Instagram has around 3 billion users worldwide, making it one of the biggest social networks. It is much more than just a picture-sharing platform. Influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers monetize their accounts and use them as a primary source of income.
It takes time to build a large network of Instagram followers, especially for new and lesser-known brands. Luckily, you don't necessarily have to do that. You can buy Instagram accounts and start using them immediately for your brand visibility, affiliate marketing, and personal projects.
But it's best done carefully to avoid losing followers or getting tricked. In this article, we'll explain how to purchase Instagram accounts without getting scammed.
Why buy Instagram accounts
The main reason to buy Instagram accounts is to get immediate access to thousands of followers. You will save time you can use on other tasks. You can also buy multiple accounts, which allows diversifying your marketing strategies to ensure broader engagement.
For businesses, that means more people will get to know your services. If you align your message with your followers' interests, you will draw more sales. The same applies to affiliate marketing, where having access to a large pool of potential buyers is crucial. If you want to expand globally, you can buy Instagram accounts in a specific country.
What are the possible risks?
Buying Instagram accounts is risky. First of all, it goes against Instagram's terms of service. It's not a severe violation, as many people and businesses run multiple Instagram accounts. It is a common practice.
But you should also be careful about managing your accounts, like using residential proxies to assign a different IP address to each. This way, they cannot be traced to a single IP, which often results in a ban.
You also risk buying low-quality accounts. For example, some accounts may have inflated follower counts that result from bots. Even if they have a million followers, you will not get any value from them.
You should be aware of scams. If you're not careful, some sellers may take the payment but will not deliver the account. If you don't obtain the email address the account is associated with, they may reclaim the account after the sale has been made, leaving you empty-handed.
Is buying Instagram accounts worth it?
Whether buying Instagram accounts is worth it depends on your business model. Well-known companies rarely do that because their Instagram accounts attract many followers organically.
But if you have just started building your brand, then buying accounts is worth it. When done right, you will introduce your services to thousands or even millions of people within a few days. If you participate in an affiliate marketing program, it's also a secure way of getting more conversions.
How to buy Instagram accounts without getting scammed
It is essential to avoid scams when buying accounts. Instagram accounts are not your typical commodity, and the market is rife with scammers. Here are our tips on how to identify high-quality accounts and avoid getting scammed.
Account authenticity
Firstly, you want to ensure that your account is and looks authentic. The number of followers is essential, but their engagement must also look natural. Their comments must be relevant, instead of just a few words that look like bots.
One of the metrics you can check is engagement rate. If you notice that it is extremely high, like 30-50%, most likely these are bots. A naturally good engagement rate is 10%, which indicates that the account has real followers that are interested in your posts.
An Instagram verification badge is a significant advantage. It is a blue checkmark that shows that the account is real and represents a real brand or person. If you manage to maintain it, people will trust your account much more, helping you grow your audience.
Verification tools
You don't have to check everything manually when buying Instagram accounts. We'd like to mention two tools that will help you verify the quality of Instagram accounts before buying.
Social Blade is a tool to analyze Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Facebook data. Its free version allows checking the number of followers, average likes, average comments, how many accounts it follows, and the engagement rate and rank. It also shows follower decay, so if you see many people leaving daily, then the account has issues, and you should avoid it.
HypeAuditor is a professional tool for professional social media managers. It offers influencer discovery, recruitment, and various analytics metrics like audience demographics, fraud detection, and brand affinity. If you subscribe to this tool, you can easily check an Instagram account's growth rate, audience size, comment authenticity, and many other aspects.
Warning signs
Using the mentioned tools, you can easily spot the warning signs that an account uses bots to build up followers instead of growing the audience organically.
A sudden increase in followers is a bright red flag. If you see 10,000 followers appear within 24 hours, they are likely bots.
As discussed previously, an abnormally high engagement rate is another issue. A good organic engagement rate is 10% to 15%, and if you see something like 50%, avoid buying this account.
You should also read the comments. Human comments are usually longer and respond directly to the posted content. Meanwhile, bot comments will be short, may have grammatical mistakes, and are generic like "that's cool" or "I love this" and alike.
