Before You Stop Posting On Instagram or Youtube... You NEED to Watch This.

you are not going to believe this I stopped posting on social media for an entire year I lost a lot of followers I lost a lot of views yet I still made over $100,000 and yes I'm fully aware that the hook is really cringe but I am pulling all the stops because there are so many interesting things that creators should know about before they decide to take a break on social media so bear with me and keep watching now in case you missed it in my last video I talked about why and how I quit

my seven figure Creator business business that included me leaving social media entirely for a year now the results completely blew my mind and in this video I'm not going to only share the behind the scenes of what happened to my Instagram and my YouTube channel but I'm also going to share how it impacted my income and the lessons that you can learn based on this experience and so let's go over to my desk and let me show you exactly what I'm talking about all right let's first talk about YouTube now before I left social media

I was actively working on growing and optimizing my YouTube channel specifically the amount of AdSense Revenue that I was making I had a YouTube consultant and a dedicated team working behind the scenes to get my AdSense Revenue up and it worked after making some minor adjustments like posting longer videos and maximizing the ad breaks in each video all the way to doing bigger adjustments like constant AB testing for titles and thumbnails that would get the most clicks our strategies started to work and as you can see here my AdSense Revenue basically doubled and nearly tripled

the moment that we implemented these changes however the moment that I stopped posting on YouTube You're Going to see a huge Dip in My revenue and this was not what I was really expecting I thought that if I left social media I would probably make around the same money that I was making even when I was posting but that is farther from the truth I went from making $10,00 ,000 a month to about $500 a month now to me that is a huge huge decline especially considering the size of my Channel having 700,000 subscribers and

so this is a Learning lesson for you and that is when it comes to making money specifically on your YouTube videos it doesn't matter how many subscribers you have what matters is the views and not only this when you stop posting videos on YouTube YouTube is going to stop pushing out your videos in the algorithm now how exactly do I know this well we're going to have to look at my traffic sources now as you can see before I stopped posting on YouTube a lot of the views that I got on my channel came from

browse now what exactly is browse well it's a few things but mainly it's the YouTube homepage and how YouTube decides what videos to show in browse is based on a few factors specifically it's really tailored to the viewer for example YouTube will understand what the viewer AK KU is watching in your search history it's also going to consider the watch time that you have for specific videos so for example if you tend to have a longer watch time on makeup videos then YouTube will be more likely to suggest makeup creators to you not only this

it's also going to look at other people who have a similar watch pattern to you and figuring out what those people like watching because there's a big chance that if those people like watching a certain subject then you might like to watch that certain subject and so the goal really for YouTube is to make more money YouTube wants to push out videos to you that they think that you will watch in full because if you watch a video in full YouTube is going to make more money from their advertisers now if that was truly only

the case then I don't think I would have taken such a big hit when it came to my views coming from browse and so that's why I want to introduce the second layer of why certain channels get pushed out into YouTube browse more than others and that is the fact that YouTube rewards creators that create binge ability that have the ability to make sure their viewers are watching multiple videos and staying on the YouTube platform which is exactly why in the past when I create videos at the end of every single video I maximize my

end screens and I'm making sure that you guys are watching the next video that I have that being said if you are serious about building your content machine but you need help on actually being the thought leader and creating the content from scratch make sure you watch this video next I break down some tools and resources and strategies on how to actually create good content and I also go into my content process and even more depth so thank you so much for watching this video but I will see you in this one next I also

maximize my cards so whenever I'm talking in a video and I'm saying something that might relate to a past video I've created I make sure I link that card I also try to stay within a niche in my Channel or at least create a minseries of videos that follow a specific topic and the reason why this is important is because let's say you create a video about about dentistry and then you attract the viewer who's really interested in this subject they go to your channel and there's no other videos on that topic well that person

is going to leave and go somewhere else which is why for me if I'm creating a video on social media I'm going to make sure I have a little bit more videos around the same subject so that same viewer is going to binge on my content and that is exactly why for those of you who are starting a YouTube channel for the first time to kind of stay within a niche or at least have about five videos that have a similar subject so you can create binge ability now Beyond staying within a niche or at

least creating a minseries following a specific topic what I also do is that every time I share my videos out to the public and I link my videos I make sure that I link the playlist link all right so the way that you want people to binge on your content is this little hack right here so when you're on your channel there is this play all button you want to click that button once you click on your video You're then going to be able to grab this list link it's anything that's after the and sign

