Exposed: 30 Ways Influencers Cheated Their Way to Millions of Dollars

Here’s how influencers and scammers cheat buyers out of millions of dollars through a thriving black market where followers, engagement, podcast, and app downloads are faked for pennies.

Do you want to be internet famous?

It can be bought for NOTHING.

The website is called “justanotherpanel.com”.

Many social media agencies selling “social media growth services” are just reselling fake bot actions from this website.

Everyone thinks they can tell when an influencer is using fake services.

As you will find out in this full exposé, faking it is cheap, easy to buy, and rampant. This includes influencers cheating brands, creators cheating investors, and entrepreneurs faking podcast or app downloads.

Strap yourself in:

Everything you think you know about social media is about to change.

Part 1/30: The fake follower epidemic on Instagram

(And yes, influencers are using this service – if not them, their management uses it to keep consistent numbers to get the biggest brand deals.)

Though you’ve never heard of it, justanotherpanel.com (I’ll call it JAP for the rest of this article) is a very popular site… it’s not some secret hidden away.

JAP has had over 375 million orders since its inception:

The above numbers are taken from the reputable web traffic website SEMRush:

Just Another Panel has averaged 2,956,000 website visitors in the past three months.

And this isn’t people popping on and leaving. The average visit duration is nearly 20 minutes!

There are many other sites doing similar, but JAP is the biggest.

(By the way, JAP is a professional site, and though it sells many “fake” services, they do usually deliver what you pay for.)

I’ll use Instagram as the first example, but Influencers have manipulated their profiles across *every* platform in JAP:

You can buy fake followers & engagement for Tiktok, YouTube, Twitch, etc. – Explore the site, and you’ll be shocked. (This is not some secret “dark web” site – anyone can signup and use it!)

Here’s a menu of just some of the fake services that can be bought:

The world runs on a “whoever has the most followers gets the most respect, brand deals, romantic interest, and hundreds of other benefits.

So just how easy is it to buy fake followers?

There are hundreds of different fake follower services on Just Another Panel.

No need to worry about Instagram finding the bot accounts.

Most offer “non-drop” services where if Instagram finds and deletes the fake followers, the vendor will replace them with new followers to make up the number.

You’re about to see a lot of screenshots.

As you see them, bear in mind this isn’t “some website that used to sell them.”

Everything in this article is live and can be bought *RIGHT NOW* on justanotherpanel.com. ????????‍♂️????????‍♂️????????‍♂️

So once you sign in to Just Another Panel, you select what you want to buy, and the dropdown menu looks like this:

So if you were to go on this site and click that button right now, 500,000 Instagram followers could be bought and sent to the Instagram username you write in that box for $102.

Doesn’t take much to make an impression, hey? ????????‍♂️

If you want to look even more natural, you can “drip-feed” the followers, so they arrive in your account over a set amount of time, which costs slightly more.

If followers arrive in a spike, you expose yourself… there are services like Socialblade that track follower growth across all public social media accounts.

What does this mean?

Internet detectives have exposed many people suddenly growing followers for no reason by studying these charts, so drip-feeding new followers & post engagement is how the professional fakes do it.

So now you have over 500,000 followers on your Instagram, and you only spent just over $100. ????

But now you’re thinking, “But everyone will know there are fake followers as of low engagement!”

Oh, sweet child, don’t be so naive…

JAP (Just Another Panel) is one step ahead. ????

Let’s talk about their engagement packages…

Part 2/30: Fake Instagram engagement: Everything you need to know

Like Followers, engagement is easy to buy on JAP.

Let’s say you want 250,000 likes per post.

That will be $12.50, please. ????????????????

Remember how I told you that you could make likes look authentic?

By clicking that “drip feed” box, you can drip the likes in spurts, making them look like real likes.

The reason you’d pay more for this is to trick people who look up your real-time engagement… if all the likes arrive in a massive spike, it’s fairly obvious you’ve bought likes.

There are numerous scandals where major influencer agencies got exposed for (what looked like they were) buying likes for accounts working with massive corporations because someone monitored the likes and saw they spiked on every post within minutes of posting. 

The agency bought their clients’ likes to all arrive at once… if they had drip-fed the likes in, it’s likely no one would have known.

Why were they buying likes for their client rather than doing the real work? 

The answer, of course, is money.

If they can promise more engagement than an agency doing things naturally, they win more contracts.

This is bad for clients and for the industry as a whole if the people faking it gets contracts ahead of skilled marketers delivering actual results.

Remember, every screenshot I’m posting is live on the site right now. Use the code on any screenshot (e.g., 7796), and you can see how dangerously easy it is to fake results.

(To be clear: My point with these services is DON’T DO IT! I’m showing how fake and corrupt this industry can be so you don’t get fooled and scammed. I’ll get more into why doing fake services is a bad idea later, and what you *should* do if you wanna win at the end of this article.)

So here’s a typical fake bot service that can be bought on JAP:

The more you spend, the better quality fake services you can buy.

For just $12, anyone can get this basic package that looks natural to Instagram and to people visiting a page, with saves, video views, etc.

Notice in the below screenshot:

“Speed: Gradually delivered in 1-3 days, location USA/UK.”

Many people think “you can always tell” when influencers run fake stuff, but often when blended with a real audience, it’s not actually so easy.

So now you’re reading this like, “But wouldn’t it be annoying to have to buy fake likes every time I post?”

JAP is one step ahead; subscriptions can be bought to get likes automatically every time you post, and even for old posts too:

Here’s what the above buys you:

250,000 – 300,000 likes on the last 30 posts and the next 30 posts until the end of January.

Delayed to deliver in spurts to look natural. 🙂

So every time you post, likes will arrive automatically.

Are you starting to see how influencers use this to fool their followers and, more importantly, brands who spend billions and get ripped off?

