According to financial blogger Sammie Ellard-King, Instagram is one of the biggest opportunities right now because of the way the platform allows for exposure and brand awareness.

In fact, he has developed several strategies that are allowing for the exponential growth of his brand, Up The Gains, on that platform.

Last month, Sammie earned $40k from Instagram alone.

In this interview, he offers a close-up look at some of the strategies he’s using, which can be applied to Instagram as well as other social media platforms.

This chat is chock-a-block with golden nuggets, so grab paper and a pencil as you’re going to want to take notes!

Watch the Full Episode

Sammie begins by sharing his background and talks about how he got into the finance niche and started his business.

Although he wasn’t hit too badly by the HCU, a subsequent Google update did affect his traffic, but the fact that he takes an omnichannel approach to the business and was able to pivot so easily has allowed him not only to stay afloat, but to thrive.

He became laser-focused on social media, in particular on Instagram, and he talks in detail about growing his business on that platform. 

First, he shares his main strategy and highlights the importance of developing customer avatars, understanding their problems, and creating content buckets.

Then Sammie shares his current Instagram metrics (134k followers, 150 million views since January) and how the platform contributes to his business. 

He earned $40k from Instagram alone last month with affiliate links and digital products, using automation software.

He dives deep into his video content creation process, touching on the use of different types of hooks and the importance of getting viewers to watch the video until the end. He talks about the different kinds of content you can create and how to validate your niche for social media.

Sammie then shares how he creates mobile-optimized funnels, the tools he uses, and some of the low- and high-ticket items he sells. He also shares his thoughts on what makes a successful product and talks about growing his email lists through quizzes.

He concludes the podcast with a 30-day action plan anyone can implement to get started on Instagram, full of invaluable tips and insight.

Topics Sammie Ellard-King Talks About

• How he got into the finance niche
• What happened after he got hit by an update
• His focus on Instagram
• His strategy on Instagram
• His Instagram metrics and impact
• How he creates content
• Entertaining vs. informative content
• Funnels and products
• What makes a successful product
• Email lists
• 30-day action plan

Links & Resources

Transcript

Jared: Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. And today we are joined by returning guests, Sammy Ellard King, Sammy, welcome back on board.

Sammie: Jared is great to be back, man. Thanks for having me on.

Jared: We’re about a year on from when you joined us last, you came on to talk all about your, and again, what we learned from that podcast, I’d fail to call it a website, but your brand up the gains and we’re a year later and so much has changed in the online world and so much has changed with you and what you’re doing.

So. Uh, given current circumstances and what you’re working on, it made sense to have you back on the talk today, mostly about Instagram. But before we get there, maybe if you could, you know, we’ll, we’ll link to the show notes, uh, to your last podcast episode, but maybe just try to catch us up a little bit on who you were before you started up the games.

Sammie: Yeah, of course. So I started out in, uh, in doing, studying music of all things. And, uh, you know, standard wanted to be in a band, absolutely failed at that. But. Uh, I had to go out and get a real job. And so I moved into marketing in music venues, uh, as the first foray and then kind of moved up the food chain there, eventually going into business with a couple of friends of mine.

Um, but when I was in my kind of early twenties, I was deep in debt. So I had about 24, 000 pounds, uh, which equates about 30, 000 us in, in, in debt. And, um, I. Basically didn’t understand the value of money. And essentially from there kind of went on this journey and path. I had a little aha moment on a beach in Vietnam paid for by a credit card.

Uh, and, uh, yeah, and came back and learned everything there was to know about personal finance. And really what I saw quite quickly was that, um, Especially in the UK, everything was very US focused and equally, um, needed a Oxford dictionary to actually understand what the hell was going on. So, um, I started writing, uh, doing.

Bit of blog work here and there, but I’d actually built up a small WhatsApp group that kind of exploded in COVID cause I was already helping friends and family on the side. And so I was kind of getting the questions from them. I didn’t really understand like SEO properly. Then, uh, I had SEO agencies when I was running my, um, my marketing teams that would just report back on like keyword positions and stuff.

And I’d just be like, yeah, cool. Sounds good. You know, like really not understanding nuances of how to actually rank our website. And so when I first started out, I was writing. You know, really just for that group. And then very quickly, like got into SEO found these pursuits and, uh, you know, started that whole brand focus.

But having come from, you know, brand marketing and taking startups, digital startups and hospitality groups from zero to multi millions of pounds. I really kind of. Always was going to build a brand and SEO was just one channel within the marketing sphere that we were going to attack. It just so happened to be the one that I knew least about.

So I took that on first and, and built the kind of core of a website out, which we’ve got over 300 guides on there now. Um, and, and. Yeah. And today we’re, today we have no traffic, which is from Google. Anyway, we have no traffic from Google, but we are doing some pretty cool things now with Instagram socials and, and, and the podcast really to kind of, um, Make up for lost traffic.

Jared: Well, it’s, and you know, it’s an interesting juxtaposition as we kind of transition into what we’re talking about today, because when you came in a podcast last year, your approach was omni channel, right? Multiple channels. It wasn’t just the classic content website with an SEO focus. And we, we really got into like the why you were doing that, the how you were doing it, how you’re able to do all that, how you’re able to balance all of it, how you’re able to focus on multiple channels.

Now a year later, your site didn’t really get hit that hard by the HCU, but still got hit by a subsequent core update. And so even with all of that effort to diversify, as you mentioned, the traffic from SEO has dropped, but it’s almost the juxtaposition is that you’ve been playing the multiple channel game for so long now, almost from the beginning, that You quickly were able to pivot, uh, into the next traffic channel.

And so I think that’s kind of an interesting thing to talk about briefly is perhaps the reason you’ve been able to transition so successfully into say Instagram is because you’ve always been building multiple channels and never really relying on one anyways, I guess.

Sammie: Yeah, you’re right. And I think where socials wasn’t where I was putting a lot of focus, let’s say, you know, you split your day up by a hundred percent of time, you know, 60, 70 percent of the time was going towards SEO, but when November hit and you know, that, that first round of sort of.

