11:27Maria Wendt · Tutorial
How to Use Instagram Stories for Business
A creator who says she's made $6M in four years off Instagram walks through the exact ManyChat keyword automations behind her daily Story pitches.
June 13th 2024The argument in one line.
Getting to your first $500 in digital products isn't a traffic problem — it's one $97 offer stuffed with thousand-dollar value, sold through five specific, scripted Instagram posts.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You've never sold a digital product before and $500 currently feels like an intimidating number rather than an easy one.
- You have an Instagram (or similar) account and are willing to post Reels, Stories, and a carousel over a couple of days.
- You want a literal, no-guesswork sequence of what to post and in what order, not general strategy advice.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for a paid-traffic or cold-audience strategy — this plan assumes you're posting to whatever following you already have.
- You already have a proven $97 (or similar) offer and a repeatable launch process — this is a beginner's first-sale playbook, not an optimization video.
The full version, fast.
The creator argues that a beginner's first $500 in digital products comes down to one small, high-value $97 offer sold five times, not a big audience or complex funnel. She frames the product itself as needing to feel like it could be sold for $997 or more, even though it's priced in the impulse-purchase range under $100. To generate the five sales, she gives an exact three-part posting sequence: three Reels that build credibility around the problem being solved (each with a short caption and a clear call-to-action to comment for the checkout link), two Instagram Stories that pitch directly rather than nurture, and one non-pitch carousel that shares a vulnerable, related story to keep the conversation going. She stresses that belief the sale is possible has to come before the tactics, and closes by pointing to a faster-money video for viewers who want to move even quicker than 24-48 hours.
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00:00 – 00:54
01 · Proof before the plan
Opens with the $500 promise, introduces herself as a $14M digital-product seller, and stacks student proof (a $3,000 month, a $10,000 week, a $40,000 week) before getting practical.
00:54 – 02:47
02 · The mindset tax
Argues the real obstacle for a total beginner is believing the money is possible at all, not the tactics — points to her own channel intro video and a Henry Ford quote before promising the practical plan.
02:47 – 05:37
03 · The $500 math: one $97 offer, five sales
Draws out the plan: launch one product priced at $97 (the impulse-purchase range), but build it to feel like it could sell for $997 or more.
05:37 – 09:07
04 · Tactic 1: three Reels built for credibility
Breaks the Reel formula into four fixed parts — credibility-building content, a short-ish caption, a clear call-to-action, and a link straight to checkout — using a relationship-coach example.
09:07 – 10:41
05 · Tactic 2: two pitch-style Stories
Positions Stories as the highest-converting channel of the three, with explicit instructions to skip nurturing and long talking-head content in favor of a headline, paragraph, and call-to-action.
10:41 – 11:49
06 · Tactic 3: one non-pitch carousel, then close
Specifies a carousel that shares a vulnerable, related story with zero pitch, gives the exact publishing order for the day, and closes pointing to a faster '$100 overnight' video.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A beginner's first $500 in digital products is treated as five sales of one $97 product, not a traffic or audience-size problem.
- $97 sits inside what's described as the 'impulse purchase range' — roughly $200 or under, where buyers act without deliberating.
- The product should be built to feel like it could be sold for $997 to $30,000, even while it's priced at $97 — the value gap is what builds trust.
- Believing you can make the money is framed as the actual bottleneck for anyone who hasn't made a dollar yet, not the mechanics of the launch itself.
- The five sales are split across three specific post types: three Reels, two Stories, and one carousel, each with a distinct job.
- Every Reel in the sequence needs four fixed elements: content that builds credibility on the problem being solved, a short-ish caption, a clear call-to-action, and a link that goes straight to a checkout page — never a landing page.
- Instagram Stories are pitched as better converters than Reels because viewers are actively opting in and clicking through, rather than passively scrolling an algorithm feed.
- The explicit instruction for Stories is to not nurture and not post long talking-head content — just a headline, a paragraph, and a call-to-action.
- The single carousel in the sequence is told to contain zero pitch — it shares a vulnerable, topic-adjacent story purely to keep the audience engaged between the pitching posts.
- Publishing order matters: the carousel goes out after the first Reel and first Story of the day, not before them.
- Two of the five sales are expected to come from Stories alone, according to the creator's own conversion estimate.
- Free content is positioned as intentionally as good as paid content, on the theory that this builds the trust that makes a $97 impulse buy easy.
