Living The Red Life - How We Make Millions on Instagram

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

Are you looking for a social media platform that delivers organic growth that you can monetize? Look no further than Instagram, where you can create a tribe, post regular content in a sustainable manner, and then look to monetize, in time, with high-ticket items or product endorsements.Rudy is in studio, perched on his Red Lips sofa, preaching to those of us still playing around with everything from Facebook to TikTok. He's sharing why Instagram covers the widest audience, how it allows for organic growth, and what you can do to make money off of the platform somewhere down the line. As always, Rudy is reverse-engineering the problem: he's looking at his money-making goals, and then looking at ways to spend money to make it back. He's rubbing shoulders with all the major players and influencers out there who, while they may be telling you they're just doing it for the fans, are shrewdly building an audience (their tribe) so that monetization opportunities will follow in due course. Insights this smart should come with a premium subscription fee. Come and get involved while it's here for free. Living The Red Life with Rudy Mawer starts now!"Overall, for organic growth, Instagram is my favorite." ~ Rudy MawerThe first 1000 to click here and send the promo code from the podcast can claim one of my courses for FREE!  - https://m.me/rudymawerlife In This Episode:Why Instagram is Rudy's favorite social media platformHow to reverse engineer your money-making goals Using Instagram to showcase what your business is up toAppreciating the sustainability factor of InstagramWhat structure and strategy should you apply on Instagram to form a tribe?What is a high-ticket item that you can sell on Instagram?What is your next step? Creating content and sourcing ideasHow do you grow your Instagram audience? Why planning on going viral is like buying a lottery ticketAnd more!Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

Beauty of Instagram for a lot of you is, is achievable, right? It's sustainable, which is super important. You want something achievable and sustainable because that's what makes social media great. If you can't do a big YouTube video every week and then you do one and then get busy for two weeks and it's not going to work out for you, it's not going to stay consistent

and then it's not going to work and you're not going to get the growth that you are hoping for. My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life.

What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we are going to dive into the world of Instagram. Instagram is one of my favorite platforms, one of the platforms we spend a lot of time on, and one of the platforms we're making millions of dollars on. And it's a very exciting platform. And of course, I'm not guaranteeing

you'll make millions of dollars on it after this one episode, but I do hope it'll give you an insight into the power of it, how to utilize it, how we're using it effectively to drive traffic, to grow our business, to grow our companies. And now we're helping other people do the same. And also how Instagram can get you these major deals and the reputation management behind Instagram and how it adds a lot of credibility. So Instagram obviously is a platform started off

with photo. It now is a mix of video and photo. Obviously, it moved to reels. And as the times adapt and as the world changes and as new social media platforms arrive, Instagram's always adapting. And I would say as an all-round platform, Instagram probably has the broadest demographic. You know, Facebook, often people reference as an older demographic, TikTok, Snapchat, a younger demographic. And I see Instagram's kind of slap bang in the middle of, hey, there are some younger people on there

and there are some older people on there. And the beauty of Instagram is obviously because of its, you know, it's part of Facebook and vice versa, using those two combined, you really do cover everyone. And if I had to pick one platform, for me, it would be Instagram. I mean, YouTube's a close second in terms of its ability to engage the user because of how long people spend watching videos. And then obviously, Facebook is my go-to for the ad side of things. But overall for organic growth, Instagram is my favorite.

And we recently in the last half a year, a year focused a lot on how do we turn this platform into profit? Because at the end of the day, what I always teach is if you're going to spend a lot of time, energy and effort actually working on making something great, you probably want to figure out

how to ROI from it because money will fuel everything. So if you start a YouTube channel, you're going to figure out how to ROI from it because money will fuel everything. So if you start a YouTube channel, you're going to spend tens of hours making videos, video editors, maybe props. And eventually you're going to go, well, I want to make money from this so I can make this even better and keep doing this. And I always say, start with that in mind, right? So having an idea of how do I make money on this is going to keep you motivated and

it's going to make financial sense and business sense to go even further and push even more so for me Instagram we were doing okay but then I was really like well if I want to get to a million followers which was my goal this year how do I do it and then how do I make a lot of money from it because I know if I can make a lot of money from it, I can spend a lot of money to get there. So we're always looking with like that reverse engineered financial goal in mind. And, you know, sometimes when you really want to grow something organic for a period of time, it's good to not maybe start that way. And it's good to go, I'm just going to put out free content. I'm going to make it amazing. And I'm going to trust it's going to pay back, right?

