10:05Maria Wendt · Demo
How a $29/Month ManyChat Setup Runs a $13M Digital Products Business
A screen-recorded tour of the automation stack behind roughly $650K collected per month — built once, running on autopilot ever since.
August 21st 2025The argument in one line.
A ManyChat automation that turns Instagram carousel comments into email addresses can convert at 75-90% per step and generate roughly 1,000 free leads a day, but the creator argues it should be ignored until a single product and niche are already proven to sell.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A creator or coach already getting meaningful organic reach on Instagram carousels who wants to convert comments into an owned email list.
- Someone comfortable setting up ManyChat/DM automations and connecting them to an email platform like ActiveCampaign.
- A business already doing six-to-seven figures a year deciding whether it's time to prioritize list-building.
SKIP IF…
- You're under a million dollars a year in revenue and haven't yet proven one product sells reliably — the video itself argues you should skip this.
- You don't post carousels or have any organic Instagram reach to trigger comment automations.
- You're looking for paid-ads or SEO lead-gen tactics — this is organic-only.
The full version, fast.
Wendt breaks down the exact ManyChat automation she uses to turn Instagram carousel comments into email leads: a keyword trigger, a confirm-yes DM, an email-capture message, and a delivered lead magnet with an email backup — a sequence that converted roughly 4,143 commenters into over 3,000 email addresses, contributing an estimated $75,000-$100,000 a month in added revenue. But she opens with a hard caveat: if you're making under seven figures a year, she says skip email marketing entirely and follow the 'rule of five ones' — one problem, one niche, one offer, one platform, one year — before diversifying. She closes with three carousel-writing tips (make the pitch irresistible, teach specific numbers, pitch multiple times per post) and a pitch for her own product-creation course, framing the funnel as worthless without a product people actually want to buy.
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00:00 – 01:15
01 · Intro / hook
States she's been sitting on this strategy on purpose because it's so valuable, and promises to show proof of the leads first.
01:15 – 01:54
02 · Proof of leads
Screen-recorded Instagram comment pages showing thousands of keyword comments, roughly 1,000 leads a day.
01:54 – 04:27
03 · The big caveat
States that anyone under $1M/year should not be building an email list yet, and introduces the rule of five ones.
04:27 – 08:58
04 · Funnel overview
Full ManyChat automation walkthrough with live conversion stats visible on screen at every step.
08:58 – 12:53
05 · How to make better carousels
Three tips for carousel copy: irresistible pitch, specific numbers, repeated calls to action.
12:53 – 14:35
06 · Further resource
Pitches her own product-creation course, framing a sellable product as the real bottleneck.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A single Instagram carousel automation converted comments into email addresses at roughly a 75-90% rate across its message steps, turning about 4,143 unique commenters into over 3,000 collected emails.
- The creator attributes an extra $75,000-$100,000 a month in revenue to this one ManyChat automation.
- Her business grew 182% year over year, from $147k to $415k in monthly revenue between July 2023 and July 2024.
- The rule of five ones: solve one problem, for one niche, with one offer, on one platform, for one year — before you build an email list at all.
- She tells anyone making under seven figures a year to ignore email marketing and focus on selling one product repeatedly instead.
- Numbers outperform vague claims in carousel headlines — '12 short scripts' and a '182.313% increase' both out-performed generic advice posts.
- The pitch to comment a keyword appears three separate times in one carousel post: in the slides, in the caption, and as a follow-up comment reply — tripling the chances someone converts.
- Listing things NOT to say ('don't say buy now,' 'don't say click here') creates more curiosity than directly telling people what to say.
- The automation delivers the lead magnet two ways at once (in-DM button and email) because email delivery through ActiveCampaign can lag up to ten minutes and impatient users abandon before it arrives.
- Even a viral lead-generation funnel is described as worthless without a genuinely sellable product behind it — the creator pitches her own product-creation course as the real bottleneck to solve first.
Free lead gen means nothing without one sellable offer
WHEN TO BUILD A LIST
A near-90%-converting comment-to-email automation is genuinely worth copying, but only after you've proven one offer works — chasing a list before that just slows you down.
- A DM automation that greets commenters, confirms interest, then asks for an email address converted at roughly 75-90% across its steps, showing a simple three-message sequence can beat a one-shot pitch.
- Sending the same lead magnet two ways at once (an in-chat button and an email) protects against slow email delivery, since a ten-minute lag is long enough for an impatient lead to give up.
- Listing forbidden phrases like 'don't say buy now' generates more curiosity and replies than directly explaining what to say instead.
- Specific numbers in a headline, like '12 short scripts' or a stated percentage increase, consistently outperform vague value claims at getting people to comment.
