Free Course: Zero To $10K Instagram Strategy

💰 How to Create Content, Grow Your Audience & Scale to $10K/Month 💰

This course is designed to take you from zero to consistent $10K months using Instagram. Whether you’re starting fresh or struggling to monetize after you’ve already launched your brand, this blueprint will give you a clear, step-by-step strategy to turn your content into cash. 💵

Before I dive in, let me introduce myself. 🙋🏽‍♀️

My name is Lauren C. Francis, I’m a branding and marketing coach at C Note Digital where I teach beginner content creators and coaches how to get their online brand off the ground and start making the money they dream of. 💭

I help women in particular with their social media strategy and content creation, i.e. building courses, workshops, sales funnels, digital products, and coaching programs.

If you need some guidance about getting the ball rolling in the right direction so that you can start making five figure months, you’re in the right place. 👍🏼

I’m going to lay out everything you need to do to start making $10K a month – every month. Because that’s what I believe should be your bare minimum profit as an entrepreneur.

Imagine this—you wake up, check your phone, and see payment notifications rolling in. Your content is working for you, bringing in sales while you sleep. You’re no longer stressing over bills or wondering if you’ll ever make real money online. Instead, you’re building a brand that pays you, growing an audience that trusts you, and hitting consistent $10K months—all from Instagram. 📱

Trust me (!!!), I know what it’s like to start with nothing—being broke, working a dead-end job with just a bright idea stuck in your head as a means to get you out of your situation for good. I know what it’s like to be at work IN TEARS because deep down you know you are not supposed to be there. 😭

You want more for yourself and you know in your heart that you’re designed to be an entrepreneur – a boss lady who generates her own income and doesn’t have to deal with all the foolishness that comes along with having a job that you hate. 

Freedom is your goal – mentally, physically, and financially! And $10,000 a month – every month – in your bank account would solve all of those problems. And that’s just the starting point. The sky’s the limit here! With your own successful online business, you can make $50K a month, $100K, and even more. ⬆️

This is your moment to turn things around. 💫

For yourself and your own peace of mind – as well as for your household.

I’m so glad that you’re here because what I will always aim to do is help and inspire women to get their own bag, make their own money, and not be dependent on anyone to give them the wealthy lifestyle they desire and very well deserve. 

You can create it for yourself. Please know that! 💯

And check this out – with this Instagram strategy, you don’t need to start out with a huge following. You can start from zero and build from there. You don’t even need to spend a ton of money on ads. You can literally invest a few dollars a day into your ad budget and start seeing remarkable results.

That’s exactly what this free course is all about – a roadmap to take you from ZERO to $10K months as a content creator, coach, or online brand.

If you follow my blueprint, stay consistent, and put in the work, you will see it pay off. You will finally create the life you’ve been dreaming of and really be on your way to start making some F U money. 🖕🏼

So here’s what we’re covering in this course:

✅ The Mindset You Need to Make Your First $10K Month
✅ The Type Of Instagram Profile That Gets Daily Sales
✅ How to Turn Content into Cash With My CNOTE Method
✅ Setting Up An Offer On Your Website or Landing Page
✅ Generating New Leads With Organic and Paid Traffic

By the end of this course, you’ll have a step-by-step strategy to hit $10K a month using content, conversations, and conversions.

🚀 So are you ready? Let’s do this. 🔥

📌 MODULE 1: THE MINDSET OF AN INSTAGRAM ENTREPRENEUR

✨ Goal: Shift your mentality and set up your Instagram for consistent five-figure months.

Before you even post your first piece of content, before you even think about monetization, you have to become the person who makes $10K months a reality in their mind first. Because Instagram success isn’t just about strategy—it’s about how you show up confidently and position yourself as an authority – even in the beginning stages as you’re starting from scratch. 

Let’s break it down.

Act Like the Brand You Want to Become

Before you master your content, sales, and lead generation system, you need to master your mindset. Because truthfully, your results will never outgrow your beliefs. Whatever you truly believe about making money online is what’s going to play out. That’s why your first $10K month starts in your mind first before it ever hits your bank account.