Brutal updates started to hit people and we’re seeing fantastic sites, basically, for what we could see as SEOs from outside of the, you know, outside the block, basically just looking in and going, why on earth are they tanking? These are great sites. Obviously, some you could see why they were, but. We couldn’t understand it.

And at that moment where the risk factor went to zero to 100, I wouldn’t say zero, but it was significantly increased in the world of SEO. So instead of putting, placing my eggs in those baskets, I essentially cut my time out on SEO and went more laser focused on other areas of the business, which needed, needed growth anyway, because at that time we were only really doing one or two videos a week.

On the socials and it was growing, but extremely slowly. And so we went laser focused, went back to zero, stopped the podcast, stopped the YouTube, stopped sending email newsletters and basically went right, where is the biggest opportunity right now? And so we went absolutely laser focused. I say, we, it was, I, I went laser focus.

Uh, I would say we, I think it’s just a nicer way of talking about business. Um, but yeah, laser focus on socials and, you know, it was lucky we did. Yeah. And because, yeah, sort of January came around and we got slapped quite hard. But by that point, we’d really put in place the strategy to, to absolutely fly on socials and we were starting to get some, some, you know, pretty crazy results.

And, um, yeah, it’s, it’s been a kind of an amazing journey since then. And, you know, the businesses. You know, four or five times what we thought it would at this point. Um, and that’s simply really down to sort of a very sort of heavy social strategy at the moment.

Jared: You, you talked about how you cut the podcast, cut the YouTube and went all in at that time on socials like Instagram and maybe some others.

I know Instagram is what we’re talking about today. Talk about why was there a data that suggested that? Was there a gut feeling that prompted that? Because I mean, when I think up the gains, I think a financial website. When I think Instagram, I don’t think financials. I think travel, food, DIY fashion. So like.

What, what, what led to this being, because it’s ultimately been very successful to, to let the cat out of the bags, but why did you go that route in the beginning and what caused you to pick Instagram or some of these social channels?

Sammie: It’s a good, good question because the thing is with SEO is it’s slow, right?

Where there is socials can be explosive growth in a short space of time. And the reason why I cut the podcast, we brought it back very quickly after. But I, we spoke about this on the first podcast. I’m a massive fan of systems. Once something is working and SEO was working. So we were doubling down on that, that sphere at the time.

As soon as that stops working, you, you need to be able to bring other things into play, but at that point, socials wasn’t running to the levels that we wanted it to, so instead of sort of, again, splitting my time up over multiple channels, I was like, okay, let’s get this absolutely rocking and pumping. And then we’ll bring back the podcast and then we’ll bring back the YouTube channel and we slowly reintegrate other channels back in.

And when we, when we do that, it just allows more chance of success because you are so focused on one thing rather than splitting your time across multiple channels. And that was really the reason for it.

Jared: The Instagram. Approach you took. Maybe let’s start getting into that and that process that you went down.

Were, um, uh, uh, well, I guess I’ll just leave it there. What was the approach you took to Instagram and how did you end up creating the systems around that?

Sammie: Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, to be honest with you, to answer your question before, I know you was talking about, you don’t think personal finance on, on YouTube, on, uh, Instagram.

The thing is people come on Instagram to. Pick up some sort of experience. And some of that time is to learn. And interestingly, I was seeing quite explosive growth in personal finance in other countries for people. There were a few people in the UK, but not really the explosive growth that I was seeing in other countries.

And I was like, well, hang on a second. There’s an opportunity here. And our strategy really is about, um, putting the user first. So the reason why our socials weren’t exploding. Before it’s because 99 percent of creators create content about the message that they want to deliver kind of, I’m going to write this article, I’m going to deliver this video, I’m going to deliver this podcast episode about what I want to talk about, whereas we flip that model on its head and we place the user very much at the center of the outcome and the transformation that we wanted to see.

So we changed the way that we formed. The video, yes, we still deliver our message, but it’s really in a hook in the way that it’s developed is designed to stop that individual in their tracks. And we actually build built out two very in depth customer avatars. And so I speak to one individual. When I make that piece of content, I’m speaking directly to Dave.

He’s 32 and he’s got two kids. He earns 40 grand. He wants to understand personal finance, but can’t understand it. There’s too much information out there. He wants someone to break it down for him. I go into that level of debt. What are their desires? What are their struggles? What do they feel? What, how much do they earn?

What’s going on around them? And where do they want to get to? And as soon as you start to unpack that, what happens is, you Start to create what’s called a problem arc and essentially it’s the problems that these people are facing in their day to day basis. But then you want to try and tie that into your niche as well.

So you tie the problems that they’re facing, similar to how you do when you write an intro in your article, right? It’s exactly the same principle. What problem are you looking to solve for them? And how are you hooking them in to that piece or that article that you’re writing? And so it’s, it’s quite a similar way of thinking, but just done in a much quicker, faster, and pinpointed level in terms of short form content.

So. Once we had established that and we started to speak to Dave at 32, rather than Sammy wants to tell you about the best investment account today, for example, which is what I was doing before. And yes, it was, you know, doing okay. But I mean, okay. It was a couple of thousands of views. Once we started to put this strategy into place, that’s when we were seeing the five, 600, 000 views, and then suddenly the 1.

2, the four, five, 6 million views on these videos. And. That was really the switch that we made. And you know, we started to put in testing as well as massive. So we tested different content buckets, I call them. So they’re very similar to like, uh, categories on your blog posts, for example, their advice would say content buckets, and then I’ll match a style of content.

Um, so I’m getting quite deep here already, but, um, matching a style of video to that. Content bucket is what we would do. So we would test different styles and the styles could be a voiceover content, me talking on camera or a five to seven second reel for a video, for example, a short, snappier one with more information in it.

Um, and we test all of those and then you double down based on the data and what’s working. And that’s how you essentially, you really start to pick. Areas of content that you know are going to work before you make the video, because you’ve already got the data leaning on that for you. And essentially it’s just about refining, refining, refining, and consistency is massive on Instagram.

We were doing basically set myself a challenge a real a day, a video a day for nine for 90 days. And in that 90 days, we went from 5, 000 followers to 110, 000 followers by basically putting in place exactly what I just said.

