Can you give an update on building a similar funnel?
I won’t say it’s going the best—it’s not—but it’s going okay. The reason is that I’m spoiled by the success I’ve had with my other Instagram channel. Across my five YouTube channels I’ve got about 18,300 views, while across the five Instagram channels I’ve only got around 2,254 views, so YouTube is performing disproportionately better. A couple of reasons: we had some issues the first day and some accounts got blocked, possibly because of the way it was set up; also, the hashtags look the same and come across as spammy. There are minor optimizations we could make, like improving thumbnails. The most important thing for me right now is to just get going and see a full month of results before I try to make any decision. Tentatively, 18,300 views in 9 days is nice, but when you consider that’s spread over 5 × 9 ≈ 45 posts, that works out to about 400 views per post—not really the best. And even though we’re posting more and more, the view count per post stays about the same, which suggests we’re not actually reaching a new audience. I’m going to think long and hard about how I might be able to do that better—I’m not exactly sure what that might look like, but hopefully that makes sense. If you have any ideas, let me know; I’m happy to discuss them.
You know what? I think I'm just going to break out of the format for this one and walk through your situation. First, I wouldn’t try to monetize a brand that only has 12 YouTube subscribers—that low subscriber count will turn people off. The channel’s formatting issues, like the aspect ratio and MDashes, also make it look AI‑generated, so clean that up. Regarding the lack of views, you’re likely being shadow‑banned. When a channel is shadow‑banned, YouTube still recommends a few videos, but they’re placed lower in the sidebar, reducing reach dramatically. To overcome this, I’d create a new YouTube channel and start fresh, not reusing the same email. Test different content topics—pick a hot, trending subject or a new AI marketing tool, make several videos, and occasionally tie them back to jewelry brands. Improve thumbnails, post consistently, and consider showing your face rather than staying faceless. Run this experiment for about a week; you should see significantly more views. Then repurpose the successful content for a faster‑growing niche, and use your own picture to build credibility. This approach should help you break out of the shadow‑ban and grow your audience.
I'm about to publish a video on my main channel covering this topic. I can see you're just starting with about five videos, experimenting with thumbnail templates and using AI for images—pretty accurate. Keep doing what you're doing; if you scaled up to 100 videos or 25 times your current output, you'd easily surpass 3,000 subscribers. I'll soon release a video detailing exactly how I approach this in the automation agency space, because lots of people want to replicate my growth. I've noticed channels copying my Instagram content outright, so I might as well share my secret sauce and monetize it.
It's a good question. I'm the automation guy, yet I manually update a janky Google Sheet each day because the value isn't just the metric—it's the awareness and reflection it brings. Spending about 30 seconds daily yields far more value: I notice trends and spikes in follower growth that make me investigate causes. If you had many metrics and worked with a company, you wouldn't do this manually every day—it would take too much time—but as a small portion it's fine. I had meant to mention Mr. Beast because we're collaborating. I recently hung out with school friends Marty, Ryan, and Michael; Marty has over 5 million YouTube subscribers, Ryan about 160 k Instagram followers, Michael many millions on Instagram. It was cool to watch the local cactus squad and discuss optimizing school as part of a big challenge. School is going well; I'm in the platinum group for educational creators with 100 k+ followers, where we help each other grow. I comment on posts for five minutes daily and have reached number two on the leaderboard, meaning I'm a valued resource; people constantly ask for my opinion. I achieved this with little effort—just voice‑transcribing posts and noting my thoughts (X, Y, Z) in 15–30 seconds per post—yet I now get massive exposure. I love giving value and seeing how communities make interaction easy and human‑focused. The free school community is thriving at 7,400 members, and we've celebrated two members hitting 10 k‑month milestones. Each day I review new posts, quickly scanning for obviously AI‑generated content (e.g., a YouTube‑video‑style post) and delete it, then ask if it's truly a YouTube video; if so, I delete it. I must be trigger‑happy for time, but the rest of the community is great: I spot AI‑generated posts, remove them, and spend about five minutes leaving a few comments. New members often feel uncertain; seeing that success is possible encourages them. The no‑AI‑post rule has raised discussion quality. A recent post from Rodrigo looked suspicious due to odd M‑dashes, but he noted it was a Google translation, so language may explain it. I appreciate Nick's style—no hype, straight talk that works. Regarding a journey‑maker school example, I noted it was obviously AI, less tinkering, more doing, and deleted it. I can give a reason for deletion, but my rule is two strikes: first AI‑post gets benefit of doubt, second results in removal. I've become familiar with AI writing patterns, so I ban them aggressively, keeping the community high‑quality. I also sprinkle in posts as needed, though the top‑level look lets people market low‑value offers in the intro tab (e.g., 'Hey, how's it going? Do you want to make money online?'), which I only see when reported; then I ban the offender. I enjoy the community and will defend it with my Warhammer 40K sword metaphor. Direct messages have become a burden—many users just say thanks—so I read them but don't reply to stay true to my promise. Reading 40–50 DMs daily makes me reflect on how far one person can go; I might be the only one sustaining this volume for over a year. I use AI everywhere except for the actual coaching deliverable and my personal presence, which I haven't replaced, preventing the perception of being fake. It's an interesting thought experiment: could I scale the community to a million members a month while still managing it alone? Possibly, but we'll see. My stats show slowed growth (0.11 %), then a rise to 0.66 % after a Maker Zero boost to 7,500 members. I plan to add an email‑address question to Maker Zero to capture all member emails for promotions, accepting some leakage as inevitable. I'm aiming to return to the top three rank again.
Sure, let's try that. I opened a tool and started looking for an Instagram follower scraper. I pulled up my Instagram channel, which is at about 178,107,853 followers, and navigated to the brand stats page. I ran into a few hiccups—copied the wrong text, opened too many tabs, and realized my earlier follower count was off. The actual number is closer to 106,000, not the 107,000 I mentioned yesterday, because I hadn't had access to a proper scraping tool before. I then checked my main channel growth, which is at 77,708, and noted a recent video that is performing well, boosting my daily updates to around 3,924. I also mentioned that we're approaching 4,000 subscribers overall, all from providing immediate value and brainstorming live. The rest of the walkthrough was just me showing the stats and acknowledging the inaccuracies while I look for a reliable Instagram follower scraper.