If you don’t believe you’re capable of making $10K a month from Instagram… you won’t.
If you don’t show up daily with the discipline of a CEO, you’ll stay stuck.
If you don’t shift your energy from “Can I?” to “I will,” you’ll keep playing small.

Some people stay stuck because they think it’s hard to get followers and get the traction going towards $10K every month. They only have the courage to post sporadically with weak content, twiddle their thumbs, wait for engagement, and hope that people will notice them and break out their credit cards just because they posted a link to their landing page with a $5K offer. Then they hope and pray that if just 2 people buy into that offer, then they can meet their so-called $10K goal. 

Don’t be one of those people because it’s not that simple.

$10K creators think smarter and have an entire sales system set up for success. They show up with purpose, create with confidence, and operate as a serious business that’s worthy of making five figures every month. They know without a shadow of a doubt that it can be done – because they see it being done by plenty of other women in the online workforce.

Here’s the difference between a hobby mindset that’s keeping you broke and a boss mentality that will get you to $10K every month…

❌ Hobby Mindset: “I’ll post when I feel like it.”
✅ CEO Mindset: “I show up daily because I run a real business.”

❌ Hobby Mindset: “I don’t want to be too salesy.”
✅ CEO Mindset: “Selling is serving—if I don’t make offers, I can’t help people.”

❌ Hobby Mindset: “I hope someone buys from me.”
✅ CEO Mindset: “I create opportunities for people to buy daily.”

❌ Hobby Mindset: “I’m scared of rejection.”
✅ CEO Mindset: “Every ‘no’ is just a ‘not yet.’”

You have to rewire your brain for this type of success.

If you have any resistance around making money on Instagram, you will subconsciously block it. Keep reaffirming to yourself that making money online is indeed possible. It is indeed meant for you. It is indeed your path. It is indeed your destiny. ✨

And once you surpass $10K every month (because you will) – remember this is just the bare minimum so be unapologetic about it. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not a real job – because it is. It’s a job YOU created as your own business. 💪🏽

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t keep earning more and more – even into six figures a month. Because you can, as long as you keep treating it like a high-earning brand that attracts wealth. It’s never just a hobby.

Doing this could mean breaking generational curses of being broke. It could mean paying back your student loans. It could mean buying a house or your dream car in cash. It could mean saving for the future.

Whatever your reason is – don’t let anyone discourage you because they don’t see the vision. If you see it for yourself and you know that it’s possible and within reach, stick to the script. Don’t bend, and don’t fold for anyone.

Believe that you can do this, and that your faith combined with due diligence will produce results. Whatever you demand out of the universe as a requirement for your life will absolutely show up if you’re serious about it. 

So therefore when you start moving and thinking like a successful $10K content creator, your audience will eventually reflect that. 

Don’t give up before your dream manifests. 

📌 MODULE 2: THE INSTAGRAM PROFILE – HOW TO HIGHLIGHT WHO YOU ARE & WHAT EXACTLY YOU SELL

✨ Goal: Build a repeatable Instagram sales funnel that attracts, nurtures, and converts your audience into paying clients.

Your Instagram bio is the first thing people see when they land on your page. If it doesn’t instantly tell them who you are, what you do, and why they should follow you, they’ll figure you’re not the right one for them and leave.

Here’s the perfect Instagram Bio formula: I help X do Y by Z.
🔹 X: WHO you help (your target audience)
🔹 Y: WHAT problem you solve (your expertise)
🔹 Z: HOW you do what you do (your method)

Let’s say you’re a new fitness coach. Here’s an example you can use: 

🔥 I help new moms lose their baby weight with my easy, at-home 30-day workout plan.

After this (on the second line of your bio), invite them to send you a DM with a keyword or phrase.

For example, you can put: 

🔥 DM me “GET FIT” for more info.

Then on the third line of your bio, include a call-to-action.

🔥 Click below to watch my free course.