But now you’re thinking, “Okay, well, sure, likes can be bought, but what about comments?”

You can probably guess JAP has that covered for that already.

Part 3/30: Think fake Instagram comments are hard to buy? Think again

As ever, starting with the cheapest package, you can get 2,000 random comments for $1.44.

(Sending emojis, basic words like “cool” and “nice post,” etc..)

As mentioned in the previous example, drip feed means they’ll arrive slowly over time to look real, though they cost slightly more.

Stop and think how easy this is to fool the world:

Buy comments from specific countries.

You can even buy comments from females only.

Two thousand comments from female accounts (with female profile pic, etc..) for $7.20.

So then you say, “but I don’t want to have to add fake comments every time I post.”

You already know JAP has the fraud squad covered.

You can buy a package that sends auto comments and impressions and saves on every post. You just select how many posts per month (and old posts if you want) and what date you want the service to end.

So then you say, “Ok, but I want even better comments?

How about… you write them yourself?

As mentioned, it costs a little more, but you can tell the bot exactly what to write!

Check this out:

Let’s say you’re an influencer who has released a song. You could get comments to arrive like this:

Fifty custom comments for only $18.

SO… 

Now we have a page filled with followers, likes, and comments.

Followers are drip-feeding in to look organic. ✅

Likes, comments, impressions, and saves arrive on every post. ✅

Now tell me, how could anyone looking at that account know any of this is fake? ????

You might say, “If they go on Instagram live, and no one watches, you could tell.”

Well…

Part 4/30: How influencers buy fake live stream viewers and engagement

How powerful would it be to share a screenshot or video of yourself live with thousands of viewers?

I’d imagine that’s exactly the sort of thing that can help secure brand deals.

Just select how long you want your Instagram Live to be, and JAP will deliver viewers to you.

So let’s say you wanted 5,000 people to watch you for 30 minutes.

$21, please.

What’s that I hear you say? “What about engagement?” ❤️????

Do you want likes on your live stream as it’s happening?

How does $1 for 5,000 likes sound? ????????

Then you say, “What about comments?”

How about 1000 comments on your live as it’s happening?

That’ll be $6, please. ????

SO LET’S RECAP

For just a few hundred dollars per month, influencers (and their managers) can (and do) buy fake followers, likes, comments, live and story views by the boatload to guarantee brands pay them, and as you’ve seen, this can be totally undetectable.

Remember: This isn’t some secret site or something that “used to” work.

A fraudster could go on justanotherpanel.com today and inflate their or their clients’ accounts out of thin air, totally undetectable, and start collecting cheques from brands/companies without doing anything to deliver real value.

All of the above fakeries are part of the reason brands now have a big focus on “micro-influencers” who don’t buy fake likes on sites like this.

– Even though they don’t have the big numbers, their numbers are REAL and drive REAL people to check out/buy stuff from brands.

So that’s how influencers cheat brands (and business influencers use it to close deals, and agencies cheat their clients and various other people who use the term “influencer”.

But I ain’t done yet… that’s only the first 4 of the 30 exposés I have for you today!

I’m coming for scammers, podcasters, businesses who try to take out their competitors, and much more!

Shall we continue?

Part 5/30: The shocking truth about how easy it is to fake a Discord channel

One big source of income for influencers is promoting different products.

In this section, you will learn how easy it is to build FOMO (Fear of missing out) amongst a community- influencers, and product creators have made hundreds of millions of dollars using the methods I’m about to show you.

So, a quick recap on why followers & community are so important here.

Many products are largely what’s known as “commodity products.” In a commodity product, the products are the same for everyone.

The differentiator is branding and community building.

So, being that many (money-driven, not function-driven) products are basically the same product, how do most consumers decide which one to buy?

Using “social proof” is a quick way to decide whether a project is worth backing.

How big the communities of that product are, and how much “buzz” (sites or people talking about it) and “audience” (followers) there is.

If you’re new to product launches, the basics of a good launch are:

• Lots of buzz on social media (people talking about a particular product launch)
• Lots of Discord members
• Lots of members online in the Discord channel
• Lots of chatter in the Discord channel
• A Telegram channel with lots of members and engagement
• Lots of Twitter followers and engagement
• The product being on the “trending” page of a site

And you can probably guess that you can buy all of the above on JAP… ????????‍♂️????????‍♂️

Ok, let’s start with 5,000 Discord members with custom usernames that will stay offline but still boost your group numbers.

Does 5,000 permanent group members for $26 sound like a good deal? ????????

Now if fraudsters wanted them to be “online” for around three months (which would look better and fool more people), that would be just $137.50.

The fake discord members fraudsters can buy would look like this, which would fool almost anyone who glances at them.

Part 6/30: How companies & bad actors create “Troll farms”

When you think about how political parties have used services like this, this is…scary.

JAP will get virtual assistants and bots to join a scammers’ discord, ask you questions about the project, and talk to other people in the project (i.e., they’ll talk to the real humans in your discord and the real humans in your discord will think they are talking to humans but will be talking to virtual assistants or bots. ????)

Again, you might think, “I would know if I was talking to a shill or bot”.

We are way past that point.

These things are everywhere – Ask anyone deep in the space, and they will tell you how rampant this is.

And if you’re thinking, “this is clever marketing,” you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Remember, I’m generally giving the basic use cases. Everything on this list can be used to cause serious harm (and that’s before I talk about how bots have caused riots, murders, and political upheavals around the world.)

Bots are changing the world, and not always for the better…

Do you think troll farms built with services like this should be reaching 140 million Americans a month before an election?

Here’s how to build a “troll farm” to talk about/pump a digital asset.

Part 7/30: Faking Telegram growth for profits & political gain

So let’s talk about how anyone can build a troll farm using Telegram.

