buy a profile and rebrand it. that's it.

okay that's not it. forget everything you think you know about instagram, especially anything about vanity, anything that bothers you about the pursuit of vanity or your assumptions about it. you'll also be re-assigning what you think you know about instagram follower growth systems.

buying an instagram profile is more similar to a merger and acquisition deal, in the sense that you are actually buying all the direct messages (DMs) - the customer rolls. A popular profile does business through DMs (you also are buying the "og email account" to pass security measures, so if anyone emailed you get that too). They've done business with people that want to do promotions on their profile, business with entire networks of profile buyers and sellers. Buying a profile buys you that whole customer list. The customers are even the innocuous empty private accounts with 0 followers that are the point of contact for heavy traders. Things you may not have known existing. This is your way into a steady stream of unlisted accounts that are for sale. You can repeatedly just ask them what else they have.

when you choose an account for rebranding, you are looking for something similar to what you will rebrand to with certain levels of engagement and reach, and ideally with similar demographics although it will already be heavily correlated. wealth and motivation can be rebranded to some playboy guy, women's fashion can be rebranded to baby stuff, rinse repeat.

the general profile is targeting the whole world, so none of the "lets normalize this super progressive thing" matters at all. traditional gender roles are in vogue.

congratulations you've skipped the rat race of growing a profile. all the apps and systems to grow a profile are more expensive and time consuming than just owning an already grown profile.

you break even by doing promotions. promotions are people paying to be tagged in one of your posts for a few hours. then you delete or archive the post. or you do it on the story.

now lets go back to the apps and systems that are targeted to people trying to "grow" instagram accounts. you can use them, but its only to offset the attrition. when you rebrand you lose followers when they notice they are following something they don't remember following and don't want to. your goal is to just slow down the unfollowers, the banned, the deactivated, by having new followers replace them. But not to actually "make numba go up".

Now back to gen pop. the general population likes popular shiny things. I was just at a party yesterday where an adult woman was fawning over this "famous" person who "is really famous" and "has, like, 25k followers on instagram". This is a nearly perfect currency that doesn't actually get spent. "Oh my god, someone has an advantage with women I hate this let me find something wrong with it, aha! fraud!" nope. Notice that these are real followers, real engagement, real views, less or different work. Brands, companies, anyone wanting promotion or attention actually do offer things for free or pay. Worry about the people that are doing less effective things. But if you must be bothered, selling an account is against Instagram/Facebook's terms of service, so you have that going for you. The terms of service.

I've been aware of this, from sporadic participation, for half a decade now. Brand accounts, influencer accounts, you name it, just when you think its oversaturated and nobody will give them time of day, another year goes by and it still is interesting to people and the trading networks are more refined.

With multiple profiles you can also more easily grow your other profiles. Basically giving yourself free promos, or anyone you like. They are real human followers, after all.