Things to Watch Out For With Instagram Follower Services
First, What Are Follower Services?
An Instagram follower service is basically a service that promises to deliver more Instagram followers to your Instagram account. To the average person, it doesn't really matter that much if you have a lot of followers. However, to businesses or people who are content creators who would eventually like to be able to monetize their efforts, it is a big deal. Many of those people would be willing to pay for such services. But are they legitimate services or just scams?
A Little Background Information
I am what is known as a content creator. A content creator is someone who creates internet content such as websites, images, blogs and so forth. It is a means of generating income by doing something I enjoy. So, in order for me to make more money or a living from doing what I enjoy doing, I need my work to be seen by as many people as possible, first. Then, I need to find a way to monetize and generate income from my content. So, in order to get my work to be seen by more eyes, I have to find ways to promote it. That involves some form of advertising or paid promotion.
So, why am I writing about this on the Craypoe Comics blog? Good question, allow me to answer. Among the purposes of this blog is to sort of assist others who may want to do some of the things I do. So, if you would like to be able to promote yourself without being scammed, this particular blog entry might be most helpful to you.
Part Of What I Do As a Content Creator Is Create Images Like This
A Suspected Scam I was A Victim Of
I am an active user on Instagram. I integrate that with many of the things I do. I can use the embed code even for this blog. Check out the Instagram Reels pages and you will see pages that include the embed code for videos I have uploaded to Instagram.
I wanted to bring an increase to my number of followers, likes and shares on Instagram. I had recently viewed some videos that gave advice as to how you could get more views of your posts by the proper or efficient use of hashtags. So I followed its advice and it actually worked. That was great but, since my posts now got more views, that meant scammers were among those viewing and some gave their pitch.
First they commented on one of the images I posted. They would say something nice like it being a great picture. They said please send it. I looked at the page of one and it seemed like a site that promoted people's artwork. So I sent the image to them, thinking they were going to promote it. I thought it was great that someone promoted the artwork of people. They had thousands of followers, so I thought that they would be able to promote my work extensively.
So I sent the image to them. Then they came back and said they charge a fee for it. I didn't think it was that big a deal to pay for a service that promotes your work. After all, if it would be effective, it would be worth the money. So I opted for the $25 plan, just to try it out. Hey, if it worked, I might go for the bigger deals. But why try the big deals first, if you don't know if they will deliver on their promises? So I gave the cheap deal a try.
The Results And My Suspicions
So, one of the things guaranteed by the deal I opted for was 5,000 more followers. The good news is that they started to deliver followers within just a few hours. I thought it was great. Now my work can be seen by more people. I started to receive a load of notifications saying such and such person followed me. Great, right? Not so great when you take the time to look under the hood.
As part of the deal, I was told the image I wanted to promote would be placed on their page. I checked and it was. It got a lot of likes and there was a link to my profile page. So it really appeared to be a paid form of advertisement or promotion. Also, I saw a load of notifications about new followers. It seemed to be working.
But then I decided to check out who the new followers were. Every person I checked had multiple things in common. One thing was that every one of the ones I checked had only done less than 20 total posts over the entire time they were on Instagram. They all had just a handful of followers but they all followed over 4,000 people. I noticed this right after the first few. Then I decided to just check a lot more of them at random, instead of going straight down the line. It was all the same. One other thing I noticed was that each one's most recent post was over a year or year and a half ago. And most of them posted all of their posts on the same day. Suspicious. Very suspicious indeed.
My Conclusion
So what are the odds that all of these "followers" would have so many strange things in common, without being a scam? Probably very low, I would think. There are other services out there that promise more followers, but this is one that works directly off of the Instagram website. Regardless, they all have one thing in common. That is the fact that they deliver users who are not active. In other words, these people will never like or share any of your posts. The whole idea behind wanting more followers is to have your posts be seen by more people. These people are not going to see your work, simply because they are not currently active users. 5,000 users that are not active are the equivalent of zero users. That's because they just won't really be seeing your posts.
My Advice To You
My advice to anyone who is considering giving Instagram follower services a try is to try other means of promotion instead. Straight up advertising is much more likely to generate an increase in legitimate followers. However, you won't usually end up with as many. But a few real followers are much better than a thousand fakes. Services that guarantee a specific number of increased followers are usually scams.
If you do decide to try one, opt for the absolute cheapest plan. Then check out the kind of users they delivered. If you find that they possess the qualities I mentioned above, you've probably been scammed. But at least you opted for the cheapest plan.
Proper and efficient use of hashtags will always increase your views. There are videos on YouTube that offer advice on the subject. It won't generate thousands of increased views but your situation will improve and will continue to do so if you use the right hashtags.
So, this basically is the best advice I feel I can give. I hope this has been helpful.
Bob Craypoe
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