Summary4 min read

Podcast Summary: Great New Courses – Online eLearning With The Best Coaches

Episode: Jasper Claus – Filmastery – Free Download Course
Host: Eric Mega Download
Date: May 27, 2026

Episode Overview

In this insightful episode, Eric Mega Download breaks down a controversial experiment by Jasper Claus, exploring the world of AI influencers, fake followers, and the economics behind Instagram brand deals. The episode takes a behind-the-scenes look at the process of creating a 100% AI-generated influencer, artificially inflating follower counts, and then approaching brands to measure their due diligence around social media partnerships. The conversation touches on entrepreneurship, marketing psychology, the blurred lines of authenticity, and the ethical (and legal) risks inherent in leveraging fake online credibility for profit.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Building the AI Influencer: The Concept and Setup

Jasper explains the experiment: creating an AI-generated personality for Instagram and attempting to monetize it through sponsorships—after buying thousands of fake followers to boost the account’s perceived legitimacy.
Defines an AI influencer as “an account on Instagram where the person that's showcasing their life isn't actually real and is 100% AI.”

“An AI influencer…can do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want, and they never run the risk of getting canceled…” (A, 02:20)
Motivation: To see if brands can be fooled by numbers alone and whether the fake status of an influencer’s following deters them.

2. The Process: Acquiring Fake Followers and Engagement

Jasper documents the simple, low-cost process of buying Instagram followers and likes from third-party websites (famestate.com), highlighting how easily social proof can be fabricated for as little as $8.
Purchased 10,000 fake followers and 200–500 likes per post to enhance the appearance of popularity.
Comments on the inauthenticity of purchased engagement, but doubts brands will bother to check beneath the surface.

3. Testing the Waters: Outreach and Brand Interest

Initial strategy: Wait for inbound interest from brands, only receiving basic affiliate/ambassador offers at first.
Decides to become proactive, directly emailing and DMing brands, pitching the unique efficiencies of AI influencers.
Experiment seeks to answer two pivotal questions:
- Will brands work with AI influencers?
- Will brands notice or care about fake followers?
Notable insight: The follower count threshold matters more than the reality behind it. Micro influencers are less attractive, even if their numbers are padded.
Escalates investment, boosting the follower tally to 60,000, but still faces rejection.

4. Pricing and Brand Negotiations

Initially attempts to secure $500 per post, experiences zero conversions.
Lowers rate to $150 per post, reasoning that with 60,000 followers, brands would see this as a steal.
A few dozen more emails later, a breakthrough: one brand bites, offering $300 for an image post.
Reveals the breathtaking ease of this transaction:

“We literally just convinced this brand to give us $300 for an image post…they immediately came back with like an offer. So that's kind of crazy. We didn't even have to negotiate.” (A, 15:40)

5. Lessons Learned and Ethical Pitfalls

The experiment demonstrates how brands often fail to verify influencer legitimacy, risking their marketing budgets on fake impressions.
Key warning:

“If you’re a brand on Instagram, this should be one lesson you should take from this video. Check if the followers are real, because they might not be. And you could potentially be throwing money away, which I think most of them are.” (A, 17:03)
Jasper notes the theoretical profitability of running such a scam, but stresses the legal consequences:

“You could definitely make a lot of money doing this. The only problem is it would be fraud and you’d probably end up in jail. So unless you want to end up in jail, maybe don't do this.” (A, 17:45)

Notable Quotes & Moments

01:10 – “Apparently 49% of all influencers on Instagram have bought fake followers…and that includes the likes of Katy Perry, the Kardashians, Chris Brown and Miley Cyrus.”
09:40 – “I realized that actually that was not the case. People wanted to work with the AI influencer account, but they just didn't want to work with a micro AI influencer because I guess we just didn't have enough followers for us to be worth their time.”
16:50 – “They literally offered us 300 real dollars for 0 real followers. But the thing is, if they just checked if the followers were real or not…they would immediately be able to tell that our followers weren’t actually real. But they didn’t check.”