Jared: Good grief. That is growth. Yeah. I have a bunch of I’ve written a bunch of notes.

I’ve got a bunch of questions for you Let’s at least give everyone a little synopsis on where you’re at right now So what is instagram in terms of whatever metrics you’re comfortable sharing? Uh, you know followers, uh view count. Um, uh, if you can tell us like how In some way, how that translates into the overall revenue model of the company, you know?

Sammie: Yeah, exactly. It’s a great point because look, traffic is fantastic. If it doesn’t go anywhere, what’s the point? So, there is a way of monetizing all of this and we’ll talk into that in a second. But at the moment, the channel sits at 134, 000 followers. Um, we’ve done over 150 million views since January and the growth for the business.

Um, we just hit last month, we just hit 35 K in just sales from Instagram. That’s not including newsletter, YouTube, anything podcast like that. So it’s about 40, 000 us views. And that’s solely through a combination of two things, which are digital products and affiliate marketing. So we utilize both, uh, avenues, um, to essentially really skyrocket.

And there are ways that you can do that through, um, automation software called ManyChat. The mini chat is essentially, uh, you’ve probably seen it if you spent any time on Instagram recently, but for those who haven’t, it’s very simple. Uh, you ask the, um, people watching to comment a certain word, and you can either do that in the video or, or the caption we’ve tested both, but, and the caption is a lot stronger if you do it like that, you ask the person.

At the end of the video to read the caption to learn more, this is where you can find a lot more value, create a bit more trust around what you’re doing similar again to kind of a, an intro, um, on a blog post to get them to want to learn more or want to take action and essentially ask them to comment a certain word and many chats.

is a software which is actually affiliated by, um, by Instagram. So it’s an official partner. And if you comment that word, it will trigger an automated direct message and then direct message inside that direct message. You can have a multitude of different options in there. You can have it. Go on different, uh, you can, you know, you could have endless amounts of messaging going on with that person and it can all be pre set up in advance before you post that video.

So what that does allow you to do is let’s say Jared comments, the word niche pursuits, and then it It will automatically then message Jared the preplanned message that was going out to him. And that could be sign up for my newsletter, read my blog posts, visit this affiliate link, buy my digital products with this discount code.

And these are the things that you can then do. And once we tapped into that, that’s when we started to see the growth, which was just astronomical. And we, you know, some posts were doing sort of, you know, mid four figures. Um, and interestingly, You know, some of the posts that were doing less views were translating into a lot more sales because they were way more targeted.

And so we started to get a lot more data and being able to lean into sort of the styles of videos that were essentially driving sales and some were driving engagement, which is fantastic channel grows, but, um, we’ll get onto sort of Instagram and, and tick tock on why I think it’s probably one of the biggest opportunities in the world right now, simply because of the way that.

The platforms are now set up, um, in terms of, uh, exposure for brand new and beginner channels, if your content is good out of the gate. Um, you, you, you know, I’ve had students of mine now, second and third video getting, you know, five, 600, 000 views on a video, and that’s a second video. So the opportunities are insane.

Follow account doesn’t necessarily matter as much anymore. It’s about the quality of the content. Um, so. Yeah, the growth has been pretty insane, dude. And, uh, yeah, we’re just trying to keep up with it at the moment. Um, but we’re, we’re, we’ve got some exciting things that we can talk about today as well. I’m, I’m, I’m pretty excited to, to, yeah, to talk about them for sure.

Jared: From, okay. So from HCU decimated to 40 K a month, um, I’ve broken the conversation into three kind of topic clusters, if you will. And tell me if you like this, we’re first, let’s first talk about Instagram and how to How to, how to create video content following some of the formats you’ve talked about to get viewership consistently, um, to this funnel system you’ve put together because it sounds very funneled.

This many chat system you’ve created. It sounds very funneled and I want to talk more about that. And then number three monetization. I mean, clearly you have a very funneled. Tightly aligned court set of digital products and affiliate offers that make a lot of sense for people at the bottom of your funnel.

And I think a lot of people could stand to learn from that. Let’s talk about Instagram. Um, I loved how you talked about an avatar and I love how you talked about content buckets. Can you play that example out a bit for people so they can start to hear you referencing different ways that looks and then applying it to whatever niche or whatever brand they have.

Sammie: Yeah, of course. So like we begin with a problem. So like, that’s the first number one thing that you do. You start with the problem that that person is facing and you then look to match up a hook. So a hook is very simply something that can grab someone’s attention. Because if you think about when you’re on social media, you’re scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, stop and something makes you stop.

And usually it’s an impactful thing that happens and it can be Two different, sorry, there’s three different, um, three different, uh, types of hooks and when combined, they’re actually extremely powerful, but if you do get one, right, often it’s enough. So you have a text based hook, which can be just text on screen trying to stop that scroll.

And usually what you’re trying to do is basically if you’d be like, hi, I’m Jared and you know, I’m 34 and I live in X, Y, and Z like, I don’t care. Let’s carry on. Right. But if it’s like, um, you know, six different ways to. Skyrocket your SEO growth, for example, suddenly it’s like, Oh, cool. Now I want to know about that.

Right. Um, if you didn’t say that as well, uh, that’s a combination. That’s the second hook is your audio based hook. So, uh, text basic, an audio based hook. Sometimes you don’t need a text basic and you can just deliver the audio basic. And then also, uh, another one is a visual hook. So visual hook is something.

Are you somewhere different? You’re not just, you know, standing on the side of the road while the cars go past, for example. Are you somewhere different? Is it eye catching? Is it grabbing your attention versus what everybody else is seeing? So we play heavily on visual hooks and, you know, I try and set the room up nicely.

Big, big shout to my other half who does all the work here and making the house look nice, but I film in nicer areas of the house, right. Just to kind of bring a different vibe. If you look at all the finance content out there, it’s just a guy sitting on it desk and just kind of going, yeah, you know, put money in your 401k.

And so I was like, okay, how do I differentiate myself from people in this niche? So I look at lots of different niches and what’s working for people in their niches and essentially if you’re. Jumping into marketing and trying to come up with brand new frameworks, then good luck to you because that’s not how successful marketing works.