- Repeating the same call-to-action three different ways in a single post — in the slides, the caption, and a follow-up reply — multiplies the number of chances someone converts.
- Building an email list before you have one product that reliably sells is treated as a distraction; the stated priority order is niche and offer first, audience infrastructure second.
- A funnel's real bottleneck usually isn't traffic or automation — it's whether there's a product people actually want enough to buy, which is worth solving before optimizing lead capture further.
Terms worth knowing.
- ManyChat
- An Instagram/Messenger automation tool that triggers scripted DM replies when someone comments a keyword on a post, used here to run the entire lead-capture sequence.
- ActiveCampaign
- An email marketing platform where captured email addresses are added as contacts and enrolled into an automated nurture-and-pitch sequence.
- Rule of Five Ones
- Wendt's framework for sequencing focus: solve one problem, for one niche, with one offer, on one platform, for one year, before adding new channels like email.
- Carousel
- A multi-slide Instagram post format where users swipe through images or text slides, used here to deliver a numbered-list hook that drives comments.
Things they pointed at.
04:36toolManyChat
07:09toolActiveCampaign
Lines you could clip.
03:23
“if you are making less than a million dollars, you should not be worrying about email marketing”
10:23
“It's actually insane how many sales are won or lost in this little micro word nuances”
13:24
“enrolling in my course... because this is the linchpin”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogy
00:00Okay. This has been one of my highest requested things. You guys have seen that I've been doing this.
00:04You've seen the literal tens of thousands of leads I'm getting every single month from my Instagram carousels, and I kept telling you, okay. Not gonna give this to you, and I'll talk about why. So I really have delayed making this YouTube video.
00:18One, because it's so valuable. I was kinda liking sitting it on my like, kinda having it all to myself. I'm not gonna lie to you.
00:23And then two, I wanted to make sure it was actually gonna work. And then three, there's a fat freaking caveat I have to put on this that really has held me back from making this video.
00:34However, this is working so well. It's at the point where I have to make a I have to make a video on this.
00:41I have to show you the strategy. I have to show you what I'm doing because it's working so well. It's gonna be a game changer for a lot of you guys.
00:48So I just wanna show you first proof of all these leads because 30,000 leads in thirty days is a lot. So I wanna show you proof of the leads, and then I'll actually, um, show you how I do it.
00:58So these are specific kinds of posts on Instagram. Each one of these comments, you see all these little things here, this is a lead. So that was 4,532 leads, 3,652 leads, 3,000 leads, 3,000 leads, 25 2,300 leads, give or take, um, and then there's a whole another page of these.
01:19I don't even know how I get to the next page. Let's see how I do this. Hold on.
01:25There we go. Um, and here's another page. Right?
01:29So all of those added up was, um, around 30,000, and that's exactly what that's exactly what it always is. It's always, like, right around a thousand a day.
01:38So I'm basically getting around a thousand leads per day for free from my Instagram carousels. Obviously, some have more, and then some have less. Okay.
01:49Here's my big caveat. I gotta I just gotta, like, make some eye contact with you, and so we'll get this thing turned around and turn off my circle.
02:00Here's my caveat. I do not wanna teach this because I strongly believe that if you are making less than a million dollars a year, you should not be focusing on building an email list. You should be focusing on selling your product over and over and over again until you make a million dollars.
02:18Every student that I've ever had that I've gotten to the 7 figure run rate, myself included, has gone all in on one product and one platform.
02:28And so the rule of the five ones is this, solve one problem for one group of people, one niche, with one offer on one platform for one year.
02:44Every student of mine who has followed this and put email marketing on the back burner until they were over a million dollars has thrived, has hit 7 figures, has done really well. Every student of mine who is worried about email marketing when they've got three people on their email list and not a great track record on their sales has continued to struggle or at best makes, you know, 6 figures or multiple six figures.
03:08You have to learn how to say yes to very You have to learn how to say no to very good strategies that could help you so you can say yes to a few things that will make all the difference.
03:21So my big fat caveat is that if you are making less than a million dollars, you should not be worrying about email marketing.
03:28So really, the only people who are supposed to be watching this video are people who are making over 7 figures. That's the rule is you can list this how it goes.
03:38Those are the rules. The five rule of five ones are the rule of the five ones. Damn it, Maria.
03:42The rule of five ones are the rule of five ones, but you are the captain of your ship. If you choose to break those rules, now you at least know that it'll make it take it'll take you longer to get to a million dollars. I firmly believe that.
03:57So this is one of the reasons I was super hesitant to make this video because I firmly believe that if you start diddle fiddling with email marketing and you aren't making a million dollars yet, you're just gonna slow yourself down. However, this is a good strategy if it's the right time for you.
