26:41Brian Mark · Tutorial
How To Make Money From Your Instagram Content
Brian Mark walks a roomful of coaches through his 3-layer Instagram funnel — live, whiteboard out, no fluff.
April 18thThe argument in one line.
Viral content is not invented — it is discovered by identifying videos the algorithm has already rewarded and recreating their proven patterns with your own voice and subject matter.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You post consistently on Instagram but your views flatline and you cannot identify why.
- You spend 45+ minutes editing a reel that gets 2 likes and have no systematic way to prevent that from happening again.
- You are a coach or service-business owner using organic content as your primary lead channel.
- You want a repeatable weekly ideation process that replaces blank-page guessing with data from what already worked.
SKIP IF…
- You are not creating short-form content in a niche where 5-10 established creators already have audiences to research.
- You are looking for production or editing techniques — this is entirely an ideation and research strategy.
The full version, fast.
The algorithm is incentivized to distribute content that keeps people on the platform, so it has already sorted the internet into winning patterns and losing ones. The outlier method makes this visible: any video that outperformed its account average by 3-10x is proof that the hook, subject matter, or format landed. The workflow is to find 5-10 creators in your niche, sort their Reels by most-viewed, save the top performers, then repeat across unrelated niches to become a trendsetter rather than a follower. Sandcastles AI automates the sorting and surfaces transcripts and outlier scores. The constraint that makes the whole system work is a blocked two-to-three-hour weekly session for ideation — treated as a non-negotiable commitment, not an optional creative mood.
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00:00 – 00:43
01 · Credential hook
$250K in mentors, 650K followers, $1.5M/month coaching revenue. Establishes authority before teaching anything.
00:43 – 01:09
02 · The biggest mistake
Inventing your own content ideas. Sets up the contrast that originality is not the path to virality.
01:09 – 03:07
03 · How the algorithm works
Platforms maximize watch time to sell ads. Engaging content gets distributed; flopping is a signal about the idea, not about you.
03:07 – 03:27
04 · The Outlier Method defined
A video that outperforms its account average by 3-10x. Manual and AI research paths introduced.
03:27 – 05:22
05 · Cross-niche research
Real example: student-studying triple-split-screen video recreated for coaching niche hit 100K views. The trendsetter edge comes from outside your niche.
05:22 – 06:18
06 · The research workflow (manual)
Find 5-10 creators, sort Reels by most viewed, save 5-10 reels per account. End result: 100 proven ideas in a saved folder.
06:18 – 09:07
07 · Sandcastles AI walkthrough
Live screen recording: add accounts to watchlist, sort by outlier score, read transcripts and storytelling structures. Cuts research from an afternoon to 15 minutes.
09:07 – 10:14
08 · Imitate, don't plagiarize
Take hooks, formats, subject matter — never the script verbatim. Delivery is a co-factor; study how they communicate, not just what they say.
10:14 – 12:13
09 · Block time for ideation
Two to three hours per week, non-negotiable, same as a sales call or gym session. Close and series CTA.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Only 3-5% of posts across all platforms ever go viral — the rest is noise masquerading as consistent effort.
- If your content is flopping, the algorithm is not punishing you — it is giving accurate feedback that the idea was not engaging enough to distribute.
- A video that already went viral is proof-of-concept that the pattern works; recreating it with your spin is faster than betting on an untested idea.
- An outlier is any video that outperforms an account average by 3-10x — that ratio tells you precisely what the algorithm rewarded on that channel.
- The real edge is not looking within your niche — it is finding viral patterns in unrelated niches and bringing those patterns to your audience first.
- Sort any creator's Instagram Reels tab by most viewed to surface their outliers in under 60 seconds — no paid tool required.
- Save 5-10 reels from 5-10 accounts and you have a 100-idea bank reflecting what actually worked in the last 30 days.
- Sandcastles AI compresses manual outlier research into 15 minutes by surfacing transcripts, outlier scores, and storytelling structures in one dashboard.
- You can take the hook, the format, and the subject matter — you cannot take the script verbatim, and that line is where imitation becomes plagiarism.
