Transcription
I make $2,433,191 on average per reel I put out on Instagram. Some make me more, some make me less, but I sat down and I did the math and actually calculated how much I make per reel. In this video, I want to show you how to make reels; specifically, how to make real hooks that attract buyers, not viewers.
Because there's nothing worse than having this massive hobby that's supposed to be making you money and sucks all your time, but you're actually not making money from it. And so what I'm going to do is, in this video, I'm going to walk you through a couple of things you need to know and then a couple of ChatGPT prompts I want to give you so that you end up with 151 reels that you know for sure will attract buyers, not just viewers.
First, what I want to do though is I want to show proof of the, like a little bit of like the backstory on the $2,500 that I make per reel, because I get it; it's a big income claim. So let me get that set up so I can show you that proof super quick, then we'll get into the actual video. Okay, sharing my screen here. This is what I want you to see. I'm going to go full-screen mode here with this guy. Um, okay. So, like I said, here I get paid right around $2,500 per reel. So I, these are the last six months of data that I pulled from you to show. So this is called Hyros; um, it's the software that we use to track all the money I make. It comes from you. You can look it up at hyros.com. If you see here, IG and Instagram together is right around $600,000 over the last six months, and then you can see here I published 246 reels over the last six months. Um, and then basically we do some simple math: $600,000 essentially dollars divided by the 246 reels I publish equals an average of $2,433 per reel. So that's how I get the math; that's how we know for sure because we can actually track—like you can see here, there's a little drop-down in the actual Hyros—we can actually track how much each individual reel makes me. So if I put a reel out on Instagram, I could say, "Oh, that one, man, that one only made me $500," or, "Oh, that one made me $7,000; we should make more like that." So that's how we have that data; that's how I know how much I make per reel.
Um, I feel like if you're going to listen to someone on the internet, they should at least know what they're talking about, so I want you to feel comfortable about that with me. Let's do this. Let's go into um, buyers versus viewers. I think this is a really important distinction that we need to make. I'm just going to turn off this second head here. There's viewers, and then there's buyers. Obviously, if you're going to spend the time to make content organically, which is a significant level of effort, you want your content to attract buyers, not viewers.
So viewers will watch your ad, or they'll watch your reel; they'll like your reel if you're lucky, and if you're extra lucky, they'll share it with someone. That happens rarely with viewers. They're scrollers, right? They're not really interacting with your content; they're probably not going to follow you. If they follow you, that's the most they'll ever do. They're unlikely to watch your stories; they never take any action beyond that. So if you put out like a CTA, or call to action, to buy your product or to get a freebie or whatever it might be, they're very unlikely to do that because they're viewers. Most people are attracting viewers, and they don't know it, or they don't understand enough to note the distinction. We do not want you doing that; we want you attracting buyers.
Here's what buyers do: Buyers will watch your stories. When someone watches your stories versus the reels that just come up in their feed, it shows an extra level of intentionality, an extra level of indoctrination, for lack of a better word, an extra level of intentionality. They're more in your world, and they're more in a relationship with you, for that's like a good way to say it. So buyers tend to watch your stories; buyers comment on your reels or click links or any other calls to actions that you put out. So if you say something like, um, "comment freebie to get a copy of my freebie," your buyers, or people who are wanting to be removed from being buyers, will tend to take the actions you tell them to take. Most importantly, buyers buy. The best buyers buy everything you put out. I have a small group of customers—maybe I don't know, 10,000 customers or so, 5 to 10,000—who joke about buying anything I put out. You know, y'all, you know yourself; you know who you are. Every time I put out a course, you're like, "Oh, damn it, there goes my wallet," right? Because you're very loyal; you've been very, very loyal customers, and I know most of them by name. I recognize you guys, and I see your orders come across my desk; like, I know you, and you know me. Those are the best buyers. That's what I want for you is the best of the best, but I'll also take buyers, and you'll take buyers too, who buy some but not all; that's great too.
How do we attract those people? How do we attract those buyers and best buyers with our content? How do we hook them in? What are the things that we should be saying on our reels to attract those people and push away or repel the people who are never going to buy from us? I don't know about you, but I only make—I'm not making content on Instagram to be famous; I'm not making content on Instagram because I'm bored; I'm not making content on Instagram because I love social media. I hate social media. I'm making content on Instagram because I want to get paid, and I bet that's why you're doing it too.
So fundamentally, here's what I've noticed as someone that has—I get an average of 7 million views a month; I make, like you like you saw, around $2,500 per reel, so hundreds of thousands of dollars a month through Instagram. I've been doing this for 11 years; I sell hundred—like I get hundreds of customers a day, some from other platforms, but a lot from Instagram. Here's what I've learned about copywriting in general and then Instagram hooks in specific: Fundamentally, the best hooks happen when you do something exceptional. You and we're going to talk about little clever words we can use because there are things that are going to be more helpful than others, but fundamentally, the things that go viral, the things that attract buyers, are exceptional results.