04:14And I wanted to show it to you because I don't like to be a gatekeeper. So you've been warned. You've had your caveat.
04:19Now you get to decide what you want to do. And, again, there's no judgment. Right?
04:22There's no judgment. You get to decide what you wanna do. So I'm gonna show you the funnel, and we're just gonna look at this together.
04:30Okay? I'm gonna show you how this works. Um, this is how I get the leads.
04:34Okay? So someone this is ManyChat, and I have a ton of automations in ManyChat.
04:40I'm gonna show you this specific automation, um, so that you can build this if this is something that you decide you wanna do.
04:47ManyChat makes me a ton of money when it's combined with Instagram. Now you guys probably already know that. This is a new automation that I have been trying, and it is making me gobs of money.
04:57Like, I think this is the reason we jumped from $300,000 a month to $400,000 a month.
05:01I think this added an extra $100,000 on my revenue. Maybe an extra $75,000 per month on my revenue as a minimum, but this was really nice.
05:12This was super cozy for me. I really liked this. So the first thing is the trigger, and it says user comments on your post to reel when they comment the word script.
05:22So I'll have a post that'll ask them if they wanna get the script, and then this is what first thing that we'll send them.
05:31Right? So you can see here if we go back one step, Let me just refresh this.
05:37I just want you to kind of see what the conversion rate is on this. You can just kind of get a sense of how crazy good this is. So this automation was sent 4,000 times.
05:47We got over 3,000 email addresses, meaning it had a 75% conversion rate, which is unheard of.
05:56It's insanely good. And so we collected this many leads from this many comments.
06:03That's insanely good. So and actually, it's just occurring to me now that the the headline on my YouTube video is slightly inaccurate because technically, I wouldn't call someone a lead until I have their, like, email address, so technically, it's gonna be 75 or 25% less than 30,000, just putting that out there.
06:21I just realized that now was like, I didn't I didn't think about that when we were kinda adding it all up, so that just occurred to me now, but you know what? It's still a lot. So just confirming you want me to send you this is what I'll send them.
06:33This is the first message that they're gonna get on Instagram. Just confirming you want me to send you the Google Doc with all the scripts of what you should say to make more money. Right?
06:39Because they commented scripts because they want my money making scripts. Then what happens is they get tagged, and that just helps ManyChat only fire once, so this is like a specific tag thing.
06:49They click yes. Once they click yes, they'll get this message.
06:53This is where the magic is.
06:58Drop your best email below so I can send it to you. Okay? Once and this is I can't even believe we get to do this.
07:04Once they give me their email address, they get added to ActiveCampaign.
07:10That's where I automatically send them like, they get automatically added to an email automation, where we then send them helpful content and pitch every single day.
07:22And then they get automatically so they don't see this. This is kind of happening in the background.
07:26They're aware of it. Obviously, they just gave me their email address. Um, and then it says here's the 12 short scripts you should use, so they get the scripts, and then they can click it, and then they can view the scripts.
07:39This version here is if they hit the button more than once, it says, may have already sent this, but just drop your best email below so I can send it to you. So they're also emailed a version of this because they might want it in their inbox as well.
07:55Um, but I sometimes there's a delay with the email, so I also like to give it to them here right away. So, like, they're also emailed a copy of this, but sometimes, like, my ActiveCampaign can take almost ten minutes to deliver an email, and people don't stick around for that, and so what was happening was, like, when we weren't giving it to them right away, they were sitting there, and then it didn't come right away, um, and then they were upset and didn't get it, and so it's just easier to give it to them both ways, just more efficient for the customer.
08:21So, guys, this is the automation, and it's doing insanely well. And I wanted to show it to you because I'm collecting email addresses by the thousands every single day.
08:37It's nuts. But what I want to do is give you three, and I'm really I might have to pause for a second here because I'm I'm gonna show you, like, an example of hopefully, I'm logged in on this computer.
08:47I don't know if I'm logged in or not.
08:51It's always easy how I'm just, logged in.
08:56Let's see. Here we go. Okay.
09:00Perfect. So this is the one that we're referencing here. So I wanna give you three different tips or strategies to make the content better so you get more calls to action.
09:12Okay? I want you to get more comments, more leads. So first thing that we have here is make the carousel excellent.
09:18Make the pitch irresistible. So this is a very good carousel. I mean, it got almost 2,000 likes, which is high for me.
09:27It's very practical. It's things not to say. Right?
09:30So don't say buy now. Immediately, people are gonna be like, what the heck? Like, I say buy now all the time because they do.
09:37They don't you shouldn't say it, though. Don't say x spots left. Don't say get this.
09:43So then, and this leads me into tip number three, so we'll get ahead of ourselves and do this third tip before the second, pitch several times and or several different things for maximum leads.
