Flow State Business

How I’m Making Daily Sales From $5 Boosted Ads

• Ruby Lee

Share episode

Send us a text

➡️ Learn how to set up your own boosted ads - grab Boosting Basics here.

I used to think boosting posts was a waste of money.

Now it’s one of the smartest things I do in my business.

In this episode, I’m sharing how I’m turning $5 ads into 200,000 views a month, daily sales, and a growing community - without complicated funnels or big budgets.

************

👉 Connect with me on Instagram - DM me and let me know what you're boosting this week.

 Hello guys. Welcome to a brand new chat on the Flow State Business podcast. I am currently recording in Seoul, South Korea. And you guys, I know last episode I was sort of saying Japan wasn't quite the vibe we were hoping for, like personally for us as a family. It just was too hectic, too cray cray. Uh, and just, I don't know, it wasn't, it wasn't the right energy for us, but ever since landing in Seoul, South Korea, oh my gosh, my heart is so open.

I have so much energy. I just feel so grounded here. And I'm sure a lot of it has to do with a couple of things. So one is my. Dad's side is completely from South Korea, so I feel really connected back into the Fatherland and I cannot believe it's taken over 40 countries for me to come and visit South Korea.

I, I don't, what was I thinking? And I am addicted. I wanna. Keep coming back here. I love it so much. It's just not enough time. You know, we're here for just over a week and I'm already thinking how do I stay longer? But my son's gotta go back to school and all his sporting things and I have work to do big work in this world.

But anyhow, you can probably hear the energy here. It's just the best, best. And I've been loving turning my Instagram stories into my travel vlogger life. But that will be returning to normal daily sales viewing very shortly. Today, let's get into business. I wanna talk about something that has been a complete game changer in my business.

And guess what? It costs less than a cup of coffee. Now, I don't know how much coffee is where you are comparatively in Australia. I'm not even joking. There are some places I go to now for a takeaway coffee and it's $10. So that's about seven, $8 US for a little bit of comparison. Although being in South Korea, a cup of coffee and a really good one at that, 'cause their cafe culture here is amazing is $3 Australian, which is what, like a dollar 50 us, you know?

So depends where you look. Anyhow, I'm gonna just say a cup of coffee is roundabout $5. I'm probably being really generous there, but I wanna show you what has changed the game for my content, for visibility for sales. And what I'm talking about here is how I make money using $5 boosted ads on Instagram In particular, I do not use ads anywhere else.

I haven't tried YouTube ads. I don't do the Meta Classic Meta ads campaign yet. Maybe that's coming in 2026. I definitely don't spend on TikTok or LinkedIn, so it's just $5 boosted ads. If you hear me say that, I mean that specifically and exclusively for Instagram. Now before you roll your eyes and say, Ruby, I've tried boosting before and it doesn't work.

I wanna show you why it's not working. So stick around. Because unlike a lot of my clients who have tried boosted ads, I am definitely not throwing $5 into the void. I'm actually using a very specific approach that gets me a ton of visibility. That gets me a lot of engagement. Actual sales every single day.

So back in December, 2024, where are we now? Almost 10 months in. I have been loving watching the entire process of the daily sales flow and how it's showing up in our world, and a big contributor to that. Is the $5 ads. Now, I'm not saying it's the ads that are directly selling. What I'm saying is it's the ads that are getting me visibility and engagement, which when your content is solid, and it makes a lot of sense to an audience who's literally saying, I'm interested in what you've got going on, and I need help here.

That naturally converts. So let's start here. Actually, there's this old narrative that boosting posts or advertising in general on social media. Is sort of lazy or it's the cheating way of doing it, or it's not the authentic way of doing it. And I've seen some coaches sort of say, I'm finally ready to start using ads because for the longest time I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it organically.

Now, in my opinion, that's not. Running a business with the business mind on that's just wanting to prove something for yourself, which is totally fine. I mean, we all have different reasons why we wanna run businesses and why we wanna be successful, and sometimes it kind of comes up in this subconscious sabotage.

But every business owner that's really wanting to have more visibility in whatever business you have, brick and mortar online, you are running ads. Okay. And I'm not talking about running really scary, complicated meta ads with 50 data sets and 10 ab split tests running in the background. Like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

Gonna sound any more Australian. Nah mate, no way. That, uh, might have been true for the ads narrative five years ago where you literally had to have a meta ads expert from. A really XY agency charging you a baseline of five grand a month just to run your ads and then you have to put money on top of that.