Before we do, quick question:

Do you think it’s good for troll farms to be sending people from Telegram to comment on Twitter posts which will then be picked up on by journalists and reported on as legitimate “public pressure”? Cnet reported the below a few months ago:

So here’s how scammers and bad actors make the above happen…

Similar to buying fake Instagram followers, $66 would get you 50,000 fake but USA-origin Telegram group members and 8,000 followers delivered every day to look natural and “viral.” ????????????????????????????????????????????????????‍♂️

And any accounts that get deleted by Telegram will be replaced by the vendor too:

Troll farm built.

But how to make it look active?

Part 8/30: How bad actors fake engagement on Telegram (comments/reactions)

It costs around $0.48c for 1000 reactions on a Telegram post.

You can even choose which emoji to send, poking people in the direction you want them to go in. ????

And yes, views are included with the reactions, so there is literally *no way* for anyone to know this is fake.

This is how some NFT projects (and bad political actors) fool people.

And once again, you can set JAP to send the engagement to *all* future posts.

$2.50 will send you views+1000 thumbs up emojis to your next 50 posts.

Set it once, and have engagement for a long, long time, each time convincing some poor investor that what you have is legitimate. ????

Here’s how cheap those Telegram reactions are to buy. ????

Getting back to how toxic this space can be, you can even pay to send auto thumbs-downs to posts. ????????

And the scary part is how cheap this is to run.

10,000 views on your next 50 posts will cost you just $0.35!

Part 9/30: How bad actors fake engagement on Telegram (comments/reactions)

$2.50 can get you 1000 random comments on any Telegram post.

You can have up to 200,000 comments per post if you need.

(Hopefully, your brain isn’t glazing over and getting bored as I go through these, but here’s a reminder of how powerful Telegram is.)

As you read number and number, remember there are real people who will see those 1,000+ fake comments and will invest their hard-earned money into a scam. This is not a harmless situation I’m talking about.

The bots I’m revealing to you are the most basic, off-the-shelf services.

– There are far scarier, more sophisticated bots that are designed to do serious damage… again, I’d rather not talk about them, but you *need* to know they exist.

I know this article has taken a dark turn, but I wanted to make it clear I take no pleasure in revealing this stuff – If it saves a few people from losing money or hiring fake influencers, I’ll have done my job.

On that note, if you can share this article with anyone you think needs to see this, and on your social networks, you’ll have done a good turn for the day, and you’ll likely get hella engagement as your friends become as shocked as you are at how all this stuff is.

Hit the button below to share it before you take a deep breath, and we continue with Twitter bots, fake podcast downloads, and much more!

Part 10/30: The fake Twitter follower epidemic

Twitter is a popular social network known for its use in political deception.

Twitter is the first place potential buyers will go to see if you’re legit.

You already know uncle JAP is here to support scammers and fake influencers.

Basic Twitter followers = 100,000 for $68.75.

As ever, better (but still fake) followers cost a little more.

10,000 USA followers for $84.00.

Part 11/30: How bad actors grow fake engagement (likes/retweets) on Twitter

So now that a scammer has lots of Twitter followers, all they need is some likes and retweets.

(The price is around $0.50 for 1000 likes and $0.75 for 1000 retweets.)

Part 12/30: How bot farms create dangerous fake Twitter replies

Fancy pasting your own tweet replies from USA Twitter accounts in order to convince people that real people are talking about your product? (or stirring up a controversial discussion? ????)

JAP makes it all possible.

So now a scammer has the numbers and engagement on Telegram, Discord, and Twitter, which are the backbone of a project.

With a bit of luck, this would be enough for you to take the fake project to market.

Likely you would need other “real” stuff as well, but that’s the thing with these scams…you can never be sure how much of *anything* is real.

So once live, you need trusted brands to feature you, adding legitimacy to your project:

Part 13/30: How scammers get their projects featured on industry websites

Once your project is live, you’ll want to get it to the top of the places your audience hangs out.

The more hype there is on a project, the higher it will appear on the websites visited by your target audience and may even be posted on their social channels.

This next screenshot from a popular industry website is pretty insane if you know how powerful these sites are for influencing tens, if not hundreds, of millions in investment on the projects featured on these sites on a daily basis.

Understand: investing in projects is not a long-term game; most investing is in and out of projects very fast, so being featured in the right place at the right time can make you millions.

So, the services offered by these industry websites?

I… don’t think I need to add anything.

Soooo… pretty crazy how much can be bought on JAP, and again this is totally undetectable to the poor consumer who thinks they’ll be sending little Timmy to college with the winnings from this project.

Not every project uses JAP, of course, but it does become an arms war.

If your competitors are on there and you aren’t, and your investors/partners (who know about JAP) are pushing you to use it.

But Just Another Panel is only one corner of the murky world of social media…

Part 14/30: How to get press on Entrepreneur, Nasdaq, Bloomberg, & Marketwatch

Want to get featured in the prestigious “Entrepreneur” publication?

You will be featured in the exotic “Indian” version of the Entrepreneur site, like the internationally renowned businessperson that you are.

You will get that link on page one of Google for your name, and this counts as a “valid” publication and article to nudge you towards being verified with a blue tick on Instagram/Tiktok/Facebook.

The other major press service is a blast for $436.25, which will rank you on multiple services :

• Nasdaq +
• Bloomberg +
• Marketwatch +
• Benzinga +
• Many Others ( Press Release )

See below what I took from JAP:

WHAT YOU GET:

Guest Post, which is SEO Optimized to Gain High Ranks in Major Search Engines

Up to 1 Link is Included in the Body of the Post.

Guaranteed Inclusion in Google News.

FULL REFUND IF PR IS NOT PUBLISHED!!

To be fair, this, at least, is a real service (potentially) reaching real people and is just a more direct assimilation of value exchange in hiring PR/journalism.