Be sure to include a link to your website or landing page that acts as the entryway into your sales funnel. It should always begin with a free offer and an email form that signs them up for your email marketing list. ‼️ 

Your bio should make it immediately clear why someone should follow you. No fluff, no random quotes—just straight to the point and concise.

Moving onto the body of your profile, keep in mind that it isn’t all about taking glamorous pictures. That era of having the picture-perfect profile is over. Nowadays, people are more gravitated to what’s real and what’s raw. 💥

They want behind-the-scenes pics. 📷

They want to see a day-in-the-life reel of what’s going on in your world.

They want the real nitty-gritty so that they can in turn relate to you as you’re speaking to them throughout your content and emotionally hooking them into your brand. 

They want to see your daily moves and how you’re reaching the same goals that they desire to reach. 

They want all your tips and advice along the way.

That’s what will inspire them to say, “Okay, I see her doing it, so I know for sure that I can do it too.”

 It’s about content that inspires your audience to follow your lead.

Before you get started on your content creation journey on Instagram – or if you need to revamp your posts after you’ve already started, seriously ask yourself these questions:

💭 If I were already making $10K/month from my brand, how often would I show up? Every day? Once a week? Or even worse, once a month? 

💭 What would I be posting that will magnetize the right audience to me? How would I keep them interested for the long haul with my reels, stories, quotes, images, and helpful tips? 

💭 What am I selling that’s different from the next person’s offer – even if it’s similar? How is my brand unique to me and how can I serve a unique experience to someone who signs up to work with me?

If you want to make consistent money on Instagram, you need a repeatable system that turns followers into buyers every single day. You can’t just post and “hope” that people click on the link in your bio to a high-ticket $5K offer, for example, and shell out that much money on a whim. 

Instead, you need a content-to-cash funnel that FIRST brings in leads for free and continuously nurtures them – then over time, converts them into paying clients.

So here’s what should be inside your content-to-cash funnel:

1. A free offer
2. A low-ticket offer
3. A mid-ticket offer
4. A high-ticket offer 

This exact funnel works for coaches, content creators, and digital entrepreneurs no matter the niche. 

Here are examples of a free offer: a course (like this one), checklist, or workbook – but for the sake of this Instagram strategy, let’s focus on creating a free course

(This free course has to be very valuable and packed with a lot of information because no one wants a shitty product even if it’s free. Your course has to help them tremendously. They have to learn from it, take notes, and tap all the way in. The purpose of giving so much value away for free is to exemplify your expertise and prove why you’re good at what you do. Information should always be free. It’s the implementation and the private 1:1 coaching that becomes payable down the line/inside the funnel.)

Examples of a low-ticket offer: a set of $15 printables, a $20 e-book, a $50 workshop, a $97 course (anything under $100)

Examples of a mid-ticket offer: a $197 course, a $497 brand audit, a $997 consulting package (anything between $100-$1K)

Examples of a high-ticket offer: a coaching package priced at $3k and up (anything in the 4 or 5 figures)

For now, let’s go back to your free offer which will be a course like this one.

You will need to use my CNOTE Formula to start building the promotional content around it – and it should have these components to make it a winning factor on your Instagram.

 🔥 Here’s the CNOTE Formula: 

C – CONVERT

N – NURTURE

O – OPTIMIZE

T – TRACK

E – EXECUTE 

 ✨ C – CONVERT: YOUR CONTENT SHOULD EASILY ATTRACT AN AUDIENCE & CONVINCE THEM TO MAKE A DECISION, I.E. HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON, CLICK ON THE LINK IN YOUR BIO, SIGN UP FOR YOUR EMAIL LIST, MAKE A PURCHASE, BOOK A SALES CALL

Your content should work as your conversion machine. If you’re not consistently attracting new eyes and getting those people locked in your content-to-cash funnel, you won’t get new sales. 