- Delivery is a co-factor in virality: the same idea communicated poorly will still flop, so study how the creator speaks, not just what they say.
- Information without implementation is just noise — treating ideation as a soft suggestion means you will never build a working content bank.
- Block two to three hours every week for ideation the same way you would block a sales call: scheduled, same day, non-negotiable regardless of motivation.
Five steps to never run out of content ideas.
WHAT TO LEARN
The algorithm has already sorted billions of posts into winners and losers — the research skill is knowing how to read that signal and build your content calendar off it.
- Flopping content is algorithm feedback about the idea, not a verdict on your ability — a weak result means the hook or subject matter did not earn attention, not that you are a bad creator.
- An outlier is any video that outperforms its account's average view count by 3-10x — that ratio is the algorithm's receipt confirming the pattern worked.
- Sorting a creator's Instagram Reels by most-viewed takes 60 seconds and surfaces their proven outliers with no tool required.
- The cross-niche move is the real edge: viral patterns from unrelated niches land fresh in your audience, making you a trendsetter instead of another voice running the same formats as everyone else.
- When analyzing an outlier, extract three things — the hook (first 3-10 seconds), the format (structure and visual style), and the subject matter — never the script verbatim.
- Delivery is a co-factor in virality: the same proven idea communicated with low energy or poor pacing will still underperform, so study how the creator speaks, not just the words they chose.
- A weekly two-to-three-hour ideation block, treated the same as a scheduled sales call, converts this research method from information into a running content bank.
Terms worth knowing.
- Outlier
- A video that outperformed its account's typical view count by 3-10x or more. The multiplier signals that something about the hook, format, or subject matter broke through the algorithm's normal distribution threshold.
- Outlier score
- A ratio comparing a specific video's views to the account's baseline average. A 10x outlier score means the video got ten times the channel's normal views — the higher the score, the stronger the proven signal.
- Sandcastles AI
- A content research tool that aggregates Instagram and other platform videos by outlier score, provides transcripts, and surfaces storytelling structures — replacing hours of manual sorting with an automated dashboard.
- Ideation
- The scheduled process of researching outlier content, extracting patterns, and building a bank of proven ideas to recreate — distinct from production and editing, and treated here as a dedicated weekly time block.
Things they pointed at.
04:36productContent to Cash Masterclass
Lines you could clip.
10:14
“Information without implementation is just noise.”
10:02
“We can take hooks, we can take formats, and we can take subject matter, but we never ever ever take the script.”
04:01
“If you're just looking for accounts in your niche, you're not gonna be a trendsetter because you are gonna be posting the same content as everybody else.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
analogy
00:00I've invested over $250,000 in content mentors that allowed me to grow my Instagram account over 650,000 followers.
00:07And in this five part video series, I'm gonna teach you everything that they taught me so that you don't have to pay the same amount of money that I Most people when they go to post on Instagram spend forty five minutes to an hour editing their video thinking it's gonna do well. They post it on their news feed. They check it fifteen minutes later.
00:21It's got two people liking it and barely any engagement. And no, I'm not gonna tell you in this video that you need to just follow trends and use trending audio. I'm gonna give you the actual research principles that me and my team use to consistently produce banger viral videos on my social media to generate between thirty and fifty million views a month.
00:36This is part one of five of my series of how to create viral content that converts, and I've used this exact system inside of my coaching business to generate $1,500,000 in sales every single month and to book 900 sales calls on a monthly basis. By the way, this number was new cash collected, not total cash.
00:50So pay attention, take notes, make sure you like, comment, subscribe to this video, turn on post notifications so you don't miss any part of the series, and let's dive in. So first, let's talk about the biggest mistake that most content creators make when it comes to content creation. It's inventing their own ideas.
01:03Listen. You don't need to reinvent the wheel at this point. There's been hundreds of millions of posts across all social media accounts, and out of hundreds of millions of posts, there's maybe three to 5% of them that actually end up going viral and doing well.