Just included it as it’s always made me laugh how much entrepreneurs pay for these “social proof” sections that rarely help them get more customers (unlike, say, running ads, which has a measurable and long-term benefit)

But press mentions are not enough, of course.

TRUE Entrepreneur bros have a podcast.

Part 15/30: How podcasters cheat to grow on iTunes

You’ve probably seen some of the top podcasts and thought, “Wow, this is TERRIBLE.”

And not in a “not my cup of tea” way.

Like, “this podcast is so bad it’s amazing Apple lets it live on their platform, let alone features them in the “top” charts.”

Well, I’m sure you know where this is going… downloads and reviews (which drive you high in the rankings) can be bought.

It’s child’s play to buy app downloads and ratings from JAP’s site, so all the “thinkfluencer” bros who don’t mind cheating have this option…and I’m sure you have no doubt that they use them.

(And yes, it’s UK and US downloads and ratings, so algorithmically will trigger the desired locations.)

I really don’t want to give the world another reason to dislike podcasters, but you know I’m out here exposing everyone, so we’re not stopping here. ????

Get unlimited app installs to get to the top of the app store

Ever see an app with an out-of-focus logo, accompanied by awful English in the description, at the top of the app store rankings as you’re browsing?

And you think, “How can this be the top app? It’s obviously pretty shady.”

One reason this happens is because of JAP.

They offer an “app installs” service.

When an app is downloaded many times, it looks like it has “buzz,” and Apple or Android will send it to the top of their daily charts.

And like everything I’m posting, it really doesn’t cost that much to get enough app installs to improve your ranking within a few days.

1000 iOs app downloads for $264?

That’s dangerously tempting to the many app store scammers out there. ????

So then you say:

“What if Apple/Android knows it’s fake?”

Well, they won’t, but for a few bucks more, you can get the “bulletproof” package.

On this package, they will search your keyword (let’s say it’s “motivation” for a motivation app.)

They will scroll until they find it, open it, and install it.

This is a signal to Apple/Android that this is what people want when they search that keyword, and, naturally, the more times this happens the higher you show up in search, so even when the campaign ends, people searching “motivation” will see your app.

When I say “undetectable”, I mean it… ????

Finally, the 5-star “premium” service includes them opening the app and giving it a 5-star rating, further pushing you to the top of the app store. 

At less than a dollar an install, it’s a parking ticket for most app companies. 

Again, it’s an arms war.

Part 16/30: How scammers order fake Google Business reviews

You get it by now, scammers pay JAP, and they get Google reviews, tricking people into thinking they’re legit. ????????‍♂️????

Prices range from $1.25 for Brazilian reviews to around $4.85 for a USA review.

And yes, you write the custom reviews yourself (as I did below.)

As the old saying goes, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet!” ????????‍♂️????????‍♂️????????‍♂️

Yellow pages reviews?

Sitejabber reviews?

I don’t want to make this article a Wikipedia on every fake service on the internet but rest assured. EVERYTHING can be faked.

Part 17/30: How scammers buy “Trustpilot” reviews (and sabotage their rivals ????)

Yeah..this article is getting juicy.

On JAP you can not only order Trustpilot reviews to make your business appear trustworthy (yes, I typed these in myself, this is what would go on the site.)

Positive reviews are one thing, but the fact that you can order FAKE REVIEWS on JAP is outrageous.

(Yes, I wrote these jokey negative reviews, but rest assured you wouldn’t be laughing when a competitor does this to your Trustpilot page.)

Like many of the items on this list, I’m not trying to stir up controversy for clicks. These exact methods are hurting real people, and the world needs to know how dangerous they are.

“Buffalo-based Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry saw its Google Maps listing changed to “permanently closed” at the exact same time that it was flooded with fake and highly unfavorable customer reviews.

“We narrowed it down as to who it was. It was another jeweler who had tampered with it,” says Barbara Oliver, the owner. “The bottom line was the jeweler put five-star reviews on his Google reviews, and he slammed me and three other local jewelers, all within a couple of days.” (source: Wired)

Part 18/30: How scammers boost their company using fake “Tripadvisor” reviews

Remember that blond dude from VICE who made a shed in his garden the world’s #1 restaurant in London?

He did it with fake reviews, which drove his restaurant to the top of the rankings, which drove real people to enquire about eating there (the same model I’ve talked about with app downloads, podcast downloads, etc.…)

If you want some of those reviews, you won’t need to get all your friends to write them on the site as he did. You can order them here… anyone fancy starting a restaurant? Lollllll ????

Again, hate to say this, but you can also send 1-star reviews and tank your competition using JAP.

Part 19/30: A quick guide to fake Search Engine Optimisation Services

I’m gonna keep this section short as if you have no interest in SEO, this section will be b-o-r-i-n-g for you.

But remember:

If you control Google, you control the world.

The (classic) main way Google knows if a site is worth putting high in search rankings is the number of other sites (backlinks) that point to it.

They can be bought from JAP.

Alongside social signals, you will need website traffic, another key Google signal.

(It’s about $2.25 for 100,000 website visits on JAP right now.)

You can buy traffic from specific countries if you’re trying to rank for a particular country too:

You can also buy traffic to your website that comes from Facebook.

Again, undetectable.

Another big SEO signal is the “human” aspect. How many people shared your page?

Well, these “social signals” can be bought too.

10,000 shares from your website to Facebook for $3.50? Lovely.

It is insane what is possible with black hat SEO.

The most lucrative search term in the world at one time was “payday loans UK.”

They go all out for terms like this as they get paid sometimes HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS for one click.

At one point, they were building 200,000 fake websites a day (!) to rank top on Google and get those clicks.

Flooding their pages with links and traffic, and social signals using services like the above on JAP.