Here’s what you need to do to attract leads to your Instagram:

✅ Make 3 types of content

• Trendy  → To pique people’s interest and possibly put you on the explore page to get more followers
• Educational → To build trust and teach what you want your audience to know
• Transformational →  To show before & after results of what it is that you teach

✅ Post 1-2 daily reels

• Reels are the fastest way to reach new potential buyers.
• Use hooks, headlines, and auto-captions that stop the scroll.

• Your first 3 seconds matter. Make people pay attention.
• Be more specific with your copywriting. Instead of putting “How to Make Money on Instagram,” you can say: “This Instagram Strategy Made Me $10K—Here’s How”

✅ Use Instagram Stories

• Stories are where people also make buying decisions.
• Use polls, Q&As, and behind-the-scenes footage to keep engagement high.

HERE’S A GOOD SALES ROUTINE TO FOLLOW: 

🔹 Morning:
– Post a high-value reel
– Engage with new followers & start DM conversations
– Post on Instagram Stories

🔹 Afternoon:
– Post a story poll
– Comment on posts from ideal clients (get seen)
– Create tomorrow’s content

🔹 Evening:
– Post a second sales-focused reel
– DM people who engaged with today’s content
– Track how many sales convos & offers you made today

✨ N – NURTURE: YOUR CONTENT SHOULD BUILD TRUST & A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR AUDIENCE DUE TO THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF FREE INFORMATION THEY GET FROM YOU. THEY CAN GET LOST IN YOUR SEA OF YOUTUBE VIDEOS, PODCAST EPISODES, BLOG POSTS, ETC.

People don’t buy from strangers—they buy from people they trust. Your job is to make sure your audience knows, likes, and trusts you enough from your free offer to invest in your low, mid, and high-ticket offers.

What you need to do to nurture your new leads:

✅ Show up daily

• Share your day-in-the-life, your wins, your blows, your learning lessons, your process of how you do things. People buy when you’re authentic and relatable.

✅ Create a 1:1 connection

• DM new followers with a simple welcome message.
• Reply to your comments and engage with your audience to let them know you see them.

✅ Make your content personal

• Let people see themselves in your story.
• Are you a mom? Pregnant? Married? Single? Going gray (like I am)? Don’t be shy about where you are in life because there are plenty of people out there just like you who would love to connect just because they look like you or might be in the same life stage as you.

✨ O – OPTIMIZE: YOUR CONTENT SHOULD BE OPTIMIZED FOR SALES AND MOVING PEOPLE CLOSER TO BUY. YOU DON’T WANT YOUR CONTENT TO JUST “BE THERE” ON INSTAGRAM DOING NOTHING. IT SHOULD BE POINTING PEOPLE IN THE DIRECTION OF YOUR SALES FUNNEL.

Make Offers DAILY—Not Just Occasionally
You need to tell them clearly, every day, how they can work with you.

🔥 How to optimize your content for sales:

✅ Mention your offer in at least 3-5 posts per week
✅ Post Instagram Stories with direct CTAs to DM you
✅ Pin posts that explain your offer & how to get started
✅ Create urgency—limited spots, bonuses, or deadlines

✨ T – TRACK: YOUR CONTENT SHOULD HAVE MEASURABLE RESULTS. YOU SHOULD BE ANALYZING YOUR INSTAGRAM STATS AND REFINING YOUR STRATEGY TO SEE WHAT YOU CAN IMPROVE.

If you’re not tracking, you’re guessing—and guessing doesn’t build a profitable business. To grow to $10K months, you need data, not just effort. You should know exactly what’s working, what’s not, and where to improve.

🔥 How to Track for Growth:

✅ Monitor daily sales activity (How many offers are you making? How many DMs are you sending? You should be sending 50-100 DMs every day with the intention of leading them up to the sale of at least a low-ticket offer.)
✅ Track engagement on content (Which posts bring in the most leads? Which CTAs get DMs? Which reels fell flat and how can you improve on them next time?)
✅ Analyze conversion rates (How many people go from DMs to actual sales calls or checkouts? What analytics are actually set up on your website or landing page so that you know how much traffic you’re getting from people clicking on the link in your Instagram bio?)