The first $500 is one $97 offer sold five specific ways.
WHAT TO LEARN
A beginner's first sales don't require a bigger audience or a complex funnel — they require one impulse-priced offer stuffed with real value and a fixed sequence of five posts.
01Proof before the plan
- Stack quick third-party proof (a few real student results) before asking a skeptical beginner to believe a number is achievable.
02The mindset tax
- Point viewers to belief-building content before tactical content when the real blocker is confidence, not know-how.
03The $500 math: one $97 offer, five sales
- Price a first offer inside the impulse-purchase range (roughly $200 or under, ideally under $100) so buyers act without deliberating.
- Build a low-priced product to feel like it could be sold for ten to one hundred times its price — the value gap is what earns trust for future, higher-ticket offers.
04Tactic 1: three Reels built for credibility
- Give every promotional post a fixed job: a Reel builds credibility around the problem, a Story pitches directly, a carousel builds connection with zero pitch.
- Route every purchase link straight to a checkout page, never a landing page, to remove friction between interest and purchase.
05Tactic 2: two pitch-style Stories
- Treat Instagram Stories as a higher-intent channel than Reels, since viewers are actively opting in rather than passively scrolling.
06Tactic 3: one non-pitch carousel, then close
- Sequence posts deliberately — a non-pitch piece (like a carousel) should follow, not precede, the day's pitching content.
- Give away content that's as good as what's normally sold, to build the trust an impulse-priced offer depends on.
Terms worth knowing.
- Impulse purchase range
- A price point (here, roughly $200 and under, ideally $97 or less) low enough that buyers decide to purchase without extended deliberation.
- Nurturing (in Stories)
- Posting relationship-building or educational content in Instagram Stories instead of directly pitching a product — explicitly discouraged for the two pitch Stories in this plan.
- Checkout page vs. landing page
- A checkout page lets a buyer complete a purchase directly; a landing page describes the offer first and requires an extra click to reach checkout. The plan insists links go straight to checkout.
Things they pointed at.
01:47channel"Struggling to believe you can make money" (channel intro video)
09:11productInstagram Stories micro-course
11:40channel"How I'd make $100 overnight" video
Lines you could clip.
00:54
“That's easy peasy, lemon squeezy for me.”
02:35
“Whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right.”
07:08
“My free content is genuinely better than most people's paid content.”
09:47
“Do not nurture in your stories.”
Word for word.
Read-along
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metaphorstory
00:00Here's the best part about this video showing you how to make $500 ASAP with digital products. You can watch this over and over and over again anytime you wanna make $500.
00:10And if you don't know me, my name is Maria Wendt. I've made almost $14,000,000 selling digital products, and even more importantly, I help my students do it.
00:18So if $500 seems impossible to you, I just wanna really show you a couple of students super quick so you believe me. This is my student Kate.
00:27She just had her first $3,000 month, and then that's like average.
00:32I would say like 2 to $3,000 a month is average, and then we have the bigger ones where this is Andrea, she's up to $10,000 a week, which is really amazing, and then similarly, Brandi's at a little bit more, which is her second week in a row. She's hit $40,000 in a week.
00:48So she's doing really, really well. Um, there's a wide range, and I'm sharing that because I want you to know that I know exactly what to do to get you to at least $500 selling digital products.
00:59That's for me. And I also want you to see testimonials like Brandy, like Andrea, like, hey, all my students.
01:05You could see my reviews everywhere. I want you to see what's possible for you. Because if you believe $500 is hard, you are you have a lot of mindset work to do to believe you can do $40,000 in a week.
01:20Um, I'm over here doing $800,000 a month almost. I'm very close to $800,000 a month.
01:25So it really is so much of the mindset stuff at the beginning. When you're just getting started, um, and you haven't even made a dollar yet, your biggest challenge right now is to just believe you can make money.
01:39And so we're gonna go into a practical game plan in a second here, but what I would really encourage you to do is watch the video that's my intro channel video. So if you go like straight to my channel, it's a video called struggling to believe you can make money.
01:52Because I'm going into a very practical game plan, but it won't work if you don't believe you can make money. If you don't believe that you can make $500 selling digital products as a complete beginner, that is true for you.
02:03I think it was Henry Ford who said like whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right. So, again, we're gonna get into the practical stuff. I'm gonna tell you how I would make $500 ASAP.
