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- Didn't know how to write… then wrote a $1 million book 📕
Didn't know how to write… then wrote a $1 million book 📕
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
The $1 Million Author Who Didn't Know How To Write
Critical Software for a $180K/Month Business
$275/Month Passive Income via ChatGPT
Good News: Nobody Cares What You're Building
$100K/Year Content Agency (in only 5 Hours a Week)
His 20-Year-Old Side Project Sold for Millions
Sprezzatura
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The $1 Million Author Who Didn't Know How To Write
Deanna Cooper Gillingham is a registered nurse who was recently interviewed on the SPI Podcast 🎙️
10 years ago, Deanna was going through a divorce and was in a tough financial spot. She started listening to business podcasts, including Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income, for inspiration.
When she heard how Pat earned $3000/month from an exam study guide, she realized she could do something similar for the nurse certification exam she needed to take 💡
So Deanna decided to create the book she wished existed. She wrote blog posts and built an email list while writing the book over the course of a year.
🙈 She had to battle a lot of self-doubt along the way…
…most people who wrote books had so many initials after their names. I had RN, that was it. So I didn't have all the initials after my name.
I didn't think anybody was going to listen to me and I didn't know how to write… I honestly could not figure out how to write a sentence. I actually had to take a course to figure out how to write again.
She persevered and eventually self-published the book on Amazon, then promoted it to her small but targeted audience 🎯
Deanna says…..
That first book is now in its third edition and [it] has earned us… after Amazon takes their cut… over a million dollars.
Yes: over $1 million in profit from that one book 🤯
From an author who said…
I didn't think anybody was going to listen to me and I didn't know how to write
A good reminder there not to take self-doubt too seriously.
Deanna has since expanded into online courses, coaching programs, a podcast and speaking gigs.
But her initial business idea is one worth considering yourself…
✅ Creating a resource to help people pass a professional certification exam.
Is there an exam like that in an industry or niche you're familiar with? 🤔
Remember: you don't need to be an expert to create a helpful resource for such an exam.
Like Deanna, you can put in the work to research your topic and create something genuinely useful.
Or, you could collaborate with someone who has the expertise. Get them to provide the tips and tricks while you handle the editing, publishing, promotion, etc.
Critical Software for a $180K/Month Business
Today's email is brought to you by ClickUp.
ClickUp is the project management software I use for my business. That's where I keep track of tasks, manage my team, record screencasts, and basically organize my entire life.
I switched to ClickUp last year after seeing how well it was working for a woman who earns $180,000+ per month running a bunch of niche sites 🤯
And it's been working great for me ever since.
Sign up for ClickUp's free plan to try it out for yourself.
$275/Month Passive Income via ChatGPT
DeepakNess tweets 👇
I created simple scripts… added them after each post on a site, and now getting 25–30 sales every month.
To give you an idea, the AI site only gets 3,500 monthly users.
Scroll to the bottom of this post on his website for an example, look for the box with the big "Learn More" button.
The scripts Deepak promotes there let you connect AI with Google Sheets and Airtable…
He sells the scripts for $10 a pop, so he's earning about $275 per month from those, totally passive, on a site that only receives ~115 visitors a day 😎
And it gets better…
Sounds like Deepak uses ChatGPT to write these scripts, rather than coding them from scratch 🤖
He believes other sites could do similar…
A monetization idea for blogs — create simple products & promote them across your site. With ChatGPT, it's not difficult to create simple tools, calculators, extensions, plugins, etc.
Just analyze the forums in your niche, see what people want, and provide them with solutions.
Could you try something like this?
Or how about offering this as a service to established blogs? 🤑
Good News: Nobody Cares What You're Building
Peter Askew is the guy behind the $7,400/Month Niche Job Board we profiled a few months back.
He recently tweeted 👇
don't forget ~
if you're building, & self-conscious about what other folks think/say
a reminder, NOBODY CARES
even if they give you shit, they'll forget 20mins later
once you soak this in, it gives you ultimate freedom to build ANYTHING
no one is watching; build whatever
💬 Adam Wright replied…
"no one is watching; build whatever"
Reminds me of...
It's okay to be a little blackhat in the beginning.
- Harvard shut down Zuckerberg's FaceSmash for misusing university info.
- OpenAI is getting in trouble for using public data.
- WPBeginner's founder initially made money online by doing things "he doesn't want to talk about."
In other words, don't worry about making mistakes or breaking a few rules when building your business.
