Modern Creator
Maria Wendt · YouTube

How I Gained 400K Instagram Followers in 22 Months

Seven blunt operating rules behind a 400,000-follower, 22-month Instagram growth run — starting with getting paid to post.

Posted
1 years ago
Duration
Format
Listicle
educational
Views
4.8K
188 likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Fast Instagram growth depends less on content tricks than on protecting your energy and consistency: get paid to stay motivated, track only two metrics, post far more than feels comfortable, and give trolls zero attention.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • A content creator posting consistently who feels burned out or unmotivated because growth isn't translating into income yet.
  • Someone building a personal brand on Instagram who wants a simpler way to track progress than a dashboard full of vanity metrics.
  • A creator who freezes up over camera-ready appearance or production polish before filming.
  • Someone getting discouraged by troll comments or public skepticism on viral content.
SKIP IF…
  • You're looking for platform-specific algorithm tactics (hashtags, SEO, posting times) — this is about mindset and operating cadence, not tactics.
  • You want data outside the personal-brand/low-ticket digital product niche — the numbers cited are specific to one business model.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

A creator who grew to 400,000 Instagram followers in 22 months argues that growth stalls less from bad content than from bad incentives and bad attention management. The core mechanism: get paid per post so motivation doesn't depend on growth alone, track only two 'cash in, cash out' metrics (30-day views and comments) instead of chasing every vanity stat, and post far more often than feels natural — repurposing 80% of it so volume doesn't require new ideas. The actionable conclusions: expect growth to plateau in cycles instead of panicking and quitting when it does, give trolls zero engagement so they lose their oxygen, and lower personal production standards so posting friction disappears.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:0000:59

01 · Cold open

States the headline result (400K followers in 22 months) and gives quick channel context — runs a multi-million dollar low-ticket digital product business and is growing ~70K new followers/month.

00:5903:33

02 · Lesson 1 — Money keeps you motivated

Getting paid ~$2,500 per Instagram post is what sustains her posting consistency; argues most creators can't expect themselves to stay motivated while making zero money from their content.

03:3306:40

03 · Lesson 2 — Cash in, cash out metrics

Borrows a business owner's habit of watching only top-line profit and applies it to content: tracks just two numbers, 30-day view count (currently ~16M) and total comments, ignoring smaller vanity metrics.

06:4008:12

04 · Lesson 3 — Post more, like way more

Cites the Instant Bollywood/MrBeast interview (reaching ~9B people/month at ~100 posts/day) and her own progression from 3 posts/week to 4 posts/day, arguing volume is directly tied to reach.

08:1210:18

05 · Lesson 4 — Expect ebbs

Growth isn't linear — describes cycling between 100/day and 2-3K/day follower gains, and warns that creators who panic and stop posting during a slow patch are quitting during a normal phase, like pulling out of the stock market during a dip.

10:1813:06

06 · Lesson 5 — Smother the trolls

Goes further than 'don't feed the trolls' — gives zero engagement to negative comments, not even a kind reply, reasoning that trolls need attention the way fire needs oxygen; started publishing tax returns to preempt income-skeptic comments.

13:0616:08

07 · Lesson 6 — Repurpose 80%

Only 20% of her output is new content; 80% is republished material that already proved itself, framed as a risk-management strategy (guaranteed performers plus a smaller experimental slice) rather than laziness.