02:13It's a very small amount of money. But when you're at that, like, zero to a million or even, like, zero to your first $10,000, your mindset is what's limiting you.
02:24You don't understand what you are capable of. You have no evidence in your background, in your history to prove to yourself that you can do it.
02:32And so the mindset stuff is so, so important. I'm a big practical girl. I'm a big, like, let's get into the data.
02:38Let's get into the marketing. Let's just tell me what to do, I'll do it. But part of it is you actually believing it's possible for you.
02:44So how to say that before we get into the practical stuff. So, okay, if I woke up in your shoes never having made a single penny and I wanted to make $500 ASAP, we're talking, like, in the next twenty four hours, in the next thirty six hours, in the next two days, what would I do?
03:04So first things first, I know it might not feel that way to you, but it's actually a really small amount of money.
03:12$500, super doable. Really, really doable.
03:17If you had come to me and said, okay, wanna make $500,000, I mean, never say never, but $500, that's doable.
03:26That's super realistic. So I'm gonna just give you the game plan, and then at the end, I'm gonna point you in the direction of some things that you can do to make this, like, infallible. Like, can't can't mess this up.
03:38You know? How to do like, just can't mess it up. Okay?
03:42So we're gonna take it one step at a time. You're gonna launch a product that's $97.
03:52That's your price point. Okay? Then you're gonna make five sales.
03:57I'm gonna tell you how to do it, but that's the math for you. You're gonna make five sales at $97.
04:06$97 is in what I call the where, basically, if it's, like, $200 or less, but really, like, $97 or less, people don't even really think about it.
04:18They just like pull the trigger and buy. So here's the key though with this. You need to stuff it with value.
04:26So this little thing that's $97 needs to be so good, you could have charged $9.97 for it.
04:34So it's going to require you to make a good product. A good product doesn't necessarily mean a huge product, a robust product. It just means looking at the problems you wanna help people solve and say, okay, what that industry is, and say, what are people selling for a thousand dollars?
04:53How can I repackage it where it's just as valuable, but I'm selling it for 97?
05:00Another way of saying it is what can I do that is so valuable I could charge and sell this for a thousand dollars?
05:10So with my courses, they're like $27 to $300 but I could charge $2,000 to $30,000 easily and sell it easily for the same information.
05:20In fact, everything I put on YouTube, I could sell.
05:25Everything I put on Instagram for free, I could sell. So my free content is genuinely better than most people's paid content. And that builds a lot of trust, which is what we need to do.
05:35We need to build trust. So let's talk about how we're gonna make those five sales.
05:43Obviously, we wanna talk about that. So you need to make a really good product and charge $97 for it.
05:48That's the gist of the first stage. Make it really good. I have, by the way, tons and tons and tons of free videos here on YouTube, specifically talking about how to make products that go viral.
06:01I'm pretty sure my last video, depending on how this is all scheduled, my last video literally shows you how to do that. So if you aren't sure how to do that, please go binge my channel. There's literally endless amounts of free information on how to do that.
06:13Okay. Here's how we're gonna make five sales. Now I'm gonna give you the game plan as if you were selling this on Instagram because most of my audience is selling their stuff on Instagram, but you can take this and modify it for any platform.
06:27So just know when I say Instagram, you can take it and modify it for whatever social media platform you're on. That's totally fine. So basically, there's three things that you need to do.
06:38It's actually not hard really at all, which kinda makes sense given the price. Our goal that we're trying to make is $500, not 500,000.
06:48So you're gonna post three reels. Now I'm gonna give you a pro tip couple of pro tips. Okay?
06:55It's gonna follow the style that I have. I'm just gonna quickly pull up my phone here.
07:00Oh, I don't have Instagram on my phone. If you go to my Instagram account, and you go to my Instagram account and you look at the reels that I publish at 4AM, those are the ones.
07:12I just deleted Instagram off of this phone. This is like my personal phone. Otherwise, I would show you.
07:17Um, but if you go to my Instagram account and you go to the reels that get scheduled at 4AM PST, make it in that style.
07:26To give you a couple of pointers, just if you want, like, a visual example, I'm still gonna break it down for you right here. I got my notes. But just if you wanna see actual examples of how I do it, go and look at the reels that are scheduled at 4AM.