you want to copy that and then for any video that you want to share to the public you just paste that and list Link at the end of every URL that you share once you have that any time someone clicks on that link what's going to happen is on the side it's going to show all of your videos instead of YouTube suggested which is going to have other people's videos not only this once that person is done watching the video it's going to auto play the next video so what you noticed right there is that

it went from this video to my next video automatically and so next time you share a video you're going to want to share that list link right here and you can use the same code for every single video that you share it's going to have the same result I also make sure to maximize all the ad breaks on my channel to demonstrate to YouTube that hey my videos earn money for you and earn money for your advertisers which gives them even more reason to push my channel and my content out on the algorithm and so

for me the moment that I stopped posting and being an active Creator on YouTube I obviously stopped doing all of those things and so I saw a huge drop when it came to my visibility especially on Browse by not posting anymore to my channel there was no more novelty to my content and YouTube would rather prioritize active creators who were demonstrating consistency and making sure featuring them more than people like me who aren't even posting on their Channel anymore what really shocked me though from these results is how fast I got punished as you can

see here before I took my social media break I was getting about 337,000 views a month from browse alone but the moment I stopped the month that I stopped that immediately dropped down to 60,000 views now to some of you it's still a lot of views but for a Channel of my size it's not that much and you'll see that steady decline as the months went on but the biggest drop was actually the first initial month where I stopped posting now at this point of the video it's pretty discouraging to see how fast YouTube slapped

me in the wrist for multiple months because I didn't post on their platform for a whole year to be honest kind of understandable but here's what really surprised me and that is YouTube search take a look at this now even though you see a huge Decline and drop when it comes to YouTube pushing out my videos and people's homepages what you'll notice is that my search volume pretty much remain the same it's pretty consistent that line is almost relatively straight and not only this even though I didn't post for an entire year on YouTube I

actually gained subscribers in fact I gained 20,000 subscribers which helped me get to the 700,000 subscriber mark on my channel and by the way I cannot not say the same for Instagram so keep watching to know my thoughts on Instagram because side ey but anyways even though gaining 20,000 subscribers doesn't seem like a lot compared to what I usually do which is 100,000 subscribers on average per year it's still really encouraging to know that even though I didn't post for an entire year I still had a net positive when it came to my subscriber count

Beyond this I'm really glad that my channel is not necessarily a vlog Channel or an entertainment Channel and it's more of an educational Channel with a lot of searchable topics that people are looking for and that's really evident in the data right here people are still actively looking for the topics that I talk about and they're clicking my videos and they're becoming subscribers thanks to my videos Beyond this what really surprised me was seeing that one of the top videos that brought me the most subscribers was actually a YouTube short that I posted 2 years

ago this YouTube YouTube short is not new I posted it a long time ago but in the new year I guess a lot of people were searching about Instagram algorithms and so they found my YouTube short and then they became a subscriber and so what I'm learning from this is that number one there is so much power in creating searchable content and if you are a Creator who wants to take a break having an arsenal of searchable content is really going to help you sustain your income and also sustain your channel but also the potential

of YouTube shorts now for those of you who are posting reals and Tik toks YouTube searchability is unmatched and YouTube is really one of the only platforms that will still push your old content and so if I was a Creator and I was going to be smart about this I would actually upload a lot of my short form content onto YouTube and make sure the title is a searchable title so that I can create longevity for my Creator career and also still see growth over time now at the beginning of this video I was pretty

straightforward forward and letting you guys know that I made over $100,000 even though I wasn't posting for an entire year and the reason is because of YouTube search and also the fact that I had Evergreen money makers doing the work for me even when I wasn't working so for every single video usually in the description I will have my affiliate links and I also have some templates that people can purchase both of these revenue streams are things that don't require any work from me I post it once and it basically earns income for whoever decides

to buy or click or whatever and so if you actually look at my income statement you'll see that YouTube AdSense affiliate marketing and these templates that I did one off actually really helped sustain my sabatical it really sustained my time off which I'm really grateful for and so I really hope that by showing you guys behind the scenes of what happened to me when I stopped posting really shows you the potential poal of YouTube it shows you the potential of passive income streams and it might even help you reconsider where you want to focus your