01:15So you need to understand how the algorithms work in these social media platforms. The algorithms are incentivized to push out content that is highly engaging so that they keep people on the platform for longer. Because when all of these social media platforms, so you're talking about TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etcetera, they're all incentivized to keep people on the platform because when people are paying attention to their platform, they can run ads to those people, which basically means for you, the more engaging that your content is, the more that Instagram can show their ads to people on their platform.
01:42As a result, they will share your content out with more people. So if your content is flopping, that doesn't mean that you're a bad content creator, and it doesn't mean that the algorithm hates you. What it does mean is that the idea or the way that you delivered that idea isn't engaging enough to keep people's attention, and as a result, that piece of content is not getting pushed out.
01:59So to solve this problem, want you to write this down. Don't reinvent the wheel. What we're gonna do is we're gonna find ideas that have already been proven and tested, and we're gonna take those ideas, and we're gonna iterate on those ideas and recreate them with our own spin.
02:12In this way, what we're doing is we're figuring out the content that Instagram has already responded to and said that this is a good piece of content, and we're finding our own way to insert our own unique value into these videos so that our videos end up outperforming our typical content. So we don't reinvent the wheel.
02:28We find viral outliers and we recreate them. When I first started posting on Instagram, I was posting twice a day, every day, seven days of the week, and I was doing everything that you're doing right now. I was coming up with my own ideas.
02:37I also didn't have ChatGeeBT back in the day back in the day in 2021, so I was just writing my own scripts. So it would take me two to three hours to write my scripts, then it would take me two to three hours to film them, then it would take me two to three hours to edit them, then obviously all of the posting. And my content was doing average at best.
02:51It wasn't until I started researching what was currently working on Instagram right now and what was popping off on social media, and then I took those ideas and I added my own spin that my own content started to take off. I started this Instagram account in November 2021, and since November 2021, we went from zero to over 650,000 followers at this point.
03:07So what I'm about to share with you is stuff that I've personally used to grow my own Instagram account, and I know for a fact that if you use this stuff, your Instagram account is gonna grow Point number two, the outlier method. So how do you actually find these outlier videos and what is the definition of an outlier? The definition of an outlier is a video that performs higher than the account's usual view volume.
03:27So as an example, if an Instagram account is typically getting one to 2,000 views a video, but then one of their videos gets 20,000 views, that's what we would call a 10 x outlier. So what we wanna look for is we wanna look for videos that have a three to a 10 x outlier score.
03:43Now, we can use AI to do this and we can also do this manually. I'm gonna show you the manual way to do this and I'm gonna show you the AI way to do this because I think it's important to understand how to do this manually so that you can do your own research Instagram.
03:55Now, this is the exact method that all of the biggest creators use. Every single content coach that has spent 50 to $100,000 on has said the exact same thing, find what works, recreate it with your own spin.
04:06And here's the real secret. The secret is that you don't just look for accounts in your niche. If you're just looking for accounts in your niche, you're not gonna be a trendsetter because you are gonna be posting the same content as everybody else.
04:16I'm gonna show you an example. Okay. So this video right here was a video in the student studying niche.
04:23Alright? So when we're talking about like students that are studying for exams and it's showing a triple split screen of a student studying and getting all frustrated and swiping their their things off a desk. I took that video concept consulting and I used this video to promote for a master class that I was running called the content to cash master class.
04:42Notice how the structure of the video is very very similar, but because I found a 20 x outlier video and I recreated recreated it with my own spin, this video got a 100,000 views on my page, and I was able to drive some traffic to the content to cash challenge. Very similar structure and concept, but I took it from a student studying niche and applied it to my niche, and I brought something new to my industry.
05:03And since doing that, I've seen dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of content coaches utilize this format because obviously they saw it on my page and now they're recreating it in like the content niche. Long story short, what you'd like to do is the ideal scenario is that you become a trendsetter in your niche. So don't just look at viral accounts within your niche and your demographic.
05:22You also just wanna look at viral accounts in general so you can grab those ideas and recreate them with your own spin for your own niche. So step number one, we're gonna start within your niche. So what you wanna do is you wanna find five to 10 top creators in your specific niche and you wanna write their Instagram accounts down.
