How to Make Money on Social Media Using Automations: Complete ManyChat Tutorial

[00:01] they're everywhere at once without needing to be online 24/7. They're not manually replying to every DM. They're not glued to their phone all day, and they're not doing it alone. They have built smart automations behind the

[00:16] scenes. So, today I'm breaking down exactly how creators are using tools like ManyChat to grow their audience, increase engagement, and build passive income. No, this isn't just another ManyChat tutorial. This is a full

[00:30] walk-through of the exact funnels that I'm using to automate my growth and increase my passive income over on Instagram. So, in this video, you are going to learn why automations are the key to earning passive income, the three

[00:45] funnels you need to be using in your creator business to grow your passive income, and at the end, I'm going to show you a bonus automation that can help you increase engagement with new followers and grow an endless list of

[01:00] content ideas. It's the same automation I used to create this list of over 1,000 content ideas without needing to spend time on any content research. So, as always, timestamps are below. Use them if you need them, and let's jump in.

[01:15] Passive income is one of the most talked about topics online because who wouldn't want to make money in their sleep? But, here's the thing, a lot of passive income advice isn't actually passive. Most of the time, creators end up

[01:29] actually just adding more work to their plates. But, automations, that's where things get interesting because anytime you can automate part of your business, you actually remove yourself as the bottleneck. And that's really the shift

[01:44] the creator economy. They're not just building content pages or posts anymore. They're building creator businesses that can actually scale beyond their own time and energy, and that's the part that I

[01:59] love the most about automations and how they've helped me and my business. They help turn your content into a real business ecosystem instead of a job where you constantly have to be online replying to every single one of your

[02:13] messages. So, if you could set up automations within your business to sell for you, or reply for you, or nurture your audience for you, or do anything for you, you will be able to outgrow, outperform, and outlast your competitors

[02:29] in today's creator economy. So, finding tools that can help you with that will be pivotal for every single person watching this. Now, one of the tools that I use for this is ManyChat. If

[02:42] you've been trying to grow online, you have probably heard of ManyChat. They are an automation tool and one that I personally have been paying for since personally have been paying for since 2021, 2022. I'll put a screenshot here

[02:54] ManyChat alone has helped me generate over 31,000 leads for my business, thousands of dollars in revenue, and over a thousand content ideas. Now, honestly, it's not just even about the revenue for me. A huge reason why I have

[03:09] continued using ManyChat for years is because it helps me build stronger relationships with my audience while also increasing engagement and growing my email list in the background. So, I'm stoked to also be partnering with them

[03:23] in this video to show you the funnels that I've been using that have been helping me scale my business these past few years. So, let's dive into the three simple automations that you can set up today. We'll start with the easiest and

[03:36] then we'll slightly get more advanced with every single one. The three DM automations creators are using to make passive income right now in 2026 are the sales and affiliate driver, the lead magnet funnel, and the sales funnel. Let

[03:51] me jump over to my laptop to show you our first automation, the sales and talk about how this one works. Basically, when somebody replies to your story with a specific keyword, ManyChat automatically will deliver them a link.

[04:07] You generate affiliate commissions or product sales. I see this used most mention something in your stories and you're like, "Well, if you want my water send you the link." You know, but you could also use it for other things like

[04:21] if you have an Amazon storefront, you could send that. If you have your own products. And fun fact, you could also use this automation as leverage with brand collaborations. I've actually been seeing a lot of brands request

[04:36] automation setup with partnerships lately, and they're willing to pay more because of it, because of the success that it can bring, getting more direct eyes to see a brand's product or service. So, this can be incredibly

[04:50] valuable for creators who are always sharing products, talking about their favorite things in their stories. I think story triggers are among the more underused ManyChat automations, but with this automation, you can share a story

[05:05] about a product that you love. People are way more likely to shop this way, especially if you're sharing items that you genuinely use every single day. So, let's set this up together. Like I said, we're going to start simple. Here in my

[05:17] ManyChat account, going to go to automations, and we're going to create a new automation. They have a bunch of templates that you can choose from. We are going to go by trigger, and anytime somebody replies to a story, and we're

[05:31] stories. There's two different types of automations that my team and I set up. automations that my team and I set up. One is evergreen automations, where if we know we have one product that we're always going to be sharing, we'll just

[05:43] create a standard evergreen. That automation is always on, so anytime specific word, no matter which story it is, they will get sent a link. There's also, if you are just posting one specific story and you're like, "Okay,

[05:58] so I've been recently loving these Talitha coffee beans." And like you're just mentioning something one-off, you could also create more of a one-off automation to a specific story that you posted. So after you post the story,

[06:11] then you would jump into ManyChat to set up that one-off automation. I love my automation, so we're going to say any story and I'm going to choose specific word or reactions. I want it to be specific. So maybe for

[06:26] the example, I'll say Talitha and then we will customize our DM that we send we will customize our DM that we send them.

