My friends, the time is almost here. It actually may be here by the time you watch this video, but the AutoFocus Box keepsake edition is going to be available for preorder very soon. So if you're interested in that, it's just this is the only way you're going to get the hardcover copy. Along with the bonuses that are inside the box itself, it's a pretty big box with a bunch of other things in there. And then we're launching the paperback after. So if you're not interested in the box, that also comes with a hint private invitation to annual events only for keepsake holders to potentially get it signed if you want to come or just we're probably going to hit the gym, we're going to do some cool stuff together in real life in person and finally get to meet. So that would be sick. But either way I won't shamelessly promote for too long. You can check the first link in the bio and let's just get into the video.

So in this video, we are going to start the Digital Writer series. So we've had the one-person business series, we've had the lifestyle design, it's just a playlist on YouTube. To be honest, where I'm going to start filling it with videos on being a digital writer, of course, spaced out with other harsh truths and rants about self-improvement and other things like that. But I want to start talking about this because it's very helpful in writing, has changed my life for the better. And if you're interested in the one-person business, then you're interested in writing because as we'll see in this video, writing is the foundation of everything to get into it. I've always been a creative at heart. I wanted to achieve the dream lifestyle that most people had or that you just saw on TV or the Internet where everyone's on the beach working from their laptop or just not working at all, and you're like, Okay, how do I do what they do?

Or I would also see artists, graphic designers, and web designers, and I'm like, I could actually see myself doing that as a job. Or I could see myself doing that as a way to get out of a job because that's what it seemed like the people I was following were doing, right? Not just maybe me, the people that I was following, and I was conditioning myself to eventually do that or want to do that. But it seemed like a way out. It seemed like a good way of living, just being able to do something creative from my laptop, from anywhere in the world. So naturally I studied things like graphic design, film, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, video editing, all of that stuff. And I also knew that I had to learn something, a skill that was valued by the market, but I didn't want to give up my creative edge. And so this is when I took a web development class in my fourth year of college, and it's safe to say that I became obsessed.

I went to the first class. I went to the second class. I started learning on my own and studying because I didn't really understand the curriculum. And then things started to click, and I'm like, This is really cool. I'm actually pretty good at this as a beginner. And so after school, I would go to the library, and I would just self-study all day long. I would buy courses, I would go on freeCodeCamp, I would watch YouTube videos, and I would just learn to code and code along with the tutorials day in, day out for like 6 hours a day after school. The other thing here is that the tech industry or just coding in general had the promise of getting a job without a degree. And so this enticed me. And the other thing that enticed me is that if I went into front-end web development, so what you see on the Internet, that wouldn't take away my creative edge. And so I'm like, I found it.

This is the one thing that allows me to both be creative, earn a high income, and potentially freelance or build a software. There were so many different opportunities that were open to me that it just made sense to learn this skill. I have always wanted to do my own thing. I don't know what caused it. Maybe it was just my childhood, but that's all I wanted to do. I wanted to do my own thing. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to be a creator. I wanted to be what I am now. And that's what led to me being it. And along with this, that meant that getting a job was the bane of my existence. It wasn't difficult to observe society and just see that many people weren't happy with where they are. They were miserable. And when I say miserable, I mean their life is so dull. It's so flat and predictable and mindless where they may not be miserable. They may be happy in some cases.

but they aren't experiencing the high highs and low lows that that contrast that actually brings meaning to life. That alone is miserable. It's a dangerous trap to fallen because you don't think you're miserable, you're comfortable, but you are so much more miserable than the people that look miserable in the low lows. But that is what allows them to have the high highs. You can't have a high high without a low low, just it's just a universal principle. When you pluck a string thing, it goes up and it goes down. But if you don't like the string, if you don't add risk or stress or throw yourself into the unknown, that event, that traumatic event that causes growth, then you're not going to live a meaningful life. And it's everywhere. This principle is everywhere in music. The highs, the lows, the chorus, the melody, the universe, universe, one song, everything happening in harmony, the lows that are supposed to be there

in the subsequent highs or the climaxes of a story. It's everywhere. Games, stories, everything you see is pointing at meaning in that double robotic, mechanical, mediocre existence is not meaningful. Long story short, I was never able to monetize my creative ability, and it wasn't because I wasn't skilled enough. I had the skill in graphic design, coding, the creative stuff, but I didn't have the skill stack that made that thing monetizable. I didn't shift my focus because everyone tells you to focus on one thing or just focus on coding, and you'll do absolutely amazing. No, if you don't learn marketing, sales, writing, speaking, that evergreen skills that I talk about, then you're not going to see your own success with that thing. There are specific evergreen skills that you have to learn in order to build your own thing. And so because of this, I had to swallow my pride and get a job. At some point, I'll go over my full story in a few videos from now.