efforts when it comes to the type of content that you create and the platform that you created on and the reason why I'm hinting that you may reconsider where you put your efforts in is because so many of the positive things that I found with YouTube yes even though they punish me and yes even though I definitely don't get the same amount of views that I did before or the same amount of subscribers growth that I did before is the fact that Instagram oh my goodness Instagram was a whole different story and it makes me

so much more grateful that I had a YouTube channel covering my ass while I was away and so let's take a look at my Instagram so I can show you what I'm talking about so when I left Instagram I had about 280,000 followers at the time that I'm filming this video I now have about 267,000 followers followers now even though losing 13,000 followers doesn't seem like a lot considering that I was gone for an entire year what you have to realize is that this is the net meaning that it's including all of the new followers

that I got and so if you actually think about it and you forget about the new followers the real number of how many people probably unfollowed my profile the moment I told everyone peace out I'm no longer posting is probably closer to 30 to 50,000 or even more which is pretty insane and the reason why I know that there was at least 50,000 people unfollowing me is because every 3 months I would have way over 10,000 people unfollowing and so if I was gone for a year you can easily do the math and estimate that

it was around 50,000 people at least who unfollowed now unfortunately Instagram doesn't really show you any data past 3 months but even with this sample size alone of the last 90 days you can see that there are way more people unfollowing me than there are following me which is why I'm at a net negative versus on YouTube there was probably still a few people that were unsubscribing but the amount of new subscribers I was getting was far more than the people that were unsubscribing and so that is why I had a net positive on YouTube

not only this when I compare the differences between YouTube and Instagram on YouTube there was tons of activity happening every single day people were still engaging in my videos I was still getting comments I was still getting even DMS from people that found me on YouTube whereas on Instagram it was pretty much Cricket ain't nobody commenting on my content ain't nobody liking anything it was basically dead over on Instagram and so why do we think that this happened why is there such a big difference on how the audience reacts on Instagram versus on YouTube well

I think that the answer boils down to two things number one is platform intimacy the truth is is that Instagram is a much more intimate platform than YouTube and this can be a great thing but it can also be a terrible thing Instagram is the platform where you can build a really solid Community you can chat with people people can know the intimacies and the the intricacies of your life and at the same time people can follow you just like that when you think about it if you're looking at YouTube when is the last time

that you actually checked which channels that you were subscribed to I know for me I'm still subscribed to channels that I watched like 10 years ago that I don't watch anymore because how the YouTube algorithm works is that it's constantly showing you channels and videos that you're not even really subscribed to also when you're searching for things YouTube isn't going to suggest you videos of just the people that you subscribe to it's going to show you any video that match that particular topic that you're looking for whereas on Instagram that's not really the case once

you follow someone you're going to see their their content all the time on stories on feed posts and even on the explore page unless you unfollow and you unmute the culture on Instagram is also very different the culture on Instagram is that we care a lot about who we're following and our follower to following ratio and so very often people will do purges on Instagram when's the last time you did a YouTube Purge I know personally I've never done a YouTube Purge whereas on Instagram every time I'm feeling down or every time it's a new

season of my life or every time it's the New Year I'm going to carefully look back on who I'm following and unfollow or mute anyone that I don't really want to follow anymore and so I'm not surprised that the moment I posted that I was going to be on a sabatical and that I was going to take a whole year off that a bunch of people unfollowed and so platform intimacy is something that you have to consider when you're crafting your social media strategy and also when you're choosing which platform you want to create content

on now the second reason why I think that there was such a stark difference between the amount of activity that I saw on both platforms while I was away is the fact that Instagram values recency whereas YouTube values watch time and quality of content and so what I mean by this is when you search anything on YouTube you may still get videos shown to you that were posted ages ago in my case if you look at the example that I mentioned earlier my YouTube short that I posted 2 years ago was still getting traction this

would not be the case on Instagram even though Instagram has significantly improve their search function when you search something on Instagram more likely than not all the posts that Instagram shows you are posts that were created not too long ago it's still pretty recent and so in my case because I stopped posting on Instagram entirely Instagram was definitely no longer pushing out any of my content which basically meant that all the posts that I had created was no longer going to get comments no longer going to get likes and I was no longer going to

get new followers which is why my growth on Instagram was basically a net negative whereas my growth on YouTube was a net positive so what are the exact lessons that you can take into your creator business especially now knowing my experience with Instagram and YouTube when I stopped posting content for a year well the first lesson that I personally learned is to know how each platform Works through my experience what I learned is that Instagram is an instant gratification platform you can get a follower really fast but you can also get someone unfollowing you pretty

