Growing & monetising a niche page - my journey

Hey guys, hope you dont mind these kinds of posts but i find them very motivating and discover a lot of tips/tricks in the comments of these kind also!

I made a photography repost page recently in hopes that it will drive more traffic to my main insta page. I was reposting peoples portraits/pictures and crediting them but i went away for a while without internet and kind of lost traction with it completely.

Today ive rebranded it slightly, changed the name and made it into a ‘for the culture’ page so itll have a moodboard feel to it rather than just be another generic feature page.

Ill give you the handle for full transparency and I’d love for you guys to give me pointers down the way as this is my first time growing a page other than my main on IG!

Stats:
ALL MANUAL

Creation date: 15/04/20 - made it a few months before but lets call that a warm up stage!
Posts: 13
Followers: 115
Following: 391

Working on:

  • F/UF method to get the first few thousand followers
  • Reposting daily (not sure on amount yet)
  • Engaging with current followers

Questions:

  • I have a pretty good way of reposting currently (saving to a collection then just downloading 1 image per time i want to upload) - this helps as i can easily find the model/photographer than needs to be tagged but would love any input to make my workflow easier
  • Hashtags - I used flick to find relevant hashtags but due to my account being so small there wasnt many good ones to choose from, shall i just use general niche specific for now?
  • How often shall I post?

I made a similar one for tiktok but became clear that that platform isnt my favourite, although i shall still update it, but this will be my main focus. I would love to hear all feedback & advice!

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Nice one man! Looking forward to it.

How many are you F/UF each day? And is it just a repost account from your main or from across the board?

It will be interesting to see if the account has to start from scratch due to inactivity, or if it comes back to life pretty quickly.

EDIT: Another thought. Are you doing the F/UF on the same phone/browser as your main? I don’t know if that matters maybe someone else will - I just thought it was a variable worth considering.

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Thanks! So I’m still kind of working it out but it’s going to be a ‘moodboard’ so any imagery that fits under the ‘cool fashion’ niche. I’m sick of these terrible portrait repost pages so thought I’d do something different

I’m doing very low manual numbers now, around 15 f/uf an hour and posting 3~ times a day (can anyone give me tips on best amount?)

I recently found an old iPhone so am using that solely for this account on my WiFi (same ip as other accounts) but will get a burner sim soon

Day 2 update!

Things have been going good, each post getting around 20/30% ER but that’s easy with such low followers, but it feels like it’s not being restricted

Stats:
ALL MANUAL

Creation date: 15/04/20 - made it a few months before but lets call that a warm up stage!
Posts: 10 - posted 4 + archived 7
Followers: 137 + 22
Following: 350 - trying to keep this as low as poss for now

Working on:

  • still f/if at around 15 per hour
  • getting people engaged on stories using slides etc

Questions/

  • still looking for advice on how to find hashtags, as the ones on flick are too high competition or low quality.
  • thinking about joining an engagement pod for a few weeks/months to get the acc off the ground, good idea yes or no?
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Check out these two threads for manual hashtag research:

With your follows, I wondered if you’d be happy to share the process? I feel mine is too long and time consuming:

  1. Go to source account’s latest post, head to the list of likers
  2. Click on target follower
  3. Quickly check target follower account quality
  4. Like 1-3 recent posts
  5. Follow

Should I just be hitting the big blue follow button on the original source account’s post? And should I be less picky with the target follower account quality? And is it 15 follows, and 15 unfollows?

Ive read about the hashtag strategy and the tiers and using ones you can rank top 9 in, but my problem is there isn’t enough hashtags for me to rank in, and the ones i do are worthless at this level anyway.

So my question: for a page with 150 followers how should i go about hashtags? currently im using the same ones that i sourced via flick for my main, but the problem is my main has 5k followers + 15% ER

Regarding your method that’s the same as me, its time consuming but worth it.

Theres are also my manual filters:
English speaking
has bio/picture
has less than 2k following
Has to be something in the arts/creative niche

If anyone else could comment on my questions above that’d be great :slight_smile:

Thanks man. Regarding hashtags, why not just skip them entirely for now? It gives you a good opportunity to A/B test

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Yeah i was thinking of doing that if no better option came up. Maybe ill try it on todays post, thanks bud! :slight_smile:

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UPDATE!

The page is going good, but due to my obsessive personality i need more. I have an old account for a fashion label that i used to own in 2016. Currently has 1.7k followers after bleeding loads over the past 4 years.

I rebranded it and made it into a contemporary architecture page, the aesthetic works well with the ‘cool fashion’ vibe of my other page although not in the same niche.

Currently unfollowing all 400 people i follow and restarting. Any tips?

I guess rebranding is gonna ruin my ER for a while but im ok with that. will update it tomorrow

why architecture? because that, and photography are my two passions :slight_smile:

DAY 3:

So as stated above, i rebranded an old account with 1.4k (thought it was 1.7) followers into a contemporary architecture page.

Stats:
ALL MANUAL
Current Network Size: 1611

Account #1 - FASHION
Creation date: 15/04/20 - made it a few months before but lets call that a warm up stage!
Posts: 14 + 4
Followers: 180 + 43
Following: 300 - trying to keep this as low as poss for now

Account #2 - ARCHITECTURE
Creation: 17/04/2020 its a 4 year old account so that helps, but lets use todays date as that’s when i rebranded
Posts: 3
Followers: 1431 - im guessing ill lose quite a few
Following: 184 - going to stick around 300 once ive got rid of old following

Due to the rebranding and not having posted in 4 years this page’s ER is so bad, im getting a couple of likes a post. Im hoping this will pick up with frequent posting (around 5 a day for a week or two)

If anyones got any answers to rewarming up an old acc that’d be great!