✨ E – EXECUTE: YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY SHOULD BE EXECUTED DAILY IN ORDER TO SEE RESULTS. THE KEY HERE IS PERSISTENT EFFORT WHICH WILL ALWAYS PAY OFF.

Execution is where the magic happens. It’s not enough to have a plan; you need to take action and stay consistent to see results. Successful execution means making your strategy a daily habit—doing the work, showing up consistently, and pushing through challenges to reach your goals.

🔥 How to Execute for Success:
✅ Stick to your content calendar (no excuses!)
✅ Make offers every day (even when it feels uncomfortable or like no one is listening)
✅ Follow up with leads and engage with people in your DMs daily
✅ Show up in stories, lives, and posts without fail to build trust and authority

💡 Execution turns your strategy into success. Without it, all the planning and tracking won’t get you anywhere.

📌 MODULE 3: THE ALLURE OF YOUR OFFER

Let’s rewind back to the DMs…

You might be asking, “What exactly do I say? How do I introduce my free offer to 50-100 people a day?”

You have to be a social butterfly here. 🦋

Make the decision to turn on your social battery and initiate the DM conversation. Does it have to be intimidating? No. Because your free offer is already sitting on a landing page and waiting to do most of the heavy lifting for you. It just needs some attention from your Instagram audience through your content-to-cash funnel, otherwise known as your email marketing funnel. 

When you DM someone, here’s what you can say…

You: Hey [NAME], thank you for following me. It’s so nice to have you around! I hope my page can help you. What is it that you do?

Them: I’m a fitness coach (using the same example from earlier)

You: So cool! How long have you been in business? (discover their current situation and what problems they may have)

Them: A few weeks. I’m just getting started with building my brand.

You: Congrats on that! Let me ask you – where do you wish to scale in the next 6 months or so?

Them: Hopefully at $25K a month. I just need some tips on how to do it.

You: I got you! I have this free course that teaches you how to put yourself in the five-figure range in no time. Have you clicked on the link in my bio yet?

(This is where the landing page to your free course will be waiting.)

Upon clicking on the link in your bio, this person will find themselves at the entrance of your content-to-cash funnel.

It must have an email opt-in form! This is a major key! 🔑 

The purpose of the opt-in form is so that the person can exchange their email address for your free information. Once they submit this, they’re officially in your sales funnel and you now have the most prized possession in the digital marketing world. 

With an email address, you can send personalized marketing messages to them anytime you want, upsell your other products and services, and offer exclusive things they can’t get on the outside. It’s really exclusive access to your brand.

Okay, you may be asking, how do I make a free course (just like this one you’re watching)? What tools do I use to put it together? 💭

1. Canva ($15/mo premium account for graphics)
2.  Loom ($18/mo for screen recorder)
3. Google Docs (free)
4. YouTube (free)
5. GoDaddy ($22.17/yr for domain + $11.99/mo for WordPress hosting)

I make my landing pages in WordPress!

6. Otter Patterns (free WordPress plugin for landing page layout)
7. WP Forms (free WordPress plugin for email sign-up form)

Note: You can also link your free course on a hub site like Stan Store or Beacons.

Next step…

Once your free course has been viewed by your visitor from Instagram and they’re now fully convinced that you can help them, they should be clicking around your website and other forms of social media doing a deep dive on your content.

This is where you’ll want to have YouTube videos already uploaded – as well as podcast episodes, blog posts, TikToks, Tweets, anything they can find on you in order to build more trust in your brand outside of Instagram.

All of your free content will more than likely be consumed before they decide to make a purchase.

Your goal at this point is to have them so tapped into your brand, so convinced, so motivated to buy from you that it seems like the natural next step for them to take.

 🤑 Have your paid content ready! 🤑

This is the content-to-cash sales funnel right here in full effect.

What is your next offer that your Instagram visitor can come back to on your website – without having a care in the world about paying because your free course was that good?

