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- I Gained HOW MANY New Followers for $47?!
I Gained HOW MANY New Followers for $47?!
Matt Karamazov
January 29, 2026
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🏅 Welcome Back to The Competitive Advantage!
I've added two screenshots (below) from my Instagram Insights that show the results of the last few days' experiment of putting $9/day toward boosting one of my reels.
As you can see, I spent $47 and gained...127 new followers!! NOT...BAD!!
Now, before I get into the weeds a little bit, let me just clarify that this is THROUGH INSTAGRAM, not some scammy, 3rd-party "Instagram Promotion" service that promises you like 10,000 "real" followers for $25 or whatever.
Those are ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) fake followers, and it is a BAD idea to have anything to do with "growth hacks" like that. They're not even hacks. They're a waste of time, a waste of money, and they'll actively hurt your Instagram reach.
So no, this is me PAYING INSTAGRAM to boost my reel so that it reaches more people. Totally legit, and they have a whole bunch of targeting tools you can use to make sure that you're reaching your ideal audience.
There are a couple numbers I want you to focus on, because this is how you can tell whether a campaign's working and it's time to scale, or if there's something wrong with your targeting, your content, etc.
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The first is your cost per profile visit, which in this case is a little over 11 cents. This is actually excellent, but the GOAL is follower growth, and for that we're going to want to look at CPL or Cost Per Lead. Well, CPF in this case, I guess. Cost Per Follower.
Here you can see that I'm paying a little over 37 cents per follower - which I'm PERFECTLY okay with! I'll take that trade all day. It means that if I wanted to gain 1,000 followers, it would ONLY cost me $370.
The SECOND number I want you to focus on is Profile Visit Conversion %. How many visited your profile, versus how many people follow you. In my case, 417 people visited my profile and 127 people followed me, giving me a Conversion % of a little more than 30% - which is GREAT, by the way.
And this might be a topic for another time, but it gets even CRAZIER when you realize that I have ManyChat set up to DM every single new follower that comes in.
What THAT means is that they all get a welcome message from me (see attached) that directs them to sign up to my newsletter!
That opens up a whole RANGE of possibilities, because let's say I get 1,000 new followers via this ad campaign, costing me a total of $370. Assuming it stays relatively the same as I scale, etc. Which it may or may not. But let's trust the Meta AI and say that it does.
Now say that just 5% (50 people) sign up to my newsletter via the welcome DM. I have NINE DIFFERENT REVENUE STREAMS linked up to my newsletter in various ways, so whether those 50 people click on ads, buy books with my affiliate links, hire me for coaching, or read my Medium articles, etc. etc., there are TONS of ways I can monetize them.
If some combination of those people go on to click 50 ads (over the course of however long they're subscribed), that's around $100 that I'd earn from that. A few of them will buy books, that'll give me around 40-50 cents per book. Maybe 2 of them decide to become Premium Members and that adds up to another $100 or so right there.
So it's NOT unreasonable to expect that the $370 I spent gaining those 1,000 followers could be MORE than covered by the various ways they can be monetized over time! VERY COOL.
I kind of opened the firehose on ya right here, and I apologize haha. It's a lot to take in!
But it's also crazy motivating to see how many ways there are to win, and how, once you're able to invest some cash into growth, you can REALLY get the flywheel turning and start making some big moves.
If you want my personal help to add between $1-5K/month in monthly recurring revenue to your creator business, and grow your audience and authority exponentially at the same time, Creator Launch Academy is exactly where you need to be. Join here.
After achieving my (somewhat meaningless) goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30, I set a new (also meaningless but cool) goal of reading 10,000 books. As of today, I’ve read exactly 1,462 books, including 8 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
DAYS LEFT UNTIL I DROP THE DEPOSIT: 62
*Buy My New Lamborghini Huracan | ON TRACK
*Upload 200 Advantage Course Videos | 200 LEFT
*Publish 365 New YouTube Videos | 358 LEFT
*Hit Monetization Hours on YouTube | 2,952 LEFT
*Reach 500,000 Instagram Followers | 377,523 LEFT
*Reach 200,000 Threads Followers | 174,437 LEFT
*Reach 200,000 Twitter Followers | 191,580 LEFT
*Reach 50,000 LinkedIn Followers | 48,115 LEFT
*Reach 50,000 Facebook Followers | 48,547 LEFT
*Reach 50,000 Medium Followers | 46,910 LEFT
*Reach 250,000 Newsletter Subscribers | 239,701 LEFT
*Reach 250,000 YouTube Subscribers | 246,939 LEFT
*Reach 50,000 Advantage Subscribers | 48,643 LEFT
*Reach 500 Skool Community Members | 447 LEFT
*Reach 500 Premium Reading Life Members | 462 LEFT
*Reach 500 Patreon Community Supporters | 457 LEFT
*Finish Reading 22 Books | 14 LEFT
*Publish 13 Reading Life Newsletters | 2 LEFT
*Publish 75 Medium Articles | 65 LEFT
*Publish 31 YouTube Videos | 23 LEFT
*Publish 12 New Course Videos | 12 LEFT
*Publish Skool About VSL | INCOMPLETE
*Update Author Marketing Page | INCOMPLETE
*Update My Coaching Page | INCOMPLETE
*Update My Instagram Profile | INCOMPLETE
*Update My Resources Page | INCOMPLETE
*Update My YouTube Channel | INCOMPLETE
*Update My Welcome Sequence | INCOMPLETE
*Update 50 New Patreon Book Notes | 50 LEFT
*Organize My YouTube Studio | INCOMPLETE
*Outline 30 Medium Articles | 10 LEFT
*Publish 25 Medium Articles | 20 LEFT
*Publish 5 Reading Life Newsletters | 1 LEFT
*Publish 3 Creator Launch Academy Videos | 3 LEFT
*Publish 9 YouTube Videos | 6 LEFT
*Record 9 YouTube Videos | 6 LEFT
*Script 14 YouTube Videos | 7 LEFT
*Reorganize My YouTube Studio | INCOMPLETE
*Update My YouTube Channel | INCOMPLETE
*Update Author Promotion Page | INCOMPLETE
*Update 20 Patreon Book Notes | 0 NOTES UPDATED
DATE RANGE: January 21st—31st
Woke Up: 9:00AM
Sleep Quality: 86%
Pages Read: 203
Workout: Rest Day
Work Completed:
Posted 2x on Instagram
Posted 3x on Twitter
Posted 3x on Threads
Posted 3x on LinkedIn
Posted 3x on Facebook
Published 1 Medium Article
Published 1 YouTube Video
Published The Reading Life Newsletter
Worked on Creating Sponsorship Deliverables
Worked on Current Author Campaigns
Managed Creator Launch Academy Community on Skool
Completely Organized My Workflow for Tomorrow
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I’ve also just started this Reading Challenge on Instagram where I’m reading 200 pages a day until I reach 200,000 Followers.
I’m only on Day Three, but it’s been such a good decision so far. Not only am I reading more (obviously), but I’ve also been forced to be more productive and organized in order to hit my daily reading goal.
Follow along on Instagram if you want to be my accountability buddy! Or laugh at me when I fail haha. Either works.
You might also be interested in my Ultimate Guide to Speed Reading on YouTube.
Signing off now, though. Back at it tomorrow!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three more ways I can help you:
Book a 1-1 strategy call with me and we’ll get you up to $5K/month in revenue by following a custom plan we’ll build together.
Become a Premium Member of The Reading Life newsletter and enjoy unlimited access to 150+ Premium Book Breakdowns, my complete notes from 1,400+ books, exclusive discounts, and more.
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