If an employee from a Google building anywhere in the world checks one of the sites, it redirects to a legitimate-looking site (The 200,000 sites a day they built were random garbage words but worked for black hat SEO.)

One thing they worked out about Google “patching” “loopholes” of things that “no longer worked” was sometimes those “patches” affected the old code in such a way that old loopholes randomly worked again.

The reason I say this?

I know there’ll be lots of SEO professionals trashing this, saying, “it’s not as simple as these JAP services. There are 2.4 trillion other factors to take into consideration in “SEO” or “Google can tell.”

Maybe, but JAP only sells services that are in demand.

In demand = repeat purchases.

It’s being used by *someone*.

As mentioned earlier, they have a full customer service/refund process for when things aren’t delivered.

SEO *is* boring, but when you think about how many times every day we all use Google, it’s insanely powerful.

Part 20/30: How “thinkfluencers” cheat on Quora

Quora is the place people go to show off how smart they are. ????

The questions and answers actually rank pretty well on Google, so they have real value.

If you ever see an obviously bad answer get to the top of a question, it’s highly possible they have given it a “nudge” with bots from JAP.

Like everything else, it’s pretty cheap to do.

Thank you for reading this far!

This whole “every person on the planet earth only has a 3-second attention span” is such a bad take.

People still read books and watch movies.

Joe Rogan’s 26-hour podcasts are the most popular thing on God’s green earth.

Thank you for reading through the horrors of the fake world of JAP.

I wrote it to be shared so that everyone is aware of how much of an epidemic this is, and again “don’t believe everything you see on the internet.”

If you’ve read this far, you are interested in what happens “behind the scenes” on social media.

And Instagram has had ten years of bot services, deserving of its own short mini-article.

Part 21/30: Instagram exposed: Era one: 2012-2016: The “classic bot years”

So let’s talk about Instagram and how bots helped it become the preferred platform for influencers.

You can’t talk about Instagram without thinking about influencers going, “IT USED TO BE SO GOOD, NOW IT SUCKS.”

Well, yes, organic reach is down BUUUUUUT everyone, EVERYONE I know who used Instagram seriously had used bot services to grow in the glory years.

But before I start, I must sit here and cry.

In 2013, a friend of mine told me that she had started a jewelry business and that “Instagram” was going to be a key platform.

I did some research and, for her birthday, ran her account through some software that I came across. This involved liking, following, and commenting on relevant posts.

Her phone blew up with notifications and attention, and I was like, “happy birthday!” 

Then I disconnected the bot and went about my life.

I thought, “I can’t see bot followers being very valuable,” and went back to working on other businesses.

Hot damn, if I’d scaled that, I would’ve made a lot of money.

Because a few people (let’s call them the “Instagram mafia”) realized Instagram was a drug and that people wanted growth at all costs, and built/used bots to give people growth.

(Even after I realized how powerful Instagram was, I didn’t wanna run a bot company, but after telling my friend how one would work, he went and set one up and scaled it to a 30-person company behind my back while I was away in America.

I got back like:

“bro wtf you took that idea and got rich with it

..I don’t know whether to be mad or impressed.” haha.

How the classic Instagram bots worked was:

You gave it keywords, say “UK fashion,” if you were selling clothes in the U.K.

It finds all the people using that hashtag and:

– Follows them

– Likes 3 of their posts

– Adds a comment.

A % of people you do that to would then follow you back.

So you’re like, “Wow! Great! I have followers!”

And because Instagram was giving out a lot of free reach, it felt like it was all working.

The truth is these followers are basically achieved at gunpoint, the impression you make is:

“HEY, I’M IN YOUR WORLD!

I FOLLOWED YOU!

I LIKE YOUR POSTS!

HERE’S A COMMENT TOO!

WOULD BE A BIT RUDE IF YOU DIDN’T FOLLOW BACK, DON’T YOU THINK?”

You get follow backs, but they aren’t as solid as someone finding you or your content naturally or through a recommendation or ads.

So when Instagram cut reach to new people, and these influencers were left with just showing posts to their followers, well, a lot of those connections weren’t that strong.

Even worse, as soon as Instagram stopped showing your posts chronologically, the algorithm became “If people stop engaging with your posts, we will stop showing your posts to them.”

Every few months, Instagram cut down on bot activities as Mark Zuckerberg politely (but firmly) nudged everyone towards buying ads for reach.

One bot company received a cease-and-desist legal order to STOP RIGHT NOW from Instagram.

They complied and shut the website/brand down and stopped taking payments BUT told people, “you can carry on using our services for free if you let us occasionally like some posts on your behalf.”

The influencers were like, “sure”, it’s free, like away!

And this (very smart) agency used this “zombie army” of Instagram accounts to make things go viral for their clients.

They would take money from a client, knowing the zombie army and the number of likes they could summon from the zombie army would send *any* post viral.

Imagine they had a million people who were previously paying for bot services.

If their client posts something and a million people go, and like that post, that post would be in every explore feed for millions of people.

Legend has it this agency was the reason viral dances attached to songs started to be a thing, as they would appear and suddenly be everywhere because the zombie army power liked it.

This same agency told me they had the green light for weed ads on Facebook.

In all honesty, I’ve never seen it, so not sure if it’s true, but I do hear of these unicorns from time to time:

“Facebook lets us run ads to anything!”

“Even Weed!”

Shoutout also to the Canadian ad buyers making a million dollars a day selling skin cream when Facebook ads just launched.

I met one of their team in Toronto, and he said:

“You could say anything, ANYTHING on a Facebook ad when they first launched. There was no filter or checks! We promised people the world!” ????????????????????

Part 22/30: Instagram exposed: era 2: The “mother/child” era

By 2016, the bot stuff (auto-follow/like, etc.) stopped working.

Small hacks came and went.

IGTV launched.

