers/likes for a decent price.
But still, if you’re buying HQ (high quality) followers or likes, people from the outside won’t see any difference.
Pingback: 5 x inspiratie op de zondag - Elja Daae
Wist niet dat je dit kon? Leuk dat je ons alles uitlegt en ook zegt wat je er wel en niet tof en goed aan vind x Jana
Good for you for sharing your story! I’m an Instagram purist, so as much as I would love 30,000 fans I am growing my account organically. I interact A LOT and take LOTS of photos. The thing is that I love photography. If someone is not using Instagram for the photos then they should spend time on other apps that highlight their passion and strengths. I’ve been into photography since I was eight, so I really try to share the best photos I take.
I’ve seen little kids like all my pics and then ask for me to follow them. They don’t get that I don’t want pictures of Justin Bieber in my home feed. I like to be inspired by the accounts I follow or get a laugh out of some crazy accounts.
I passed the 2,000 mark one week ago and have noticed that I get more followers a day compared to when I had 800 followers. I know someone on Twitter who I admire and noticed they had an Instagram account. Wow, he had 36,000 followers! Then I looked at his picutres and they had 15 likes, so I decided to not follow him….also his photos sucked. 😉
Hi Tiana, no justin bieber pics… lol, and there are a lot! I used to think everybody on instagram took his own pics: was i disappointed when i found out most young users just copy from websites (and post selfies). But … everbody has its own reasons to be on instagram and i respect that! You have strict, but straight forward reasons yourself, that’s good for you. I have two: take two or three pics a day of things I love or am proud of, so it becomes my visual diary, for me, family and friends in the first place. Second: to engage with bloggers around the world.
@Ben, Thats cool, dont rely on buying followers but besides it also helps boost your counts before the real one starts following you thinking you must be a celeb.
My advice is;
= Buy certain no of followers from http://FansBook.info
= Start posting funny pics, videos and talks
= then more and more real people will start flooding to your profile thereby increasing your followers count !
Hope this helps !
Pingback: 10 Instagram tips to become an Instagram-pro! | JUSTK.
Pingback: Ik rockte de zaal met mijn presentatie Instagram marketing - JUSTK.
Pingback: Buying Followers on Social Media: Does It Work?
Beste Kirsten,
Ik moet mijn muis dol scrollen om bij je fb etc buttons te komen.
Je google+ werkt niet, of doe ik iets verkeerd?
Of ben ik ouderwets 😉
Groet, Alex
I had a similar result, What has worked for me is just to buy a 1000 followers, post some funny pics and then start following people like crazy, so when they see your profile, they’ll be more than likely to follow you back.
Kind of tedious but it sure works, I have more than double my followers.
One important thing is to just follow influencers, more like regular people with good followers on your niche, don’t waste your time following artist or any famous people with million followers, they will never follow you back.They usually have some guy doing the “social media stuff” for them.
Pls where can we buy followers from after the update, I need to get mine back up
@Dav try some apps like ‘get followers’ those are real followers
Tank you for the heads up and for taking your time to experiment with things. The majority of bloggers follow the heard and talk about things without testing themselves. With the latest Instagram purge i lost almost 2k followers and i’m wondering where i can buy real IG followers with real accounts? I searched on google and found http://igboost.net/ gonna give them a try to see if they are legit or just selling fake accounts like the majority of providers.
Best regards.
Try some of the apps like ‘Get followers’ or a tool like Instagress. Those get you real followers.
Thank you for your reply. Could you please do me the favor of editing out the link i used on “website” in my previews comment? I would appreciate.
Best regards.
For the marketers and business folks, sometimes this makes sense. But the problem comes when that boy or girl in junior high gets upset when they don’t get as many likes as one of their friends and begins spending money on fake interactions. What sort of damage does this do?
Pingback: How to shop Instagram - or sell your products over there - JUSTK.
most of these are fake followers 🙂
Yes you are right there are a lot of social media services nowadays, which promise you a lot of real followers within some hours. Trust me most of the time they don’t keep what they promise. There are just a few services which can offer you really cheap high quality followers and likes, which are real and active with bio on Instagram and other social media networks. One of these resellers is http://www.buycheapestfollowers.com . They offer almost everything starting from views and likes on YouTube until Likes on Facebook!
hi, nice review there.