16:0820:08

08 · Lesson 7 — Lower their expectations + CTA

Trained her audience to expect her unpolished (no makeup, whatever she's wearing) to remove the prep-time bottleneck before filming; closes by pointing to the $2,500-per-reel course link in the description.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Getting paid per post removes the need to rely on willpower alone — motivation follows income, not the other way around.
  • Tracking dozens of metrics is a distraction; one creator narrowed her dashboard to just two numbers: views in the last 30 days and total comments.
  • Posting volume scales with reach more directly than most assume: going from 3 posts a week to 4 posts a day tracked with proportionally higher growth for this creator.
  • 80% of high-performing content can be repurposed content that already proved itself, leaving only 20% as new, riskier experiments.
  • Treating a repurposed post as low-risk and a new post as the only real risk changes how much a creator is willing to publish.
  • Growth on social platforms moves in ebbs, not straight lines — accounts that quit during a dip are quitting during a normal, expected phase.
  • Responding to trolls, even kindly, still feeds them attention; the more effective strategy is total silence, not clever comebacks.
  • Lowering personal production standards (no makeup, no perfect lighting) removes the prep-time bottleneck that keeps creators from posting more often.
  • Posting four times a day instead of once distributes risk across more attempts, so no single post carries all the pressure to perform.
  • A creator earning around $2,500 per Instagram post has an outsized reason to stay consistent that most creators posting for free don't have.
Takeaway

Seven blunt rules behind fast Instagram growth.

WHAT TO LEARN

Fast growth here comes less from content tricks and more from treating attention like a resource: get paid to stay consistent, track two numbers instead of ten, and give trolls nothing.

02Lesson 1 — Money keeps you motivated
  • Getting paid per piece of content changes the psychology of consistency — motivation stops depending on willpower and starts depending on income.
  • It's unrealistic to expect steady motivation from unpaid content creation; treating monetization as part of the growth strategy, not a separate step, protects against burnout.
  • Tracking down monetization tactics matters as much as tracking growth tactics, because income is what keeps someone posting through slow periods.
03Lesson 2 — Cash in, cash out metrics
  • Reducing a dashboard full of metrics to just one or two top-line numbers mirrors how a profitable business owner tracks only cash in versus cash out.
  • Fixating on minor metrics (single-post performance, small dips) wastes energy that's better spent on the handful of numbers that actually predict outcomes.
  • A rising baseline metric (in this case, views) tends to pull related numbers like followers and reach upward with it, so one well-chosen metric can stand in for many.
04Lesson 3 — Post more, like way more
  • Reach scales with volume more directly than most creators assume — going from a few posts a week to several a day tracked with proportionally higher growth.
  • High-volume creators who reach massive audiences (cited: ~9 billion monthly reach) got there by posting close to 100 times a day, not by posting rarely and perfectly.
  • Increasing posting frequency gradually (weekly to daily to multiple times daily) is a more sustainable ramp than jumping straight to a high volume.
05Lesson 4 — Expect ebbs
  • Growth on social platforms moves in cycles, not a straight line — a plateau or slowdown is a normal phase, not evidence something is broken.
  • Quitting or panicking during a natural slow period is compared to pulling investments out of the stock market during a dip — it locks in the loss instead of riding it out.
  • Anticipating slow periods in advance reduces their emotional impact; expecting the ebb means it doesn't derail momentum when it happens.
06Lesson 5 — Smother the trolls
  • Any reply to a hostile comment, even a kind or witty one, still gives the commenter attention — the recommended response is total silence, not clapping back.
  • Publishing verifiable proof (like tax returns) preemptively can neutralize a recurring category of skeptical comments better than replying to them individually.
  • Attention and time are treated as a limited resource that should go to supportive readers, not to people trying to provoke a reaction.
07Lesson 6 — Repurpose 80%
  • Republishing content that already performed well reduces the risk profile of a content calendar — most of the output is a known quantity, not a gamble.
  • An 80/20 split (80% proven repurposed content, 20% new experiments) lets a creator post at high volume without needing a constant stream of brand-new ideas.
  • Most audiences don't notice or remember that a piece of content has been posted before, which makes repurposing far lower-risk than creators often assume.
08Lesson 7 — Lower their expectations
  • Deliberately lowering the audience's expectations for polish (no makeup, imperfect setting) removes the prep-time bottleneck that prevents frequent posting.
  • Training an audience to expect authenticity over production value turns filming into something that can happen in a spare thirty seconds rather than requiring a routine.
  • Posting more often lowers the pressure on any single post to perform, since there's no longer one shot per day to get it right.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Cash in, cash out metrics
A small set of top-line numbers (analogous to a business owner's profit line) that a creator watches instead of tracking every possible platform stat — here, 30-day view count and comment volume.
Repurposing
Re-publishing content that already performed well, often reformatted or resequenced, instead of creating something entirely new for every post.
Ebb
A temporary slowdown in growth or reach that happens naturally between periods of faster growth, rather than a sign that something is broken.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