fast as well and so many people choose to build their brands on Instagram because you get that immediate result most of the times you post something you get an immediate like you get an immediate comment maybe you even get an immediate DM whereas on YouTube it takes a lot more work and a lot more patience to get your channel up and running and so when you're thinking about your social media strategy or what platforms you might want to invest your time in it's almost like you have to think about what are the short-term gains that

you want but also what is the long-term Vision that you have for example Instagram is definitely really amazing to be able to build community in and to get your brand started but keep in mind that you're probably going to have to be consistent on Instagram forever in order for you to stay relevant whereas what you learned in this video is with YouTube even though I didn't post for a year I still had a net positive when it came to growing my channel and it was something that was still bringing me Revenue even though it wasn't

as much as before it was still money on the table I can cannot say the same for Instagram and so you kind of have to ask yourself where do I see my career in the future and what do I want to have set up in the long term for me I know for a fact that there is an expiry date on how long I'm going to be a creator for maybe in the future I might want to start a family and I might want to be in a position where I don't want to be on

camera every single day and so it makes sense for someone with my goals to stay on YouTube YouTu and to focus on YouTube and build this asset that I have now this doesn't necessarily mean that I'm not going to be on Instagram I still see value in Instagram especially with Instagram Stories being able to link your products being able to have that intimacy with your followers and building Community but this has really taught me of hey where I might want to invest most of my time in and most of my money in is probably a

platform like YouTube versus putting so much pressure on myself to try to grow on on Instagram now the second lesson that I also learned is the importance of diversifying your revenue streams now luckily I already had a different Revenue stream set up but prior to me taking my social media break I put a lot of time and effort only focusing on my coaching programs because my coaching programs was what was bringing me the most money I made multiple millions of dollars a year by selling coaching programs and actively running them but the thing that you

have to know know though is even though these coaching programs made me multiple six figures a month and multiple millions of dollars a year it also took a lot of time and effort in order for me to even make that type of Revenue and so it was actively managed all the time it required a lot of effort and the moment I decided to take a break and stop all those things all of that money basically stopped as well it wasn't necessarily a passive income stream whereas when I decided to take a whole year off for

my m mental health the revenue streams that really came through for me was my YouTube channel AdSense Revenue it was my affiliate marketing and it was also the oneoff templates that I would sell these are templates that don't require any work from me they're passive income products that are tied to my YouTube videos and so these were really the three revenue streams that were working for me even when I wasn't working through this experience I also learned the value of building a personal brand and building a social media audience the reason why I say this

is because even before I came back to social media I already had brand deal offers for me even before I came back to work and so that goes to show the power of focusing and investing your time in building your audience especially on platforms where you know that companies are willing to pay a lot more for collaborations so for example platforms like YouTube and podcasts are known to have companies that are going to pay a lot more for that content because they know that that that audience is much more engaged since it's a long form

piece of content versus content on Instagram and Tik Tok even though Brands will pay you for collaboration it's likely going to be a lot less than what a YouTuber or what a podcaster is going to make and for me in particular knowing now that whoa I left a lot of money on the table by not taking brand sponsorships and I left a lot of money on the table by not optimizing my other revenue streams like affiliate marketing and my digital products and my AdSense revenue and all of that is that because I didn't do any

of that I put a lot of pressure on myself to sell my own programs to sell my own products and a lot of creators emphasize the importance of just selling your own stuff and not relying on brand deals and all of that but when you don't diversify and you only focus on that one Revenue stream you're going to be in a position where you may burn out like I did or you may be in a position where you have to actively continuously work all the time and so what I learned from this experience is is

that having Diversified revenue streams allows you to create balance in your life and again if you haven't watched my last video where I talked about why and how I quit my seven figure Creator business you'll see that I basically ran myself to the ground because I didn't have that balance and so I think that there's a huge huge Learning lesson here when it comes to Diversified revenue streams now moving on to the next lesson that you can apply to your careator business is content quality over quantity still matters there's this huge Trend now of a

lot of creators including myself back then talking about the importance of posting as many content pieces as you can and with the rise of short form videos being a lot more popular there's definitely an appeal to only post short form content and post a huge volume of short form content but what I learned is that when I took that time off it was really my long form videos and my long form content that retained my audience that allowed me to reach new audiences even when I I wasn't working and was a big reason why people