like Complete Breakdown of everything that's happened in my life, especially related to business. But I feel that so many different. We're skipping like five or six years here where I'm failing, failing, failing at multiple different creative endeavors, and it finally not working to the point of me giving up and being like, I have to get a job just in order to survive. The lesson here is that you don't need to go to school to get a high-paying job, but that job can be used as a launchpad for building your own thing. Because I talk shit about jobs a lot, but I'm not against them. I had one. I see them for what they are, and what they are is a stepping stone because if anything is more robotic and mechanical and mindless and unmeaningful, then a job. It's a job that didn't make sense. But you get the point. You're either going to have to break out eventually to live that uncertain and chaotic life.

that brings meaning, or you're going to be stuck in the job and slowly making progress up this corporate ladder that others assign to you. So let's get into the topic of the video, because I love just running on and ranting and not making any sense. But we're here to learn how to make $1 million as a writer per year. So I worked at a web design agency. That's the job I got for a year. And this was a blessing to me because it showed me exactly what was missing in my previous freelancing businesses. The agency that I worked for had a marketing department, a sales department, and operations department, and then the creative, the designer. So marketing and sales got the customer's operations, did whatever they do and gave them to me so then I could create something for them. So I realized, okay, for my freelance one-person business, I have to become all of those things. I have to be the media company, I have to be the marketing department

I have to be the sales department. I have to be the operations department. But there is technology and software now that has allowed one person to do that. Well, social media is for your marketing and sales to attract clients. Then there's software like Khadra or even Clickfunnels, or some CRMs that allow you to manage those project management softwares as well. So the whole thing about building your own thing is you need technical know-how, and you need the creative skill in mass, the two together in order to make it work. So this led to me learning skills like copywriting, sales, direct response marketing, and all the other skills that people tell you to learn. But nobody actually learns because they're so focused on learning the creative skills and not doing anything that actually generates customers. So you can build your website all day, but if you don't know how to send people to that website, it doesn't fucking matter. And then there's always the objection of, Oh, I don't want to learn those things.

I just want to do design. Well, think bigger. Like zoom out and think, what do you actually want in your future? Do you want that? Because if you want that, then you want to do the things that are going to take you there. Otherwise, you're just thinking too small and lying to yourself because then that's when your mind gravitates to the surface level pleasures and distractions that you succumb to. And then you get absolutely nowhere. Which do you not want more? So at my job, I would spend all of my free time trying to land clients because I knew that was the key that I was missing. So I tried everything under the sun, like cold email, cold calls, called the EMS, Facebook group networking, paid Facebook and Google ads, walking into local businesses and talking to the manager, and writing down the phone numbers of service businesses from their vehicle graphics. So like when a car would pass me and I'd see the vehicle graphic and it's like, call this number for pest control.

or to get your glass replaced. I would literally write it down or take a picture, and then I would email them or call them later. And I started landing a few clients, and eventually referrals started to kick in. And over the coming months, I started to see some results, and things started to flow a lot smoothly, and I started making good money, but it wasn't as much as I wanted. And don't get me wrong, this allowed me to replace my income and quit my job. But I didn't just want to replace my income because at this time I was getting close to the glorified $100,000 a year mark. But a few things happened at this point, and they could only happen at this point. Why? Because I wouldn't understand them without my prior experiences or failures. The first thing is I begin to understand the power of social media. A huge problem in my business is just why was I doing so much manual work to land clients. That was taking me more time than the actual client work.

Why didn't I realize that posting content and building a following over time, and understanding social media, allowed me to have unlimited clients at my fingertips? Think about it. Like, I don't even need the audience. If I can write a post that is good and persuasive, and plugs my product or service, and then through networking or even paid growth, I can have someone share that post to their audience of, let's say, 100,000 to 1,000,000 people. They see it, they click through. I know how to capture and guide attention. Then, without me even having an audience, I can generate leads ten times faster and easier than just a manual effort. But if I could build an audience myself over time, that would save me 10 to 20 hours a week just on client acquisition. And then, if I built my following large enough, like past 10,000, past 50,000 people, then I knew that I would be able to pivot out of client work, and that would save me even more time.

