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Absolutely!

Here’s my YouTube channel, which has 5 million views, 7k subs, and earns about $300 per month. It’s not my only source of revenue, but it’s an important part.https://youtube.com/c/BrianPenny

As a blogger, my focus over the past decade was largely on building web traffic. That means I built my own website (actually 5) and worked to build their reputation by grinding other online forums, like Quora.

But that’s not all – I also put time and work into WordPress, Blogger, Medium, Tumblr, StumbleUpon (OMG do I miss StumbleUpon, and no, Mix is not even close to the same), Steemit (blockchain-based Medium), Substack, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Visual platforms like Pinterest and Imgur are great for indexed SEO. Instagram is not. 

Because of that, I rarely use Instagram for myself. I do have several accounts, and I’ve run dozens of business accounts through my digital talent agency, but I’ve been so successful on other platforms that I never really gave Instagram much thought.

Things have changed recently with the addition of their creator tools, shopping options, and other monetization initiatives. But because Instagram isn’t properly indexed in Google, I don’t pay attention.

Instagram, Clubhouse, and Twitch are honestly the worst places to build on, in my opinion. Their on-platform discoverability is notoriously atrocious, and they’re not indexed in search engines like Google, so you’re missing out on a LOT of traffic by building anything on them.

Here’s my YouTube traffic analytics for the lifetime of my channel:

The bulk of my traffic came from within YouTube itself. Only 8.2% of the 5 million lifetime views came from external sources. 

And the external sources are even more skewed towards Google.

Nearly half of my external traffic is from Google-related sites, which includes YouTube, Google Search, Google News, and the AMP project, which is other sites hosted on Google servers for mobile search indexing.

Instagram isn’t on there largely because I don’t use it to promote the channel, but I also didn’t place the links on IGN, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other places you see on that list.

They simply referenced my video, because it was what they found when searching for whatever it was they were looking for.

That discoverability isn’t possible on Instagram. It may drive what looks like a lot of traffic, but it’s nothing compared to YouTube and Google, which are the top two most visited websites on the planet.

At 27, Instagram is not nothing. It’s still an elite website that brings in more traffic than Twitch, Twitter, or TikTok. 

But it’s below Wikipedia, Reddit, Yahoo, Baidi, QQ, and many others. And most of the top websites are internet portals and search engines where you won’t easily find Instagram.

You can find an Instagram profile easily, but not a post. And that’s the biggest problem with trying to use it for growth.

When I publish a YouTube video about a topic like Bill Gates on Clubhouse, it shows up on Google searches.

It also shows up on YouTube searches.

Because the big story was that Clubhouse was iPhone only at the time, even if Bill Gates shows up again on Clubhouse today, and I miss it, there’s little chance I’ll get bumped from the front page of the search result which fuels the 45k views.

In this case, the topic (Bill Gates) is more popular than the channel creator (me). This exposed me to a larger audience that is now introduced to me only because I covered Bill Gates.

Had I posted it on IG Live, it wouldn’t exist anymore. It also would’ve only drawn the people who already know me, and I would not have gotten the Bill Gates audience boost.

Even if I published it as a post through IGTV, I would only get the on platform Bill Gates boost. That means you’d only see me temporarily if you happened to be looking for Bill Gates specifically on Instagram.

But not everybody interested in Bill Gates is on Instagram nor using it to search him. People use thousands of apps and websites to find what they need.

YouTube makes me visible all those other places. Instagram does not. And that’s why I use it.

Of course, as mentioned above, all those other sources account for less than 10% of my total YouTube traffic. The other 90% comes from YouTube itself.

That 90% is worth more than 100% IG traffic, and the 10% boost from everywhere else is just the icing on the cake.