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That sponsored post that cost me $800 with zero return
I paid an influencer $800 last spring for a sponsored Instagram post about my small batch hot sauce. She had 120k followers and her engagement looked solid, so I thought it was a steal. But the post got maybe 30 likes and I sold exactly 2 bottles from it. I checked later and found out most of her followers were bought from a bot farm. Has anyone else gotten burned by fake followers?
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riley_schmidt1mo ago
Got burned the same way last year with a boutique coffee brand I was trying to help a friend promote. Paid $600 to some "foodie" with 80k followers and the post got maybe 15 likes and zero sales. Spent a whole afternoon digging through her followers and yep, thousands of dead accounts from India and the Philippines. @the_tessa is right, $800 is cheap for that lesson. I also lost two months of waiting on that post to "take off" before I realized I got played.
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