The hack there, as IGTV didn’t post to your timeline, was to post the same video 100 times a day with different hashtags…collecting views across all of them.

(Social media is so sad sometimes. lol)

2017 was the beginning of the “mother/child” era of Instagram bot growth.

By 2017, Instagram severely limited the number of people you could follow and posts you could like per day.

So the Instagram mafia started building millions of Instagram accounts.

Instead of (your) account following/liking lots, they made an army of accounts that all followed and liked a little.

The trick would work like this:

Let’s say you’re a music artist.

The Instagram mafia would find a big artist’s account (e.g., Lil Wayne) and send his bot accounts to follow all of Lil Wayne’s followers.

If you have 1,000 bot accounts…

following 300 people each day…

of which 30 follow back…

you have 30,000 new followers per day across a network of bot Instagram accounts.

Then once someone follows you, the direct bot messages them:

“Hey, saw u like Lil Wayne. Check out @localrapperwithnogoodsongs. He’s up next”

And a % of people would click the handle and check out the artist, and a % would follow.

This was the beginning of your Instagram inbox being a spam zone. 🙂

Instagram eventually started tracking sim cards and country origin to stop this method, and so it moved to Brazilian/Tier 2 markets, then died out.

Part 23/30: Instagram exposed: era 3: 2019-PRESENT DAY: Loop giveaways & story viewing

Once most basic activities (mass following/liking/commenting etc.) had been limited, the Instagram mafia needed a new scheme.

And they found it in “story viewing”.

In 2019, there were no limits to how many stories you could view.

So some Russians (!) built a machine to watch stories all day from your Instagram account.

A tiny % of people who watch their stories check who’s watched their stories (I actually recommend this, it’s an under-rated brand touch point to see who’s interested in what you put out daily)

Anyway.. if you see new people watching your stories, there’s a chance you will go and see who they are, then follow them.

This ran for a few wild months, then got patched (limiting the number of accounts any one account can view in one day unless the account is verified), though I was shocked to find out it’s still working.

Seems way too risky to put on my account or a client’s account, but I hear it still works. ????????‍♂️

The final ongoing level of Instagram growth is loop giveaways, where a celebrity will say, “Follow everyone I’m following. One person will win an iPad/a Birkin bag signed by 6ix9ine/$5,000,” and people pay to be in the “following” queue.

This means they will get followed by people to enter the competition.

It’s easy to be cynical about this method but to give credit, it is real people, arguably the most active people on Instagram, and possibly easy to sell to as they are the type optimistic (desperate) enough to enter a competition like this.

Naturally, it works best for broad niches.

Also, bear in mind no matter what you do, once you pass 100,000 (real) followers on Instagram, you get a good baseline of views on your posts which should turn into engagements if your content is good.

Part 24/30: Tiktok’s dirty secret

Credit where credit’s due: 

There aren’t too many spammy things that can be done on Tiktok.

It really is all about the content.

But that knife cuts both ways.

Followers on Tiktok are worth less than on other platforms.

If you stop having “hit” videos, you quickly disappear from your followers’ feeds as Tiktok rushes to give them better content to keep them on the platform.

Part 25/30: The genius/terrible growth method for Onlyfans/Tinder

I actually have a ginormous guide for how to make money as an Onlyfans star. Email me, and I’ll send it to anyone who needs it (free). I’m a big supporter of the creator economy, whether through Patreon or Onlyfans.

Ready for a bleak cheat code that works very, very well?

This strategy:

1. Works, but also…
2. Makes me very sad

So, on the one hand, as a human… I want it wiped off the face of the earth, but as a marketer, I gotta admit.. it converts like crazy.

It’s very simple.

(I’m presuming you’re a female Onlyfans star)

Start a Tinder profile, post hot pics

Write in your bio:

“Don’t use Tinder much. Let’s chat on IG @myinstagramhandlehere”

Then just swipe a few guys, and you will get hundreds of matches from guys in literally minutes.

(Sidenote: Studies indicate women find 90% of men unattractive.) 

And when you get that 10%, then it’s are you their “type.”

So an average guy needs 100 swipes for one opportunity.

Because of this, the average guy does not get many matches.

So when he suddenly gets a match from a hot girl, you BET you have his full attention.

Even if you’re 99% sure the match is a bot/Onlyfans bait, if you’re a guy and you get that bio “find me on IG” message, you HAVE to go and check the IG just in case it really is a girl looking to date who prefers to speak on Instagram.

Alas, 100 times out of 100, you will find a link to her Onlyfans in her bio.

And that’s just the basic scheme; the professionals reach in and grab guys’ undersexed hearts with bio phrases like:

“In town for a few days, just looking to have fun”

“Just broke up with my bf so just looking for friends with benefits only”

If you’re a guy looking to get laid, and you see something like this is exciting… it is every guy’s secret dream to meet and film with a hot girl. Here is that offer! ????????‍♂️????

But there’s one final level!

These Onlyfans bot accounts do the unthinkable and message you first! (This never happens on normal Tinder.)

It’s always the same message:

“Add me lol”

With their Snapchat card.

Snapchat is the wild west of saucy private snaps.

If you talk to them on snap, you can bet there’s an upsell to Onlyfans coming.

But again, after 2 hours of swiping and getting no matches, you *really* want to believe it might be possible to meet a girl.

Be honest: Can you believe 363 million people use Snapchat every day?

363 million!

When was the last time you sent or received a Snap or heard an adult mention it?

One theory I entertain is girls have been selling private snaps for YEARS, and this is a big part of Snaps’ userbase. 

There can’t be enough teenagers to keep it going!

Anyway, there you go, highly unethical but a killer way Onlyfans’ girls can hit their target market and get free targeted traffic every day.