07:37So there's four things with these kinds of reels that you're gonna publish. One, the content of the Reel needs to create credibility. So whatever problem it is you're trying to sell, whatever it is you're trying to solve for people and the product you're selling, the content of the Reel has to create credibility around that.
07:51So if you're a relationship coach and you're selling a, like, a a course on, like, reigniting the physical spark in a marriage that's been around for twenty years or more, right, so you've been married for a long time, the spark's not there, but you are a great relationship coach and you are very good at helping couples fall back in love with each other, then your the content of this reels needs to be you and your husband, you know, being flirtatious together at a minimum.
08:21It needs to have a short ish caption, not a very short caption, not a very long caption, like, a paragraph or less. It needs to have a very clear call to action telling them exactly what to comment so they can get the link to buy, and the link is gonna take them to the checkout page.
08:37Not the landing page, the checkout page. So again, if you go to my 4AM, um, reels, I'll give you, like, a specific one to look for.
08:44It's me boarding a plane. Um, I'm in a white outfit. Again, I wish I had my other phone with me, but I don't.
08:49My assistant has it, so you just have to go to my Instagram account and see it. If you want a visual example. If you don't care to have the visual example, then the four things you need to know is the content of the reel needs to create credibility.
09:00It needs to have a short ish caption, a clear call to action, and the link is gonna take them to the checkout page. You're gonna post three reels. Then you're gonna post two stories.
09:11Now I just launched a micro course telling you everything that you need to know about making money specifically with Instagram stories. Instagram stories are gold mine. If you didn't know that, they're really conducive for sales because it's different than Reels.
09:24When people are looking at Reels, they're just watching whatever the algorithm serves up to them. So they're kinda aimlessly scrolling Reels. With Instagram Stories, they are going and opting into your content.
09:35They're taking the time to click and view your stories so they're better buyers. So I just released a micro course on that, but here's what I want you to know. Do not nurture in your stories.
09:48Do not post long talking head stories. Do not do any of those, like, engagement hacks.
09:54I have a very specific kind of story. I go into it more in the course, but basically, it's a headline, a long paragraph, and a call to action. It's my moneymaker.
10:02So do two stories that are pitching. Stories create tons of sales.
10:07Of your five, I would think you would get at least two, maybe three from your stories.
10:16People who have not done that style of Stories yet especially have this, which most people haven't, have this massive untapped part of their audience that has never gotten properly pitched to you before. So, um, I just launched it yesterday, and my student shared that she has a very tiny account, but she's never gotten more views on her stories, um, from this style.
10:36So it's just a really, really it creates, a boosting loop. So, um, post two stories and then post again, is for our five sales, one carousel.
10:47Now here's the thing about the carousel. You're not gonna pitch at all. You're gonna do a vulnerable topic that relates to what you are selling.
10:56So again, using our example of that romantic, um, like, course, you know, like, oh, reignite the spark, um, talk about something, maybe a time that, like, you and your husband weren't intimate, maybe for a long time, and then how you came back together.
11:14So it's related to the topic that you are selling. Don't pitch in this carousel. It's meant to continue the conversation around what you're selling, and then when you're gonna post it, you're gonna post it after the first story and after the first reel are published.
11:29So if you publish your first reel at 7AM and your first story at 8AM, publish this carousel at, like, 11AM or twelve. K? Now if you wanna make money even faster, I have a very popular video on how I'd make a $100 overnight.
11:44You can watch that next and see if you like that way better. They're both amazing.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
She opens by promising a repeatable $500 recipe, then stacks quick proof from her own students — a $3,000 month, a $10,000 week, a $40,000 week — before drawing the entire game plan out by hand on screen.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:47list
The $500-in-3-Posts Plan
- Launch one $97 product built to feel like a $997+ value
- Post 3 Reels (credibility content + short caption + clear CTA + checkout link)
- Post 2 Stories (pitch, no nurturing: headline + paragraph + CTA)
- Post 1 carousel (no pitch, vulnerable related story)
A fixed five-sale sequence for a beginner's first $500: one impulse-priced offer sold across three specific post types, each with its own job.
Steal forany first-launch or low-ticket digital product with an existing (even small) social following
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
11:40next-video
“Now if you wanna make money even faster, I have a very popular video on how I'd make a $100 overnight. You can watch that next and see if you like that way better.”
Single soft mention at the very end, redirecting viewers who want a faster result to a separate video rather than pitching a product directly.
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
