Meet Nastja, better known as DIY Eule, a Berlin-based creator with 138K Instagram followers and a German DIY community that shows up loud, loyal, and ready to argue about sewing patterns like it’s a constitutional right.
Her niche is wholesome chaos: sewing, crafting, Cricut projects, and “how-to” content that makes intimidating stuff feel doable. She posts weekly on YouTube, runs a busy Instagram community, and has built a business around content creation, brand collaborations, workshops, events, and her blog.
The Backstory
This whole thing started with a sewing machine and a creative childhood.
“My father and their family were all musicians,” Nastja said. She almost became one, too.
“All my teenage years were spent at band practices and rehearsals. I played the keyboard and organ in several pop and rock bands.”
Then she went academic: North American Studies, Musicology, film music, and ended up editing film and video.
And somewhere in the middle of all this? She started thinking about YouTube.
“I really wanted to do something with YouTube, but I never had a topic,” she said. “I didn’t want to be in front of the camera necessarily, but wanted to do all the marketing, the ideas, the scripting, the filming, and the community management.”
So yes, the irony is delicious, she built her career by doing the exact thing she didn’t want to do at first… but she did it her way.
Then the plot twist arrived.
A sewing machine. Out of nowhere. From her grandmother.
“My grandmother just gave me a sewing machine out of the blue,” she said. “We sat at her kitchen for half an hour, and she told me this is how to thread it, this is how you sew forward, and this is how to sew backward.”
Everything else? Nastja learned it on YouTube.
The Social Media Moment
Five months after she started sewing, she posted her first YouTube video. And it moved fast.
“It went very quickly back then because there weren’t many sewers,” she said. “I got my first YouTube payment after three months or so.”
By 2017, she was fully self-employed. And since then, she’s been doing what smart creators do: folding her real life into her content without pretending she lives in a studio with perfect lighting and no laundry.
With a child at home, Nastja doesn’t sell the fantasy of “balance.” She sells reality and flexibility.
That’s the backbone of her business: she works a lot, but she works on her terms. And she builds systems so her time doesn’t get eaten alive by the internet.
But this story is not about her being “consistent” or “authentic” or whatever other word people use when they mean: this person works a lot and makes it look easy. This is about how she used Manychat comment automation + a DM carousel to catch a moment when her audience was desperate for resources… and deliver them instantly, at scale, without living in her inbox.
And yes: it involves an Amazon projector.
The Accidental “Oh wow, Germany cares about this” Moment
In sewing, pattern cutting is a whole mini hell.
There are a few ways to do it. None of them is fun. And most of them involve paper. Lots of paper. Possibly tears.
Nastja noticed something interesting: projector pattern cutting had been trending in the U.S. for a while, but in Germany it still felt… intimidating. Her audience assumed it was complicated. Something that requires a special setup.
So she went to an Amazon event and coincidentally won a projector.
“It costs 40 euros, and when it’s on sale, it’s even less.”
This seemed like the perfect price point for a skeptical DIY audience: low commitment, high curiosity, easy to try without feeling like you just financed a small appliance startup.
So she tested it. And it worked.
Then she found a free open-source tool that makes calibration easy, which is the part that typically scares people off.
“They have this really cool open source website where you just move the corners onto your cutting mat, and then it calculates the rest,” Nastja said. “It couldn’t be simpler.”
And here’s the key detail about her audience: “the majority of my peer group is 50-year-old women.”
So she leaned into what she does best: explaining complicated things like a calm, competent friend, not like a robot reading instructions off a tripod.
She made a YouTube video, along with smaller Instagram posts and Reels.
And that’s when the comment section started doing that thing where it turns into an unpaid support group screaming:
“LINK?”
“Where did you get this?!?”
“How do I do it??”
“HELP!”
The real problem: Instagram is not built for 2,848 comments
One of her projector Reels hit:
- 340K+ views
- ~5K likes
- 2,848 comments
And behind that Reel was the part that mattered: A Manychat DM automation triggered by comments, delivering a swipeable carousel packed with resources.
“The comment keyword automations on Instagram are 100% my favorite [Manychat] feature,” Nastja said.
Because it turns content into an interaction. A “give me the thing” moment. A quick exchange that feels personal, even when it is automated.