People ask, like, popular videos of mine are the four-hour work day, and they're like, You don't work that little. And it's like, I do because I noticed what was taking up my time and then used the thing that is called creativity to create a solution to the problem so that I could work less. Like, you call yourself an entrepreneur, but you can't spot a problem and solve it in your life. The second thing is that I had the experience to grow on X centuries ago. There was a social media app called Twitter, and I never really cared for it. But for some reason, I was scrolling one day, and I saw a post, and it was a self-improvement post. I've talked about this story so many times before, but in short, I followed one person, liked their content, followed another, followed another. Like, content started showing up on my feed. I started to like Twitter more and more. I saw that this guy was selling web design services, and I'm like, Okay,

why can't I do the same thing? If he's making a full-time income with that as his way of generating clients for his freelance services and his products, web design products, why can't I do the same thing? So I started emulating their content structure and posting the ideas in my head because with my background now in marketing, sales, copywriting, all that stuff, I can notice the patterns. I'm like, Oh, they're using a hook in that piece of content. I wasn't reading it like a consumer. I was reading it like a researcher where I would see the content and I'd be like, That's a hook. Okay, this is leading people down the page. This is where it delivers value. This is the conclusion or call to action that actually leads to engagement. I'm going to take these pieces and put my own thoughts related to my own interest in them, and it should work for the content side of things. But that's not all there is to content.

You need to get eyes on your content, and we'll talk about that in the next video, which is going to be called How to Actually Grow on Social Media: What They Don't Tell You. So in my first year, I gained around 10,000 followers. In my second year, that jumped to 50,000. In my third year, another jump to 100,000. Then I use my validated ideas to post to other platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. I knew they would get engagement because I had so much data from writing on Twitter. Today, four years later, I have around 2,800,000 followers across all platforms. Though narcissism aside, that is a testament to exponential growth and consistency. The third thing I realized is that everything pointed to writing. Writing on Twitter made me realize one thing is that I wasn't just writing on Twitter. I was writing emails, newsletters, landing pages, promotions, video scripts, direct messages, of course, curriculums.

product material, everything. It wasn't too long until I just considered myself a writer. People would ask me, What do you do? And I'd be like, Oh, well, I kind of sell web design services, but I'm also on social media and have a good amount of followers. Eventually, it just got too complicated to the point where I'm like, I'm just a writer, right? I couldn't box myself in to any given thing because when you actually tap into and understand what a content creator is, not as a job, but as a way of life, of capturing ideas and distributing the valuable ones to people like you and then solving your own problems and selling the solution to the people like you that have the same problems. It's just like the most natural business model there is. It's much deeper than I just want to be a YouTuber. And that's the thing I did every single morning. Even if I had web design clients to fulfill.

like that took an hour or two, maybe more like a day. But I was writing every single morning. That was the driver of my business. That's what allowed my business to survive. And so this is how to our writer was birthed. And that's my course where I teach my entire writing ecosystem. Because everything you do in business, no matter what it is, starts with writing. And so here's the thing: most writers that probably clicked on this video, if you're a writer, then you'll understand this. If you're not a writer, then we're going to talk about what a writer actually is. Most writers try to sell their services on social media. Most writers try to just sell their writing in the can with something like a paid blog or newsletter or community. But but that's so limiting. Writing is both the traffic mechanism and the means to create an information product or to create the education and the marketing around whatever product you want to sell. Even if it's like a physical product, you're still a writer.

And this is where writers miss out. They think that they have to monetize their writing, rather than create a solution to the problems that they're talking about in the writing. Because any good writer knows that writing starts with a problem and creates steps in value to get to a solution. And so when you have that, the topics that you're talking about, why don't you sell a product that the people that are interested in those interests are already buying, rather than trying to sell your writing? When you know how to write, market, and sell, you can earn an income writing about whatever you want. And that's just the things that writers or creatives in general don't know how to market. And so the fourth thing that I realized is that my income grew with my readership. A few years ago, I read a post that said I could make $0.50 to $1 per follower per month. And the caveat here is that this is only possible with your own product or service.

This is not possible with banking on the algorithm, or using something like AdSense. You need to create an independent source of income. You need to take control of your income and not rely on the algorithm or AdSense as your boss, like you would a job. That's your, that's the complete opposite of why you're doing this. You don't want another boss, just this monolith or mega, whatever the fuck, the word is of a corporation to determine your income based on your views and how much you cater to them. So this $0.50 to a dollar per follower per month held true for me to a point from years 1 to 3. I made about $1 per follower per month. So 10,000, then 50,000, then 100,000 per month. I made $800,000 in my third year, and this past year passed my follower count in income around $3.1 million so far in revenue generated this year with writing. So the last year