You take tiny little pieces from different areas of spaces and you bring them into your own framework. So if you can pull all of that together, look at the creators that are in your space, what’s working, how can I differentiate myself? What’s different about me? So for example, one of our students in the fitness space, he, You know, everyone’s in the gym pumping iron, right?

And just the same old shots and it’s boring. But with him, we take him up to a top of a place in the UK called Dunstable Downs, which is a like very hilly, weird kind of formation of hills, and he does his exercises on top of the hills. So his is, that’s a visual hook for him because you’re scrolling down looking at fitness, fitness, fitness, and suddenly you see the guy pushing weights on top of the hill that stops you in your tracks because you’re like, wow, that’s different.

And then as long as the content is good. So that’s the first part of it. A video of a video is getting your hook absolutely dialed in, and then it’s about keeping them on the video. So Instagram and TikTok and equally YouTube shorts optimized for watch time. It’s not, it’s not necessarily about likes and comments like it used to be back in the day and equally follow account.

Now it’s about watch time. Simply because these platforms are trying to keep you on the platform, um, to essentially allow you to, um, allow them to show more ads. And so if you are giving them that opportunity by keeping that person on the platform, they favor you essentially making your content shown to more people.

Um, so that’s really what we’re trying to optimize for. And there are ways of doing that. And essentially you have, Very much like a very small story of a beginning, middle and end, but you always let them know that the end is coming. So there needs to be some sort of payoff. Why am I going to stay and watch you over the millions of other videos that I could be watching right now?

And the reason is usually is there’s a payoff. So an example of personal finance, really simple one. I just, um, one of our more successful videos is. Um, we’re buying, buying a house in 2020 versus 2024. I’m looking at that one right now. Oh, cool. Right. Yeah. Nice. So you can see there straight away. The hook is like, Oh, there’s going to be interest.

Like, I want to know what’s going to happen. Right. So immediately they’re going to want to see each cost versus each cost. And then you throw in another thing, like stick around to the end because the results are nuts. And then they’re like, Oh wow. I’ve just, I can’t, I’ve got to wait until he tells me how much.

Is the end when he adds it all up, right? So now they’re in and they are not leaving as long as you don’t do anything ridiculously silly. So there’s an opportunity. That’s a really great, uh, video example, just for how we’re locking them in for the entire thing. And the watch time on that video is extremely high and it’s almost best performing video.

So if you’re working towards that, that kind of framework, it essentially you’re distilling down your article into beginning, middle, and end. You’re still going to want that person to read to the end of the article. Great writers will do that and they’ll tempt you and give you the little like, or yeah, you know, this is coming stick around kind of thing because they want to understand and want to get to the end.

Right. So, um, it’s exactly the same in terms of video content, but it’s just how you structure your video. So that’s how we approach a video. Then we need to figure out how we’re going to deliver that. And there are different styles of content, which are more suited to certain individuals. Um, I really enjoy voiceover content.

So that’s me explaining stuff on screen and having, uh, you know, numbers and, uh, and workings out essentially happening on screen, um, which are actually really easy to create. And then I voice over the content after, and literally all I do is sit at a table. So this is the craziest thing about these. The more successful pieces of content is they’re extremely easy to create.

And that’s something that I want to like tell people now that I listen to this going on, bloody hell, this sounds so difficult to even think about. It’s not once you break it down, I feel myself doing random stuff. Like the camera is set up right now here and it’s on, even though I’m not delivering anything simply so I can capture myself doing stuff and this is me just doing talking and doing stuff and I can then cut that.

Piece of me sitting down at my desk and then saying hello to Jared, for example, and overlay some text over the top with some cool, funky audio. And as long as the text is doing the heavy lifting for me in that video, I can knock that video out in 20 minutes and that could do two, 300 views and make a few hundred pounds in sales.

So there, the, there are what I call different styles of content, which are harder to make. So we do. Uh, follow a framework, which is called four easy, three hards a week. So four easies are just the five to seven seconds information, dense, um, very easy B roll content of you making a cup of tea, walking out the house, sitting down at your desk, opening your laptop, that type of thing.

And then voiceovers, which take a little bit more time, usually take about an hour and a half to edit, and they are a little bit more thought out and the breakdowns essentially. that these ideas into pretty much any niche and, and we’ve got people in fitness, gardening, you know, wellness, uh, honestly, anything you can think of finance, uh, we’ve got a football coach, we’ve got a musician and they follow these frameworks and it works.

Um, so. Yeah, it’s, it’s super, super interesting. And our sort of philosophy now is that anyone can do this with 90 minutes a day, and that’s what I do. I, so I have 90 minutes a day, non negotiable towards creating content and no more than that. And so that allows me to then deliver this kind of growth and these kinds of numbers.

With that level of time in there, and it’s literally all down to planning and, and equally as well, you know, looking at what works and kind of doubling down on that. Hope I didn’t lose everyone there. So,

Jared: no, I think everyone’s probably feverishly taking notes. The big question, because, you know, I had, I have your Instagram account up obviously before this, but also while we’re talking about it.

I mean, I just, I think, um, as we start to talk about the type of content you’re, you’re making and tying it to what we’ll get into next, which is this funnel. I’m just curious how you come up with content that both. Satisfies the algorithm by keeping people engaged and keeping people involved while also coming up with content that at the end has an opportunity to convert.

Because, In many ways we’re taught and we see like there’s viral content content that’s meant to entertain and then there’s converting content more bottom of the funnel kind of is meant to convert and it feels like and I just want to tap into like how are you bringing all this together inside of an Instagram inside of a video inside of the content strategy that you have.

Sammie: Great, great question. So some content is solely designed for like pure virality and we’re not expecting to make money out of it. Simply like the buying the house 2020 versus 2024. I knew I wasn’t going to make any money out of it, but I knew it would absolutely explode. And so that’s just designed to do that.

And that’s totally fine. You can have pieces of content like that. Um, and interestingly from the data, our five to seven second reels do bulk load of the sales because they’re so targeted and they’re so like, for example, we do like, uh, three best investment ices right now and they flick up on screen really fast.