07:01channelInstant Bollywood x MrBeast interview
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

01:05
I don't think it's very realistic for you to expect yourself to be super motivated when you're not making any money.
blunt, contrarian creator-economy takeTikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
12:34
They need oxygen to live. Take that oxygen away from them.
vivid metaphor, standalone punchlineIG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
14:29
I have an 80% chance that most of my content is gonna do well because 80% of it is repurposed.
counterintuitive stat framingnewsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
The Script

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metaphorstory
00:00I got 400,000 Instagram followers in twenty two months and I wanna show you exactly how I did it. I learned seven really big important things that I truly was not expecting to learn when I did this and so I jotted them all down and I wanna just show you what I did in case you don't know oh, no. We don't wanna do this on autoplay.
00:19In case you don't know. No. No.
00:20No. There we go. In case you don't know me, third time's a charm.
00:25My name is Maria Went. I run a multi million dollar business selling low ticket digital products. I kinda show people what I've learned.
00:31I've been doing this for about ten years longer, eleven, twelve years, long time. But I just recently started, like, Instagram growth, and I've really figured out what works.
00:42I'm growing at about 70,000 new Instagram followers per month now. And so at this rate, I'll be at over a million followers in, like, eight months or something like that.
00:51So maybe one day I can update this video and say, how I gained a million Instagram followers in thirty months, which should be amazing. So this is the first thing.
01:00Money keeps you motivated. I get paid about $2,500 for every Instagram post that I put out.
01:08That's a lot of money per reel. I've made other videos on how I do this. I'll link to them somewhere here so you can see it if you're interested.
01:15Um, but I don't wanna get into too much in this video. I have tons of videos on how I make money on Instagram. What I want to point out is that it's very easy to stay motivated when every single time you post, you make money.
01:27Every single time I post, I make money. I'm paid for every piece of content I put out. Of course, I am motivated.
01:33But it's not very realistic for you to expect yourself to stay motivated if you're not getting paid. I don't think many of us are doing this as a hobby. I think we're doing, a lot of us are focusing on creating content oh, jeez.
01:45Let me put my phone in do not disturb mode. That was so loud. Okay.
01:51There we go. We're in do not disturb. I don't think that it's very realistic for you to expect yourself to be super motivated when you're not making any money.
01:57So it's not just learning how to grow on Instagram, it's learning how to monetize Instagram, how to make money, assuming that's what you want, assuming that's why you're doing this.
02:08Because otherwise, if it's a hobby, you won't mind as much when you aren't making money. But if you're in this to make money, and you're making content because you wanna grow, and you wanna get a better income for yourself, for your family, it's very natural that you would feel unmotivated.
02:23And so as you're learning your skills, do not just be watching videos on how to grow your Instagram audience, Watch videos on how to monetize your Instagram audience, which frankly is why I make so many videos on how to monetize your Instagram audience because that's what's actually gonna keep you in the game.
02:38When you make content day in and day out and you do not make money, of course you're discouraged. Of course you're thinking about quitting. Of course, that's normal.
02:44That's natural. I would be if I was putting out content and wasn't making money, I would wanna quit too. The difference is I get paid $2,500 per Instagram post.
02:53I share, like, proof of that in other videos, I know there's always every time I make an income claim, there's always skeptics. You can go to mariawent.com/proof and read my tax report from last year.
03:01I make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, literally, like, 500 to $600,000 a month, which I prove in many different ways. And that's what keeps me motivated.
03:10Of course, I'm motivated. I'm making a ton of money. Let's not discount that.
03:13Let's just be honest about that. Let's, like, point to, hey. I might be discouraged because I posted 30 times and haven't made a single sale yet.
03:20That's okay. That's normal. That's what we wanna just say out loud so we can fix, which I'm really good at helping people fix that.