Important Segment Timestamps

00:00–02:20 – What is an AI influencer and why brands might be interested.
03:40–06:15 – Process of buying fake followers and likes; setting up the account.
07:00–10:00 – Initial brand outreach, pitch strategy, and first lessons about credibility.
11:30–13:00 – Scaling up: buying more followers, expanding pitches.
15:40–17:00 – Securing the first paid offer, reflections on brand (in)attention.
17:30–End – Ethical/Legal wrap-up and cautionary advice to both brands and would-be scammers.

Takeaways

Surface-level metrics still drive brand decisions in influencer marketing, despite easy avenues for fraud.
AI-generated personas plus fabricated engagement can deceive inattentive—or desperate—brands.
Vetting influencer authenticity remains essential for marketers to avoid wasting budget and harming brand reputation.
While the system can be gamed, the risks—from fragile reputation to outright illegality—are significant and real.
Entrepreneurial curiosity can expose system flaws, but ethical boundaries must not be crossed.

For anyone interested in the intersection of AI, digital marketing, and entrepreneurship, this episode offers a provocative—and cautionary—exploration of modern influencer culture.

Loading summary

Transcript1 lines

[00:01]
A
In this video, I'm going to be building an AI influencer. Then I'm going to be buying her between 10 to 20,000 fake followers. Then we're going to be seeing if it's possible to use and leverage those fake followers to somehow make money online. We're going to be building an AI influencer account and see if it's possible to leverage the followers on the account to get some sponsorships and brand deals. We're not going to be taking the brand deals, but I still want to see if it's possible to even get a paid brand deal after spending only like $20 buying some followers. So what is an AI influencer? Well, it sounds exactly like what it is. It's an account on Instagram where the person that's showcasing their life isn't actually real and is 100% AI. So basically we're going to be creating an AI personality and posting a bunch of pictures of her on Instagram so we can get some brand deals and get paid from some companies. But we're going to be adding an extra step because we're going to be giving her fake followers to make sure that those brand deals want to sign with us and treat us to some pretty high checks. And I know what you're thinking, no way. These brands are way too small. They will never fall for fake Instagram followers. Well, apparently 49% of all influencers, influencers on Instagram have bought fake followers and that includes the likes of Katy Perry, the Kardashians, Chris Brown and Miley Cyrus to say the least, with about 33 of their followers being fake. So I just created a new Instagram account right now. And so we need to put some content on the account so that, you know, brands want to work with. I actually think a lot of brands are going to be happy with this proposition. I mean, think about it. If you're a brand, who would you rather pick? A normal influencer, An AI influencer who can do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want, and they never run the risk of getting canceled or having, you know, questionable opinions. And I think if I sell the idea of a influences like that to a brand, they could potentially side with us and give us a brand deal. Or before we even get to that point, we first need to get taken seriously. And so we're going to need to gain some followers. Now, the right thing to do and what I would do in the future, I wasn't running low on time, is I would just go ahead and just start growing this account by Posting a bunch of AI influencer pictures. But in the sake of time and the fact that I don't want to spend three weeks making this video, I'm going to go ahead now and get some fake followers just to speed up this process. So because of that, I'm going to go into this website called Fame State, onto a website called famestate.com the sponsors of today's video. We literally went onto the website, clicked on add funds. I clicked the stripe option because stripes are trustworthy company and I could get a quick refund if this didn't work. I clicked on the 20 option because that's all we need to get some decent fake followers. Then we click pay, plugged in our credit card details and then we had 20 added onto the website. Then we clicked on this. Instagram followers here chose this option. We added the link to our Instagram page over here, buying 10,000 followers, which came out to about $8. Click submit and we finally got 10,000 fake followers. We also coupled it with 200 to 500 likes per post on each post. The only problem I will admit was the comment section. Like we had a bunch of almost inauthentic comments, but I'm pretty sure most brands won't even check the comments section. To be honest. If you guys want to buy the follows for yourself, the link will be in the description. They're pretty cheap if you ask me. But now that we had the AI Instagram influencer and now we had the Instagram account figured out, it