The whole environment has changed. I believe that advertising has changed, the platform has changed, the algorithm has absolutely evolved. And if you are still sitting there praying that your organic posts go viral on their own and, and you are manifesting that in your journal and you are going, you know, I wanna go from.

A hundred followers to a hundred thousand followers this year. Honestly, I wanna say that that absolutely can always be a possibility, and it happens every day. You are also holding yourself back by not exploring ads in this way. I wanna share with you the really simple and easy ways to set this up. And I'll say like, I love organic reach.

It's cute, it's awesome, it's fun, it's exciting, but it's slow. You know, when it, when you think about your business growth, like I'm currently growing between 101 hundred and 50 followers every single week. I definitely am not someone who's gonna sit here and say, that's organic. That's actually probably 80% $5 ads.

And without it, I would be extremely inconsistent with my follower growth. And obviously, please, it goes without saying. It's not just about how many followers you have, because we know that we know what that story is. Now that. Your followers don't equal sales, but if someone chooses to follow me because they've seen an ad that I've boosted, then that's fantastic because it tells me that my message is resonating with them.

And then from there I can nurture them. So I'm never, you know, popping an ad up to go direct to sale. It's always a direct to follow, which I'll go into in some detail. But anyhow, I wanna just say, if you haven't explored ads, it keeps way too many amazing coaches, mentors, service providers, the peeps that I speak to every single day.

It keeps you invisible to your next clients. And guess what? Those clients are coming to me because they're seeing my $5 boosted ads, right? Like they're going to Sarah, they're going to John because they're boosting. Putting their work in front of the right people. So I will just say that if you are a coach, a mentor, a healer, a teacher, and you are posting your best work, you've literally studied how social media works.

You're seeing how a lot of amazing content creators and other educators online are sharing their work and getting like tons and tons and tons of like shares and follows and it's not working for you, and you are barely getting any traction, then lean in because I wanna continue to say that. This is not something that is a you issue, it's not a your message issue most of the time.

You know, it's not a, you are not cool enough issue, it's just that you're not allowing the system to best find clients and you know people for you. So let me break this down. Okay. $5 a day buys me around 170,000 to 200,000 views to profile every month. 200,000 at the top end that's, think about it, 200,000 new chances for someone to see my work, to hit follow, to comment, to DM or to buy.

And when somebody comments, I've talked about this on my YouTube channel and hear before I use ManyChat. I love it. It's changed the whole face of my business in the way that I own daily. My automation delivers them a specific offer, so something low ticket. It's easy to say yes to, and usually one of my $27 products gets sold within seconds or minutes of someone following me.

So I've literally seen on Instagram when it says, you know, Sally Taylor has followed you. And within a few minutes, Sally Taylor has purchased a $27 product. And typically, I will say the follow to buy ratio for me currently is around 5%. It's not huge numbers, but I will take it. Now. Those who see the 200,000 views who don't follow, guess what, they are still seeing my ads again and again because I'm only targeting a certain section of people.

So more than likely if they see me 2, 3, 4, 5 times. They're gonna hit follow or they're gonna comment and not necessarily follow straight away, but they're still gonna receive a link to purchase something or a link to go further and deeper into my work. I played around with purchasing like links to purchase, small low ticket offer.

I've also played around with a link to my podcast or a link to my YouTube channel. And all of it works. All of it grows, all of it gets visibility, which is so amazing. And you know when I said that 5%. Number before, it doesn't actually sound like that much until you realize that this is the compounding effect of what's happening every day.

That there's this daily exposure, there's a daily trust being built, and there's daily sales stacking in the background. Whilst I literally am traveling through South Korea. And to me, I wanna also say I don't set and forget with my ads, I check it quite consistently, at least twice a week. So instead I like to think about it, it's set.

Flow, set and flow. And I have so many examples and screenshots and receipts that I wanna show you on how many people are seeing the ads that I'm putting out there. And I'm gonna show you how you can take a look at all of that in, in just a minute. But it seriously has completely uplifted my personal branding game.

It's uplifted the way in which my Instagram is performing like in a big, big, big way. Um, I used to, I dunno who said this to me. Someone said this to me. Over the years, like if you start boosting on Instagram, that's it. Your organic following falls off. You'll always have to pay Instagram for visibility because it's like your account gets marked and it will penalize you for stopping boosted ads.