[06:38] conversational instead of salesy. So we're going to add our link. Shop now. Then I'm going to share the link to the Talitha coffee beans that I

[06:50] love. Now, optional, you could also add a follow-up message after 24 hours if they didn't reply. So you could just turn on this follow-up and just be like, explore the coffee beans. Let me know if you have any questions about like your

[07:05] preferred flavor profile of beans. Would love to help you pick which beans would be the right fit for you." You know, like a customized follow-up message. And would just press go live and your automation is set up. Now, with this one

[07:18] that we have set up, I literally just linked directly to the Talitha coffee website, but if I had an affiliate link or my Amazon storefront, we would want to make sure that we are disclosing any sort of affiliate links both in your

[07:32] sort of affiliate links both in your post and in the DM itself. So when you're posting your story in closed captions or with text on screen, just being like, "This will be an affiliate link." And then when you deliver, you

[07:44] could say, "Yay, you're going to love these beans. "Yay, you're going to love these beans. I'll share my affiliate link with you below. I've been using the

[07:58] Arise blend to make all my ice lattes lately. So, just a simple FTC disclaimer, because anytime, you know, you are sharing affiliate links, you want to be following those FTC guidelines. Okay,

[08:12] the next one that we're going to set up is the lead magnet or email list machine flow. This is the most common one that my team and I use. I would say like 80% you see used the most often. Basically, when somebody comments a specific word

[08:26] on your reel or on your post, ManyChat automatically sends them a link or the resource that you're referencing in that post. From there, if you have an email directly into your email list, which if you have funnels set up, you can upsell

[08:41] them later into your products, courses, or memberships. This automation is one or memberships. This automation is one that I stand by for so, so, so many reasons. Not only is it great for email list growth, but when you have that call

[08:55] to action saying, "Comment this keyword and I'll send you blah, blah, blah." The comment itself that somebody is posting, it boosts your post in the algorithm, in a sense, leading to even more engagement and more reach. Because not only can you

[09:10] to build engagement, but you can set up an automation to be replying to all of those. And then it's like this snowball effect of engagement. For example, I have this post that is currently going viral that has a ManyChat automation set

[09:24] up on it. And I think one of the reasons it is performing so well is because so many people want the free resource that's associated with it. So, as you can see, 1.3 million views. Not only that, but there's 11,000

[09:37] comments. And most of those comments, I will show you, are people wanting the free resource. So that again, it's feeding into the algorithm of increasing engagement. And because I have my replies automatically turned on, it is

[09:52] just snowball effect and snowball effect. Another post that's performing really well is this one, 3,000 comments. And again, as you can see, it's all the automation. That's what's getting the video to start well and to

[10:05] start to take off. So, that's a common denominator that you'll see on a lot of my posts that are performing well, like this one, 189,000. Comment shop gear. Boom shakalaka, increased engagement. I think DM

[10:19] automations are just They work so well because they feel a lot warmer than a traditional like cold traffic or running ads. It's like the audience is asking automations. I feel like you can make them a lot more personal and fun instead

[10:35] of like traditional marketing funnels. Instead of pushing people off Instagram immediately, you can meet them where they're at and nurture them with in Instagram, continuing the conversation there. And that's what makes this

[10:48] automation feel scalable without losing personal connection with your audience. going to be fairly easy. I'm going to press new automation, and I'm going to press new automation, and I'm going to do the popular auto DM links from

[11:01] comments template. This is when you can choose a specific post or reel. A lot of mine are more evergreen where we just have specific phrases that we're always using. So, let's just do any post or reel. And then choose your keyword. Now,

[11:15] the keyword that you set up matters. You want this to be something specific, not generic, because you don't want to accidentally trigger an automation that somebody didn't ask for. So, for me, a keyword that I would not choose would be

[11:30] keyword that I would not choose would be like grow or link. Because if somebody's like, "Oh, can you send me the link?" and I have this for any post, which link are they talking about? Or if I have the word grow, that is so vague and broad.