03:27But the first step is let's just acknowledge that that's happening. So money keeps you motivated. Second thing is really important.
03:34You need to pay attention to what I have learned to call cash in, cash out metrics. What the heck does that mean? What's a cash in, cash out metric?
03:44A cash in, cash out metric is based on a story that I learned where I was talking to this guy who was making, $300,000 $300,000,000.
03:52Sorry. So much money, my brain dipped. He ran a $300,000,000 business, and he had since sold it, so he wasn't working on it anymore.
03:59But he was talking about how he paid in he only, as the owner of the business, paid attention to the high level metrics. What's the cash coming in?
04:08What's the cash going out? Basically, the only metric he paid attention to as a business owner was are we profitable? It was the most important metric.
04:16This is really important because as you get better at business, you start getting trained to keep track of a lot of data. KPIs, how did our how did this marketing campaign do, how many units of this did we sell.
04:28So as a business owner and a good business owner, you're trained to track a lot of different metrics. As a content creator, it's similar.
04:36We have so many different metrics we can pay attention to. Watch time, click through rate, um, how many views did this get, how many followers did we get, um, how many people did we reach, how many non followers versus followers? There's so many metrics that are thrown at us as content creators.
04:50And so I have learned to pay attention to what I call the cash in cash out metrics that I learned from my friend. Right?
04:56What are the important metrics as a content creator? As someone that's really trying to grow very quickly, what are the important metrics? There's only two metrics that I really pay attention to.
05:06This is just like honest truth. There's two metrics I pay attention to that I never wanna see dip because that's overall comparable to a business owner paying attention to their profit.
05:17I pay attention to the number of views I got in the last thirty days. So right now, my average is 16,000,000 views.
05:25Um, I don't know if you can see on the camera here. But whatever. I'll just tell you.
05:3016,000,000 views in the last thirty days.
05:33That's, like, what I like it to be. That'll go up. It always goes up.
05:37It used to be, like, 12,000,000 was the standard for a really long time. I remember when I hit 6,000,000 views in thirty days, that was the standard. I remember when I hit 1,000,000 views in the thirty days, and that was the really big standard.
05:46But like you kinda figure out what your baseline is. For me, 16,000,000 is my baseline. I don't like to go below that.
05:51I'm really trying to break into the 20,000,000. That's my next one, which I'm sure I will soon. That's that tells me you're reaching people.
05:59I know my content gets a ton of followers. I know that followers you know, I know I get those interactions. I know, like, I'm if I pay attention to my big metric, the other little metrics follow.
06:10The second metric that I pay attention to from a monetizing standpoint is the number of comments I get. I track my comments meticulously. And so for me as a secondary thing for someone who monetizes, paying attention to my many chat comments is a really important metric.
06:23But overall, my cash in cash out metric that I pay attention to is views. Because if you're getting views, everything else falls into place.
06:30Don't get hyper fixated on the little things. I see a lot of my students get hyper fixated on tiny little metrics that don't matter. Just pay attention to your cash in, cash out metrics.
06:40Easy one, don't need to spend more time on this. The more I post, the more I grow. I am now posting four times a day on Instagram.
06:47I literally never run out of content ideas. I have like, my bottleneck is time.
06:51I would love to create more. If I could post 10 times a day, would post 10 times a day. If you haven't seen it, you should go Google instant Bollywood mister beast.
07:00This is a viral video that pretty much every content creator I think has seen, most everyone. It went viral in our little content creation world where this instant Bollywood account talked to mister beast, and he was reaching like 9,000,000,000 people a month.
07:139,000,000,000. Freaking nuts. And he posts like a 100 times a day.
07:17It's not just posting, by the way, it's posting good quality content. But post more. I have kept posting over and over and over again.
07:28And the more I post, the more people I reach, the more people I follow, the more comments I get. Way more.
07:35I went from posting, like, once a day well, like, three times a week, really.
