I have 60K Instagram followers, a good product but basically zero sales. Time to move on?

Hey Simon,

You could start a YouTube channel, but run into the same problem.

My take: 99% of people don't like being sold to directly. Any time you sell on a platform like IG or Twitter, those posts get low engagement.

I'd change up your game plan, but take advantage of what you already built.

Start thinking about your funnel instead of sales, as funnels consider the steps before the sale. Fixing one step might unclog your funnel.

A basic funnel:

• view IG post
• visit website
• collect email
• make sale

Focusing on collecting email may change your game and give you a better chance at nurturing sales. While collecting email seems less valuable to you at first, it should be way easier to do then making a sale, right? You have 60K followers, but only a fraction see each post. With email, you can get 15-40% open rate depending on how well you maintain your list. Dangle a carrot like a free resource that answers the question "why would they give you an email"? Providing free value also will help the prospects think of you positively.

The other thing, I'd create a move interactive product. You can sell a book by giving snippets of information, but with an interactive product you can use it in your video posts to show people how to solve problems.

For example: I teach people how to complete a specific website task. I don't sell anything directly, but I grab an image from my website for the tutorial. They can source their images anywhere, but they're now aware of my product.

Hey Simon, I've sold over $1MM in courses through social media. An underrated, but very powerful tactic that I used frequently was live streams (youtube/ig live) + expiring coupon codes.

I'd essentially would just do a simple Q&A session live and just hang out with my viewers, answer simple questions, etc for about an hour once or twice a week.

I'd mention (but never push) the coupon for 20% off that expires in a few hours (make sure it does, ofc). They key, like others have mentioned here, is to not hard sell, but just give the option and show how valuable you and your knowledge are.

Another great booster was to do lives with existing/successful students of your course. I sold 30k in a single hour when I did this one time. Show your viewers that other people are signing up and getting the results they want.

As others have said getting an email list will provide massive returns. I built one of my largest using a simple opt in offering something hugely valuable to my following. Maybe offer your book for free? The classic 'Free Plus Shipping' book funnel has been used for decades by many people. Then upsell another program/course.

Ultimately, just be knowledgeable, helpful, kind, and genuine and people will trust to purchase from you. Feel free to reach out if you wanna chat more.

Simon,

Don't lose hope at all. The fact that you were able to amass 60K IG followers, you did something right.

I have been selling courses in a similar domain for last 10 years so I know a thing or two.

1. Somehow I feel "how to get your first job" isn't really a thing one should sell standalone. It can be a great complimentary companion (or perhaps an upsell) to a course on coding though.
2. As you rightly said, you SHOULD sell courses on learn to code stuff. Once you make a connect with your subscribers, it isn't very hard to sell to them.
3. While this is not your problem yet, I just want to say it here. Try to move your followers to your own email list. "Money is in the list" as they. 3rd party platforms like IG, Twitter, FB are good-to-have for better reach but you can't place your bets on them. (They can boot you out anytime.)
4. If you need any further help, I'm available at kheuxyvx(at)duck(dot)com

While above is a disposable email address, in case they're not allowed here, @csallen please let me know.

Hi,

it's clear you built a nice audience, so I would not abandon it if I am you.

I am unsure why your product isn't working. Maybe they get enough motivation from your posts and they feel like the book is not giving them anything extra.

Have you tried to sell them something else?

I actually wrote a technical book that could use an affiliate. Would you be interested in selling it to your audience? Almost no harm in trying, and you don't have to build something new yourself just to try something different.

Perhaps you'll see you can sell some and then find other products to try.

Either way, good luck!

Simon,

Forget about that "Instagram is not the channel for this" thing.

If it was not the channel, you wouldn't have got that following.

Your audience is there, they are interested in what you are teaching, but your monetization attemps are failling. So what? Just keep testing, but try not to do it so "blindly".

How did you decide that "helping them get a developer job" was a good offer for them?

IMO, the problem is that your Instagram account and your website are disconnected and talking to two different "users" (even if both of them are interested in "coding", their goals are pretty different).

Hey Simon. How can people buy your product? Do you have a website?

I don’t think there’s a lot of ‘developer folks’ on Insta. So, my advice is to leverage your 60k followers to build an audience in another platform that actually has coders. You can try YouTube (especially with shorts these days) for starters.

You can also start a newsletter and sell via that as well.

1. People these days prefer video courses over a book.
2. If you anyways plan to move on, I would suggest that you put the channel on sale. I'm sure there will be many who can monetize the audience you have built and will be happy to pay you good money for that. If you just move on and don't post regular content, the audience will anyways forget you. Why not make some money from it while it's active.

My 2 cents.

My Instagram account slowly grew to 8K followers by Feb this year and then it took off and now I'm at 60K followers.

This might not be the advice you want to hear, but in my opinion if you've got 60K followers it is certainly possible to monetize your work, but that comes with a caveat of being willing to invest in your brand (in terms of time, and some equipment).

The "how to get your first dev job" space is definitely blowing up, and I see people on YouTube doing really well. How did you grow on Instagram? Was it your chosen channel or did those followers come from another channel?

In my opinion, I'd focus on building a YouTube presence and really try to bring a personal presence to your business. You need to be people can trust easily, and it's easier to build that trust with your face over video than it is with Instagram photos of tips.

All this to say, you've got a following, now it's just maneuvering in the way.

This post telling me that Instagram was the wrong place to grow.

Not sure why I was thinking you have a YouTube channel already. I think it's doable If not a big hassle for you. Even TikTok can work in this case.

You are looking for sales and thinking if it's easier to sell learn-to-code content than do it, pivot. You don't even need to pivot, it's a built product which can sit on the side.

About the product and landing page itself. I find it too broad and the landing page didn't give me any reason to follow along. While reading your bio I expect to see some headhunting career or being in the HR for years. It feels like, you basically sharing your trial and errors during your career. It made it less attractive for me.

I don't usually read that long testimonials, just for the sake of giving a feedback. They were long, one paragraph for each would look better imho.

It could be a design choice but since front-end development is under the same umbrella I for some reason expected to see a more modern(?) user interface.

In any case good luck on whichever path you take.