Is it a low-ticket offer? Let’s just say it’s a $97 course that’s already prepared and ready for instant download. Once they break out their credit card, there’s your sale.

(Here’s a tip: you could use a free platform like Notion to design your course if you’re not on a premium site like Teachable)

Let’s say they click on another landing page from your website for a mid-ticket offer that’s $497 for a brand audit. You could also get that sale.

Or they may choose to apply for your high-ticket offer, which is private 1:1 coaching that you have priced at $5K.

Any of these scenarios are highly likely to happen on your website – not only from this one person, but from dozens more!  

Your $10K every month is going to come from MANY different people buying into your various price points. 

And it’s so sweet to know that they’re all coming from Instagram. 💞

Setting a goal of talking to 50-100 people every day in your DMs will almost guarantee your success – as long as you provide amazing offers.

📌 MODULE 4: PAYING FOR INSTAGRAM ADS & BOOSTED POSTS

Since you’re starting from scratch, growing an audience 100% organically will take some time – in fact, a long time. 

And we don’t have all the time in the world, do we? We have $10K goals to reach, a job we want to hurry up and quit, debt to pay off, things of that nature.

Luckily, Instagram ads and boosted posts, can come to the rescue and tremendously bring in some much-needed rapid growth. Even on a very small budget (I’m talking $3-$5 per day), you can bring in hundreds of new eyes to your daily content—potential leads who may have never found you otherwise.

Can you go beyond that and invest $10 per day into your posts? Or $20 per day? Or more? 

Even better! Your daily reach will literally be in the thousands. This is on top of your organic efforts by liking and commenting on other people’s posts, following, engaging, and being the social butterfly you’re meant to be.

 Paying for ads is like adding fuel to the organic strategy already set in place. Ads help you attract ideal clients faster, increase engagement, and generate more sales opportunities.

🔥 Boosting Posts vs. Running Ads

Boosted Posts (Quick & Easy)

• Pick any post.
• Choose a goal: More profile visits, website clicks, or messages.
• Set audience targeting (age, location, interests).
• Start with $3-$5/day for however long you want.

💡 Best for: Increasing reach, engagement, and brand awareness.

Instagram Ads (More Control & Customization)

• Set up ads on Facebook in the Meta Ads Manager.
• Choose an objective: Traffic, engagement, or messages.
• Define your audience with custom or lookalike targeting.
• Focus placements on Instagram Feed & Stories.
• Track and tweak performance better than you would from Boosted Posts.

💡 Best for: Generating leads, driving sales, and scaling faster.

Scaling your business to $10K every month starts with balancing between organic and paid traffic—working both together towards your funnel. Organic content builds trust and authority, while paid traffic accelerates your reach, bringing in more potential buyers faster. 

Again, the key is leading both types of traffic toward an irresistible free offer—something valuable that gets people excited to engage with you. This free offer serves as the entry point into your ecosystem, where you nurture relationships and seamlessly upsell into paid offers. When done right, this system becomes a predictable, repeatable way to convert followers into clients and scale your business to consistent five-figure months.

Your content is the front door to your business, but attention alone doesn’t pay the bills. The goal isn’t just to get likes and views—it’s to turn that engagement into sales. 

This is where your content-to-cash funnel comes in: 

Content → Relationships → Sales → Transformation. 

Every piece of content should have a purpose—whether it’s driving engagement, starting conversations, or leading people to your free or paid offers. Your organic strategy is about being consistent, providing value, and building trust, while your paid strategy speeds up the process by getting your best content in front of the right audience. 

The difference between struggling entrepreneurs and those hitting $10K months isn’t talent—it’s consistent execution of proven strategies. This system works if you do.

At the end of the day, scaling to $10K isn’t complicated—it’s about taking small, intentional actions daily that lead to big financial breakthroughs. 

It’s about using my CNOTE formula along with my free strategy and combining it with consistent execution to see results. Now… you have the roadmap and the basic foundation to build your own clear, repeatable system and turn your Instagram into a consistent money-making machine.

This is your moment. Thank you for watching.