07:40I went from posting three times a week to once a day every day to then twice a day to then three times a day to now four times a day, and I just keep growing. And maybe if I start posting five times a day, that's when I'll hit 20,000,000.
07:53Like, am seeing no negative consequences of posting. And in the next couple of slides, I'm gonna talk about how on earth I'm posting so much without working. I work very little on Instagram, and it's because I'll I'll I'll save that for later.
08:07But, like, the right now, for point number three, the key takeaway is post, like, way more than you think. Other thing is to expect ebbs. Right now, my Instagram account is going through a really big peak, um, probably directly correlated to me starting to post four times a day consistently instead of three times a day.
08:22But there have been times where I you know, right now I'm growing by about 2,000, um, two to 3,000 new followers a day, which is a lot for me. Um, but before that, like, my quote unquote ebb was, like, a thousand a day. And before that, it was, there'd be times where I would get, like, a couple 100 a day.
08:37And my growth on Instagram hasn't been as steady and climb up. It's been, like, it still is getting higher.
08:44It's like that stock market thing where, like, it's gradually trending upwards, but it has its ebbs. So expect ebbs. I see people go off the rails where they'll post, you know, for a while, and then they'll run into a very natural, very normal, very much to be expected ebb, and they freak out and stop posting.
09:02That's like that's like pulling out of the stock market when it's in the dip. Like, keep going. Expect the ebbs.
09:08Expect periods where you'll feel a little burnt out. Expect periods where you're not gonna be super, like, in it to where you're not excited to post four times a day. Who the fuck is excited to post four times a day?
09:18Not everybody all the time. Everyone has periods of time where it's not fun. K?
09:22But what I want out of my own personal life and how who I wanna reach and the vision I have for the women I'm going to help, that's bigger than my day to day motivation. And part of handling that is to expect it.
09:35Don't be some of my students, they just get so emotionally shocked when they have an ebb or they have a period where they don't grow as quickly and it's a little bit of a plateau.
09:43Expect it. Then you won't be so gobsmacked when it happens. It's gonna happen.
09:47And then you just keep posting through it. You don't even give it any giving emotional attention to stuff like that, to to to abs or slow growth or really anything.
09:57Giving emotional negative attention is the is such a waste of energy to me. Like, it shouldn't be you shouldn't be posting about it in the Facebook group.
10:06You shouldn't be freaking out. You should just know, okay, this is gonna happen.
10:10I'm not doing anything wrong. Just need to keep doing exactly what I'm doing and weather the storm. Don't change anything.
10:14If anything, post more when you're in an ebb. Smother the trolls. This is one of my favorite.
10:20You've heard the phrase don't feed the trolls, and that's good. I like to smother the trolls because every single this is something anytime I have a reel that gets over a million views, I absolutely know the comments are gonna be completely fucked, just completely trashed with haters and cynics and people commenting about how ugly I am or whatever.
10:41Like, it's people think I'm a liar. People think that this is why I started sharing my tax reports and everything because my, like, actual tax statements. What is it called?
10:49Where you file your taxes every year. Whatever. I just that document.
10:53Tax returns. I started sharing my tax returns because of the comments.
10:57Because because people do not believe that it's possible for me to make the money I'm making. And so I prefer to not just don't feed the trolls, but I don't I like to smother them altogether.
11:10And here's what I mean by that. Trolls need oxygen, and when you don't give them that oxygen, they die out.
11:18So as I understand it, don't feed the trolls would be like totally, you know, just like acknowledging them, like, but not baiting them. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe it means the same thing I'm saying, but what I have what I do is I see other influencers reply kindly or reply sassily or do, like, clapbacks.
11:38Everybody loves it when, like, the trolls get clapped back. I don't clap back. I don't read them.
11:44If I happen to have my eyes come across on because it was in my notifications and I happen to see it, so be it. But I try to give as little attention as possible to the people who comment negative things.