Some other gurus reference that. And I partially agree, but secretly, I know all of these gurus know that eventually they'll make a shit ton of money from it, right? So it's kind of, they're still saying the same thing. They're like, well, I'm going to not sell anything for the first year, get to a million subscribers, but don't be fooled. They know when they're at a million subscribers, they can launch a live event. They can do a free opt-in and grow an email list, and then they'll sell on the email list. They can grow their personal brand and build an agency

behind it and grow a multi-million dollar agency. So everyone is always reverse engineering how to make money from it, whether they tell you they are or they're not, right? They really are. So understanding the plan, right? Understanding the long-term plan, the long-term vision, and how do you make a financial model from it is super important. And then, you know, in terms of the next stage with Instagram, if you're looking to grow it,

if you're a business owner, a personal brand, I think it's gonna give you that all-round reach. It's going to give you the ability to do some cool videos, the ability to keep people updated on your business, your lifestyle, your progress as a personal brand or your company brand. It's going to give the users the ability to see what you're doing as a company. I love it because we showcase, if you look at my Instagram, and don't get me wrong, we don't have the best engagement, but for us, it's a great platform to showcase which supports everything else we're doing. It's a great platform to drive leads. It's a great platform to highlight what we do as a company and all our ventures that gets everyone excited. So when we send emails, when we run Facebook ads, when we host live events, when people meet me in person, they feel they know me and they know my journey and they know what I'm up to.

And whether they comment or not, they're watching, right? The amount of people that message in our DMs, we get hundreds of DMs and they might not comment because they don't want it to be public or they might see me at an event and they've been following every single post I made. They might not comment, but they've been watching. So you've got to realize this, that a lot of people, even if they're not engaging, they're still watching. And that gives that platform for you to show off the amazing work that you do or the amazing products you have as a business. And it's super easy to do. You know, the downside to YouTube and these other platforms is, you know, a good YouTube video has to be scripted. It has to be highly edited. It has to, or for the most part, it has to be well planned.

And, you know, it's going to take a couple of hours or a few hours. It's not going to be a, hey, let's do a couple of stories off the cuff every day. Let's post a couple of nice images and then find someone on Upwork to do a 60 second reel, right? So the beauty of Instagram for a lot of you is it's achievable, right? It's sustainable, which is super important. You want something achievable and sustainable because that's what makes social media great. If you can't do a big YouTube video every week and then you do one and then get busy for two weeks and it's not going to work out for you. It's not going to stay consistent and then it's not going to work and you're not going to get the growth that you are hoping for. So all those benefits of Instagram, great place to showcase. And then let's dive into

like the structure and strategy, right? So everything when you come to growing an Instagram or growing a social, for me, I always start with the platform and the messaging, right? So what am I trying to achieve on here? What am I trying to be known for? Why are people going to follow me? And you have to realize people are going to follow you because they want to engage. They want to interact.

They want to be part of your tribe. So how are you building messaging and how are you building all this? So they're part of your tribe. So how are you building messaging? And how are you building all this? So they're part of your tribe. So they want to follow you and get your content every single day. And a lot of people, they never really figure this out. They just post randomly. There's no structure. There's no core messaging that stays consistent, whether it's motivational stories, whether it's side hustles, whether it's how to sell on Amazon, whether it's how women can lose weight over 40, whether it's healthy recipes in five minutes or less. You need a theme like that, right? All those examples I just gave are great themes. They're

great themes where you become known for that thing. And if you look at all the biggest channels or platforms and Instagram accounts, they all have that consistent theme. So how do you pick a theme? How do you pick a theme that's easy to translate onto the platform? So if you have a great theme, but they're all super long videos and they're not very eye-catching because it's a visual platform. If they're not very eye-catching, you might have a great theme, but if you can't make it work on that platform, it's not a great pick, right? It has to be something that fits well on that platform. And that's why you see so many, you know, models and OnlyFans and fitness models.

