The Way Millie Adrian Made $400K by Instructing Aspiring Social Media Influencers
Millie Adrian is on a mission to teach new social media influencers on how to make money on Instagram.
Her love for content creation began early; in 2008, she created a YouTube channel along with her younger brother, which lasted 9 years. "It was all amusement," she says. "We created random videos, skits, mock-ups and tried out various life hacks ."
After she got a new company job in her early 20s and was bored with the artistic opportunity that video-making gave her. So it was that she decided to give it a go Instagram writing on the side of her 9-5. She promoted herself as a lifestyle blog and published "anything as well as everything" posting photos about travel, food, fashion, coffee, wine, books, and even her dog.
Her account, @itsmodernmillie, rapidly grew, and she was being asked all kinds of questions from the people who follow her. People wanted to find out about how she was growing, how she took specific pictures as well as how she managed to get so much engagement. In order to provide her fans with the most relevant answers she decided to start another YouTube channel. In the course of time, teaching on Instagram was her focus.
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"My YouTube started to grow and then my Instagram began to expand and this created the whole effect of aiding more people," she explains. "I wanted to see which platform took off and then go on to the one that had been successful. However, they all interacted naturally over a ."
In the month of October, she quit her job at a corporate company and began to become an all-time creator of content. Since, she's built an Instagram following of 117Kand a YouTube channel with 246k subscribers andhaving launched online courses in 2021 -- has enrolled 600 students and generated over $400,000 USD. "Next year, I want to earn seven figures," she says with a smile.
Here are 10 ways she made multiple six figures in her first 16 months of selling course materials:
Skip ahead:
- Her gut instinct was the one she followed
- She has launched three different courses
- She carried out market research in order to find the best price
- Her content was created based on what her audience would like to hear.
- She continually improves the experience of her students
- She was very generous in her expertise
- She designed a straightforward sales funnel
- She offered freebies for each of the courses.
- She fought off burnout
- She is steady
She listened to her instincts
While working for her company, Adrian created content for Instagram and Youtube during the weekend. The outlet helped to revive the spark of her creativity and she soon found herself craving more time to do it.
While she loved working from 9 to 5, she began having an unsettling "gut sense" of knowing she was destined for more. "I could not sleep as my inner voice was telling me that I could dream higher," she shares. "I realized there was an opportunity for me to be a part of something bigger than the ."
The decision was made to leave when she had consistently earned at least half of what she was earning at her previous company job by creating content. "Everyone will have many different requirements for this shift," she says.
Once she achieved this objective, she quit her job and stepped into the realm of self-employment on the 4th of October, 2019. With an enthusiastic following and an abundance of time it was decided that the next step in her path was an online course creation.
She also launched three courses
Presently, Adrian has three courses: The Modern Influencer, that is her most expensive course with a price of $997 USD. Email List 101, which is her intermediate-ticket course costing $297 USD and The Reels Roadmap which is her cheapest course at just $97 USD. The courses she offers teach individuals how to become an online content creator, but"The Modern Influencer is her main focus.
At first, the company called The Modern Influencer was a course was launched in the month of July in 2021 started with a six-week coaching group call that cost $597. After that, she was able to turn the group course into a three-month, one-on-one coaching program. But Adrian discovered that she wasn't in the capacity to teach thousands of students one-on-one. She decided to turn"The Contemporary Influencer into a recorded course instead.
While searching for the perfect online platform for hosting courses, she was drawn to the platform after she had taken several of online courses, and , as a student was her most-loved.
"From students' perspective, it's the easiest way to learn and the easiest to master."
Apart from offering three courses, she also has additional materials available for upsells at checkout to increase sales, like Pitch Email Templates, Pitch Slide Deck Template and Kit Guide for Media, Kit Guide, and 100+ Caption Ideas.
She did market research to figure out the best price
When it came to pricing the Modern Influencer, she did market research; she was interested in knowing what other authors were charging for similar programs, and she compared her course to what they were offering. "I studied what they taught, as well as my own teaching style than," she says.
"I was unable to locate a class that covered the use of Instagram as well as brand collaborations. My course brought the two in one," continues Adrian. "That's what allowed me to determine the appropriate price ."
She created her content based on what her audience desired
Adrian designed her courses, not only on what she was looking to impart however, she also considered what courses were missing.
She asked her audience how many of them took a class on Instagram, and what information they'd like to have learned but didn't. In the next step, she designed The Modern Influencer's course using "brain-dumping" everything she was aware of onto sticky notes. "The table was a disaster of sticky notes" she laughs.
The sticky notes were arranged starting from A to Z, covering all the information needed for somebody to transition from being completely ignorant about Instagram to being a full-time creator of content. Each A Topic was turned into sections, while other sticky notes became lessons. Although she claims that her course is primarily focused on Instagram, it's constantly evolving; every year, she will add more lessons. Plus, she can see herself adding lessons on YouTube and TikTok because this is what the audience asking for.