Or we do, uh, you know, if you invest 150 pounds and you get 10 percent a year and year one, you get this two, two, three, 10. It’s 30 and it happens fast. And the interesting thing then is that you can say, read the caption and they read the caption and then they take action if, as long as you’re providing value within the caption.

And so they’re the ones that actually drive the bulk load of, uh, of sales. It’s not necessarily the big viral videos that do the bulk lifting, but what the big viral videos do is. Create a lot of trust very quickly and equally as well, explode your channel, which can help. And so this isn’t the only tactic as well of selling and you can then utilize stories and where a lot of people go wrong with stories is they treat them like, kind of like, Hey, I’m having dinner.

Hey, uh, this is what I have for breakfast. And like, yeah, that’s important. But keep that to your personal channels and, you know, have a few things like that happen in your, this is your, this is a business, right? So treat it like that. Um, I utilize stories like newsletters. So they’re mini newsletters, so I create five, six, um, stories back to back, preloaded, saved into drafts, and then put up, designed to take people on a journey, and at the end, you can use ManyChat again in this function.

comment the word X and we’ll send you X, Y and Z or send, you know, give you more information or you can join our newsletter or whatever that might well be or get our lead magnet, whatever that could be. Um, so there are so many opportunities now and that’s why the big viral videos are important because the higher your follower counts there is the more people are seeing your stories.

And so you’re actually then having a second. Way of funneling these people back in. Um, so there are different ways of creating content. Yes. And you know, there’s not one way that works for one niche and what viral looks like for me might look very different to what viral might look like in pickleball, for example.

So. Um, it’s, you know, a viral and pickable could be a hundred thousand views and that’s totally fine. And, you know, if you get to that point, amazing, like, well done. Um, you know, and there are, you know, I’ve got, I know a channel right now that’s doing really well in rare toy collectibles. And so rare toy collectibles, that’s the niche, super sub niche, niche of a niche of a niche.

Right. So like, and they are absolutely smashing it because they’re creating content around things, but they’re. Set one sale for them is five, six, 7, 000 pounds. Some of them, uh, some of the things he’s got, uh, 60, 70, 000 pounds. So he only needs six or 7, 000 views and one person takes action and he’s laughing.

So it’s very different for very, very, for different niches, but they’re right, there’s a process that we can go through to validate whether or not your, your niche socials. And we do that for a number of two to different ways. What are the creators doing in the space? What’s happening on YouTube is a massive thing because often if it’s working on YouTube, then there is a short form version of every single one of those niches that is ready to be made.

Um, what’s happening on Reddit? Reddit’s amazing for sourcing for content ideas simply because everybody’s telling them about their problems. 247365 on Reddit, you can basically source an entire month’s worth of content in about 20 minutes just by reading a couple of the, uh, posts. A couple of the Reddit feeds there and, um, and, uh, and Google as well.

Cause Google’s, uh, Google trends essentially, like what’s happening within that space of people naturally looking and searching for it. And these are good indications whether or not that niche is going to be successful.

Jared: So let’s, let’s, let’s move on to funnels. Let’s move on to how you. Take this viewership to your point, you know, millions of views in many cases for some of your videos and how do you move them over and into a process where they can buy and they can engage and they can do things that I think a lot of people myself at times think doesn’t happen on Instagram.

Where do we get into this? And how do I mean, you’ve already teased it a bit with many chat and you’ve already teased it a bit about how you’re able to slide Your content in and how you’re able to engage people, but like, let’s get into the process of how you’ve created these funnels and how you, you know, what you found to be successful.

Sammie: Yeah, great question. So the initial kind of growth spurt was done utilizing a technology called many chat. But then we also combine that with a, a social storefront, which is designed for creators called standard store and standard stores just really simply Highly mobile optimized and extremely beginner friendly for you to create a storefronts where you can take payments directly on the storefront and it just gets you going.

Seamlessly works with Instagram. Um, and essentially you can have your digital products on there. You can have, uh, courses, you can have anything you can think of ever all housed within that platform. And it just made it really quick and easy for us to, to test, throw up really quick, you know, landing pages that looked great and that converted, um, you know, we tested that.

Gumroad. We tested Shopify for socials, and standout outperform them in terms of, uh, in terms of sale. So, um, that’s really the basic level of like it’s, it’s mobile optimized funnel essentials funnels essentially. So Sal’s dead. Their actual sales pages. You can really design them to help as well. They’ve got fantastic design features, and we basically will send traffic directly from the real utilizing many chat into a highly, highly tested and optimized stand up store page.

where they can make the payment without leaving the page or Instagram. And essentially then they then distributed that product and that product can be low ticket. So low ticket to draw products were a massive, massive thing for us and still are to a degree. Um, although we have pivoted slightly, um, And, um, you know, you can charge anything from a, we had budgeting templates, we had eBooks, we had guides, we had cheat sheets, we had mini courses, like, and these things with chat GPT can be thrown up in half a day and you’ve suddenly got yourself a products, you know, whack it on Canva design.

Templates on there for, for days, you know, you can have a digital product knocked out in under 24 hours and be testing it, whether or not it’s going to make sales, it doesn’t work. You put it down or you revamp it. Um, and there is a process and launch process. We get the audience involved in the, in the creation of things.

So we asked them what products they would like, and we put them together and then we, we, um, and then we sell them and we just, you know, Um, you know, the better performing that reel does, the more comments that it then generates and the more opportunities you have to send them through to your landing page.

You know, we have one video, for example, it was, uh, um, how to retire on a 30, 000 pound salary. Um, and we just did a very simple, like invest 15 percent of your salary equals X and, uh, invested into the S& P 500, give you 10 percent and you do it for this long, you end up with this. And. Read the caption at the bottom.

And then we explained a little bit more. And then we said in the caption, um, we said, DM us the word ISA, uh, which is, you know, the, uh, UK version of the 401k and, um, we’ll send you our list. And where were we sending them to our best ISIS guy that was sitting on up the gains, which had lost all of his traffic, but was highly optimized and was doing really well before.