They crush it on Instagram because it's a super visual platform. So it's very easy to see someone in a bikini or see a male fitness model on the beach, right? And it's great for recipes. Recipes do well, right? Because a 30 second video showing this great food, right? This great dish being made or the final product, and then they show you all the steps. It's super visual. So try it. And if you look at my account, it's super visual, right? I've turned my personal brand that's super visual, like the backdrop today, if you're watching this on video, and we work very hard to make it super visual because that catches people's eye and it grabs

attention. So pick your messaging, pick your theme, stay consistent with your theme and make sure it's super visual because that's what will grab attention. Okay. Now let's move into the monetization strategy, right? So you've got this consistency, you've got this theme, we've now got to think how do we monetize this and how do we grow it? Well, monetization is, you know, how do you make money in simple terms? What is the strategy to make money from this platform? And there's a few strategies, right? Obviously, the most obvious is selling your own products. The next obvious one, which a lot of people do, which I don't think is the best, by the way, but what most people do is sell other people's products their influencers right and i work with some of

these influencers i always encourage them hey don't sell other people's because you're just diluting your brand and you don't own the customer which is the real value build your own brand right build your own brand and start selling your own products and if you look at the influencers that have done that they make way more money and they're way more successful. So you've got selling, you know, your own products and your own brand. You've got selling other people's products. The next one is shout outs, right? So people will literally pay you for the ad space, what I call ad space, right?

So if you do a post and you have a million followers and you post a picture of their product or a shout out of them as maybe their account, that's ad space. They're buying a space to advertise on your profile. And again, I think that's a suboptimal way. But for a lot of people, it's easy money, right? They have a big following. They don't want to start a brand, don't want to start a business. They make 10, 20 grand a month doing reposts and shout outs and maybe

affiliate offers. That's what they do. Okay. So there's all these different ways to monetize it. Obviously, in my opinion, the best one is you own the brand, you own the product. One of the best ways I think to monetize Instagram is through high ticket. That's what we specialize in. That's what we do. And that's what we help members do. And if you don't know what high ticket means, high ticket for us, at least in context for us, it means a higher level offer, generally a couple of thousand dollars or more. And, you know, that could be fitness coaching. It could be accounting. It could be legal advice. It could be how to start your own business, how to build an Amazon store, how to build a Shopify store. So you have all of these different

opportunities to sell something for thousands of dollars. And you go, well, really, would someone really pay $2,000 on how to start a business or to learn how to start an e-commerce store? And absolutely they would. And we have hundreds of clients that do that. So Instagram is a great platform to sell these high level services. And you might wonder, well, how do you do that? You just post like, hey, learn how to start a Shopify store. And some of the times you do, and I'll dive into that now. So the way that we and several other people make millions of dollars with Instagram is using it conversationally, is using it to create a brand, right? Like we've done, build a tribe, have great content, but then on the back end, having certain calls to action strategically placed where people can

take that next step. So say I wanted to sell how to start an e-commerce physical product business. I might do content every single day about my lifestyle, how having these Shopify stores has changed my life, how I was able to quit my job as a personal trainer, and how I now travel the world. And I might talk about how this one product here is making millions of dollars on Amazon. I might talk about this Shopify store that's making, you know, all these product sales. And I might talk about this new product like that I'm launching. So you're building this consistency, right? You're building this theme. Then I might talk about how you can start, you know, three simple steps to start your own Shopify store, right? And then you're teaching. And then at the end of that pause, whether it's a 60 second

video, whether it's a carousel, whether it end of that post, whether it's a 60 second video, whether it's a carousel, whether it's three slides, or whether it's a single image with three lines, at the end, you might say, DM me or go to my link in bio, right? If you want to learn more, or you want us to show you how, or you want us to give you a pre-setup Shopify store, right? So where people can shortcut time, they can shortcut success, whether it's going to be you showing them exactly what to do or whether it's going to be you doing it for them,

that's a high ticket offer. And then those people might go and direct message you. They might go to the link in the bio and click and book a call and you're using it to generate leads. Obviously, now they get on a phone call. Generally, we always have phone call as the next step because if someone wants to spend thousands of dollars, we want to vet that it's

right for them and they're right for us and they're not going to be a pain and they're not going to blow their last amount of money and be living on credit costs because we don't want that. And we're going to go for expectations. So we're going to work through and make sure this is a good fit for both parties. And that model there is an amazing model. It sounds very simple, but it really is that simple. And obviously there's lots of micro parts within it that you have to optimize. But from a simplicity of a business model, there's people making millions of dollars just doing that. Now, of course, I have a big company and we do a lot of other things and it's a small part of our overall revenue. But for us, it's one of the most profitable. And the reason I love it is it fits in with our brand. We're already going to be running Instagram and doing Instagram

