So if you go on Google and search for “How do I buy followers?” you’ll come across a company called Devumi. Tell me about them.Ĭonfessore: That’s true. Ryssdal: Should it happen that I wanted to go out and buy myself a million followers - which for the record, I don’t want and haven’t done - there’s a company you talk about who will happily provide me. So it really pays for itself quite quickly if you can fool the advertisers who are paying you. But guess what? You can buy that million followers for just $2,000.

If you have a million followers, you can earn $20,000. So the current market rates are roughly: If you have 100,000 followers, you might get $2,000 for a promotional tweet. So there is a data from Captivate, which is an influencer agency, and they provide this data to us. Somebody with, like, 100,000 followers gets X amount of dollars for an endorsing tweet, and somebody with a million followers gets, like, some multiple thereof. Kai Ryssdal: There is an amazing statistic in this piece. And they came back with a profound story called “ The Follower Factory,” along with some grade-A digital graphics and design folks. Nick Confessore, one of the reporters, spoke to host Kai Ryssdal. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation. A company called Devumi can do just that for you - you just have to pay for it.Ī group of investigative reporters from The New York Times went inside social media’s black market to examine the process and effects of fake follower purchases. If you want to gain thousands of followers on Twitter overnight, it is not that hard.

Black market meaning