Honestly, that's such a bunch of bs. That is small thinking that is keeping your business and your company so small that you may as well just stay word of mouth. Don't even worry about socials. Like why even have it? If you're on social media and you're a business owner, I know that I'm sounding a little spicy right now.

Get yourself into running ads. You are a business operate like one. Now, I know some of you are listening and are like, you know what, I'll start boosting when I'm ready. I'll start boosting when my fee looks great. Or I don't wanna spend money until my organic growth. I wanna call this out. You are being so stubborn.

You are literally thinking the old school way of doing business and the old school way of doing business is 20 22, 20 23, around there. Like new school has shifted in the last. 15 to 18 months. Come on in. Be an early adopter and I promise you, if you are running $5 boosted ads, you're still being a very early adopter in 12 months time.

I don't think I'll be able to say this. I think I'll have to say run $20 a day a day, boosted ads. You are waiting for the algorithm to bless you with free reach. Whilst I see a lot of really smart coaches and powerful voices in the space that I coach in, and they're paying $5. Once that one does well, they pay $10 and they start building an audience of thousands and thousands of people and you are just there going.

I wonder why like no one's seeing my staff even though it's so good and you are getting all in the T for no reason except you are just not boosting to the right audiences. You're not running money behind your business and so many of you are willing to pay me and other coaches thousands of dollars, but not willing to put $5 behind an ad.

It's, it blows my mind like when they come to me, when my newer clients come to me for the strategy and I'm like, cool. Not every single person you know is ready for it. I understand that. But if your main complaint to me is I feel burnt out with content, I'm like, cool, well, let's have the content platforms work for you.

A, we need to set up an evergreen feel and flow. Secondly, we need to set up a five minute funnel through ManyChat. And thirdly, let's put five bucks behind it. The resistance. The resistance. It's like, no, Ruby is there another way? Is there another way that you can like magically give me some sort of journaling prompt so that my algorithm will bless me with all of this free reach?

Like how did you do it? I'm like, well, ah, when I started on Instagram, which was like 2019. It went to every single person that followed me. And over the years, slowly but surely, it's like literally been climbing up a really, really big hill. And now that I've learnt how to run these boosted ads. I don't have to do that anymore, you know?

But I get it. Like some of you will tell yourself it feels safer to wait. And if you wanna wait for my episode next year in 2026 where I say run $20 a day, boosted ads, great. But visibility is safety in business. Don't you get that? Visibility brings in opportunities and clients and sales, but you don't have to do it in such a, you know, bullish way.

Uh, like when I say bullish, I mean like the stock market reference where you just have to like bull your way through it and, you know, get people to buy your stuff and have all of these like fancy scripts so that people go into your free funnel. I just really cannot stand that way of doing ads, nor do I ever respond to that.

What I mean is just. Putting $5 a day behind the content you are so proud of and the content that's giving you an indication that, hey, this is actually resonating. Even if it's resonating with, if you've got a smaller audience, it's resonating with 10 people as opposed to another piece of content that resonated with one person.

You know that this piece of organic content is 10 x already performing better than your others. For me now, if I'm seeing a piece of content go to about. Let's say a reel or a carousel, and it's reaching about two, 3000 people organically. That's fantastic. I'll put $5 behind it and within a week it will have a hundred thousand views on it.

So if you are still stuck in, I'll wait till my post does something and gives me some really clear evidence that I won't lose any money by putting some ads behind it. I am lovingly telling you that's a belief worth letting go of. It really is, and it will change the way that you operate in your business.

So I wanna quickly chat through the system behind my $5 and how I make it go further because the actual setup really matters, and I don't want this episode to be just like inspirational and you feeling all like yes. And then it's like not really leading you anywhere practical. So in a nutshell. Five steps.

Here's my process. I choose my top performing reel or carousel. Carousels always do better for me. Always, always reels, always tank. Um, that's okay. So my carousels are always the top performing. Sometimes that's already getting a really solid engagement, like I said, two to 3000. Some, uh, reels of mine have done organically really well, so I would do the same.

And then I hit boost. I hit boost on instagram.com, not on my mobile because then Apple takes 30%. So really important step, you have to do it on your desktop. Then it'll just literally lead you through the steps. Like you can choose the countries, you can choose the segments. You can choose their interests.

