I told artists I would pay them 10 cents per follower I gain . I gained two. Is this a a good marketing idea?

I am an indie author with basically no audience and no art budget, and I set myself a rule I am now slightly afraid of.

The rule: I pay ten cents per Instagram follower. Whatever my following is on the day I commission a piece of character art, times ten cents, is what the artist gets. No negotiating it up, no quietly skipping it when the number is embarrassing.

I have gained two followers. So commission number one pays 20 cents. I am going to send the 20 cents and screenshot it.

The reasoning, which is the part I want torn apart:

1. The rate card is the content. Nobody cares about another author posting character art. People do seem to care about a number going up, and about whether the guy actually pays. The absurd rate is what makes it a series instead of a post.

2. The artist is not being paid in exposure, they are being paid in ten cents plus the truth. I say in the ask that it is basically free work, I cap the request at a fifteen-minute sketch, the artist keeps full copyright, and I only take social rights. If I ever want it on a cover I come back and pay real rates. I would rather be told no than have someone feel hustled

3. The deliverable is the timelapse, not the drawing. A finished illustration is one static post. Someone drawing it in thirty seconds, vertical, is the thing the algorithm actually moves. I am commissioning a video and getting a picture for free, not the other way round.

4. Following becomes an act on behalf of the next artist. Every new follower is ten more cents in the next person's pocket. That is a better reason to hit follow than "I post about my book."

5. The escalation is the whole story. At 100k followers, which is the goal by the end of 2027, the same commission is a ten thousand dollar one. If it works, there is a chart with somebody's ten-cent sketch at the very bottom of it.

What I am unsure about:

- Does the joke curdle? At ten cents it is funny because it is obviously absurd. At 4,000 followers it is four hundred dollars, which is a real commission, and I am not sure where the bit stops being a bit.

- Is it going to read as cheapness to artists no matter how honest the ask is? I have tried to write the request so the answer is no, but I am the wrong person to judge that.

- Should the rate be per follower gained rather than per total follower? Total means I am paying for followers I got in 2025 over and over. Per gained means the rate can go down, which kills the chart.

- Is there a version of this that does not depend on me being the one who is broke? I would like it to still work at scale.

If you have run something where the audience sets the price, I would really like to hear how it aged.