Instagram Promotions???

Riddle me this, has anyone seen substantial gains by paying for promotion on other IG channels/pages?

It seems that as soon as one of my posts go live I get a few likes, which is nice, but it seems the only comments I get are people telling me to promote my post/book on some account that has a bunch of "followers". Are the followers real or bots, I can't say.

Early on after the release of Book 2, I did opt to promote that book on an IG channel but for the next 48 hours after that promo post went up all I did was respond to people asking me to promote with them through their channel/page. Most were pretty nice when I politely declined but some were rather pushy and I had to get a little rude to prove my point.

The promo post didn't really do anything to increase my followers by much more than a dozen or so, most of whom were the ones DMing me wanting me to pay them to do what I had already paid someone else to do.

The quarterly sales report for that quarter did not show any major increase of sales for Book 1 or any surprise sales figures for Book 2 in its initial release period. This begs the question, at least to me, of is it really worthwhile to promote your work through IG "influencers". I mean, if they have 250k followers that's great but if paying them to promote my book doesn't generate sales or new followers for me, is it really worth it?

Granted, most of the people in my inbox asking me to promote on their page didn't ask for much money (usually less than $50) but if I paid each one of them that would add up to several hundreds of dollars being spent on what, an endless supply of other people DMing me trying to get my money for basically posting what I could post on my own page? I'm not interested in that repetitive cycle but rather the cycle of finding a promotional service, or services, that actually results in organic followers and hopefully sales. It would be nice to earn back some of the money I've spent on getting these books released even though that is not a do-or-die goal for me.

I don't mind people DMing me to ask me questions about my books, my experiences, to compare notes, or anything like that but when every comment is "promote it on <insert channel here>", it is a little disheartening. It seems that my posts are only being seen by those who want something from me, mainly money, and not those I want to read the books. Instead of my posts being seen by my target audience, I am the target of these groups who use my posts to inundate me with their brief sales pitch, which is usually followed up with a lengthier one in my inbox.

I may try letting someone promote my work on IG for me again at a later date but it will be after I've sat down and looked at the history of things a bit more and maybe try to track down some of the people that had used those services in the past to see what actual came from it. I'm not above spending money on something I want but if I'm going to spend the money on it, I want it to at least work to the extent I want it to. I won't piss away money letting strangers make posts on IG that bring no value back to me.

And don't take this post as an invitation to tell me how great your channel is or how many followers you have. I'm not looking for IG promotions at this time, especially considering how the last one turned out. If all you have to say in my comments is "promote it on <whatever>", just leave it at that. If you have actually used on of those groups to promote you book and saw a solid return on your investment, then by all means send me a DM because I'd love to hear more.