Still not sure how to find relevant hashtags using flick without them being far too active/engaged for my current accounts so any help there would be fab.

Day 4:
Same old really, i got rid of all my following on the architecture page and started doing F/UF slowly.

My ER on that page is awful, 1.3k followers getting 20 likes a post, hoping this will sort itself out - especially after 1 post randomly got 300 likes. used the same hashtag set on another and that flopped

Stats:
ALL MANUAL
Current Network Size: 1646

Account #1 - FASHION
Creation date: 15/04/20 - made it a few months before but lets call that a warm up stage!
Posts: 19 + 5
Followers: 204 - 24
Following: 300 - trying to keep this as low as poss for now

Account #2 - ARCHITECTURE
Creation: 17/04/2020 its a 4 year old account so that helps, but lets use todays date as that’s when i rebranded
Posts: 10 + 7
Followers: 1442 - surprised at how little ive lost (maybe all inactive)
Following: 170 - going to stick around 300 once ive got rid of old following

Aim of today is to buy a couple of shoutouts for my culture page, but having a hard time finding any pages that reply to my DM.

QUESTION:
If anyone has any insights into any pages that are good for featuring small pages in the fashion culture niche id appreciate letting me know!

Day 5:

Good day yesterday, spent some time trying to find shoutouts and ended up buying just 1. The owner then asked if i had any unpublished work that he could post so i sent him over about 20 images i took and he’s going to post them all over this week. SUCCESS!

Stats:
ALL MANUAL
Current Network Size: 1701

Account #1 - FASHION
Creation date: 15/04/20 - made it a few months before but lets call that a warm up stage!
Posts: 24 + 5
Followers: 245 - 41
Following: 455 - Keeping it at 500 so don’t unfollow too fast.

Account #2 - ARCHITECTURE
Creation: 17/04/2020 its a 4 year old account so that helps, but lets use todays date as that’s when i rebranded
Posts: 15 +
Followers: 1456 - surprised at how little ive lost (maybe all inactive)
Following: 226 - going to stick around 300 once ive got rid of old following

Any questions hit me up!

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How is the ER of the architecture page? You published more than 10 posts since you rebranded the account. Do you get comments from your followers?

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The ER for that is strange. Usually getting 10-20 likes a post which i guessed would happen, but 3 posts have got over 300 likes from hashtags!

AND to add to that, i thought when i rebranded that id lose a lot but its quite the opposite. Just need to work on building a community on it. But im working a lot harder on my 1st page for now as the other will organically grow from that

EDIT:
Just signed up for a day of mass story viewing using a technique posted here. Not going to do it for long as i know it ruins your account in the long run but wanted to test it out to see results

UPDATE

I created a weekly Live video session every sundays where myself and other creatives go on and talk about inspirations/projects/how they work etc. Went down super well and had 30 viewers, which for a 4 day old page is good! I know hundreds of creatives based in London and LA too so hopefully I can make this into a little hub for information.

Regarding my accounts:
Architecture - I made this page private to see what the growth was like as 9-10 likes a photo wasn’t cutting it! Going to keep posting 3 times a day whilst private and work on the fashion page.

Fashion: The mass story viewer has been running for 20 hours and Ive gained a lot of followers. I put something along the lines of ‘I can see into the future, follow our page and you’ll be inspired for years to come’ and surprisingly it worked really well & was even thanked multiple times for ‘reaching out’

I also bought 2 more shoutouts from a different page, going to stop buying and reassess if they’re worth it and if they are, buy a couple more.

Stats:
ALL MANUAL
Current Network Size: 1701

Account #1 - FASHION
Creation date: 15/04/20 - made it a few months before but lets call that a warm up stage!
Posts: 29 + 5
Followers: 317 +72
Following: 500 - Keeping it at 500 so don’t unfollow too fast.
Profile views this week: 1852

Account #2 - ARCHITECTURE
Creation: 17/04/2020 its a 4 year old account so that helps, but lets use todays date as that’s when i rebranded
Posts: 19 + 4
Followers: 1458 + 2
Following: 229 - going to stick around 300 once ive got rid of old following

4 Likes

Update

Just hit 500 followers on the fashion feature page after 7 days, pretty good if i say so myself!

Currently posting 3x - 5x a day and doing a bit of F/UF every hour.

Id like the growth to be faster but im hoping it picks up after a certain point

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Good luck! You’re doing well! :slight_smile: I’m on my own journey to 4mill network, have 2 fashion accounts as well, all automated

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You can use: https://taggatory.com/ , https://taggatory.com/ ,https://ritetag.com/, https://seekmetrics.com/, https://displaypurposes.com/, https://hashtagify.me, https://www.all-hashtag.com/index.php and this: https://www.hashtagsforlikes.co/

Start with 1 per day and increase after you hit 500 followers. No need to post frequently if you don’t have followers to engage with your posts.

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Going strong @SBG, keep it up :muscle: :muscle:

Great numbers, hope you’ll get there @SBG :star_struck: :star_struck: