My Deep Dive into the Massive Underground Economy for IG Meme Pages

There's a massive underground economy for IG meme pages. I just did a deep dive.It was triggered by a DM trying to sell me 8 IG accounts for $100k.

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I just HAD to pepper him with questionsI'm not a buyer, but I'm curious. Here's what I learned about his biz & the industry:

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‍The biz:- $79k YTD revenue, almost all profit

8 accounts with 1.4m followers combined

Account sizes range from 92k to 416k

The content is all startup inspiration, self-improvement and hustle culture type stuff

58% of followers are in the US

Their charge for sponsored posts ranges from $50 to $1,700 depending on the duration, # of accounts used and content type

100% of all sales are inbound in the IG DMs

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He said the business could grow a ton if he started doing outbound, which would mostly be DMing companies behind other sponsored posts.

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Something a VA could do.

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Monthly revenue ebbs and flows based on inbound volume, from $3k to $15k, but the pages are all growing

The seller pays 35% of all revenue to a kid in Canada to run the accounts for him. This is his only cost, and he said he could outsource to a VA to take 10-15% or hourly instead

They don't produce original content, but just repurpose from elsewhere

His typical customers are eCommerce sites, other meme pages and course sellers

These accounts were all aggregated over the last 18 months by reaching out to page owners and making offers

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The guy is in his early 20s and wanting the money to grow his other company.

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‍The industry: My interest in this industry was first piqued when I heard a story on ep #19 of @myfirstmilpod about a dude that stood on stage at a conference and made a random word go viral on X right on the spot, with meme pages. This guy, Steve Bartlett, had employed the same playbook as the guy in my DMs - accumulated a ton of meme accounts and then used them all to market things concurrently to college students.

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@almostfriday_ the company that owns accounts like @entrapranure and @litcapitaldoes the same thing, except their content is super high quality.

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Almost Friday has many millions of followers across all platforms and several different accounts, and they monetize with merch, events, original music, podcast ads and sponsored posts.

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What started as mere meme pages ended up raising millions in VC and employing dozens.Anyway, I found this whole industry fascinating.

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If I were 20 again I can see myself following the same playbook. I'm happy to intro you to the seller of these pages. He's a good dude.Thanks for reading! Sorry if this sent you down another rabbit hole and your boss is about to fire you as a result.