“People comment, get a message, and feel like they’re speaking directly to me,” she said.
Now imagine handling 2,848 comments manually. Think of sending links to the same people over and over while also running a business, making content, and being a human with an actual life.
“Manually replying to thousands of comments with links is a nightmare. Instagram simply isn’t built for this volume,” Nastja said.
So she stopped treating Instagram comments like a customer support desk. Instead, she made the platform do the work.
The Automation: One Reel → One Comment → an Instant DM Carousel
Her projector automation ran 1,376 times, which is a pretty direct signal that people did not just “like” the Reel. They wanted the resources now.
“The engagement rate skyrockets within the first hours because people want the resource immediately, and Manychat delivers it automatically,” Nastja said.
And she didn’t send one sad little link. She built a carousel that basically functions as a mini “projector starter kit” in DM form.
The automation included:
- an affiliate link to the projector she uses
- an affiliate link to an alternative projector (because the first one sometimes sells out)
- an Amazon collage for other equipment needed
- a link to the software she uses for calibration
- a link to her long-form YouTube setup tutorial
“I love posting these gallery-like automations with pictures that you can swipe through. I believe they bring a high value and enhance the CTR,” she said.
This is what creators miss when they think automation kills the vibe. The vibe dies when people ask for something, and you make them work for it. The vibe lives when you deliver quickly, clearly, and in a way that actually helps.
The Quiet Money Part (aka: the Part Creators Pretend Doesn’t Matter)
Nastja’s goal is clicks. Traffic. Links. People taking action.
Her audience constantly asks for product links, especially when stories expire, and people can no longer find them.
Instead of manually resending links forever, she wanted a system.
“I saw other creators use keywords like ‘link’ and people flooded their comment sections,” Nastja said.
So she built her own version, tuned to her niche, content style, and audience’s needs.
And she collected affiliate links for the projector under a separate Amazon ID. In the screenshot she shared (for 2025), that ID shows:
- 1,562 products shipped
- €28,789.99 in sales
- €2,095.05 in commission
This ID “does not include all the affiliate links” used in the projector automations, meaning it is not a complete accounting of projector-related earnings.
The Other System She Built: Hiring Help
Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes now: Nastja’s growing beyond the “solo creator who does everything” phase.
And she’s honest that she probably waited too long.
“I’ve been knowing that for quite some years,” she said.
She does a yearly review where she tracks wins, lessons, what worked, what didn’t, and writes down solutions. One solution kept coming up:
“Have an assistant, have an assistant.”
But she still needed human support.
She has a management person handling brand inquiries and emails, and a video editor who now does two-thirds of her long-form videos.
And she just hired an employee. And one of the employee’s tasks?
Recycling content.
Because she’s producing nonstop, and she knows her library is worth more than she’s currently extracting from it.
“It would give me some more time to breathe if we could reuse some of my content,” she said.
This is the grown-up creator arc: content is inventory.
Her Actual Philosophy: Be Real, be Messy, be a Person
For someone with a six-figure audience, Nastja’s advice is refreshingly unglamorous.
She thinks creators should stop trying to look perfect and start acting human. Nastja emphasizes leaning into the mistakes: “Things don’t always work out the way you want. Just show that you’re human.”
Her community loves to watch the chaos.
“People want emotions. People want real people. So show yourself and be real,” Nastja said.
Show your mistakes. Show your mess. Your audience appreciates it.
What Nastja Wants People to Understand About Manychat
Nastja is not trying to become a marketing guru. She’s a DIY creator who learned that engagement is not useful if it collapses into chaos.
“Manychat turns social engagement into real action automatically. It saves time, increases performance, and makes your audience feel more connected,” she said.
That’s the story.
A €40 projector. A community that needed answers. A comment section that refused to calm down.
And a DM automation that delivered the goods — instantly — while she stayed focused on what she actually wants to do: create.
Want This Kind of Win?
If your comment section is packed with “link??” and your response strategy is “I will answer later, and then I never do,” Nastja’s system is very stealable:
- Post the thing people want
- Ask them to comment for the resource(s)
- Trigger a Manychat automation
- Deliver a carousel packed with links, guides, and next steps
- Let Instagram reward the engagement while your inbox stays sane
Ready to build your own comment-to-DM resource drop? Start free with Manychat.