maybe I've just gotten lazy with how I promote, and I don't know, but I don't think I could see myself with 2.8 million followers across platforms making $2.8 million a month. Then again, that could very well be a limiting belief. So there are a lot of technical details here. But one thing holds true. If you slowly build a decent readership, launch a new product, and get 80% of the things right, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't make $1,000,000. Like, it just doesn't make sense. Like if you have control of the product and you have control of the traffic and you are consistently growing the traffic that is being sent to the product, that bar can go up forever at a job. You weren't in control of this and you weren't in control of this. You're in between, and you're just being given a set amount. The main trap I see is people playing

short-term money games, blasting their audience with promotions on a crappy product, and never improving what they offer. This is a huge trap. Just evolve over time. Evolve what you write about, diversify platforms, create new products, do what you have to do. Now we can discuss the principles of monetizing your writing. I don't want to give you tactics and hacks. This is a very long-term game. This is preferably something that you're doing for life. I would argue that every single person is a writer, not that you have to label yourself as a writer, but whatever you do in business, you're going to have to write, and you should get good at it. You're going to have to write almost every single day. If not, however, you create your schedule. But I want to give you the principles to focus on. These will be the main drivers in monetizing your writing. The first is distribution. So choosing a platform distribution is how you bridge product

In people for writers, social media is how you're going to do that. You don't need to start on a writing platform. But why wouldn't you? You don't need to post pictures of your body. You can prioritize learning and idea generation. You don't need to design graphics or edit videos. It is a peaceful existence unless you want to expand in the future. So I recommend X or Twitter as your starting point, and then you can develop and grow in the future if you want. Because things like Medium.com or blog sites or even a newsletter, those take time to grow. Twitter to me is the only real short-form writing platform where you don't have to post pictures, you don't have to do whatever you can, tweet multiple times a day, and those serve as those ideas that you post, serve as data for any other content that you create on any other platform. And in my eyes, let's say you want to become a YouTuber. It's easier to build an audience on something like X

and then move that audience over to YouTube, especially when you have validated posts that you can then expand on in YouTube videos, and know that they're going to perform well because they already got high engagement. So the first lever or principle is distribution. So just having traffic. The second is an offer, something to send the traffic to. That's how you monetize an audience. And the thing here is, beginners tend to see something like a YouTuber pulling in big money from AdSense and think that's the only way to monetize. Now more people are coming out and being transparent about how much they make as a creator with the products that they sell. Right? That's the thing. The big people, the huge people make a ton of money with AdSense. But if you're, it really depends. I've talked to YouTubers that make like $1000 a month, $5000 a month, $10,000, whatever. But if you want to make a million, $10,000

a month for a channel that has 250 to 500 paid subscribers, depending on your niche. It's still not enough. And if the thing holds true, where if $0.50, $2 per follower per month, then you're wasting a ton of money rather than having $10,000 a month paid out. With AdSense, you can create a product that sells, iterate until it sells, and potentially make 250 to 500 K per month. But if you don't make it that far, let's say you create a product that is 50% as good as perfect. Let's consider the higher end 500 a month perfect. Let's say you shoot for the stars and land on the moon, then you're still making like 5200 a month rather than ten K a month from relying on AdSense. So in order to create an offer first, just go watch my one-person business playlist. Watch the best business model to start in 2023.

That'll go over like offer creation, I believe. But here's what I would do. First thing is start a freelance business. You don't have a large following at first, so you do more manual work too. And writing clients for a higher price than something like a course. This allows you to make an income, and you can sell social media content, copywriting, emails, etc. Just don't offer plain old writing. Second is to wean off of manual outreach. As your audience grows, you can leverage that for landing clients. This frees up time to start creating a product. The third is turn your freelance service into a product so you can keep freelancing. By having a digital product course or physical product, allows you to earn without manual labor. The fourth is do whatever you want. At this point, you should have the mental and financial resources to build and monetize whatever you want. Enjoy the freedom that a proper skill stack and experience provides. One last thing is that people create a product and see zero results.

most of the time. First, I'll just give you what to do. One study the people that you already follow and that you know are selling the product or service, and that it's actually selling, created. Take it, make it better under your own name. Sell what's already selling. Stick your hand in the money that's already flowing. That's how you make money. Don't try to be clever. Don't try to create something new, at least for the first product. Just create what you know is going to work. But if you want to take it a step further, then consider enrolling in digital economics, which is my higher priced course that has all of my monetization systems. That goes over all the evergreen skills: writing, speaking, marketing, sales. It goes over branding. It goes over literally everything. Or if you want something else, go watch the video on value creation. It should be called value creation, the skill that built my one-person business.