Now, immediately, what I want to clarify is that you should not feel discouraged because you might be thinking, "Well, I haven't done anything extraordinary, or I haven't done anything incredible," and that's not true. Everyone has done remarkable things, and I want to make a very clear point of distinction using myself as an example. Okay, and then we'll do a couple of other examples, and then I want to give you—it's a very specific ChatGPT prompt—but I want to give you a very specific ChatGPT prompt that's going to generate 150 Instagram reel hooks that follow the premises of what I'm about ready to teach you. So I want to pull up something, and we're going to look at one of my examples first, and then I'm going to teach you how you can see the remarkable things that you've done. So let's do an example first. Okay, so I want to show you what I would consider to be a classic hook. Let me show you. This is something remarkable: I make a million every 3 months. It's actually closer to every 10 weeks now, but let's just call it every three months. I make a million dollars every three months. Here's how; here's what I do. This is a remarkable result, and that is why it's a good hook.
Now you might see this and be like, "Well, I can't do this because I don't make a million dollars every 3 months, or I don't do XYZ remarkable thing in my industry," but you do, and you don't realize it. And I'm not just saying that because I want you to feel good about yourself. I don't want you to feel good about yourself or not; I want you to make money, right? That's my job as your business coach is to help you make money, and so I'm telling you that not to make you feel good unnecessarily about yourself. I want you to know that you literally do remarkable things, not in a trite, feel-good way. Here's the perspective shift I want to give you: Let's say that you are like, "Well, I don't run marathons, and therefore I'm not a good runner." To the person who can't even get out of bed because they're so depressed, they're not interested in learning how to run marathons; they want to know how they can get out of bed and take care of themselves, brush their teeth, brush their hair. So for someone to say, "Hey, I overcame a six-month depressive episode, and now I brush my teeth every day," that's remarkable. Whatever you've achieved in your life, as it relates to your industry, as it relates to your business, is remarkable to the person who hasn't done it yet. A lot of you know my first year of business I only made $63 the first entire year. If I were to make content like this now, an exceptional hook—now you know—like at that time when I had only made $633, my hook would be how I made my first dollar in my online business, because to the person that hasn't made a dollar yet, making your first sale is remarkable. You've done it. Most people want an online business, and they can't make their first sale; they don't know how to even do the most first basic step, which is make your first dollar online. And so the best hooks—and I'm about ready to give you a ChatGPT prompt—is going to start pulling this all together. The best hooks are not the ones necessarily that are like, "I make a million dollars every 10 weeks." Obviously, the more the more remarkable things you do, the more you can talk about them online, but you have to—the measure for what's remarkable isn't what you think is remarkable; it's what your potential buyers think is remarkable. And so you have to really peel back a couple of steps and say, "Oh, wait a minute, where when I was just getting started, when I was just beginning, what was remarkable to me?" This applies to every industry. We're going to do some ChatGPT prompts in a minute here.
If you want another way to create remarkable results, which again is a good hook—a good hook isn't fill-in-the-blanks like you see them all over Instagram. Here's 73 hooks that are amazing, and they're—it's just like fill-in-the-blanks; that's not very helpful because that's just trying to get cute and clever—but like I'm saying, the best results are the ones that actually have accomplished something remarkable, and then you don't need to get fancy with your copy around it; you just have the good result. Another way to achieve remarkable things is to do what BuzzFeed does. You guys know BuzzFeed, right? The quizzes, the articles—as a millennial, BuzzFeed was like a Bible for us. BuzzFeed did this thing that's remarkable: They ran experiments, and then they reported on them. I want you to do this too. Let me show you an example: BuzzFeed experiments sugar. Okay, I quit sugar for 30 days, and this is what happened. I banned sugar for a week: Mom in progress. We quit added sugar for 30 days, and this is what happened. Now let's say that you're a life coach: This guy hired a personal friendship coach. I hired a life coach to help me make friends. Um, I would say like relationships. We tried a classic love experiment: Couples take—that one's different. Um, we'll just say like relationships: intimacy challenge; yourself to have sex, I'm guessing like every day or something like that. So we'll do BuzzFeed experiment, um, parenting test—now not test, that'll pull up quizzes—I'll just maybe I need to put parenting in front of experiment: BuzzFeed parenting experiment. Well, maybe parenting isn't a big thing, but like, you—let's go back to the sugar one because I think this really illustrates it: I did blank for a blank period of time, and this is what happened. Classic experiment. I do this all the time in my business, and I report on it all the time. I posted to Instagram for 365 days in a row, and here's what happened. I publish two YouTube videos per week, and here's what happened. I changed this one thing on my landing page, and my conversion increased by 30%. Here's what I changed. I run experiments all the time as a marketer, and I report on it, and it makes very good, remarkable content.
So the first thing that you're going to want to do is shift the perspective: Okay, I achieve remarkable things. The second thing that you're going to want to do is say, "Okay, what are experiments that I can run that are not being done in my industry, or I would like to read for myself, or I know my potential customers would like to read?" You have to—it's information. If you want good hooks, you have to go make happen for yourself. You can do that in a thousand different ways, but the best hooks are the ones where you do remarkable things. Everything on social media that goes viral is because it's different, unique, remarkable; it stands out. I see tons of people spend all this time creating content that isn't remarkable, trying to force views, trying to force this magical hook that's going to solve the problem of their low engagement or their no views or their lack of reach. If you go out and you do something remarkable, even if it's not remarkable to you, remarkable to your potential buyers, you will see results; you will attract buyers.