But i disagree with your reviews about not to buy any from the seller who were sell instagram acc. It is just because not every seller sold BAD fake ig account, they’re all maybe fake but not bad. I have many fake followers from 2013 and up till now none of them got deleted.
Pingback: De beste koppen, headlines en de perfecte blogpost - 29 tips - JUSTK.
Im so happy that I bought from http://www.getrealigfollowers.com
Instagram update not effect my account 🙂
All followers are real!!!
FUCKK YOU INSTAPRESS GOT MY INSTA HACKED. FUC KYOUR ARTICLE!!!!
Really? That is bad news. How are you certain it was Instagress that hacked your account?
That’s too bad when your account gets hacked, but it’s a sad truth about many services. I personally use fast-unfollow.com, it’s somehow similar to instagress, allowing to unfollow up to 5000 users not following back, but i never had mine hacked nor banned. Kirsten, I’d strongly advice you to only use this app as it is completely safe and beginner friendly, they grant 1000 unsunscriptions for free to new users. About the article, it’s great to know others’ experience in this matter, cause my own way pretty much the same as yours, but i can’t call the result long-lasting. It’s much better to build up your very own base of followers, but i understand the magical influence of numbers and ratio as well as your motives to do so. Thanks for sharing 😉
Hi Samantha, I don’t recommend it to anyone anymore, I totally agree that without tools your engagement is much better!
I always use to go to sites like http://Wizish.com and http://Twiends.com to get a few free followers to boost my follower account on my business page. What is your take on these “Follow4Follow” type websites, that allow you to earn coins by following people to later exchange them for followers to your own account? I’m not one to spend money on anything to fake boost my accounts, especially if it’s fake. These sites do offer some real people to follow you though that could actually be interested in you or your business, you know?
Hi Maxy, they do indeed offer real people/account on these follow4follow sites so it’s a little better than fake followers. Still they won’t interact with you when you are not interesting enough, so there will be little engagement from these accounts. Growing organically by posting relevant content for your followers is still the best, but hardest, way.
Wow! This is a very useful page and I really enjoyed reading article and all users’ comments. Developing influence on Instagram has never been so easy. Buy Instagram Followers and Likes at free and extremely low prices with an amazing customer support. Thank you for sharing valuable information.
i agree. I also believe that users or companies with low brand awareness can benefit from using more hashtags in start-up phases. This is because it will force them to eventually research hashtags and their posting rate, and understand which ones drive traffic and which ones do not.
The thing about buying Instagram followers is you have to be careful with the provider you choose.
There are so many people out there promising the world for pennies on the dollar and they don’t even deliver the service they say they can.
Fly-by-night websites and fivver accounts don’t seem like a big deal until you think about the fact you can get your social media profile deleted by hiring someone who uses blatant tactics against the terms of service of the social media site.
The best way to buy Instagram followers, and everyone is buying them, is to do your research and buy from a reputable company.
Check out the reviews http://buyinstagramfollowersreview.org/ by real people. We provide actual reviews of the services provided as well as leave a review yourself if you have dealt with any company in the past.
Don’t get ripped off, read the reviews first!
i agree. I also believe that users or companies with low brand awareness can benefit from using more hashtags in start-up phases. This is because it will force them to eventually research hashtags and their posting rate, and understand which ones drive traffic and which ones do not.
So far I bought from 8-10 companies
Only one gave exact what i want!!!
the best thing is ,they have online chat for any issues
Anna is the best
http://www.getrealigfollowers.com
Good information yes, buying followers help in most case to get more followers. i did that once and i could still remember the site i use then. http://fansdrive.com . they are one of the best i ever use
It’s not a bad idea buying followers and there’re not many sites givin real followers, e. g. what if your account is having 100 000 followers, but all are fake? I’ve tried and tested some low functional listed by others. It cost a pretty penny 🙁 try to promote yourself with Zengram. It really finds people which are active and interested in following you.