The third principle. So we have distribution offer. That's how you make money. The third is leverage and scalability. So if you don't prioritize leverage and scalability, you won't be able to make $1,000,000 a year, or at least without hating your life because you're spending so much time on like freelancing clients. Like you could technically go and land 25 to $50,000 clients once you get really good at what you're doing five years down the line and then land two clients a month. That's just that's a loser's game. Like that's hard. And to me that's not worth doing, especially because I would argue if you don't like working a job, then you're not going to like client work because you're not doing your own thing. You're not doing what you really want to do. You're doing projects that are still assigned to you by a client. So the Internet and to the point where it's developed now.

with all the resources and software, allows you to build a business and scale without hiring an insane amount of employees. The software is now your employee. As you are writing and building, you have to continue to evolve the products that you're creating. The obvious and priority thing to do is to turn your service, like freelancing, into a digital product, like a course, teaching the same thing to a more beginner-level audience. So if you're selling copywriting services to these clients for $10,000, but you've attracted a broad audience teaching about copywriting, then don't turn the freelance product into something that is targeted at something super niche. Just create a basic copywriting course, teach people the basics. Everyone's a beginner 90. However, 90% of the market are beginners. You're going to be much better off taking on fewer clients, charging more, and building the base of your income with a lower-priced digital product that allows you to scale. So in my case,

I was a freelance web designer. So, to free up more time and take on less client work, I created two products in my first year as a creator as my audience was growing. The first was a freelancing product. So, I just thought the principles of freelancing, the basics, what I knew under my name with everything that helped me and how I just did it. The second was a web design product because I understood that, okay, if people don't have a skill to freelance with, then I need to give them a skill to freelance with and teach them that skill. So, I created a web design course on how to create websites and landing pages. In my second year, I stopped freelance web design as a whole. I had so much more experience at this point. It didn't make sense to continue doing something less profitable and more time-consuming. So, I transitioned into marketing consulting for online businesses. I had direct access to them on social media. Anyway, it just made sense.

and eventually I did the same thing. So I evolved one of my previous freelance into digital product, and then that the freelance service pivoted and changed into something more valuable with the experience that I had. I wasn't stuck to it or attached to it. I just did something new. So after that, I got rid of the other digital products, and I created better ones from the service that I was already offering, the marketing consulting and brand consulting. So the fourth and final principle is just promotions, which is the destroyer of brands. So I've talked about my book, The Art of Focus, launching soon LinkedIn Description for close to three years now, because it's taken that long to actually write it. And the thing here is, is that I still have people message or comment that they didn't know I was writing a book, even if they've been following me for three years. So just because someone has followed you for a certain amount of time does not mean that they know what you sell.

or how they can pay you. Even if they're a perfect fit, you have to promote. Promoting means that you're telling people about your product or service and sending them to a landing page with a payment link. So a simple framework for promotions, and you can study copywriting frameworks in order to learn more or to practice, but this is one you can just practice with now. It's called PR as problem amplify solution. So the problem captured their attention by talking about the problem they're facing that your product solves, quote unquote, if you struggle with is a great place to start. Amplify is talking about how the problem impacts their life and why it needs to be solved. Solution is positioning your offer as the solution to the problem, so they click and read more. You can plug your product services or newsletter in the comments of your posts, in your story, or randomly in your writing, like I did above with the book. And whenever people come to me

with problems with their marketing, it's usually just a lack of promotion and good promotion. Getting people to click and then guiding them down the page, and they can't monetize consistently because they don't promote consistently. They don't have a schedule or system in place to promote every single day. They don't have that block on their calendar that says, Go and make some fucking money because you're broke. And that's what allows you to make money - promoting. You don't have a marketing and sales department like the job you work at. You are the marketing and sales department. So just to summarize how to make $1,000,000 a year as a writer, first thing is that I wish I could tell you that it's going to be easy, but it's not as anything worthwhile in life. The principles are pretty straightforward. They're set out for you. Use writing to build a readership that grows infinitely with the Internet. If you know how to improve when you hit a start in growth.

if you're, as I said, if you're an entrepreneur, then you have to be able to identify problems in both your life and your business and solve them. The problem is they're like, Oh, I'm not making enough money. I'm not making the amount of money that I want to make. Then you have to change something. You have to create a solution. You stick it out for multiple years, if not the rest of your life. Entrepreneurship means you are in full control of how much you make. Your income is only limited by your perspective, beliefs, skill set, and real-world practice. That is it. Enjoy the rest of your week. Again, The Art of Focus. First link in the description. If you want to learn how to write, buy to a writer. If you want to learn brand marketing, writing entire everything about online business, digital economics, I'm so good at promoting. You see other free stuff in there like subscribe.

I'll see you later. Thanks for watching. Peace.

How To Make $1 Million A Year As A Digital Writer

How To Make $1 Million A Year As A Digital Writer

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