You can use internet-based targeting, like coaching, business, entrepreneurship, personal development, online courses, tarot, reading, whatever it is, where you want your content to land in front of, and that's it. I allocate the budget and I hit boost, and it will go into a bit of a review period. Typically, my ads get approved within an hour or less.

So that's the setup. That's the practicality. Now, if you wanna see exactly how I do it, like actually see like the tutorial of how I walk through it, step by step, what countries I'm personally targeting, where I see the most amount of success, what internet-based targeting segments and categories that I'm using.

I'll show you all of that. I'll definitely show you how I set it up, and it's really, really useful. A lot of my clients who have followed this have found immediate sales and success from it as well, which is so cool. I'll talk about how I review things, how I look at what, whether my ads are performing, whether I keep going with $5 a day continuously, or when I only spend, you know, uh, $5 a day over a week to test something and then I make another decision.

Or when I just let it run on its own when I decide to put more money behind it. Regardless, if you wanna see that, then I'll share with you how you can have a look at my process. But I wanna just say that the magic is in the consistency. Please. It is not one viral post. It's not one viral ad. It's actually what I found to be most successful is seeing the daily visibility compounding.

So if you have, you know, automations like I do, and it works, like every new comment or message that you get triggers a conversation that leads to a, now there's some. You know, funny little things because I don't know the exact terminology, but the Facebook Meta Ads platform and the ManyChat platform, when you combine them into an ad space and you start boosting.

Something from your Instagram. Sometimes the API, between ManyChat and the, the Facebook Meta Ads platform, they don't talk to each other. So there's sometimes, you know, moments where you have to manually respond. And if you have das and ODMs that can help you with that and systemize that, fantastic. But honestly, I think for a lot of you, it's not even gonna be an issue.

Like if you have 30 comments a day, at most you can handle that. You know, 50 comments, you could probably handle that. You would be joyful in that because. Maybe you've never had comments before like that. So there's this like excitement around it. The way around that weird sort of, you know, connection, I dunno if any of this is making sense, is when you are boosting, you pop a link in instead.

So I can also show you that. I'll run the demo and I'll, I'll show you what that looks like. But please, you do not need to spend thousands of dollars. You don't do not even need to spend, you know, hours and hours and hours doing like, you know, trying to work out the system. It's so easy. I wanna show you how easy it is and you honestly just start with five bucks.

Okay? And then you can scale up from there. Once you start seeing the results, the energy, we do need to always talk about the energy of flow on this podcast. Whenever I talk about something strategic, the energy of a $5 ad isn't just a strategy because I know so many people who have done this and they will report back saying it's bull doesn't work.

Your $5 ad as in anything you invest in in your business, whether that be a coach, a piece of software, whether that be something that you know you really need, like this ad strategy, it's an energetic decision. And what I mean by that is you are saying, I'm getting out of my own way here. I'm actually really ready to be seen.

Stop making excuses. I'm done hiding behind, hoping that the organic algorithm. Is gonna do something for me one day. I'm really choosing to stop playing this small game and having this subconscious narrative run behind the health of my business. And I'm really ready. I'm really ready to invest in my visibility.

And you're literally telling the universe and the platform, Hey, send me more people, I'm ready. Let's do this, bitch, I'm open for business, let's go. I'm like, that's literally, I just said that with my eyes closed. That's literally the energy that just ran through. Let's go. And that's when things start to shift.

You can't keep playing by the old rules and the old game and the old arena. You've really gotta start showing up differently. You know, it's like the old adage of when they zig you zag. And like I said earlier, you are still early on in the game. I've maybe seen four other coaches who have boldly said that they run Facebook ads and boosted ads and it's working for them.

That's really not that much. You are still very early on in the game. When you start seeing it flood your feed like massively. You know that things are really shifting and changing. It's like when people were like, oh my God, like reels is where to go. But in the early days, remember with reels. Maybe a handful of people were doing it, and now everyone's doing it really well.

So you've gotta start treating your content like an asset instead of just a post and pray post. Treat it like an asset. Treat it like every post I make, this is, this post is worth a hundred bucks in ads. So you're kind of like, this is my mindset and energy behind it when I'm posting a carousel. I'm posting something that I know I will more than likely boost and spend more than likely, maybe 50 bucks, a hundred bucks, if it does well.