05:36Then what you're gonna do is you're gonna go to their Instagram accounts and you're gonna go to the reels tab. Once you go to the reels tab, you're gonna click the little down arrow and you're gonna sort by most viewed. Then you're just gonna scroll through their top performing videos.
05:46You're gonna look through those top performing videos and you're gonna ask yourself, which one of these top performing videos could I recreate? Now, you're not necessarily just looking for the style of the video because sometimes there's a top performing video and a style that you don't resonate. What you're actually looking for is the topic and the subject matter of that video.
06:01So you're looking for the style, maybe it's the style you can replicate. You're also looking for the hook of the video a k a what is said in the first three to ten seconds, and you're looking for the subject matter of the video because it's likely that the subject matter and the hook of the video is one of the contributing factors and what made this video go viral.
06:17Then you're just gonna save five to 10 of these reels per account, and then you're gonna have a save folder in your phone that you can reference later. When you do this with five to 10 accounts, now you have a 100 viral videos in your saved folder that you can consistently reference back to later whenever you're looking for content ideas that have already proven to do well.
06:33Just like that, now you found viral videos that are already working within your demographic. Part three is I'm actually gonna show you how to do this with AI. Now, Sandcastles AI is the best platform for you to do this, and Sandcastles will actually do all this manual research for you.
06:46Again, I do think it's important to be able to go to somebody's Instagram account and find their top performing videos, which is why I wanted to articulate that. That way if you're ever scrolling on social media, you don't have to log into your computer, go into Sandcastles, etcetera. You can just go to their Instagram account, sort by most viewed, and then you can take a look at their viral videos, and you can save some of them.
07:02However, I do think it's important to also articulate that utilizing Sandcastles on a weekly basis is gonna give you an advantage on the competition because Sandcastles is going to do the organization of the research for you. So let me walk you through it.
07:13You log in and you type in an account or a niche. And what Sandcastles is gonna do is it's gonna load up those accounts for you to save to a watch list. Then you're gonna press the plus button and you're gonna save these accounts to your watch list and go save.
07:24Then you're gonna go to the videos tab and Sandcastles are gonna show you all of the top performing videos and it's gonna be organized. Then there's a little menu button in the top and you can sort the videos by outlier score. What you're looking for is videos that have a three to a 10 x outlier score or higher.
07:39Then what you're gonna do is you're gonna analyze these videos. And if you click into each one of these videos, it's actually gonna show you the actual transcript of the viral video and it's gonna show you the idea, the format, the storytelling structure, etcetera. These are all beautiful ideas that you can utilize to recreate your own content.
07:53Now, just wanna highlight something very important. You do not wanna use this to plagiarize because if you use this to plagiarize and you copy somebody word for word, you're an actual dork. You're What gonna do is you're gonna take these transcripts, you're gonna take these templates, you're gonna take these ideas, and then in part two of this video series, I'm gonna show you how to utilize this stuff to create viral content.
08:10What used to take me an entire afternoon now takes me fifteen minutes of searching and looking for viral concepts. It's literally that simple. If you have the intention to be able to sit down and look at some of the top performing content in your niche and just save those videos, save the transcripts, and utilize these transcripts to create your own viral videos, your videos are gonna perform significantly better because you're basing them off of stuff that already worked in the algorithm.
08:31Now I just wanna make a quick note because I think this is really important because you can take a viral script or a viral idea and you can absolutely get up and you can absolutely cause it to flop. So when you're looking for these viral videos, not only do you need to look at the transcript, which we're gonna save and utilize in a different way.
08:45We're not gonna plagiarize, but we also need to take a look at the delivery of the video itself. Because the way that somebody's articulating themselves in a video can be one of the reasons that the video performs well. So don't only look at the script, I also want you to look at the delivery of the script as well.
08:58How were they communicating the information in a way that caused people to wanna pay attention to the video, that caused the video to perform better than most of the videos on their account. Now, section four, imitate, don't plagiarize. Now, I know what a lot of you guys are thinking, but Brian, if I'm just saving these viral videos and I'm recreating these viral videos, isn't that plagiarism?
