If you’re interested in this topic, make sure to read till the end, because you’ll learn everything you need to know about this “dark side of Instagram”

There are many companies that offer you to buy Instagram followers at a really cheap price (I found an offer of 1000 followers for 10 bucks!)

But, it’s worth it, and especially, will this help your account to grow or it will destroy your audience engagement and eventually, get banned by Instagram?

• Some people say that buying followers can help you gain the initial boost that you need to start if you have a small page

• Someone else instead hates this idea because he thinks that, after buying followers, you won’t have any possibility to grow.

I was either a little bit confused about what I should do and what should not, and I wish I had an article like this in the past!

In reality, buying Instagram followers is not that difficult: you only need to type in the Google search bar “buy Instagram followers”, scroll a little bit and you’ll find a lot of websites that provide this type of service.

I’ve done some research and I’ve found that most of these platforms have almost the same pricing (I think that they have a common set price to reduce the competition or something like that)

So you can pick whatever platform you prefer to buy your first followers, only make sure that the website doesn't look too sketchy and you should be ok

Then, you can choose the number of followers that you wanna buy.

I suggest you don't spend more than $20 to start, because if you gain, let’s say, 30'000 followers in a single day, the Instagram algorithm might get a little suspicious!

Usually, while you’re buying your followers, they’ll try to upsell you other services (i.e sell something related to what you’re buying) such as Instagram likes and saves

I don’t tell you to not buy these services, but only to be aware that, when you’re buying something, you’re more likely to spend even more money!

It’s a really powerful marketing technique, so be careful of that and always take your own decision without external influences (like “25% discount only for you” or “50% percent discount if you buy today”)

This is a really helpful suggestion and if you apply it every day, it’ll help you save so much money!

Now that you’ve chosen how many followers you want to buy, it’s time to select the payment method

This is the time when you‘ve to be careful: Never, never insert your primary credit card details

Doing a similar sketchy transaction, you could compromise your bank account where you have all your savings, so you want to absolutely avoid that!

Always try to use the Paypal payment method, but usually, these websites won’t allow paying with Paypal

I think that’s because, once Instagram start noticing and removing these fake followers, many customers could contact Paypal asking for a refund and they will probably get their money back

So if you find a company that allows you to pay with Paypal, that’s fine, but never put your credit card details into websites like these

Another way, if you want to buy Instagram followers without risking your credit card integrity, is to create a brand new bank account.

There are a lot of free option, I suggest you use N26 because it’s absolutely free and has no costs of maintaining, nothing

It’s basically a debit card: so you can deposit the amount of money you need to buy your followers and you won’t risk your primary bank account

After you sign up for N26, they will deliver to you a debit card with all the details that you need to complete your first transaction and buy the followers safely!

Well, it doesn’t work just like that!

First of all, Instagram hates when someone buys followers or anything sketchy like this that could compromise the app’s reputation

So, when the algorithm sees that you’ve got something crazy like 5 thousand followers in 3 minutes, could control your account and delete it

In that way, you’ll lose all the followers that you bought, your account, and also the money that you spent if you haven’t paid through Paypal.

But, what if I already have a good following, and sometimes I buy a couple of hundred followers?

Well, maybe your account won’t get shut-down, and all your posts deleted, but this will still affect negatively your page and your growth

To understand why I first need to explain to you how the Instagram Algorithm works

When you post something, your photo/video won’t get shown to all your followers immediately, but only to a bunch of them.

If they like and engage(like, save, share or comment) with your content, it will show your post to your other followers and, if they like and engage with your content again, it will eventually show your photo on the explore page.

Here, if your content is engaging, you’ll receive the most amount of impressions and eventually new followers.

Now your post can go “viral”

At the end of the day, your goal is to show your content in front of the most people possible and you can do it only if your initial random followers liked your post!

But, what happens if you have bought Instagram followers?

Well, they’ll end up being “inactive followers”, that never interact with your content and, if the algorithm shows to these fake people your post, they won’t obviously like it because they’re not real!

So, Instagram could think that your content isn’t really good and it won’t ever suggest it to your other followers or put it into the explore page

Your posts will gain fewer and fewer likes until your page will be completely dead and you’ll have to restart a new one from scratch!