And that post is gonna get me 100 to 500,000 views. So it better be freaking good. It's not just a, oh, I've just gotta feed the algorithm. That's a different mindset. That is a lack mindset. That is a playing a small game mindset. This is every post that I make is an asset for the business. It is drawing in sales, it's drawing in line clients.

It is helping people do the work. It is changing people's lives. This needs to be on a billboard. This is so damn good that it can't not be seen, and I'm proud to run money behind it. And then you start realizing this whole thing doesn't have to be so hard. It just has to be intentional. Now if all of this feels really confusing and you are really scared about how the tech exactly works, don't worry.

I've got you. You do not need to know Ads Manager inside out. We, we don't even touch it. We don't even open the Ads Manager platform. We just open instagram.com. You also don't need to spend hours learning every single metric. Please, you do not. I'll show you the metrics that are really important. So I put something together.

It is brand new, and I wanna walk you through all the steps that I take to run these $5 ads. That's literally getting me 200,000 views every single month is making me daily sales, is helping me grow by a hundred to 150 followers every single week. And I promise you the only ad budget that you need is five bucks a day.

So I am welcoming you to click on the link in the show notes to the link that says Boosting basics. And in there you will find literally all the video walkthroughs and tutorials. At the end of it, you will have your first booster ad. You're gonna know how to pick the right post. You're gonna know how to target your audience.

You're gonna learn exactly what money to spend, how long to spend it for, how to connect it into your sales flow. So if you know you have been sabotaging yourself or stubbornly hanging on to, you know, fingers crossed, organic only this is, this is the pho. I'm gonna go viral, please. This is your invitation to evolve.

It's a super simple setup. Like I cannot even begin to continue telling you this is gonna change the way that your content and your profile is acting and how it behaves with the sales psychology element of things. It's gonna get you off that content hamster wheel. I had a client tell me the other day, oh my gosh, Linda, I love my client Linda, she's from Africa.

And she just said to me, Ruby, you are the best investment I've ever made because you make things so simple and I get immediate results. She's getting daily sales almost every single day now, which is unbelievable. And she follows these methods. So if this episode really lit something up in you, please take this as a sign.

Even if you don't go ahead and have a look at boosting basics, which I highly recommend you do 'cause it's, you just wanna see how somebody else does it and it's gonna just shortcut your time. Right? But if you just wanna try it out yourself, go and spend that $5. Go and test go and boost. Go and get visible.

Please do it. Please do it. And you know, if you are like ribs, I can work this out of my own. I don't need boosting basics. Like I'm just so happy that this is the one episode that's got you feeling motivated to do something about your visibility game. Because do you know what like. Truly hand on heart from one coach and mentor to another coach and mentor Your dream.

Clients can't buy from you if they can't see you. And if you don't know how to get seen through boosted ads, I'll just help you set it all up. Okay? Head to the show notes to grab boosting basics. It's literally brand new. I've not taught this anywhere, anywhere, anywhere else. It's my entire process. You know me like it's very casual on the inside, you'll literally see me fumbling around.

I'm keeping it real. Like you can pause, you can rewind, you can screenshot all the things. I'll show you all of my stats, everything. It's so simple to follow, and you'll get your ads up and running in less than an hour after you've watched all the boosting basics. So go and do that right now. Okay? Until next time.

Stay in flow, stay visible, get visible if that's more you, and please like show up for your business. You are closer than you think. We need you so much. Your work is unstoppable. Let's just put some boosting basics behind it so that it gets amplified out there. All right, big love. I am gonna enjoy my last day in Seoul career.

I'm so sad, but you know, I'm gonna hunt down the gi bap, the Bim, bim bap, the ginseng soup, the kimchi. If you don't know what any of that is, go and have a look at it. Korean food is by far like my, one of my favorite isn't my favorite food in the world. It could be like top. Three. Nothing beats Italian. I'm sorry, but nothing beats Italian.

But I do love my Korean cuisine. I'd say like top three, although I don't know what my second one is. Maybe German. I do love a schnitzel. Is that just exclusively German? Anyway, you guys tell me. Uh, and I love my sauerkraut. Oh, oh, oh, the food it's calling me. All right. I'm going out to explore. Love you so much and I'll see you in boosting basics and I'll catch you next week.