How bidding works
The whole product is one rule: the account with the highest standing bid in a category sits at #1. Everything below is the fine print of that sentence.
The rule
Highest standing bid ranks first
Within each category, accounts are ordered by the total they have paid. Accounts with no bid sit below every paying account, ordered by the follows they actually drove. Follower count never affects position — a 2,000-follower personal account can outrank a 300,000-follower vlogger by paying more.
Bids are cumulative, not replacements
Your standing bid is the sum of every bid ever placed on that account. Paying $25 twice puts you at $50, not $25.
Ties go to whoever got there first
Two accounts on the same total? The one that reached it earlier stays ahead. To pass someone you have to exceed them — matching isn't enough.
There is no auction close
The board is live and permanent. No rounds, no deadline, no end date on a placement. You hold your position until somebody pays more.
Getting outbid is not a refund event
Bids are non-refundable. If you get passed, your money stays where it is and your options are to top up or sit lower. Minimum first bid $5; minimum top-up $1.
Every category is its own auction
#1 in Travel has nothing to do with #1 in Memes. Quiet categories are cheap to win, and the front page mixes all of them together, so a cheap #1 in a quiet category still gets seen.
Two buttons, counted separately
Every listing has a View profile button and a Follow button. Both open the same Instagram profile, because Instagram has no follow-intent link and we're not going to pretend otherwise. What differs is what we record — and that matters more than it sounds.
Follow rate is measured against follow taps only. Divide follows by everyone who merely looked and you get a flattering number that tells you nothing. Divide by the people who arrived meaning to subscribe and you get something you can actually make a decision with.
What you're actually buying
A position, and the traffic that position happens to produce. Not a number of views, not a number of followers, and not a promise about either. We publish every number for every listing precisely so you can judge whether the spot is worth the money — including before you bid.
Your own dashboard additionally breaks clicks down by the rank you held when they happened, which is the only honest way to answer “is #1 worth 3× #4?”
How follows get counted
Views and follow taps are easy — every tap goes through our redirect, so we count it server-side along with which button produced it. Actual follows are harder, because Instagram gives third parties no attribution data at all. So there are two honest routes, and your listing shows which one produced each number:
- A follow postback. If you run any kind of tooling over your account, POST one request per new follower, ideally carrying the
?followersbid=token from the click. Token present, we call it deterministic. No token but a matching device fingerprint within 24 hours, probabilistic. - Daily follower counts. Post (or type in) your follower count once a day. A rise gets credited as snapshot follows — but only up to the number of clicks we actually sent you in that window. If a reel goes viral, that growth is recorded and explicitly not claimed as ours.
What gets rejected
- Accounts that don't exist, are private, or aren't yours.
- Inflated follower counts. An operator checks the real number before approving and corrects it on the way in.
- Bought followers and engagement pods. You are welcome to buy a position here; you are not welcome to fake the audience it buys.
- Falsely claiming Instagram verification, or a tagline that misrepresents the account. You buy position, not the right to lie in it.
- Anything illegal, and anything sexual involving minors.
Ready?
Listing is free. $5 is enough to take #1 in any category nobody has claimed yet.