How to create a successful brand, that generates a substantial income - where to start?

Moving an idea forward and supporting it, so that it can eventually support you, seeing your idea grow into something bigger than the initial concept is an exceptionally rewarding experience. Doing this might not be particularly for everyone, as it requires quite a significant input and a fair share of commitment along the way, however why not keep an open mind and give it a try if you have something to share with the world?

There is an introductory post to explain what this is all about and fill in the blanks, you can find it here.

This is a series of posts where you can follow my attempt to create a brand - I will be posting updates as I go, whether it fails or succeeds - doesn't matter. Whatever the outcome is, likely this experience may be useful to a lot of people in one way or another.

Where to start?
Well, so far I created an Instagram (IMSURROUNDEDBYSPIDERS) page showing the stuff I created, some people locally expressed genuine interest, so I gave a few products away for free just like that. I was just happy, that someone out there would be wearing my stuff with pleasure.

Now what to do next?
I wanted to give my products to some more or less well-known (at least on a smaller scale) people, like artists or musicians, who's work I respect.
That didn't go as well as I imagined and that is understandable, nobody really cares about some random dude on Instagram with 10 followers and 4 publications. None of the communication attempts actually lead anywhere, with the closest I got to my goal was "I'm busy at the moment, I'll let you know later". That's fine and totally understandable, no hard feelings at all.

Need to get a bigger audience
My next thought was "I need to collaborate with someone, who has a audience, which may potentially like my stuff".
So here I am trying my luck at that, again being a profile with 10 followers and 4 publications - most reqeusts were left hanging in the air, all but one.
The one above-mentioned request started off like this:

Although a minute later, which is when I suspect he actually checked out my profile, I got this message:

So it seems that without having a persuasive profile I can't really appeal to anyone, who I would like to promote my stuff or collaborate with.
And here I am doing, what millions of users in Instagram are doing and what I (to be honest) thought is a really boobish move - I am spam-subscribing to everybody and anybody who might potentially be interested in the products I have, I guess I will have to see whether it will be worth it..

That's it for this post, in the next one I will let you know how is this going, am I eventually attracting the attention I was hoping for.
For now I would love to hear something from you, how do you feel about using such a strategy, have you had a similar experience yourself or really anything else at all!

I am absolutely open to communicate via any possible channel personally if you want to talk to me about anything, so let me know in the comment section below.

Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you again!