I’m relatively new to IG automation and have been playing around with it for roughly about three weeks.
These have been my expenses so far:
10 rotating residential proxies @ 2.20 each - $22.00 / month
4 warmed up slaves @ 2.75 each - $11.00 (1 has been disabled)
12 fresh slaves @ .55 each - $6.60 (7 have been disabled)
10 HQ scrapers @ .55 each - $5.50 (6 have been disabled)
5 MQ scrapers @ .35 each - $1.75 ( 4 have been disabled)
Outsourcing of Slave Rebranding @ .70 each - $11.20
I have been abusing Jarvee’s free trial system as I’m still acquainting myself with the software. Eventually though, I’ll likely be paying an additional $50 / month for the software.
Total expenses thus far (3 weeks in) : $58.05 to run 10 slave accounts consistently for the last three weeks.
Followers gained to the mother so far: 242. Cost per follower: $0.23
Had I been paying for Jarvee’s 30 account plan, cost per follower would’ve nearly doubled at $0.44.
All in all, I’m still far from having a cost-efficient operation and would like to know where the general benchmark stands for the more experienced guys here.
This is just my own set-up. I feel way too inadequate to be charging money for this as of yet. I was genuinely surprised to see that some of the prices to run these services range so high but with the knowledge I have now, it kind of makes sense.
I can honestly only see this being a viable alternative to Instagram’s sponsored ads in case of high-demand, high-ticket niche services like SaaS, Finance, etc. The average cpc in those niches are around $3 which I suppose this methodology can beat with some effort. But if we’re talking clothing brands, music artists, etc. (Which is like 90% of brands who choose Instagram as their primary advertising channel), I’m not sure you can compete with sponsored posts as their cpc can be as low as $0.03 via Facebook Ads.
yes, once you get to know the business you understand why the prices are so high, and believe me it was much more easier to run accounts back in 2018 way more easier.
Here’s a rough sample of my time-consistent costs:
Server 8gb, 160GB Space: Around $150/year (I don’t use this, but will soon)
Server 3gb RAM, 30GB Space: $30/year (I don’t use this, but will soon as another proxy at the least)
Proxies: Set One (5 Instagram Proxies): $14/month or $168/year
Proxies: Set Two (10 Proxies): $10.80/month or $132/year
Software: Private Software (negligible cost so I won’t mention it here)
Much of this is run on a local computer, so consider the cost of that.
So my rough setup costs around $500/year, in which I only use $300/year directly related to running my operation. The rest, about $200, is currently waiting to be used.
Wow okay thanks for sharing. That’s quite a lot of bandwidth you have on your upcoming VPS. Considering you have 15 proxies total, how many accounts are you running? Above or below 45? And if you don’t mind me asking, what kind of proxies are they?
Yes, one client pays for about 40+ other clients expenses.
One client costs about $4 per month.
That includes VPS, proxies, scrapers, MP, panels and like exchange.
Does not include my time or fees for charging clients (too much variable to calculate the two).
The setup & operation I run should handle that transition. Keep in mind, everyone does something different with their setup. Some do M/S, Some do F/U/L, Some do Story Views, etc. That said, I run somewhere around that number of accounts.
The kind of proxies & cost were shared in my original response, “Instagram” limited proxies & regular (datacenter) ones. Again, keep the setup & use case in mind.
At minimum, one client pays for my original listed setup in a week at my current rates for what I offer them. This number gradually increases over time with them. On top, a few other clients pop in here and there on a semi-regular basis & pay relatively similar rates.
Do you mind giving a bit more info as to what Instagram limited proxies are? And do you encounter any issues with operating your accounts on data center proxies?