wanted me to come back to social media because I was very consistent back then in posting longer more informative more value based videos and so one of my bigger lessons here is when you focus on delivering high value content you're going to be able to build an audience that will actually miss you when you're gone I can't count the amount of DMS that I got of people saying Vanessa I really miss your tips on social media I really miss your videos I really miss XYZ whereas on the other hand there was basically nobody telling me

that they missed my shortform content of me just having a compilation of me working behind the scenes with a fancy quote post or me dancing on camera and so even though I do understand and see the validity in the strategy of posting as many content pieces as possible especially now that short form videos and short form content make it so easy for us to do so I also see a lot of value in continuing posting long form content and not just any longform content but value based content because at the end of the day what

I believe is that if you can attract an audience even if it's not a big audience of people who are willing to sit through a 5 10 15 30 60 Minute video of yours you basically have that subscriber or that follower for life now for life might be an OV exaggeration but what I I mean is that you're going to be able to attract a higher quality audience who may still stick around and even wait for you if you decide to take 6 months off a year off a year and a half off you're going

to be able to really build a lasting Legacy when you actually put valuable content out there in the world and so that is why I believe that we shouldn't just focus on volume all the time of shitty content but to actually focus on producing High valuable content for our audience say all right guys I am reviewing the video and now this has been my first week back to social media when I filmed this video I was not back yet um and wow I really need to emphasize what I just said in this video because now

that I'm back look at the comment section in my first video that I even posted even on Instagram it's popping off and I really do believe that if I was just someone that was posting a lot of short form content that didn't have a lot of value I don't think I would have gotten the same reaction and it was because of the Last 5 Years of me putting so much value and putting so much work in my long form content that I feel created such a strong community and such a strong audience that literally missed

me while I was away and so just as an update because I am back to social media now I just want to show you guys that holy crap even though I was gone and I lost a lot of views lost a lot of followers lost a lot of money you guys came through and so want to share that with you guys especially if you're a Creator who's been in the game for really long time and you've been putting value day in and day out don't be afraid to take a break the people who genuinely support

you will still be there waiting for your return and so thank you guys so much for the support and keep watching this video now at this point of the video you might be wondering knowing what I know now do I regret my decision for quitting social media my income took a nose dive my following took a nose dive My Views took a nose dive and I find it really difficult to articulate my thoughts around this and so I want to share a podcast clip of an interview between Jay Shetty and James cordin where James Cordon

was asked whether or not he regrets his decision for quitting his famous talk show because I think sometimes when we make a decision we often feel like we have to convince ourself it's the best decision in order to make it through but for you to actually have the vulnerability to say I actually don't know that takes a lot of Courage well I I do know that that ending the show I I do know the the the reasons for it are absolutely right no question but but you don't know you don't know how those things will

you just don't know you don't know any of it yeah there's something really beautiful that came out of what you said this idea of reasons over results like you know your reasons you don't know what the result will be but you're sure about your reasons and that's something we can all practice and take on like I think that's something everyone who's watching can apply that you never know the result of your decision you don't how it's going to pan out but you can be sure about your reasons without question now what James said really resonated

with me because so far in this video I've really shared with you guys what I've observed while I was away and not posting on social media but I still don't know what are the actual consequences what are the actual implications now that I'm back now that I'm posting content again is Instagram going to put me into Shadow band jail and none of you guys are ever going to see my post uh will YouTube never push my content out again on the algorithm even though I'm following every single strategy that I know and even though I'm

being consistent these are all things that I have no idea how it's going to pan out and so it's really hard for me to answer the question of whether or not I regret the decision maybe I will regret the decision or maybe I won't but what I don't regret is my reasons for why I decided to leave I left social media because I wanted to take back control of my life I wanted to focus on my mental health I wanted to repair my relationships and I wanted to simply just be happy and live life to

its fullest that being said though even though I don't know exactly what the future holds the best that I can do is to rebuild from scratch with the experience that I have now and so if you're interested in what I'm up to and how I'm starting from scratch and how I'm rebuilding and what my strategies are going to look like and how those strategies might have changed thanks to the lessons that I learned in this video then make sure you hit that subscribe button and that notification Bell because in my next video I'll be sharing

my updated social media strategy for this year as always guys thank you so much for supporting me and watching and I will see you in my next video bye guys and take care