09:15Well, it's plagiarism if you copy the transcript word for word and you read it word for word, which I've seen people do, and I'm just gonna advocate that I do not stand for that. Okay? So if you're plagiarizing other people's content word for word, that is not how we're gonna use this idea.
09:29We're using this idea to take proven concepts that the Instagram algorithm, is based on human behavior, has already proven to perform well, and we're gonna recreate those concepts with our own spin. I'm gonna show you how to do this in part two of this series, so make sure you're subscribed to the channel so I can walk you through how to do this.
09:45This is just a fundamental understanding that when we take concepts that human beings have already reacted to on social media platforms and we recreate those concepts with our own language and our own unique twist, our videos will perform better. So we can take hooks, we can take formats, and we can take subject matter, but we never ever ever take the script and that is how we stay in alignment and in integrity as we're creating content.
10:11Section five is blocking out time to do ideation. This entire process that I just walked you through is the blueprint to be able to find viral ideas that you can recreate with your own spin. But information without implementation is just noise.
10:23And the reason that most people fail to achieve success with your content creation is you don't take it as seriously as you take your fitness or any of the other business commitments that you make in your life. If you make a business commitment like you have a sales call, you don't just ghost on the sales call because you don't feel like it.
10:37If you have a scheduled time that you go to the gym, you go to the gym at that scheduled time regardless of how you feel. You need to treat your content creation process like you would treat your business commitments, like you would treat going to the gym. When you make a commitment, you stick to it regardless of how you feel.
10:51So block off at least two to three hours every single week to do content ideation using the process I just gave you. This is gonna give you the ability to consistently find the viral ideas that are working right now in the last thirty days and have a consistent bank of viral ideas that you can recreate with your own spin.
11:06When you do this properly, when you follow the instructions of this video, you will never ever ever run out of content ideas because you'll be basing your content ideas off of stuff that has already performed well on Instagram, stuff that has already been proven. So make sure you block off at least two to three hours every week at a day of your choice so that you can do ideation, you can find what's working.
11:23For me, I like to do this on the weekend on, like, a Saturday morning when my wife and baby are asleep so that I can just have that creative time in the morning to look at what's working well on social media right now and communicate those ideas back to my team so we can recreate some of those viral ideas with our own spin.
11:36Now that's it for this video. If this video is helpful, make sure you like this video, comment on this video, turn on post notifications, and leave me a comment below. Because here's the thing, you don't wanna miss a video in this series.
11:45Because if you miss a video in this series, you're not gonna have the complete picture of what it takes to create viral content utilizing social media. And right now, I believe is the best time to be creating content because we can utilize AI to do research for us in ways that would have taken us hours and hours and hours previously.
12:01So if you wanna stay ahead of the game and you wanna build your personal brand in 2026, utilizing AI to do a lot of the work for you, make sure you turn on post notifications. Leave me a comment below this video, and let me know if this is helpful.
12:11And I'll talk to you guys in the next one. Peace.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Quarter-million dollars in mentors. Six hundred fifty thousand followers. One-and-a-half million in monthly coaching revenue. That is the receipt this video opens with — and it lands before a single tactic is explained. The argument implicit in every second that follows: this system is not theory, it is the output of expensive, repeated experimentation compressed into twelve minutes you can apply this week.
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:07model
The Outlier Method
- Find 5-10 creators in your niche
- Sort Reels by most viewed
- Identify 3-10x outlier videos
- Extract hook + format + subject matter
- Recreate with your own spin
A systematic process for identifying which content patterns the algorithm has already rewarded, then iterating on those patterns instead of inventing from scratch.
Steal forAny weekly content planning session — works equally well for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts
09:07concept
Imitate, Don't Plagiarize
- Take: hooks
- Take: formats
- Take: subject matter
- Never take: the script verbatim
The ethical and legal boundary that separates pattern-borrowing from plagiarism. The script is off-limits; everything structural is fair game.
Steal forFraming content research to a team or client who worries about originality
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
00:43subscribe
“make sure you like, comment, subscribe to this video, turn on post notifications so you don't miss any part of the series”
CTA lands in the first minute before any value is delivered — front-loaded and repeated at the close. Classic series-hook approach to retain viewers across parts 1-5.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
