Click Quick Scheme: How Instagram’s ‘Flipping’ Is Big Business – Some Selling for $55,000
Instagram accounts sell for up to $55,000 and have millions of followers.
Those who want to become Insta-famous place bids on the handles, hoping to take the name and unveil it in glory.
People also buy and “flip” accounts by growing their follower count to increase value before reselling them for double the original purchase price.
A similar account exchange occurred when Katherine Asplundh, who recently married a billionaire, tried to bully a woman, Kate, into selling her account, but she pushed back and told the newlywed that she could be banned from the platform.
Instagram accounts sell for tens of thousands of dollars on marketplace websites (pictured)
Katherine Asplundh (pictured) tried to bully a woman into selling her Instagram account
Users can release their username to someone else for free by changing their username, but accepting payments of any kind is not allowed.
Despite Instagram’s terms and conditions prohibiting the sale of accounts, users have continued to sell their accounts for thousands of dollars.
Marketplace websites like Social Tradia that allow people to sell not just their username but their entire platform (including followers) make it easy to exchange accounts.
People who have started a business are looking for established Instagram accounts.
One Reddit user said they have a business and are looking for an account with at least 1,000 followers to help them get started.
But other individuals may be looking for ways to commit cybercrime, as another Redditor wrote: ‘I would like to buy 10-15 accounts with a normal number of followers (between 100 and 300).
“This won’t be for marketing purposes, I just want the accounts to look like they belong to regular people.”
Social Tradia shows how many bids have been made for specific accounts, but it is unclear whether that is purely a marketing tool.
Similar to a website that lists homes, the site shows numerous business and marketing accounts with a photo, number of followers, original listing price and whether the price has been reduced.
A Food account with 359,000 followers was listed at $55,000, down from $70,000, while a Luxe Living account with 1.1 million followers was listed at $17,000, down from $25,000.
Katherine Asplundh (left) married Cabot Asplundh (right) and demanded to receive the new Instagram name, accusing the woman of using a fake name
By contacting the woman known only as Kate, who has since shared the messages on social media, the newlyweds have inadvertently gone viral.
Asplundh then continues to question the legitimacy of her name, which confirms that she is not American
Although Katherine wasn’t convinced, Instagram’s rules state that buying, licensing, or selling an account includes transferring “any aspect of your account,” such as usernames, passwords, or other login credentials.
There are still risks that Instagram could find out about these underground sales, and when Katherine, an influencer with 14,600 followers, demanded that Kate hand over her desired account name, @katherineasplundh, she was told: “I just googled and there it stated that selling my username will get me banned from Instagram.’
Katherine responded by arguing, “I bought my username in the past, but that’s actually not true. Celebrities do it all the time, so they all have their handles as their full names.
When Kate again refused to sell her username, she said, “I don’t want to get banned. Sorry!’ Katherine questioned the validity of Kate’s identity and threatened to report her on Instagram, claiming it wasn’t her real name.
A Luxe Living account with 1.1 million followers was listed for $17,000, down from $25,000.
“The family I just married into is the only Asplundh family in the US,” Katherine messaged Kate, who simply said, “I’m not American.”
Katherine demanded ID, which Kate refused, telling her she had sent a complaint to Instagram for violating the Terms and Conditions and for harassment.
“I was open to giving her my username,” Kate said The Philadelphia Inquirer.
‘I just didn’t want to sell it because I would get banned. After I replied to her, her messages came across as snarky, so I told myself, ‘Okay, this isn’t worth it.'”
Instagram does warn that it may ban users from buying or selling their accounts, but Thor Aarsand, a social media influencer from Norway, previously said Vox: “The thing is, Instagram can’t really know if an account has been sold or if it’s being managed.”
DailyMail.com has contacted Instagram for comment and to confirm how it can identify if an account has been sold.