How I am earning ~500 followers weekly on Instagram using Python and ML

[animeboy]

The answer to do hard work without effort is automation. So I created a bot that does all the tedious work while I sit back doing nothing.

I am a guy that likes to learn new stuff, so for some time now I wanted to find out if all the fuss about Machine Learning (ML) was worth it.

At university I learned a lot about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence but unfortunately I've never had the change to work in a real life project where I could use it.

Challenge accepted! It's time to change that, so I decided to take a course on Machine Learning to update myself, and at the same time learn Python.

The best method for me to learn something fast is just to do something practical, and after thinking for a bit I decided to write a bot to automate an Instagram (IG) account by using Python and ML.

I created a new IG account, handed it to my bot and sat back watching it work. I was impressed that it quickly started earning followers and growing in popularity. In a couple of months it earned more than 2000 followers and currently the growing rate is about 500 new followers per week but the rate is increasingly fast.

These numbers might not seem impressive for you IG marketeers, given that there are several tools out there that do the exact same thing and probably perform much better, but for me it is a very good outcome, given that this bot was entirely written by me in Python from scratch and as a result of a learning experience. Oh, and did I mention that now that the bot is alive I don't have to do any actual work?

In this article I will explain what I did in detail, explaining the best I can all the tech I used, but will not provide any source code.

What is it?

Nowadays all we ear is about IG influencers and how many followers they have and the amount of money they make with sponsored posts. Having a personal IG account for some years that never got anywhere (I only have a couple hundred followers), I wanted to know how hard is it to have a lot of followers and therefore to have "success" at IG.

I created a new IG account and then automated the whole thing: it chooses the content to post, it posts content 3 times per day, it writes the captions, chooses the tags, it credits the original author, it chooses who to follow and who to unfollow. It basically automates the whole work of a real human in a way that you can't tell the difference. I basically just sit back and watch it work.

I don't even pay for a server for my bot to live in. It is running from a small old Raspberry Pi I had dusting on a shelf. I just pay for the electricity it consumes.

I got to learn some Python, I learned some Machine Learning and I proved I could start a successful project from scratch by using technologies I nearly knew nothing about before I started. It seems to me a clear win-win scenario. Oh, and I had some fun too 😉

How it's made

My bot does these actions:

• It gathers new pictures from IG (scrapping)
• Among those pictures it selects only the best ones (cleaning)
• Three times per day it posts a new picture. It writes its caption and gives credit to the original poster (posting)
• It gathers new users to follow (promoting)
• It follows new users regularly (follow)
• It unfollows users regularly (unfollow)

Here's the details:

Scrapping

First I choose a theme for the IG account. I am not going to reveal the real theme because I want the account to remain unknown. But let's imagine that I decided to create an account about cats.

I gave my bot a list of tags and accounts so that it knows what kind of content I want it to post. Therefore I researched all the best tags and accounts that post the best pictures about cats and I created a list with it.

It's important to know that the bot does not generate any content on its own, it only reposts content from other users giving them full credit. IG is special in this area because most users will be happy to see their content being reposted because it means more exposure for them. In fact many of them write a comment thanking my bot for selecting it. Of course, if anyone would complain about it I will have to delete the post immediately but till this moment it never happened yet.

Once in a while the bot checks if there is enough content available to post, and if not, then it starts the process of visiting some of the tags or/and accounts and selects a few pictures and records all the related information and metadata.

To be continue....

[AlenSony소니알렌]

Animeboy Writes Essays 😃😳

[animeboy]

Give me some ideas

[Anonymous]

What??

[babailyas]

Chutzpah

[animeboy]

What that mean?🤔

[babailyas]

Your theory like that

[animeboy]

If you want more then just subscribe to my channel name just type #godnicgamerz

[PrateekPriyadarshy]

Which device you're using?

[DGkumar]

Ok