As much as online social media market has fake providers we also have real proViders of the real human service not inactive bots!! BuyTwitterAndInstagramFollowers .com is one of them.
I bought 3000 instagram followers for only $12 from here, only legit way to get followers, hope it helps, here’s the link on Etsy 🙂 – https://goo.gl/LbRcao
HI, i am introducing you cheapest INstagram followers with 100k base , Instant Start. Non DRop. at .90$ per 1000
SKYPE me – sociozpromo
I believe the commenter’s are making good points. As an Instagram “Newbie” I am applying lessons learned in a previous life. Your approach must include a multi-step plan. In other words one thing, like buying followers, will NOT provide you long term value. Purchased followers are 90% fake and the few services that do have REAL followers cannot guarantee the their REAL followers will like, comment or continue to follow your posts or page. My approach was to buy 1,000 fake followers and then work a long term plan. I found my FREE 7 step plan here
http://buysellshoutouts.com/blog/how-do-i-grow-an-instagram-account
No illusions – this is a lot of work but it is rewarding when you see your hard work create a following of REAL people that like and comment on your content. I hope I have the staying power to stick with it! Will you??
Hi, Kirsten!
Always nice to see people honestly talking about their experiences and objectively judging the results. If you decide to continue, I think you should try Zengram.net. It is somehow similar to Instagress, but if found it to be more useful, primarily because of web-posting function. And geolocation tool is kind of more efficient in city targeting, which is a huge advantage. I’d be happy to know what you think about it.
Hello, you can get cheapest HQ Worldwide Facebook Likes on http://www.promoshore.com
Pingback: Comprehending The Potent Power Of Social Media Marketing and advertising For Organization – mendezmendez86' blogs
Hei there 🙂
I think there are many Websites where you can buy Followers. I buy it all the tim eon http://www.salesocialmedia.com or on https://www.fastfollowerz.com/. They are very cheap 🙂
Nice little review there! I also have been struggling to find a good website to buy insta followers because its so hard to determine trustworthy sellers. But recently Icame upon this website: http://www.buyinstagramfollowersreviews.net/, here sellers of instagram followers and likes are compared. Also people can leave their reviews on what they think of the sellers. Maybe this website can be useful to some of yuo?
I was curious if you ever considered changing the page layout of your blog? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having one or two pictures. Maybe you could space it out better?
Hi Nancy, a bit of a late answer, but things can always be done better. Agree with you, but sometimes you just want to write!
Hi Kirsten,
I know your post is a little bit old now but I stumbled on it doing some SEO search, not gonna lie here. But your post could have been from 2016 and still relevant, since a lot of people buy fake followers now days still, as you can gain organic following with the fake followers they had their value, even when they are deleted. Problem for brands could be it does look very suspicious loosing many followers over night, once Instagram wipes out another bulk of fake accounts. I know I know I shamelessly tell you I have a better solution for gaining real followers instead of buying fake ones, because I have 🙂
Since I work on a start up which is a big marketplace and network of many real accounts/influencer and we can build fully managed campaigns for different goals at https://shoutsmarket.com for example gaining more real followers with shoutouts. In case you are open to try new approaches I highly recommend you take a look. Thanks Kirsten, I would be happy if you email me just to talk about your opinion 🙂
Nice article, even posted 2 years ago, still very helpful. Thanks.
Very nice list of your blogs, I really needed these Instagram blogs, Thanks
Nice article again
Thanks for sharing..:)
Old but great article. I am Provider for Instagram Followers for a 2 years now. I hate when people say: “They are now real, you can’t chat with them” or ” they can’t like your pics” etc… Ofc you can’t chat with them because they are bots, they are not real. People need to understand that you don’t buy IG followers for fun, you gonna buy them to promote your business. It’s very simple. If you have 20 followers, you don’t have social authority and people will see you as fake and scam even if you are not. But if you got 10 000 followers then people will take you seriously. It’s very simple!