[11:45] "Oh man, I've been trying to grow on Instagram for like the past 2 years." and they're just like sharing their growth journey, and then they randomly get a DM with like, "Here's the link you asked for." It just doesn't come across

[11:58] genuine. So, you want it to be hyper specific. For example, you could do something like PB&J, right? That's random. Or like fireworks. random. Or like fireworks. Or I love using numbers because numbers

[12:13] Who really ever comments numbers? So, I could say like vid 20 if I was sending them to a YouTube video or even like a podcast episode. You could say episode podcast episode. You could say episode 203, right? So, being as specific as

[12:27] 203, right? So, being as specific as possible for this one, let's say hooks 100 where they could get my free resource of hooks. For this one, let's resource of hooks. For this one, let's say automate 24/7.

[12:41] Then, we are going to reply to their comments under the post. Now, there's automatically responses here. These are very generic. You want to make it as personal and as true to you as possible. So, I'm going to change all of these to

[12:53] match me, my brand voice, what I would actually say. So, if somebody were to say automate 24/7, I would say Perfect. Just

[13:17] Like I said, these just keep that engagement loop going. Now, we are going engagement loop going. Now, we are going to set up our opening DM.

[13:33] making it casual. And basically, what we are doing is we're confirming that they asked for the resource that they asked for. So, I'm saying this with yes, send it over. Then, to grow our email list,

[13:46] we turn this one on. You could also make sure they're following you before you send them the resource. But, we grow our email list, so I'm going to say you got it. So, we're going to say something like, "Perfect. Honestly, this is one of

[14:00] my favorite resources I've made to date. Drop your email below and I'll send you the link in my next message." Then, when they reply to their email, you give them the resource. So, you say, "Hey, thank you. Here's your ManyChat templates. Let

[14:13] me know what you think of it." with the link. freebie. Now, if you're sending them to a landing page on your website, where on

[14:27] your website they have to opt in and give their email, then you can skip the email step because your website will already be gathering their email. But, if you just have like a link, like I have this AI Creator Prompts, and if I

[14:42] just want to share the Google link directly, this is the step that I would make sure I'm getting their email before I send them the link to this Google Drive. So, we are going to press go live. With that live, as those emails

[14:57] start coming in, you will be growing your contacts list. If you have your own your contacts list. If you have your own email system set up, they also have integrations, where you can connect like your Flowdesk or ActiveCampaign,

[15:11] Mailchimp, ConvertKit, HubSpot. So, you could connect your other platforms, and then those emails will directly connect to your email host. If you've learned this video a thumbs up because it's going to tell YouTube that other

[15:26] video helpful and push it to the right people. If you learn two new things by the end of the video, consider subscribing since it's a free simple way to support me and my channel and it allows me to continue to create free

[15:40] content like this for you every single week. Going to our third automation, this is like the sales driver. And if you're a creator who wants to sell digital products, coaching, memberships, or even courses, these sort of

[15:54] automations that we're setting up today become even more valuable because they help you nurture people automatically instead of manually trying to follow up with every lead yourself. So, let me show you how to automate those sales

[16:07] with this third automation. Now, this one is going to use a similar strategy and concept as the one that we just set up. But, this time we're going to add more of a funnel, an upsell, and

[16:22] directly drive people to your digital product or course or membership or whatever it is that you want to direct people to. So, this time we are going to people to. So, this time we are going to set up a new automation from scratch and

[16:35] we are going to start from a blank canvas. This is where we get a lot of customization and this is where we can have a little bit more advanced fun. So, we're going to click on the win. This is our trigger

[16:48] and we are going to say when somebody comments on your post or reel. And for me, of course, I love evergreen when these automations I just have to set it again. So, I'm just going to say for all posts, press next. We are going to

[17:03] choose our specific keyword. Our keyword is going to be bananas with a Z because why not? And then you're going to customize these responses again to fit

[17:15] customize these responses again to fit you, your brand voice, your tone. Save. So, when somebody comments on your post or reel, we have the trigger, then you're going to send an Instagram message. So, let's customize what that

[17:30] message is going to be. I have my simple confirmation message where I'm just confirming they want access to the specific freebie or resource that I mentioned. So, we're bringing people in with a free resource, and once they

[17:44] download the free resource, it's telling us, "Hey, I'm interested in this thing." And once we know people are interested in that, then we're going to upsell them to a related paid product. So, let's do this together. Access to

[18:00] this together. Access to 75 hook. Just to confirm, you wanted access to the 75 hook prompts. When they press this button, we want to send another Instagram DM. So, when the button is