Obviously don't do anything illegal, but try to get out of your comfort zone and be willing to experiment with tactics and strategies that might ruffle a few feathers 🪶
$100K/Year Content Agency (in only 5 Hours a Week)
🗂 From the archive, published November 2022…
Nice feature here about Angad Singi, who has a side hustle that earns him $100,000 per year in revenue.
Angad’s content agency is called Quarks…
We help educational organisations build the content that their students love and need to excel.
One project brief was to create 1000 questions for an exam for aspiring assistant professors in 🇮🇳 Indian universities. And it needed to be done in several different languages.
Since he started the business in 2019, Angad has assembled a team of contractors to do most of the work. And he’s whittled his own time-commitment down to 5 hours per week by hiring a full-time project manager (took him a few tries to find the right person for this).
After expenses and taxes, Angad apparently takes home 30-35% of the revenue 😎
My main takeaway from this story: leverage your past job experience to find side hustle opportunities.
Angad had worked for ed-tech companies in the past, and his first big client was a previous employer.
What experience or connections do you have that might unlock a 5-hour workweek opportunity? 🤔
His 20-Year-Old Side Project Sold for Millions
They Got Acquired tells the story of Matt Sly…
In 5th grade, Matt Sly wrote a letter to his future self and handed it in to his teacher. Years later, while out on a run, he let his mind wander. He thought back to that letter but couldn’t recall what he had written.
That sparked the idea for FutureMe, a platform that allows people to send emails to their future selves 📝
Matt writes on LinkedIn…
So I registered the domain futureme.org, and over a few weekends, hacked out FutureMe v1 with jay patrikios. It was 5 php files on a shared $11/month server.
Living in San Francisco, post dot-com boom and bust, we told a few friends, who told a few other...and in the intervening decades, through an admittedly mystifying mix of persistence, creativity and (most of all) luck, FutureMe grew into an enduring “indie” Internet brand, with many millions of users writing and receiving letters, and sharing their experience.
After running FutureMe as a side project for nearly 20 years (since 2002), Matt was approached about acquiring the business. He ended up selling in 2021 "for mid-7 figures."
So something like $4 million 💰
As Matt puts it….
I've been in this game since 1999 and knew that valuations in the software market were at historically high levels, so financially speaking it was a good time to sell. Twenty years is a long time so I felt ready for a new chapter – and FutureMe was ready for a new perspective, too.
Oh, and the site was making good money before the sale 🤑
Bootstrappers reported last year…
It generates over six figures in revenue and costs Matt just $500 to operate each month.
FutureMe apparently has "three product lines"...
consumer payments, advertising and SaaS custom sites.
Consumer payments = a premium subscription that costs $5/year or $100 lifetime.
And "SaaS custom sites" appears to be their offering for businesses 💼
Anyway, I like that Matt was patient and let the business grow on its own terms…
The nature of the use case meant letters were written, but it wasn’t until they were received at a later date that the users had that ‘wow’ moment.
Unfortunately, Matt revealed in an email to They Got Acquired that he was diagnosed with cancer a few months after selling FutureMe 😔
Thankfully he seems to be doing well and has a new project called The Parent Bank.
Last words from Matt…
In almost twenty years in tech, I've worked for (very) large brands and VC-backed startups tackling hard problems with amazing people. But nothing compares to my experience and the outcome of bootstrapping, building and selling FutureMe. Keep hacking, folks!
Sprezzatura
🗂 From the archive, published June 2020…
From Wikipedia:
Sprezzatura is an Italian word that first appears in Baldassare Castiglione’s 1528 The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines sprezzatura as “studied carelessness.”
Think of celebrities spending hours in makeup and wardrobe before casually dominating the red carpet 💃
Or a comedian practicing a joke for months until they have the wording and rhythm just right 😂
Or the fighter who has practiced one kick ten thousand times 🥋
Words from a short 4-minute video on YouTube…
The implementation of sprezzatura grants the individual manipulative power over those observing. It produces a style that makes the observer think that the individual is so skilled, confident and carefree that they don’t even have to try.
Keep this concept in mind whenever you see someone earning lots of money online. If they make it look or sound easy, assume that’s sprezzatura, that they had to work damn hard for it to appear effortless.
…
Thanks to Fardeen Khan for helping me write and research today's newsletter.
Hasta la próxima, rock on with your legendary self 💪
Niall Doherty – Canillo, Andorra
eBiz Facts (follow on twitter)
P.S. ClickUp is my favorite project management software. Once I had it set up, I was able to take my business to another level (Sept will be my first $30k month). Try ClickUp for free 👈
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