So we suddenly kept all of that going. And so we knew that that was happening. Um, And then we also Interestingly, that didn’t convert very well. So then we switched it to straight link in the message. So we literally said, this is the best I sir, click here. And they click here, go onto the affiliates page.

And if they download it and, and sign up, we get the affiliate commission. So that’s been really interesting of kind of playing with affiliate marketing and digital products and per post and testing and seeing what works. And yeah, just basically squeezing down on what does and, um, so low ticket to draw products.

So low ticket for me is anything under 200 pounds. So 250, 270, for example, anything that’s kind of, uh, very quick purchase because people will. Naturally say here, yeah, you I’ve just seen your real and I don’t even follow you and I’ve just commented something you’ve dm’ed me and like you need to do a good job of converting them.

So the sales page copy is important that you know, the testimonials on the page about the products are still important. Um, so you’re adding all of these things in there, but it’s so quick and seamless. And so the funnel can is actually very short. In terms of how it’s set up with lower ticket products, when we have our higher ticket programs, so our larger courses and communities, essentially, then we.

We’re noticing that the traffic coming from them into those pages would just not convert as a certain, um, threshold of that wasn’t really converting that much, that well, as it was with, uh, with digital products. So we were then driving mailing this signups through lead magnets and then nurturing them that way, and then following them back into the larger courses that way, actually, that has been extremely, extremely, uh, successful.

So that’s really our tactic at the moment. And then we’ve launched higher ticket coaching alongside that and to teach people how to do this. And that’s been, that’s obviously then helped us explode things a lot quicker. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s so interesting. There are so many different avenues that you can go down with this.

You could literally start a channel. Today, put out a ton of five to seven second videos of you doing stuff around the house. You don’t even need to show yourself your face. As long as your hook is good and you’re providing value and you can set up mini chat and drive a ton of traffic to a high converting affiliate program that you know converts and you’re away, like you could be doing four figures in the next 30 days if you really hammered it hard.

So there’s so much opportunity there. Or if you just want to grow your email list or your presence, because what the growth on socials has done for us is also opened up. Now we’re working with lots of brand deals. So, excuse me, um, brand deals have been extremely lucrative for us. So once we hit sort of above 20, 000 followers.

We’re starting to get finance brands reach out and say, Hey, can you make a video with this bank? Uh, we’ll give you mid four figures for a 30 second reel, which takes me, you know, 90 minutes to create. So you’re like happy days. Well, this is another now an added revenue stream. We’re now doing lots of.

Public speaking, talking gigs, which you start getting offered and you start getting picked up in the press, which then you can link back to your websites. And it’s really, really interesting. We just won an award as well. Best money content creator of the year at the British banking awards, which is nuts, right?

I guess you wouldn’t even have comprehended. This would have never have happened if I’d have just stayed writing just blogs or hadn’t really gone laser focused on, The social. So the opportunities are really there. And, um, I just want to talk about as well. This isn’t just instagram. Many chat doesn’t work.

It does work on on facebook. So you can do facebook reels now and they are really pushing that at the moment. So you have instagram, you have facebook, then you have tiktok, which you can then put the content on. And now you’ve got linked in and twitter moving to a mobile video first. Mhm. Format. So you’ve got five major platforms that you can create the video once and distribute them across and Um, even if you just have the link in your bio on Twitter and LinkedIn and tick and tick top, you’re going to be getting traffic to wherever these people want to go.

Um, so it’s such a, such a massive opportunity for me at the moment in terms of the growth of video and where it’s going and uh, yeah, I’m really excited about the future

Jared: to give people some context. Next, if you’re, if it’s possible, can you share maybe your best selling low ticket? Product and maybe your best selling high ticket product.

And I might have a couple kind of follow up questions.

Sammie: Yeah, great question. So our best performing low ticket product is, um, an investing guide. So investing for beginners ebook, we’ve sold that right now up to 47 pounds. Um, that just pumps. Because everybody wants to understand the basics of investing, and so we can put up pretty much any investing focus post.

And if we put that in there, we know it’s going to sell. And, you know, we’ve done some sometimes, you know, it will do 100 plus sales on a video, which is nuts. And some of those videos don’t get millions of views. They’ve got a hundred thousand views, for example, that they are just super highly targeted. So guides and eBooks and templates and notion templates and all these types of things do really, really well.

Um, just because it’s so quick, like I need that now. Oh, it’s 30 pounds. I’ll buy it. Right. So rather than you’re, you’re really just trying to tap into that emotional trigger purchase. Um, Higher ticket for us. We have our digital products Academy couch to five grand is what it’s called, where we teach you how to go from zero to five grand in revenue on socials in 180 days.

And that is essentially is our best performing higher ticket. We do have to do more work to get them to buy that. So that’s where the lead magnet free lead magnet is really useful. Um, and we will just do exactly the same thing. Mode. Utilize types of content. So side hustle content, for example, does really well, uh, in that space.

And we’ll say, Hey, you know, DM the word, um, comment, the word hustle, and we’ll send you our free cash on the side guide. And we put a lot of effort into the lead magnet. We actually make it decent. And then within the lead magnet, we have affiliate links. However, we have also, um, Them on the mailing list and we nurture them with a sequence and then eventually we’ll send them into either when the course is open, either it’s open and they go into a sales sequence or they go into a register, a wait list.

Jared: A hundred, you mentioned a hundred sales in that low ticket item at times, right? On a certain video, like I’ve, it’s such cold traffic, you know, like they’re just seeing you for the. First, second, third, fourth time. What are the, I hate to use the word secrets, but like what’s involved in getting that many conversions to happen right away off of the video?

Like, is it the, um, is it heavily discounted? Is it, um, the testimonials? Is it the, the, the, the landing page copy? Are you giving them like a hundred page guide for 47 pounds? You know, what, what are, what do you think the components are that go into that? Again, just trying to help people kind of get in the mindset of.

Understand how to build out something like this.

Sammie: Yeah. Great question. So we, we test prices, so you just have to test, you’ll find the limits, but equally as well, like this is where competitor research is really important. Like if someone else is selling a vesting for beginners guide at 47 pounds, you probably know that you can charge 47 pounds at a minimum.