(And don’t bother trying to report bot accounts, either. Tinder accounts are free to set up with a phone number, and the people running them have warehouses full of sim cards to create new accounts with, let alone profiles like the below are not technically breaking Tinder’s terms of service.)

Part 26/30: How Twitch streamers fake their numbers

You know the drill by now.

These are services any Twitch streamer can use to artificially inflate their numbers.

As ever, let’s start with “real-looking followers.”

(For example, if someone clicked through your followers at a glance, everything would look legitimate.)

Next, fraudulent streamers buy channel views.

And clip views.

And just like with Instagram, you can choose how long you want your live views to be live too.

They actually have even more risky activities on their menu, which I don’t want to endorse as some of them involve activities taking money from Twitch (literal financial fraud), and some risk your account.

One crazy thread throughout all these screenshots of offers from JAP is that they are essentially risk-free to use.

Wild.

Part 27/30: Facebook page mafia wars

This is only a tiny corner of the internet involved in the “Facebook page mafia”, but they are powerful people.

Throughout the 2010s, a big Facebook page was one of the most lucrative forms of real estate available, reaching millions of people for a cost of $0.

They were grown through “share networks.”

If one page had millions of followers and you owned it, you could create a brand new page and like/share the new page’s content to the big page… sometimes netting +200,000 page likes *in the first day.*

Eventually, Facebook clamped down on this, but it was a wild west for a while, with a few people wielding crazy power across what went viral across Facebook.

Here’s how crazy it got.

The pages were making so much money that one rogue company realized they could extort page owners.

The blackmailing party would mass report posts on their pages, leading to viral posts disappearing and monetization being paused (or canceled! People were sometimes owed tens of thousands of dollars when this scam hit.)

Once it was known amongst the Facebook page mafia (though they were all technically rivals, they all worked together to share each others’ posts) that this company was killing pages.

The company doing the blackmailing started sending outright blackmail requests “You’ve seen what we do to pages. Pay up, or we send the mass reports to your page and get it to shut down.”

????????????????????

I’m telling you if most people really knew how crazy this social media world was…

Another example that’s risky to print… one of the UK’s biggest, um, media companies hired someone to run their pages, which had millions of followers.

This sneaky new hire quietly used the media company’s massive page to like/share his own page and was quickly gaining millions of followers before my friend noticed and pointed it out to the media company “eh, you should really know that your employee is growing his own page from your page.”

I believe the employee was fired.

Justice served, right?

Nope, justice doesn’t seem to be served in the social media world.

That page the rogue employee grew on the side was the start of his own social media page empire, and he went on to make millions himself.

Another employee waited until my friend went home and shared his pages (and links) from my friends’ accounts (and celebrity pages!) while my friend was asleep.

By the time my friend woke up, he had deleted all the posts he had shared and un-shared the posts he shared to grow his own pages.

Now, remember my friend ran many celebrity pages, not just his own.

One day my friend woke up to some of the world’s biggest influencers saying, “DON’T SPAM LINKS ON MY PAGE WITHOUT A PROFIT SHARE,” and my confused friend quickly had to work out what had happened.

His rogue employee used the company accounts all night while my friend was asleep.

My friend fired the employee and then noticed the employee cleared out his Paypal (£30,000 – £40,000) on his way out and stole a few pages, too (millions of followers).

The guy causing all this chaos was a maniac – he ripped off about 15 people ins similar ways.

So was justice served?

No – He’s hiding out in Thailand.

There is a Whatsapp group chat of people working on a lawsuit to bring him home.

I could fill another 10,000 words with similar stories.

I guess that’s the point of this article – to warn you about the world you live in.

Part 28/30: How to make $200,000 while watching the Superbowl

There are many survey sites that pay you around $4 for each person you bring who fills out a questionnaire (if it has numerous pages and gets their email, etc..)

So imagine if you could get tens of thousands of people to take a survey for free.

Here’s a method I heard about a few years back.

The biggest Superbowl page on Facebook (was it the official one? I couldn’t possibly say ????) made a status update.

“KICK-OFF TIME! WHO ARE YOU BACKING TODAY?”

Annnnd… I imagine the social media employee thought they’d finished their job, closed the Facebook window, and watched the game.

Well…

As soon as the status was posted, this scammer commented:

“OMG, found a working link to live stream the Superbowl!

You have to fill out this questionnaire to get the live stream link, but it only takes 3 minutes: 

>> (link to survey site) <<

Hit “Like” if it worked for you”

And then he went on JAP and ordered thousands of fake likes (which arrived instantly), which made it look like people had filled out the survey and got the live stream link.

Soooooo… tens of thousands of people saw that comment, pinned to the top of the thread as of all the likes, and I imagine he bought some comments saying, “worked for me! Thanks!”.

Thousands of people then filled out the survey, hoping in vain to watch America’s great sport. ????????????

My friend made $200,000 just sitting in his college dorm room before the link was found and deleted from the page.

Part 29/30: My favorite business growth strategy right now: (Something that actually works and isn’t fake)

“FACEBOOK IS DEAD,” buuuut… It’s been downloaded more than Instagram in the past four years…and is only just behind Tiktok.

Huh?

Yes, if you’ve ever said Facebook is dead or dying, you have believed the hype.

Facebook is not going anywhere.

Facebook/Instagram ads are how most online companies begin selling online. You can start making money quickly with Facebook ads, though it gets harder to make quick returns the more you scale. Whereas with Google, it’s hard to make money at the start but easier to scale. So Facebook ads tend to be where most people start, let alone carry on forever.)

AND

Facebook reels are the best way of getting reach on *any* platform right now. (Yes, that includes Tiktok.)

When my agency takes on building a new brand for a client, we run Facebook ads to get their page the first 100 likes in their *perfect* core audience.

Facebook will then learn to push out content to this audience and lookalikes of this audience.

(Yes, we post the same viral short-form videos on Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube, but we start with Facebook.)