was now time to actually generate some cash from this and get some goddamn brand deals. And you won't believe this, but after following a couple of celebrities on the account and just being active on the account, we received a couple of DMS from companies. But these were the normal affiliate ambassador links and not what we actually wanted. What I wanted actually get a paid Instagram brand deal and I could just sit around for weeks on end waiting for a brand deal to come around. Or I could just be proactive and go ahead and DM and email some of these brands about our AI influencer, talking about the benefits of using this account. And so that's exactly what I did. Okay, so I'm going to go email and then DM a couple of brands to test a couple of things. First thing, I want to test the brands even want to work with an AI influencer. I think they should if we pitch this correctly. And, and then secondly, I want to test if brands will even check if we have real or fake followers. I mean, if they don't check. If you have real or fake followers, then that is a massive issue. I mean, think about it. We've spent $20 getting 10,000 followers and if we charge like $200 for a brand deal, we've immediately made like what, $150, $180 in profit in literally a day. And if you were unethical, we would literally capitalize on it. Basically. I think most of these guys will check if we have fake followers, but I wonder if how many people would check and how many people would. So I started DMing a ton of Instagram brands. Some of the bigger brands like Fashion Nova, and also some of the smaller brands that sold jewelry and other women's products. We sent a ton of emails and the template from these emails was pretty simple. We basically sold the idea of an AI influencer being better than a normal influencer, much more efficient, being able to get the job done in literally 24 hours and with none of the hassle. And initially this pitch didn't work. Basically a lot of these brands didn't want to work with us. And I thought that this was because they could tell that we had a bunch of fake followers. But I realized, realized that actually that was not the case. People wanted to work with the AI influencer account, but they just didn't want to work with a micro AI influencer because I guess we just didn't have enough followers for us to be worth their time. And so we spot 50, 000 more followers bumping up our follower account from 12000 to now 60, 000. We also bought tens of thousands of likes sending about 12 different emails to different online brands. I finished massive Instagram account in three days. About 20 emails have been sent and we have gotten zero conversions. No brand deals so far. And I don't think it's because these brands have fig big followers. I think it's because I'm overcharged. Media kits, which is basically how much I try to charge these brands, is about $500 for a picture post. So maybe I should decrease that from 500 to maybe $150 and then see if we can actually fool these brands into skipping us a contract. So yeah, my last bet is decreasing my prices and I think 60,000 followers and $150 for a picture. That was a no brainer and any brand would say yes to that. So in order to entice these brands to actually give us their money, we had to decrease the prices and liter another couple of dozens of emails basically saying, hey, we can Promote your restaurants, we can promote your jewelry brand, we can promote your company for only $150. And we knew this was gonna work because, I mean, this is an absolute no brainer if you are a brand. I mean, usually 60,000 follower accounts charge thousands of dollars. We were charging 150 and not even long after making that decision. Okay, so we literally just convinced this brand to give us $300 for an image post. Actually, we didn't even convince them. After sending out email, they immediately came back with like an offer. So that's kind of crazy. We didn't even have to negotiate. So they literally offered us 300 real dollars for 0 real followers. But the thing is, if they just checked if the followers were real or not, just literally spent 10 seconds checking, they would immediately be able to tell that our followers weren't actually real. But they didn't check. And most brands won't check, considering it only cost us $100 to get like 50,000 fake followers. And we could potentially make $300 if we take this brand deal. We just could potentially make $200 in profit. So if you're a brand on Instagram, this should be one lesson you should take from this video. Check if the followers are real, because they might not be. And you could potentially be throwing money away, which I think most of them are. And now there's only one type of person still watching this video. Someone who thinks they could run their own pseudo follower business. You could definitely make a lot of money doing this. The only problem is it would be fraud and you'd probably end up in jail. So unless you want to end up in jail, maybe don't do this. Anyway, watch this video to see another cool way we probably made money online.