Right. Um, so this is a, uh, we also utilize the power of seven. We’ve done so much testing on it. It’s so weird. Do the same thing for 9. 99 would put it for 9. 97. It sells 10 percent more. You tell me why I don’t know. It just works. Um, so we put a seven in all of our price points and it just converts better.

Um, and we test, we just test, test, test, test as much as we possibly can. Um, sorry, I forgot what your initial question was. What

Jared: are the components that go into being successful? Is it price? Is it discount? Is it, um, you know, landing page copy? Is it length of guide? Is it testimonials? Is it something else I didn’t mention?

Like that’s a lot of conversions. You’ve kind of figured that out, but trying to help people understand what the components are to look at.

Sammie: Yeah, really good. Really good point. So you’re not selling. So again, it’s not about you and your ego. You’re selling them the transformation. So that’s the number one thing we really dial in on.

If you do this and buy this, you will get this. And we’re very upfront about that. And we really hone in on the problems that it will solve for them by doing the By taking this action, rather than being like it has 600 pages, and it has 94 checklists like we never say any of that. We never even mentioned length.

We literally just say, learn, you will learn how to do X if you even if your X, you know, and so, um, I’m a big fan of like tapping into that first and understanding what problems you’re trying to solve in your product. Even if you just go and make a beginner’s guide, like what does that beginner’s guide solve?

And then that’s your title and everything. All of the problems that it’s solving within that is basically all your bullet points followed up by a testimonials followed by we do use discount pricing, but we’re not actually discounting it. So we’re just. We’re, we’re essentially anything that we put up, we always just add the 20 pounds on top.

So if it’s 47, we have 67 crossed out and Stanstall does that really nicely. And a lot of other channels will. So. To them, they’re discounting it to you. It’s normal price. Um, so we just play around with those and see what converts the best and then keep it at that level. Um, yeah, look at it. Secrets to success is just really, it has to be down to not being emotionally attached to the outcome.

So if you create a video and it flops. Which often it will if people are starting out like your first video is going to suck. So is your 10th, so is your 50th when you compare it to your first. So getting over that early and treating this like a process and a business is the number one thing that you can do because that’s how you’re going to set yourself up for success.

Like I put a rail out today and I know that it’s flopped already simply because I, I know what a viral reel looks like in the first hour and it doesn’t look like that, but do I care? No, like it’s a learning for me. Okay, fine. We’re not going to do that again. Like that’s great. And then we’re going to put this into place.

Um, yes, I spent 90 minutes of it and yes, it may feel like time wasted, but if you, if you treat it like that, then you’re going to, you are going to fail if you treat it very much like, okay, cool. That happened when I tried this and it flops. So if I do that again and I tried this and it does well, okay, fine.

It wasn’t the idea of the video. It was where I placed the hook or how big I had the text or whatever it might, might, might well be. So test and test and test until your, your eyes hurt. Um, Is my, my advice for success because the data doesn’t lie. Like it’s literally proof in the pudding, right? You can see how many views you’re getting.

You can see your watch time. You can see how many people have commented for your free guide or your affiliate link or your digital products. And you can see how many sales you’ve done from there. Um, so only you will know. And yeah, that, that’s what I can say, really. I think. Being emotionally, uh, involved in this process.

Yes, it’s your business and your livelihood. And yes, you know, my mortgage depends on me doing well. But, um, like, I know that if I do, the moment I do that, the wheels just fall off. And I have flop after flop after flop because I’m like, this one has to work. This one has to work because I’m not thinking logically about.

The user and what they want rather than the more I want to show them.

Jared: I’d be curious to hear as you’ve grown in this process, cause you’ve talked about how it’s led to brand deals. It’s led to awards. It’s led to recognition. It’s led to traffic. How, how much part and parcel has this led into like an email list and you leveraging email?

Um, I think a lot of people. Maybe it would help to distinguish how much Instagram plays into email and how much of the conversion or the ongoing interaction happens on an email level versus an Instagram level.

Sammie: Yeah, so email is now like the number one thing that we’re looking to double down on and interestingly what we’re doing is, um, so I’ve taken down all of my low ticket digital products just simply because they’re still available.

But if you click on the storefront and try to see them now, you can’t find them, they’re just exist as landing pages. And you can also do that with, with Stan stores. So we still do send traffic to them. Yes. We’re set with certain videos, but they’re not. Public facing and there’s a reason for that. And that’s because we’re launching higher ticket programs.

Um, when you’ve got higher ticket programs, you don’t want a 17 pound product sitting on your page because then it really is someone going to pay mid four figures for your high ticket program. There’s a psychology thing there. Right. Um, so. The thing is email now is highly important strategy for us. So we’re actually just about to launch, um, a very highly segmented quiz.

And so the quiz, um, is Basically set up seven questions and all of our traffic now is going to be going through that there are six outcomes. So we have one about debt, side hustling, investing, entrepreneurship, blah, blah, blah, and they’re fed different sequences based on their outcomes from that quiz. And then they’re actually then given questions.

Products, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, all in a step by step plan, which is pre created for them. And when that launches, that’s then going to mean that we’ve got extremely segmented data, which means we can push certain products to certain individuals. So we know we’re not going to push the, the digital.

Products, course to someone sort, struggling in debt. Um, whereas at the moment on our mailing list, you know, yes, we’ve got 30,000 people on there, but we haven’t got a bloody clue what they all like. Right, right. So it’s very difficult where they’re at, how old they

Jared: are,

Sammie: all

Jared: that.

Sammie: Yeah, exactly. So the quiz is gonna solve that from day one with new data, but equally as well, the people that are already in.

The mailing list will be fed the quiz and hopefully as many of them will do it. And then we understand where they’re at in terms of their, their financial journey, and we can then feed them the right information from there. So that’s the next phase of this. And we just see essentially social media now as a, basically a lead growth.