11:57Because there are so many people who comment loving positive things, and I have such little time to reply to anything, that if I'm going to give any comment or reply, I'll be damned if it's someone who's being stupid on my page. There's so many stories that get shared with me of people who's who have been changed.
12:16Their lives have been completely changed by my courses or my free content. Those are the people I should be getting my attention to. Trolls comment because they're keyboard warriors and because they want your attention, they want your energy.
12:27And you need to understand what a valuable asset your energy is, what a valuable asset your attention is and your time. Don't even reply kindly. Don't even reply explaining your point.
12:37Don't reply to them at all. Smother them. They they need oxygen to live.
12:43Take that oxygen away from them. They're like a fire. Like, just just put that cap on it and absolutely give them zero attention.
12:52Not even kind, not even nice, not even respectful, not even I we have a difference of opinion. Nothing. Smother them because they want oxygen, they want your attention, and you refuse to give it to them.
13:06Now that I'm off my soapbox, key insight number six is to repurpose 80% of your content. This is a really big one.
13:13This is how I've been able to post so many times a day.
13:19Only 10 only 20% of the content that I put out is new content. I have another video that I'll link to that talks about how I turn like one post into 15 posts, and you guys never know.
13:30Like, I never once have I ever had someone be like, I saw that you posted this as a carousel five days ago. Never once have I gotten that. First of all, a tiny percentage of your followers even see your content.
13:42Two, if they see it, they and remembered it, which most don't even remember that they've seen the content before. If they do see it and do remember that you've posted this before, which is abysmally rare, they're grateful for the reminder.
13:57And so 80% of my content is completely repurposed, only 20% of my content is new. And here's the thing about repurposing that I learned from Alex from Wizzy that I thought was just so good. He said, why would you not repurpose the stuff you know works over and over again?
14:14If I put out 10 pieces of content and 80% of them are so eight of the 10 are content that's repurposed that I know already did well, I know that 80% of my posts, eight of those 10 posts, are not gonna flop.
14:30So we should be doing 20% experimentation with new styles of content, new topics, new ideas, but we shouldn't be risking all of our content on content that we don't know or, you know, may or may not flop.
14:46Versus if I'm putting out eight eight of my 10 pieces as content that I've already published that I know already does well with my audience, I have an 80% chance that most of my content is gonna do well. I have a 100% content chance that most of my content will do well because 80% of it is repurposed. These numbers are confusing me.
15:02I'm speaking out loud too much. When 80% of your content is repurposed stuff that already does well, you are not taking a risk with that content. You're only taking a risk of flopping with the 20% new.
15:14It's a much smarter strategy. He said it a hell of a lot better than I did, but that's another reason to repurpose. I used to think repurposing was lazy.
15:21I used to think that, oh, like, I read an email from that girl and I saw that she put it on her, you know, Instagram content. I used to think less of people that repurposed. And now I just realized that was a stupid one because they were just repurposing content that did well.
15:36Now I will tell you, I still don't love it when a content creator posts the same piece of content on the same day at the same time to all their platforms. Um, but that's me on my little judgmental high horse, honestly.
15:49If you wanna do that, do that. I repurpose a little bit differently. I repurpose in a sneaky way so you can't tell I'm repurposing, which is why I made that video on how I do that.
15:56But again, like, potato potahto. Like, I like the way I repurpose, but also I shouldn't be judging people who repurpose that way because repurposing is effective and it's a good strategy. So I just need to not be judging.
16:07Okay. This one I love. This is lowering expectations.
16:13This is a big breakthrough moment for me when I figured this out.
16:20I had to train my audience to lower their expectations. And I know it sounds bad, but bear with me.
16:27I train my audience to expect me to show up, and this might only be specific to women.
16:34So if it is, that's fine. I'm just talking to you girlies. I train my audience to expect me to to not show up in makeup.
16:42So I gave myself permission to show up with my hair not done perfectly, with my makeup not on, in clothes that were whatever I was wearing. I'm a mom. I'm with my kid most of the time.