(And remember, our short-form videos are very niche relevant, they are not random videos.)

And when we have a reel that goes viral organically?

We simply pour ad money onto it to scale the page up with a client’s dream audience.

The reason?

We are building a massive retargeting audience to run ads to.

This is how my agency can run Facebook/Instagram ads to “cold” traffic cheaper than anyone else.

With an audience who knows/likes/trusts your page and a big organic audience, ad costs are significantly lower.

If you don’t have this?

You’re often reaching out in the dark with cold traffic, spending big money to show ads to strangers in the hope they’ll like what you’re into.

I say this as an example of REAL things that can be done that are working.

I’ll get to why fake stuff is bad at the bottom of this article but do take onboard that Facebook is still underrated, even now.

Part of the reason Facebook reels have so much reach is younger people aren’t posting as much. (Notice I say “not posting,” not “not using.”

Numerous studies have said 90% (!) of American 18-30’s “log in to Facebook at least once a day.”)

So though they post less, they are still using it, let alone Messenger use too.

And with people posting less, there is more *room* for reels.

Part 30/30: How to sell millions of dollars of tickets for free using Facebook events

Ok, this one isn’t unethical but is a nice example of out-of-the-box thinking.

My friend ran a secondary ticketing company, buying and selling tickets, mainly for music events.

He had multiple alerts set up, waiting for any big artist to announce a concert.

The second he got that alert, say, “David Guetta, new Los Angeles date 17th July.”

He would make a Facebook event with the title “David Guetta 17th July Los Angeles rave friends meetup.”

He added a picture to the event, and… waited for hundreds, sometimes thousands of people to join the group who were searching for the event on Facebook.

Music industry being music industry, it would take hours, sometimes days, for the promoter or artist management team to make a Facebook event – by which time my friend had a group full of people actively talking about the event, and soon enough, buying and selling tickets to.

Sometimes there was *NEVER* an official event announced, and he had the only Facebook event for a concert or festival!

And, of course, he moved the date of the event into the future as it approached (as otherwise, the event would end, and the page would shut down.

So, instead, he just changed the name of the event to the next (similar) artist playing in the future e,g, “Calvin Harris September Los Angeles date rave friends,” and a good % of the people would stay in the group.

He made a LOT of money in the small %’s he took from people buying and selling using his ticketing platform.

WHY BUYING FAKE FOLLOWERS IS A VERY BAD IDEA

It’s important to know how social media platforms and algorithms (Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere else) work before you even think about buying fake followers.

When you release a post, they show it to a few of your followers…

…If they engage with it, they show it to a few more…

…If other people start engaging with it, it hits the “explore feed” all the way to you having a viral hit if people continue engaging with it; see below.

(Pic credit: Naomi D’Souza)

So…

The more fake followers you buy, the more “ghosts” you have following you.

When the social media platform shows your new post, and no one engages, the platform thinks this is a bad post and stops showing it to people = Dead post, no engagement.

BUYING FAKE ENGAGEMENT IS ALSO A BAD IDEA

If you think buying fake engagement (likes, retweets, comments, etc.) will fix this ghost problem.

Almost all of the accounts carrying out bot activities have zero followers (as they get banned so often), so any likes or retweets will not make a difference in the number of people who see your posts. The platforms allow low-quality accounts to exist, but only healthy accounts with real followers will help you hit the explore feed.

If you buy lots of followers, you’ll need to continue to buy them forever to show follower growth (over time, the platforms do find them and delete fake followers, too), AND you’ll need to buy fake likes and comments on every post forever. Not to mention it’s all fake.

And if you forget to do even one post, you risk exposing yourself.

The fake/bot/scam “shortcuts” I talk about in this article don’t last (and often don’t work).

The good news is marketing/making money online isn’t that difficult once you know what to do.

I’ve been doing it and teaching people how to do it for almost ten years.

I’ve made most of my money over the years from less than 5,000 Facebook friends on my personal Facebook profile.

No massive follower list, no PR campaigns, no “clout” for want of a better term.

If you’re doing business or are a creator, you don’t need many followers to make a good living (or better) 

Thank you so much for getting to the bottom of this epic post!

Final Thoughts

I had people tell me not to post this as it could be a “guidebook” for people to scam, but my reasoning was people need to know that what they see isn’t real and, more importantly, how easy and cheap it is to do, so they can look out for it.

When I talk about these fake things, they are not harmless:

– Many people have wasted campaign budgets and lost inheritances, life savings, pensions, houses, and college funds (and worse) to social media and other online scams.

– Buying into an online asset based on fake numbers bought on a platform and then found to be holding a worthless asset as the numbers they were seeing weren’t real.

– Small businesses have wasted thousands paying bad influencer agencies and influencers themselves for fake results. In some cases, that marketing budget not working was the kiss of death for these companies.

Thank you for reading and sharing this to let people know the dangers of this social media web.

Despite everything I’ve revealed here, I do believe the internet is the cheat code that can help anyone improve their lives.

I went from being on welfare to living the life of my dreams, and though it’s a cliche, it is true that anyone can do it, BUT it will only happen if you focus on “real” stuff.

If you’re getting tempted to try some of the fake stuff in this document, step away from the laptop.

Please forward this piece to anyone who might benefit from it…

I’ll be revealing how to *actually* grow your personal brand/make money online with a new post every day this year.

…I’m on a mission to help one million entrepreneurs improve their lives using these cheat codes!

At the end of this article, I would like to extend a special thanks to Vin Clancy for granting us permission to syndicate his article.

Vin Clancy is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker who has assisted startups worldwide in developing their businesses. To explore more of his work, visit his website at: https://chatgptfreedom.com/

Once again, we express our gratitude to Vin Clancy for enabling us to share his valuable insights with our readers.