Organic growth engine for that. So all of the traffic’s going to pump, pummel through that. And then we can do our launches and, and, you know, smaller low ticket digital products, very selective to these types of individuals. So these six individual type, six individual types from there. Um, so that’s like where I always wanted to be in terms of like, uh, you know, highly segmented.

Marketing, um, as a marketer of mine and probably yours, Jared’s like dream essentially, but, um, I think this is the way to do that. I’ve seen some massive success from the likes of Ramit Sethi and, uh, another lady called Tori Dunlap in the U S, um, and just having some sort of interaction. With them and giving them something to do, which you can then leverage for their email.

It’s such a, uh, an amazing tool. And yeah, I’m very excited about that because it’s just going to mean that, you know, affiliate partnerships will get stronger. We’ll be able to do better brand deals because we have highly segmented people that are ready for you. So, you know, opening a high interest savings account with that person, you know, if we Go to a bank and say, look, we’ve got, you know, 6, 000 people a month coming through this segment, like, do you want them?

Yes or no. It’s a very different kind of conversation. Um, so that’s the plan for us at the moment. Email is a, is a enormously, enormously, because you are on rented land. And, uh, tomorrow mark could wake up and go, I don’t like Sammy anymore and flick the switch off just like Google can. Um, and I’m well aware of that, which is why we’re diversifying across the other platforms as well.

Um, and so, uh, we want to get them as much. It would be, we want to get as many of these people that are following us and engaging with our content and, and, and like us, and we’ve built trust with them off onto this platform now, let’s get them on the emails and, uh, and sell them stuff.

Jared: I feel like as we start to kind of come to a close, people are going to be both incredibly inspired and incredibly overwhelmed right now.

Sammie: I couldn’t imagine. I was just thinking, okay, what very deep, but yeah.

Jared: That’s good because I think when there’s depth, people can really wrap their mind around the sophistication of it. If, and I know this is way too simple of a question, um, in its, in its, in its origin or in its nature, but If we could try to summarize what’s a 30 day action plan look like for people so they can, it’s gonna be far too simplistic.

I think that’s clear. Like the depth is in the testing. It’s in the experimentation. It’s in the analysis and it’s in putting in all the work that you talked about. But to help people not feel overwhelmed, like how do we wrap this into like maybe the next 30 days for someone who wants to go down a path like this?

Sammie: That’s a great, great question. So look, there is an element of throwing stuff at the wall at the beginning and seeing what sticks because we have no data. So you have to go down that road, no matter what. Um, but I’m just spend at least 48 hours. Like diving into the niche and who you’re actually going to target and what problems do they actually face and try and go as deep as possible into that.

Cause that really does set you up later down the line, the broader, you know, avatar you

Jared: spoke of that’s creating that avatar of the person you’re, you’re talking to.

Sammie: 100{d0d8c9a3780aae347a3c0ec9b539f6350131b27bfcedb699d8911923448b0bae}. Like get that completely dialed in. If there’s anything you do do first, that’s what you do because you will struggle later down the line.

If you’ve gone too broad and then suddenly you’re like, well, why is nobody buying my stuff? Because you spoke to too wide of an audience, right? And it happens a lot. And so you see people with millions of followers, they’re like, I can’t sell any products. Well, that’s because you know, you’ve been yeah.

Talking about food one day, camping the next. And so everyone just likes you for you rather than you being able to actually pinpoint a problem for that individual. So get that really dialed in and then honestly set usual. So basically, one thing I didn’t say is that We’ve up until recently, I bought my, I bought a new camera two weeks ago, and up until then, I was filming absolutely everything on an iPhone 13 and editing it on free software, either on CapCut or DaVinci, which are free to use.

And you can learn how to use them in half a day on YouTube. Um, so you can be making really great content. Just with your mobile phone and honestly, just get started and start throwing stuff at the wall, seeing what’s going to stick. Just remember to solve problems for your audience, try and get a video out a day for 30 days and you’ll have enough data to start seeing what works.

Some are going to absolutely flop, some are going to pop and when they pop, look at them and understand why they’ve popped. And what was it? Was it the topic? Was it the way I shot this? Was it the hook that I used? And they’re the really, really good ways for people to get started. Um, and yeah, and also just lean into like what is working in the space right now.

You don’t have a big, big tip that I will give people that I tell every single one of my students to do is to take the top three performing posts in your niche, Um, from other creators and literally remake the entire video from start to finish. It never gets posted. It never gets used. But what it does do is it makes you understand you unpack that entire video from start to finish at where every single piece of it, you’re going to try and match it to be exactly the same.

And what you’re doing is you’re dissecting viral content and looking at what is actually the reason that this is going on. To the point, and you’ve actually made it yourself. So you go from a zero to a five out of 10, like quite quickly when you do do that. So, um, that would be a little takeaway.

Jared: Well, you’ve got a lot of other resources for people. So where can people follow along and learn more about the different things you have going?

Sammie: Yeah. So we’re up the gains money on all social channels. Um, come say hi, that’s up the gains money. And, um, I answer all dms and emails.

So if you have questions about today, which I’m sure a lot of you will, please just reach out. I have tons of free resources and we also have a paid course and community as well. Learning how to do this. We have over 350 students that have joined now and we have multiple students are doing five K and beyond.

Um, um, and, um, Mr. James DeLacy is also part of that as well, which is quite cool watching him do his, uh, sweet science of fighting stuff, which is really fun. But, um, I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes. You can come and check out if it’s right for you. Uh, if it’s not, uh, totally get it, but yeah, I hope everybody can take away something from today.

It was a lot of fun, man. Thank you.

Jared: Well, we’ll get all that in the show notes, Sammy, heck of a second episode. Uh, that was. A lot of information in a good way, but again, congrats on, I mean, really like transitioning from a site that got hit by these Google updates, which so many people listening will have experienced in some capacity and now over 40, 000 a month from Instagram and obviously other sources, other traffic sources that you’re building out as well.

So, um, Um, thank you for sharing that story. A good dose of inspiration for people, but hopefully also a great amount of tactical, uh, um, um, things they can go execute on, right. Things they can go get started on right now. So thanks again for coming on. We’ll see you again next time.

Sammie: Cheers, man. Appreciate it.