anyway, because we want to do it for our overall brand and our following and to grow a tribe. And now we're able to monetize from it. We're able to make money from it. So that's allowed me to build a video team of two, three, four people. It's allowed me to have a couple of dedicated designers. It's allowed me to have a full-time social media manager that I didn't have for a long time. And now I might spend 25 grand a month on a team because I'm able to make, say, 200 grand a month back, right? Or whatever that number is. That's just an example. So for me, that's why I love the ability to make money.

Because once I have the ability to make money from it, I can now pump more resources and invest back into it to make it even better. And that, to me, is what entrepreneurship and business is, right? It's like, take something, figure it out, bootstrap it yourself, do it all yourself, make some money from it, hire a couple of people. Now you can take it to that next phase. Okay, now you can hire five more people and take it to that next phase. And obviously some people stop around there and now they make good profit and they have this small little boutique couple of employee business or freelancers. I like big businesses. So I just keep doing that and keep doing that and keep doing that

and keep doing that. And that's how you eventually grow a company of a thousand employees, right? So for you, if you're listening to this today and you have an Instagram, the first thing, remember, is really take a step back and don't worry if you have to start over. You have to redo all your stuff and redo your theme. You can start a new account if you don't have a big following or you can just build off the existing one. But just figure out, okay, well, how do I really create this theme? Okay, good. I got the theme. How do I start creating consistent content? How do I create a filming schedule? I'm going to film twice a week. I'm going to go on Fiverr and hire a designer. They're going to do three or four posts. I'm going to do two hours of research a week where I'm looking at other people similar to me and getting concepts and ideas, or I'm looking at

competitors or people in totally different industries, but looking at how they're doing all the styles, right? That's the next step. After that, it's now obviously doing it, right? And then the final stage is, well, how do I monetize it? Do I have products and services? What do I have where I can use it to make money on the back end, right? And that's obviously the most important part because then you can use that money to invest and make it bigger, right? Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests.

And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far or any previous episode or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you

hit a five star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes, and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram, at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30-second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot.

I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. And then the final part that you're all wondering, right, is, well, how do I grow it? How do I get millions of people? Well, obviously, that's the hardest part, right? And I always teach one strategy is continuous posting chasing that viral reach right it's continuous posting looking at viral topics and finding that like how do i go viral how do i post so i can go viral well i see that kind of like betting like

hey i want to be a millionaire i'm gonna buy lottery tickets i would personally never do that because i want to control my own fate and i don't want to leave my own destiny and fate to the chance, a small chance, very small chance of winning the lottery. And I see going viral in a similar sense. Like, hey, I can, you know, I can pick the best content, do all my research, but there's a big piece of luck there, right? There's an AI, there's an algorithm that's ever evolving, that's randomized, that you don't control, you don't know. Honestly, most people don't know, right? They have concepts and ideas and they have the best practices, but they really don't know. So to me, I see that as, hey, well, let's go and create a business or create a way

to make a million dollars and buy lottery tickets as well. And if by chance I win the lottery, then that's amazing. It's going to expedite everything else I'm doing. But if I don't win the lottery, then I'm not going to look back in two years and go, well, that sucked. That was a waste of time. I regret that decision. So my idea for you, right, and what I'm trying to say here is the going viral and just posting to go viral is to me a little more of a lottery ticket. I mean, it's a good idea to focus on all the viral aspects because that's what makes good video. But don't have that as your only strategy. Have other strategies to grow your account. And if you do get some videos that go viral, good for you, right?