This is why I suggest you never buy Instagram followers, even if the idea sounds attracting

It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, because at the end of the day it will only hurt your page and Instagram could look at your page as a possible scam, and, at your first error, ban you

So, if you were thinking about buying Instagram followers, please let’s think about it really carefully

Bonus Reason Why You Shouldn’t Buy Instagram Followers

Now I want to add a bonus reason why you shouldn’t buy this sort of service and this is because it could also distort your analytics performance.

I know, this is not as bad as getting your account banned by Instagram, but it’s still very important

Think about it: if you have a medium size page, let’s say, 30K followers, and you buy 1000 followers, chances that you’ll be shut-down or your engagement will drop to 0 are rarer.

So, you could think, “why don’t I just buy a couple of thousands of followers each month, if my engagement can be almost the same?”

Well, because buying fake Instagram followers will compromise your analytics metrics.

And if you think that this thing is kind of secondary, you’re completely wrong!

Always be conscious that by buying so many followers, you won’t be able to grow organically at all

This could be also helpful on the other side: if you are a customer and you see a brand that has 100K followers, don’t be impressed by the numbers: remember that he could have bought all these followers for something like $250-$500.

So, if you want to check if an online business has fake followers, control the likes and comments under their posts: usually, if they have a poor engagement compared with the number of followers they have, they've probably bought their followers

Yes, they could have also bought likes and comments, so the next step is to check the people who commented or liked the posts.

Usually, the followers that you buy have no profile picture or maybe they have some random profile picture and posts with almost 0 likes

They also generally follow a ton of people and they have very few followers

It won’t be difficult to find out if they are real users or not

So, if you want to buy something from an Instagram page or business, always double-check if their followers are real or fake: this could tell you a lot about the trustability of this page

The second way people make money buying Instagram followers is a lot more scammy

Please don't do this kind of thing!

Basically they DM people offering their services to grow their Instagram account organically really fast

They act as a sort of social media management agency, but without competencies!

They guarantee you to become an influencer or have a big page that attracts brand deals and promotions offers

They say you that once you’ll grow your page, you’ll be able to generate a full-time income off of it

And that’s true, but it requires time and effort!

Instead, they offer their service for example for $200 a month and then they simply go over these websites and they buy 5’000 fake followers for as little as $49.

They will send you maybe a couple of hundreds of fake followers every day, so you could think that you’re growing organically, and maybe they could also buy some Instagram likes and comments, as long as they are maintaining a good profit margin

In that way, people who bought this service think that their account is going well, but as I explained before, this will end up destroying the page!

Your engagement will drop soon, you won’t receive any likes and you’ll end up throwing away your page

So please don’t do this kind of scam and report everyone is doing it.

This isn’t theoretically a legal fraud but it’s definitely an unethical practice, so stay away from these scammers and always check out twice if they have real or fake followers and engagement

A page with a lot of fake followers and poor engagement is the first red flag that you should stay away from

If you don’t know about this scam, it could sound like a good deal and give them a couple of hundred bucks to work with their “social media marketing agency”

I’m not saying that all the SMMA are scams, but you should always check on Google if they have a website, if they have reviews and if they offer some form of guarantee.

If you don't know exactly how to grow your Instagram page, or you don't have time, the best Social Media Management App that if I know is this one

I tried so many SMMA in my life, and I find that this one: is the most efficient and professional out there

I recommended this agency to a friend that is a business owner, and he has seen an incredible growth of his page and his business, equal, more sales and more money.

So, if you're interested in growing your Instagram account without even think about it, I can only recommend them!

Generally speaking, big and trustable marketing agencies have a lot of reviews and articles online, plus many case studies and satisfied clients!

So, never trust these random scammers that DM you, because, paying them, you will not only lose your money, but also the page you’ve built!

All your chances of growing on Instagram after buying these type of services will be equal to 0

Another Way They Could Scam You

Also, when someone DM you offering these types of services, he could even run away with your password and take control of your account!

This is a little off-topic, but it’s something that could happen to anyone, so I wanted to talk about it

Be very suspicious when it comes to these types of offers because the chances that you’ll get scammed in many ways are high.

Always do your research and don’t fall in love with their words and their promises, acting impulsively!

They could be really persuasive, talking to your emotions, but always remember to think about first and do your investigation: if you don’t trust them 100%, never give them money or passwords!