09:56So I pitched the scripts several times, so let's count. That was the first one.
10:03Second one, I'm saying different pitches, but it's basically the same thing. And then I pitch again a third time in the caption.
10:12So I pitched the call to action. I pitched the next step three times in this carousel.
10:18That three x's the number of opportunities people have to say yes, which means I ultimately get more comments. So make the carousel excellent.
10:26Make the pitch irresistible. The content itself should be really, really good. The pitch, the thing that they're going to get, should be so good they can't physically bear not having it.
10:35It's a free it's for free. The third or the second tip is teach very, very specific things. So numbers perform really well.
10:46So I wouldn't say like a carousel wouldn't do well. It's just like how to make money. That's not going do well.
10:52But 12 scripts 12 short scripts to use to make more money is more specific. And I'll I don't know if I can scroll all the way down.
11:03I have no idea if I'm I seem to be logged in, so this is exciting. But another one of mine off the top of my head that did really well was where was it?
11:16It was so good.
11:22This one. This is the one I'm thinking of. This one did really well as well, and it's here's what we did to see eight, like, the specific numbers perform really well.
11:29So a 182% increase in one year. They really liked this carousel.
11:36That one stuck out to me in particular because numbers perform really well. But if you look through my actual content, you'll see I talk about numbers all the time. I had $800,000 a month with a $40 offer.
11:46Right? That one also did very well. How I went from 100 k months to 400 k months.
11:52How I post 53 pieces of content a week. This is all very intentional stuff I do in my content because it performs better because I've run a lot of experiments and I know. So to recap, you're going to create an automation exactly like this.
12:10They're going to start commenting on your carousels and the most important part of all well, there's two important parts.
12:20First important part is to have a carousel that's good enough people actually read, so the carousel has to be excellent. The pitch has to be irresistible. If I give you a list of 12 things you're not supposed to say, what do you immediately want to know?
12:34What the hell you want you need to say? And so that's where the pitch is irresistible because I'm like, okay, don't do all these things, and comment below if you want to figure out what you do want to say.
12:45Now, here's the deal. All of this is for nothing if you aren't selling the right thing.
12:53So if we're doing all of this and we're not selling something that can actually go viral, products people actually want, it's a waste of time. It's a hobby. And that's because again, like these are work to make.
13:04I always say, like, if I wasn't making a ton of money from Instagram relative to my income, I wouldn't be doing this because this is a lot of work. And so if you're just getting started or if your product isn't selling, what I would like to at least propose to you is to consider enrolling in my course, how to create a viral digital product, because .
13:24You can have content that goes viral, but if you don't have a product that people want to pitch, it's you're not gonna get paid, and you're missing out on I see a lot of people who have products that are mediocre that could be doubling, tripling, or honestly 10 x ing their income if they just tweak their product. Like, you might have be like, oh, I already have a product.
13:43Well, if you had a product that was slightly adjusted, it would actually be poised to go viral, and then you feel like you're . If you don't have a product at all, obviously this is a place to start because I'll teach you how to figure out what to sell, what you're talented at, what's gonna be something that people will actually pay you a lot of money for with a little, like, with little resistance.
14:04That's what we're looking for here is when you make a product that goes viral, there's no resistance to the sale, which means all the work you do to create content and get leads actually has a return on your time investment because you actually have a product that they want and that they're willing to buy. So, again, it's totally optional.
14:20I do highly recommend it, um, but it's totally optional. It's not at all what you have to do. In the meantime, this is a pretty good strategy.
14:29I'm excited to see how it goes for you guys. Let me know in the comments, and I'll see you in the next video.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Maria Wendt held this funnel back on purpose — then broke down and shared the automation generating roughly 1,000 free email leads a day from Instagram carousel comments, alongside a blunt rule for deciding whether you should even be building a list yet.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:32list
The Rule of Five Ones
- one problem
- one niche
- one offer
- one platform
- one year
Wendt's threshold for when a creator has earned the right to build an email list — solve one problem for one niche with one offer on one platform for one year before diversifying into list-building.
Steal forany pre-seven-figure creator deciding what to prioritize next
08:58list
Three-Tip Carousel Formula
- Make the carousel excellent / the pitch irresistible
- Teach very specific things — numbers outperform vague claims
- Pitch several times, several ways, in one post
Wendt's own breakdown of what makes a lead-generating carousel work, illustrated with her own top-performing posts.
Steal forany lead-gen carousel or organic content post
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
12:44product
“enrolling in my course, how to create a viral digital product”
Soft-pitches her own paid course as the actual bottleneck (having a sellable product) right after showing the free lead-gen funnel, explicitly framed as optional.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
Visual structure at a glance.