16:53I work very little. If I'm gonna be on my phone, you best believe, and if I have an idea or like a piece of content that I wanna film, you best believe I'm just gonna take that second and film it and get right back to playing with my kid.
17:05I don't even like to do that. I try to not work at all when she's with me because I just I don't wanna work when I'm with her.
17:12I'm only working about fifteen hours a week now and that's how I want. I wanna be working like even less, honestly. I like to work like five hours a week.
17:20Wonder if I could do that. I'm gonna sit like anyways, I have trained my audience and really frankly, at the end of the day, given myself permission to show up without makeup as I am in that moment uncensored, completely uncensored.
17:39And what that's done is it's removed a bottleneck because what I used to do is not give myself that permission and I've I used to, um, like, okay, I have to oh, I gotta film that, so I gotta go put different clothes on, gotta go do my hair, gotta do my makeup.
17:54It added 30 to my routine. I don't see boys as much doing that, but maybe you guys are. Maybe you're like, oh, I gotta I don't I don't have my lighting the right way, or I have to film if I'm in my car, or I have to film using this particular microphone.
18:07I have trained myself. I've I've trained myself and I've trained my audience to not expect me to be dolled up all the time. I just filmed a video of me eating chicken and rice sharing something.
18:18It was probably really gross to look at. I was in my workout clothes. Certainly not Maria from three years ago would have never.
18:25And so I've lowered I've trained I've lowered my expectations for myself, and I've lowered my expectations for you guys, and I think that's really helped me produce content that's my best energy, where I'm just like, I had the idea. I wanna share this. I wanna say this.
18:38And we're all in this together. You guys are with me as I put my makeup on, or you're with me as I'm eating food, or you're with me when I'm driving in my car, like, you're just with me with whatever I'm doing, and frankly, think people kinda like it. So I've lowered their expectations.
18:51Now, if you want to, there's there's if you wanna know how I do this, like how I got to the point where I did this is I just started.
19:03Like, I think that's the thing is just start, pick up the camera and start. And I know that sounds so cliche, but that's just what I did. It's like I just picked up the camera and I started filming and then I published it.
19:14And I was filming another video on this really quickly before I, you know, get to the next point here, which is I filmed that when you're publishing content four times a day, there's so much less pressure on each individual post to do well.
19:26Back when I was posting one post a day, there was so much pressure. That was my one chance of the day to make a good piece of content, but now I get four chances a day to make a piece of content that goes viral. So just getting less of a shit about each post actually really helped.
19:40And the other thing, by the way, is if you want to know how I get $2,500 per reel, I think that's gonna be really motivating for you. I'm gonna put a link in the chat or in the chat.
19:50I'm gonna put a link in the description for you to look into that because I think that that's why I put that point first. I meant to say this earlier, but that's why I put that first is like, if you aren't getting paid per reel you're putting out, it's really discouraging, and it's gonna be hard for you to stay in the content game long enough, so go check that out in the description.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Maria Wendt opens by promising the exact math behind 400,000 new Instagram followers in under two years — then spends the next nineteen minutes stripping the growth story down to seven blunt operating rules, starting with the one most creators skip: get paid, or don't expect to stay motivated.

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK
19:37product
go check that out in the description

soft closing pointer to a paid course link in the description rather than an on-screen hard sell

FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

open
hookopen00:00
lesson 1
valuelesson 100:59
lesson 6
valuelesson 613:06
CTA
ctaCTA19:37
Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

Watch next

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Maria Wendt · Tutorial

How To Go Viral

A no-edits, 48-minute breakdown of the repeatable system behind the reels that keep popping off for her students, not the one lucky fluke that never comes back.

October 10th 2024
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