What I want to do is move to ChatGPT, which is why I'm still sharing my screen, and I want to do examples, um, and then I want to talk about what happens after this. So okay, here's an example. Let's do one in an industry that probably most of us aren't in. Um, I'm a fashion designer, and my my fashion, my design, my pieces, or I don't even know the right terms, heavily featured during Fashion Week in Paris, um, Paris. What am I doing here? I also um have a course that teaches new fashion designers. So this is the prompt you'll put in: "How to break into the fashion industry and get paid to design fashion. Generate 150-plus Instagram reel hooks that attract buyers, not viewers." This is important: Really dig into the pain points of not being able to break into this industry, not knowing—again, I'm just making this up literally—a spot, what to do to get started. Don't be overly salesy, and keep the focus on the results I've achieved. All right. You will not like every prompt that comes up. This is why we generate 150. Some of these prompts will work well; others won't. The point of generating so many prompts is to hit different angles you can use. You also might see the ChatGPT gives you ideas on experiments that you can run. So while this is generating, I wonder if I can do two prompts at once. I think I can. Okay. Um, "I am a fashion designer"—you can insert your industry here—"what are some experiments I can run and then report on to new people who want to start designing fashion pieces?" A good example of an experiment style I like is: "I quit sugar for 30 days; here's what happened." Okay, so let's go back to the other one while that's generating. Okay. Um, this is a great one: "I used to design in my bedroom; now my pieces are in Paris," and then I probably wouldn't say something like, "Let me show you how it's done." I probably would do one more like this where if I refresh and then it'll say something like, "Here's what I do," or like, "Here's how I did it," and I want you to visualize what a good hook that would be to someone who is currently designing pieces in their bedroom and maybe just like on a computer, like without really anyone seeing, and you see that visual of the before and the after—very powerful hook—but it's not like like this here; it's not clever. Like when people say, "Oh, I want hooks," they're thinking of clever phrases that will mask the mediocrity of the results they've gotten, or the—really the perceived—like it's not really even mediocre; they perceive it to be mediocre because they're thinking about it through the lens of how far they're—like the gap between where they are and where they want to be. You need to think of your results as the gap where your potential customers are versus where they want to be. Um, yeah, "My Paris debut wasn't luck." I would say something like, "My my design pieces ending up in Paris wasn't luck; do this. Is what I did." Some of these are good, right? Some of these are not good. Um, this is a classic one: "My bank account was at zero; now I get paid for every piece I create." That's like very—Allaha Maria went—um, yeah, this is a really good one: "You won't believe how quickly my designs sold once I niched down." Like, "You won't believe how quickly X happened once I did X like Y thing"—also very good. So again, like we generate a whole bunch; the point of generating this many isn't that you will literally use all 150; it's what are the angles I'm not thinking of? What are the different ways I can hit this? Now we go to our prompt here. Here's an example of different experiments. I recommend you do this if you feel like you don't have really good results. So you put your industry in, like you did: "Designing with a single color palette for 30 days"—love it—"creating zero-waste patterns for 30 days. I created whatever, 30 zero-waste patterns in 30 days; here's what happened." And that even tells you like what to um report on: "One-hour fashion sketch." These are all so good; um, these are all interesting; these are all different remarkable things you can do in your industry. I want you to start—when you consume content, you're in that last hour of the day, scroll of Instagram or TikTok or whatever might be—I want you to start paying attention to the the the reels that are ending up in your feed or the TikToks that are ending up in your feed. Why are they there? If you have a curated algorithm account, like I do, where you're wanting to attract buyers, they're not necessarily watching stuff for entertainment; they're watching stuff that are solving problems. There's things I am watching in different departments that I can't like really get into, but they're not business-related, but they're very solution-oriented. It could be generational healing; it could be single parenting; these kinds of things. I'm consuming content on them, and I buy courses around those topics all the time, and so I'm a buyer. So when those kind of people are putting out content, I'm not looking—although I love cute cat videos—that's viewer behavior. I'm a—I exhibit buyer behavior, and I'm a really good person to be having consume reels around certain problems I'm wanting to solve in my life. And so those are the kind of people you're wanting to attract; that's why you have to have really intentional stuff, and that's why you need to keep it results-focused. Let me switch my camera back. And by the way, people sometimes tell me, "Maria, you're so into what you talk about. Maria, you talk so fast." It's because I know that this is one of the things: If you can unlock this, this copywriting hack, this this hook hack, it makes a very big difference in your bottom line, in your bank account.
Now that you've done this, now that you've attracted, and that you've got the hooks that are actually going to attract buyers, the next step is is to get them to your checkout page. So you you've got them; you've got the buyers; they're watching your educational, problem-solving, results-focused, remarkable results-focused reels; you need to get them to then go to your checkout page after they viewed the reel. And this is the first step in building an automated business. I just published a whole video on building an automated business from scratch; go watch that one now. I'm going to put it somewhere on the screen here. Go watch that next.