I sat down to run the math on my Instagram experiment so far, and was NOT expecting to be so annoyed by the results.
When I publish a YouTube video with an email-specific call to action (usually pointing people towards a free resource), it brings in somewhere between 100-150 new subscribers in its first week.
A high-performing Instagram post (relative to my current performance right now) brings in about 100.
… So, roughly the same. Cool, right?
Except a YouTube video costs me roughly $350-500 in editing, plus HOURS scripting, filming, designing thumbnails, the works.
This Instagram story brought in 50+ new people and took under 90 seconds.
Per-hour spent, my phone is currently making me more money than my YouTube channel.
This is an absolutely INSANE sentence for me to type. I’ve spent six years building my entire business on YouTube.
Since July 1st, I’ve spent around five hours a week on Instagram and pulled in 366 new email subscribers out of it that are directly attributable to IG. (What I do with those subscribers is in email marketing for artists.) Almost 200 of those came from STORIES.
Stories!! The thing you can make in under 90 seconds while you wait for the toaster to finish!!
But to be fair to YouTube, this does NOT mean I’m quitting. And I don’t think you should either.
Because the strength of YouTube is ultimately in the outliers. A video that performs REALLY well for my channel ends up blowing all of these numbers totally out of the water.
And even a mediocre YouTube video keeps bringing folks into my business for years, ultimately out-earning an IG post.
YouTube is a long game.
But…
Money now is worth far more to a small creative business than money later.
Money now is what pays the bills. It’s what lets you hire help, restock materials, purchase time-saving equipment, better education, and pay your own salary.
Money in eighteen months is great, don’t get me wrong! But it does none of that.
And there’s a compounding effect happening here too: because that $500 today to hire an editor buys back 5-10 hours of your life, which goes into making more work, which makes more money, which buys back even MORE hours, and so on.
Money now ultimately lets you fast forward time. To skip the grinding and get to that dream lifestyle business you’re really after.
The long game only pays out if you’re still around to collect.
I know a LOT of creatives who have ultimately shuttered their businesses, and they didn’t quit because of a lack of talent. They posted for months or years, nothing came of it, and eventually they decided it wasn’t worth it anymore.
Short term results are what keep you in the game.
So if you can pull your results forward…
Do it.
All my love,