[18:13] pressed, confirm. This time, we are going to do our data collection. We're going to do our data collection. We're going to do remove the text, add data collection. Now, the cool thing with ManyChat is if

[18:28] you have multiple automations set up where you're doing an email gather, and you're getting people's email contacts, they actually have a condition where you

[18:40] could add and check to see if a contact's email is already known. So, basically, ManyChat's going to make sure, "Hey, you don't have this person's email address yet before asking for it." Because imagine if somebody's already

[18:54] their email, they want like another freebie, and then it's like, "May we have your email again?" That could get kind of annoying potentially for a user's experience. So, ManyChat can make sure, "Hey, you don't have this person's

[19:08] email address, so now I will gather the data." Or if they recognize we already have this person's email address, they're just going to skip that email data gathering message all together and jump directly to the next step. So,

[19:23] customization that you can have. We're going to assume we don't have this person's email yet and we're going to set up one if somebody hasn't replied yet, we want to send a follow-up message just like

[19:37] Hello. I wanted to see if you still wanted the hook prompts. And then we are going to deliver the freebie. Once we have this freebie

[19:51] delivered, I'm going to do a smart delay. We're going to just do a 24-hour smart delay. After 24 hours, we're going to upsell them to a similar product. So,

[20:06] hey there. Hope you're liking the 75 hook prompts. Since it seems like you might be interested in growing, getting more views, my Cool. So, now I'm saying, "Hey, I It

[20:21] getting more views to your content. I thought I'd also share with you my how to grow to 100,000 followers workshop. Let me know if that would be helpful." With a button making it easy for them to reply. And

[20:37] making it easy for them to reply. And then when they reply, I'll send them the then when they reply, I'll send them the final sales message. With this final final sales message. With this final delivery message, I like to put a recent

[20:49] student win for the product that I'm delivering. So, I recently had a student grow Perfect. Recently had a student grow

[21:01] 20,000 followers in 30 days by following the tips taught in the training, so I really think you'll like it. Watch now with a link where they could purchase and join the workshop. With all of my messages, I love adding a little bit

[21:15] more context and conversation because I feel like it makes DMs feel a little bit more personal and not so much transactional. And also, I just love being able to show how creators can set up automations in a way that feel

[21:30] authentic and feel human and conversational, not just like an AI bot like every other Joe Schmo, but really make it sound like you. So, once you have this automation set up, you could set it to live, and now you have a sales

[21:46] funnel automatically working for you. Okay, now as promised, the final one, I want to show you the automation that I have set up where I now, because of it, have set up where I now, because of it, I have over 1,000 content ideas directly

[22:01] from my audience. I didn't have to do the content research. This is literally from the ManyChat automation that we have set up. As you can see, over 1,200 responses. So, what you do is super simple. We're going to go to automations

[22:14] basic. And right here, where it says, "Say hi to new followers. First impressions are everything." You're going to choose this option and set up your automation. Now, a lot of people might use this to send a digital product

[22:28] or send them directly to their email list. For me, I just want to hear from them and know, "Okay, what's the biggest thing that you need help with at this moment?" So, when does somebody new follows me, I have the automation set up

[22:40] so that after 5 minutes, they will get an opening DM. This opening DM is going conversation. They're going to go back and forth with me. We're going to talk. We're going to nurture our connection. So, I'd ask them if they have a minute

[22:54] currently dealing with. And if that's something they want, they just click here to fill out the form. When they click there, they'll automatically get a message with a link to open the form that takes them directly to an airtable.

[23:07] This airtable does not gather email addresses. It's free for somebody to their handle, what their current pain point is, and press submit. And on my end, I automatically get all of their responses, giving me everything I need

[23:22] for coming up with new materials. All I do is file, download, share this as a Excel sheet or PDF, and then I upload it directly to an AI bot of choice,

[23:35] ChatGPT, Claude, and I have that AI bot categorize what the biggest pain points are, so that all of my future content can be directly and exactly what my you press go live and you are good to go. If you want to set up any of these

[23:50] in the description to sign up for ManyChat, and when you use the code Modern Millie, you'll be able to try a pro account free for 30 days. Now, you

[24:02] have four simple ways to connect with your followers, grow your email list, and increase your passive income, all from Instagram. So, comment below which from Instagram. So, comment below which automation you will be setting up first.

[24:17] ManyChat is such a powerful tool, so if you'd like a part two with even more advanced automations, just let me know for watching, and I'll see you in the next one. Follow your joy. Bye.