To begin this thread, I didn't invent this method, nor do I think I'm the first one to share it on here. However, I have done it myself, and below is a case study I did over a short period of time
Chapter One - Finding Your Niche
Step one doesn’t actually include what you may think it does, creating an Instagram. The first thing you want to do is choosing a niche. For this project, we’re choosing a niche that has lots of large Instagram accounts already. For my store I chose girl’s iPhone Cases. I know what you’re thinking; “but phone cases are played out”. Although this may be true, and it would be easier in other niches, anything is profitable if sold to the right audience. Just look at all the large Instagram’s my products will appeal to
Now that you’ve found a niche containing large accounts. Let’s move on to actually finding some products in that niche, this is after all, a money making guide. Head over to AliExpress and start picking products that will appeal to your niche audience. If you don’t know how the basic drop shipping process works, please look it up on YouTube before proceeding
You are going to build a complete Instagram account around these products, so choose wisely and only choose those with nice looking pictures. The ultimate Instagram comes with finding a specific store on there that sells lots of products that will appeal to your audience. Of course, since this is no fake guide, I will provide an example of an old store of mine. I will show and tell you EVERYTHING about it
You can see, these are no ordinary white background AliExpress pictures. Nah, these are on another level! Definitely Instagram worthy. These are only some of the products I used of course, the store had about 70 products when I decided to sell it (I’ll get to this part in the last chapter)
Chapter Two - Building the Foundation
Okay, so here comes the least fun part to be honest. It has to be done though, and it can be done in a day with some effort.
First off, decide what you’re going to name your business, preferably something you think will appeal to your niche audience. I chose the name “Pink Room”
Now that you have your name, products, and niche. Go on to create your webstore. I usually do this with Shopify since I always have, but you could use Wordpress etc. too. Just make sure you can import products from AliExpress, because that’s what we’re going to do
You now have everything done, so all that’s left to create is the actual Instagram account. I recommend putting 2-4 lines describing what you sell and so on in your bio. You should also have a logo ready, but this perhaps belongs to the shop creation process. Here’s an example of my account
Chapter Three - Gaining Followers
You are now all set to begin making money. You have a fresh account, with a good bio, but no photos or followers… How do we fix that you may ask? Well… simply rip a couple of the high quality pictures your products has on AliExpress. Post a couple to start off the account (3-6). Remember to use niche-specific hashtags!
It’s time to begin the growth process, and the easiest way to kickstart an Instagram account is simply following and unfollowing people. I of course have an improved way of doing this
First, find a smaller account (2-10k) in your niche. Go on a post of theirs that has a couple hundred likes, and begin following the people that liked it. This way you gain engaged followers instead of inactive ones. This will help your growth substantially. Likes is what the Instagram algorithm adores the most. If your posts get lots of likes, you are much more likely to hit the explore page and dominate hashtags. This will ultimately make your posts reach a much wider audience
Continuously unfollow people as you go as well. Unfollowing thousands of people at once is tiring. Just do it little by little!
I recommend following/unfollowing 30-50 people per hour to prevent getting temporarily banned. *OUTDATED, PLEASE DISREGARD
Once you have reached 300-500 followers, it’s time to move on to the next chapter. This shouldn’t take you more than 2 weeks though, don’t worry
Chapter Four - Affiliates
You may wonder why I said you had to have 3-500 followers to begin getting the big money. This is due to a little something called social proof. Social proof essentially equivalates to having lots of people liking what you do. An easy example of this is when you go out to eat. If you walk by a restaurant with no guests, you don’t want to go in there. Instead, if you walk by a restaurant that’s almost filled with people, you are intrigued to eat there as well. Others like it, so perhaps I will too?
The same goes for building a webstore and a presence on social media
Why you need the social proof for this project though, is because you are going to approach larger pages than yours. Nobody will trust you if you come asking for a partnership with no followers
So, now that you know why, let’s continue on with the practical part. You first off need to install some kind of affiliate app/plugin to your store. If you chose Shopify, I have two free apps to recommend to you. Either, GoAffPro or Affiliate Marketing. Both of them has a little more customization options when using the paid version, but I’ve honestly never needed or wanted to upgrade
Once you have your affiliate marketing app setup and working, the grind begins. This is honestly the toughest and most boring part. I recommend offering a 20% commission to all affiliates, no matter their following
To gain these affiliates is rather easy in most niches, especially those aimed at girls. Simply proceed to DM larger (but not too large) pages in your niche and explain your partnership. You should easily be able to gain 1-4 affiliates per day
KEEP ON GRINDING!
Chapter Five - Selling & Closing Notes
I think this is a very easy way of making money, and consistent money as well. The sad news is, with this type of business (dropshipping) as soon as you start seeing the green, people will copy your idea. Easy for them to do that as well of course, since they’re not actually your products after all.
With that said, your store will soon start declining in profit whether you like it or not. This is the time you will want to start looking for the biggest sale of this entire project. Actually selling your store
This is the part where Shopify beats the other platforms. It’s very easy to sell your store. Simply write a 300 word description and post it on the so-called Exchange Marketplace. You should definitely be able to get right around what you got your store valuated to. I have always been able to at least.
*I SOLD THIS STORE FOR 650$
For some motivation, this were my first two weeks of running this store and account. Keep in mind this is a very low conversion rate. Stores usually get around 1,5%. Having a 1,5% CR would’ve brought total sales to 1040$ instead