All of her courses are presented in various formats; she switches between her videos, her speaking, slide shows, and screen recordings. "It will depend on the subject and how I believe the students will best digest the information," she says.
Plus, her content is all pre-recorded. There is no live portion except for occasionally, a Q&A that she organizes in her Facebook group.
She continually improves her students' experience
Her Facebook group is where The Modern Influencer students are joined. The students have access for life to the group and it offers a forum where students can ask any questions on content creation.
Aside from the group on Facebook and the Facebook group, she's been playing around with several ways to keep people engaged within The Modern Influencer She's considering creating a Modern Influencer certificate that proves they've taken the course and are recognized as an influencer. Plus, she wants to help connect people who've earned the course to get brand-related deals on a PR list. "I don't want to be an agent, I want to give people the next step to take," she says.
Additionally, she wants to offer her students the opportunity to be affiliates of the class, which means that Adrian will pay students a share of cost of the course by referring people. "Those are a few suggestions we're exploring, and we want to have an established plan for next year's course," she says.
She was generous in sharing her expertise
Her audience is aspiring influencers -- in other words, content creators who want to become the face of their online brand.
"I don't work with businesses or anyone who isn't looking to appear on camera since a large portion of the techniques I employ is how to create an emotional connection with your viewers on camera" she says.
Like her students, making Adrian's public audience a reality required her to step outside of her comfort zone -- yet, as she says, "you don't grow from places of comfort."
She says she built her following by spending time in her own education. "For quite a while I would attend free webinars and analyzing how other people's activities were being done," she says. "I quickly noticed the change in my life as I began purchasing online classes to give me the results I wanted ."
Her number one tip to help content creators build their reputation is to be generous with what they want to teach She strongly believes that creators should not be guardians of information.
"Don't keep a secret about your knowledge, but be generous with the knowledge that you have.Once I said , 'no way to the side' and began teaching everything I had learned without any intention to get paid, my audience found me."
She designed a straightforward sales funnel
Instead of being intimidated by elaborate sales funnels, Adrian decided to keep his sales funnels easy.
In the months leading up to when the launch of The Modern Influencer, she created a waitlist using the Google form. Then, she posted the information on her website as well as all her social media channels. When she finally launched her program, she found an enthusiastic audience waiting for her emails.
She recommends that course creators avoid letting sales funnels scare the audience. Instead her advice is to create a simple funnel like waitlists so they will create leads and get people eager to buy their courses once it's launched.
The instructor offered freebies with every course
Now, Adrian's sales funnel is a little more extensive and she offers free resources which correspond with each of her courses. "When people download the freebie , or interacts with it, they're then put into an email automation where it'll upsell them eventually with those emails," she explains.
For The Modern Influencer, she has a 60-minute webinar which will teach the 100-day Instagram strategy -that is i.e. what people must do to reach 10,000 followers and make $1,000 within 100 days. When they've completed the training program, people are being re-sold the training program.
With her Email List 101 course, there is a cost-free, ten-page download that teaches individuals how to begin growing and maintaining the email lists. For The Reels Roadmap course, she has a freebie that teaches people how to increase views, draw attention to themselves, and make their reels go viral.
She fought off burnout
While Adrian's company has been growing quickly, it came at the cost of her mental well-being.
Despite building her dream job, she was caught in the pattern of working too much. "I was working every single hour of every day," she says.
After suffering from anxiety attacks and burnouts throughout the months following the first time she launched her course, she decided to hire an assistant to manage the back end of her company. "If I'm not making content, my business dies," she explains.
She now has the position of a digital business administrator, a funnel strategist, an engaging and community expert, a virtual assistant, video editors, a brand collaborations manager and an SEO specialist, and a Pinterest manager. Since hiring a team, she's been able to create more personal and professional guidelines for the self-care she takes. What's the result? The freedom to focus on creating content rather than becoming a weed. "I've had to learn lots about myself so that I don't hit these tipping points," she says.
She is consistent
One of the key aspects that Adrian realized during her content creation journey -as well as her burnout experiences -the fact that it's a marathon not a sprint. She recommends that other creators follow this same approach also, especially in getting rid of burnout and building a business with longevity.
"You're on the long run," she explains. "You don't need to see results right now or require immediate satisfaction."
She advises creators to work on their business everyday in little smaller pieces. "It isn't necessary to have everything happen at once," she adds. "This is the game that lasts. If this is something you're trying to achieve improve your performance by 1% every day. If you take it one piece at a time and over three years you're going to see so much more success than anybody attempted to achieve all in one ."
Her greatest achievement has been obtaining her YouTube Play Button -- an honor given to one of the platform's most popular channels. "It was the most complete experience in my life" she recalls and smiles. "I wish I could go back in time and inform twelve year old Millie that those dreams that she had in her head could come true. ."
One thing she wishes that she had the time to tell herself is to be a believer in the process. If you're aspired online creator, she recommends that they focus on the results which result from slow and steady progress. "Don't focus on the time it takes to complete your work," she advises.
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