Best practices for purchasing Instagram accounts
It's essential to find a trustworthy seller who assures the quality of your purchase. You must be a cautious buyer because some sellers will try to scam you. One way of avoiding that is using reputable marketplaces that guarantee secure account and payment transfers.
Finding reputable marketplaces
Dedicated marketplaces have several advantages over individual Instagram account sellers. We will mention two marketplaces you can trust: Sebuda and Social Tradia. Both platforms offer buyers' data protection and secure payment methods.
They also emphasize the importance of customer service satisfaction. When buying Instagram accounts, you want to make sure you can use them for your marketing strategy immediately. Social Tradia and Sebuda filter accounts to ensure that buyers get real followers that will engage with their content and drive value.
A money-back policy is another security guarantee. For example, if Social Tradia cannot complete your purchase transfer within 5 business days, it will issue a refund. When using Sebuda, you can also contact their 24/7 customer support with a response time of less than 10 minutes.
This makes buying Instagram accounts easier. Also, these marketplace benefits are typically not available when buying from individual sellers.
Avoiding scams
Some sellers may offer great deals that look attractive, especially if you want to save money. But that's also the tactic that scammers use to trick you into purchasing low-quality accounts. Here are a few signs you should look out for.
You should drop the seller if they force you to move off-platform. For example, Sebuda offers escrow services to safeguard the buying and selling of Instagram accounts. That means that the platform verifies the transaction and only sends funds to the seller when the buyer has received the goods.
A scammer would try to get off the platform to bypass these security checks. If the seller is unwilling to provide account details, you should also drop it. It is paramount to get access to the original account email. Otherwise, fake sellers can use it to reclaim the account post-sale.
Trusted platforms
We recommend visiting the Sebuda and Social Tradia platforms. Both of them offer benefits that individual Instagram account sellers cannot guarantee.
Sebuda uses various analytics and account performance statistics to ensure that sold accounts are legitimate. It also helps Instagram sellers connect to buyers and negotiate good prices. Sebuda has access to thousands of Instagram accounts in various categories with different engagement rates, depending on your needs.
Similarly, Social Tradia also verifies accounts before selling them. It offers escrow services, which charge your account only after the sale has been confirmed.
How to safely transfer ownership
After the purchase has been made, you should take care of a safe account transfer. Keep in mind that Instagram can ban an account that changes ownership, because it prohibits buying and selling accounts.
Firstly, you should get access to the original email address. It ensures only you can access the account and that fake sellers cannot reclaim it post-sale. You should then set up two-factor authentication using your own authentication apps.
We also recommend using a proxy to switch geographical regions. If you bought an account from the US, connect to a US proxy and use it for a few days, so that the IP address switch is not immediate. Also, don't post aggressively at the very start, because Instagram may notice all changes and flag the account for inspection.
Lastly, try to purchase an account within your business category. If your account suddenly changes its direction, it misleads your followers, who can start leaving it.
Legal considerations & Instagram’s policies
Meta clearly states in its Terms of Use that selling and buying Instagram accounts is not allowed. That's why there are always risks to consider. It is likely that some of your accounts may get banned.
On a more positive note, these transactions are not illegal generally. You will not get into trouble with civil law. The real risks are losing your followers or losing bought accounts to Instagram bans.
Alternatives to buying Instagram accounts
As you can see, there are some risks that you simply cannot avoid.
If you want to be 100% safe, the only option is to grow your account organically. It takes time, but you will ensure that the followers you get are genuinely interested in your brand.
You can also use Instagram ads to attract followers. This will cost you more, but it is also a risk-free method to get more visibility. Lastly, you can collaborate with other influencers. If you find an influencer who is willing to cooperate and has a big audience, maybe they will agree to mention you in some of their posts.
Conclusion
Buying Instagram accounts is a common practice. But review the associated risks closely. Remaining ethical is best. You should bring value to your new followers, because if you use your account just to inflate your follower count, they will lose interest quickly.
We recommend buying them on trusted platforms, like Sebuda and Social Tradia. These marketplaces offer tools to inspect the quality of your account, and you can align your purchase with your brand message.