And it's only going to expedite your growth. But other strategies, right, that are going to help you grow are collaborations, doing collaborations with other people that have your audiences, whether you have to pay for them, exchange services, build relationships. And simply, that starts by doing outreach to these other people that share audiences and posting backwards and forwards and doing lives together and co-posts and collaborations. The next thing is doing giveaways. Giveaways have become very popular. And that's where you can use a giveaway to grow your audience. And you pay a few thousand dollars and someone manages it and they get five or 10 or 20 people that all pay a

couple of grand and then they go to a celebrity and pay them 50 grand to do a post and a giveaway, right? I don't personally do that because you get a lot of random people that want free stuff and I want to sell expensive stuff and people that do giveaways for free stuff don't buy expensive stuff. So for me, it's not my avatar. But if you were selling a how to quit your nine to five, how to have a side hustle, how to, you know, invest $100, that audience might be great for you, right? It's about knowing your audience. So the next one after that is paid ads, right? That's what I do. And I run paid ads on Facebook with the Instagram setting to grow it, or I will do paid placement.

I talked about that earlier where I'm going to the big pages with a million, 2 million, 3 million, 5 million followers, and it's an audience that follow an account similar to mine, and I'm reaching out to them and saying, hey, can I pay you $1,000 or whatever it is, $500 to do a post with my image, right? Or a motivational quote for me or a lesson, free ways to start an e-commerce business, right? Can I pay you to just post that and say, hey, my friend is da-da-da-da-da, follow him to learn more, right?

And they obviously have to do their disclaimer at the bottom and say it's an ad. But to me, that's the best way. And you might go, well, really, that's a lot of money. I can't afford it. Well, remember this whole episode I've taught, you've got to build a financial model around it so you can afford it, right? And if you are able to spend a thousand a day, 30 grand a month and make back 30,000 a month from selling products, that's a win. You're getting

$30,000 a month of free growth. That would probably equate to 30,000 people, right? About a dollar a follower. And imagine if you did that for a whole year, you made zero profit, but you now had 360,000 followers that were genuine, that followed you because of educational content and were your audience, right? Think how much you could make from that. You could stop that after a year and do the same for another year and now make $360,000 maybe, right? By selling those people products. And I'm, again, not saying you'll do that, but there's so much value in breaking even and growing a big following.

And most people don't have that investment mindset, right? They don't have that mindset of investing to make more money long term. They want to make short term profit. And that's why they're never successful long-term. So look at that as like the best model, in my opinion, where you're running ads or you're paying for placements. You might throw in a couple of giveaways to get bigger numbers. If you care about that, I don't.

But some people want to just get to a million straight away. And then obviously, content is king, right? I'm not saying don't do good content. This is all based off doing great content and if you, you know, fingers crossed, some of it goes viral, then awesome for you, right? So that's the 101 on Instagram. That's how we make millions a year

in, you know, 20 minutes or so and it's how we've grown the platform so big. It's how we cash flow from it and just remember it started small. I didn't have a big video team. I didn't have full-time designers. I didn't have a social media manager. I did have video editors and designers on my agency, which I use to do my own stuff. You can find people on Upwork or Fiverr, freelancers for super cheap, $10, $20, $30 a video. You can find designers for $5, $10. You can go on Canva and do your own stuff.

There's no excuse of why you can't start except for the limiting beliefs in your own head, right? Build a system, allocate time in your calendar, do a content schedule, come with content ideas, do a film day on your iPhone with good lighting. Lighting's everything. You can get away with iPhone and a couple of good lights on Amazon, and then voila, okay? You can start your Instagram journey. I think it's a good investment. I think

it's going to be around for a while. I don't think it's going anywhere. I mean, it's got a great audience. It's a great platform to sell and make money. And the last thing I'll say is it's a great platform to open up opportunity. I've got so much opportunity, big 100 grand, 200 grand deals, partnerships just from my Instagram, okay? Because it's like an online resume these days. Like when I meet people, I give them my Instagram and the first thing they say is, oh, wow, right? They don't know who I am.

They're like, wow, you know, got a lot of stuff going on. And you can build that for you too, right? It's all about branding and positioning and sharing your life, okay? So yeah, that's the 101. I hope you enjoyed today. I hope you got some good lessons. I hope it motivated you to grow your socials a little and gave you a bit of a concept

and big picture framework on how do we do all this, right? How, what goes into it? And if you obviously wanna work with me and my team and get more help, get more support, learn from us. There's lots of ways to do it. Lots of free trainings. DM me on Instagram and tell me you watch this episode or listen to this episode and I'll talk to you about your goals and try and point you in the right direction.

And yeah, until next time, just keep living the red life. You know what to do. And I'll see you on another episode very soon. Take care. live in the red life you know what to do and i'll see you on another episode very soon take care ladies and gentlemen