How I Quietly Built a Tiny $100,000+ Blogging Empire (& How You Can Too)
All I do is write for 2–4 hours a day
People think making six figures online means working 14-hour days, mastering 21 tools, and launching flashy funnels with countdown timers.
Nope.
I built a tiny content empire in my spare time. No team. No paid ads. No yelling on TikTok.
Just me writing on my recliner (Hence, the image.)
Let me show you how you can do the same.
People don’t buy “expertise”. They buy this instead
Nobody wakes up thinking, “I need a new person to follow and buy from!”
They wake up thinking, “My back hurts, I hate my job, my wife cheated on me, and I need more money.”
Humans think in problems.
That’s what gets the credit card out.
Not your degree.
Not your life philosophy.
Not your pretty face smiling to the camera.
So before you write another post about your thoughts or some generic “tips,” stop.
Ask: What are people desperately Googling? What’s keeping them up at night?
You could also use my secret AI-market research prompts (click to get for free.)
Then position your offer as the painkiller. Not the vitamin. Not the optional self-improvement fluff.
Vitamins are a hard sell. Painkillers make money.
Write on these platforms
I’m an introvert.
Which means:
I’m not chasing views on TikTok.
I’m not performing for strangers online.
I’m not posting selfies with motivational quotes.
I’m better at writing than talking. And I like it. Quietly. On my own terms.
Most influencers tell you that you need to be on social media. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to.
In 2022, I started writing on Medium. Just long-form posts. I also use SEO (yes, it still works.)
Now, I’m also writing on Substack.
And the process on these platforms is all the same.
Write articles that speak to your target audience and let them opt into your email list.
Learn the rules of “social writing”
What I love about Medium is the fact that you don’t need to interact with anyone. The algorithm recommends your articles to the best audience.
But when I first got started, I didn’t understand that.
Because I came from an SEO background. I’ve been doing SEO for over a decade, and when I first started writing on Medium, I thought that I simply had to write SEO articles.
Turns out Medium and Substack are platforms that value what I call social writing. It’s like social media but in long-form.
This means that personal stories and clickbaity stuff work well on these platforms. (Sorry to break it for you.)
Also, the whole article doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to get the click.
So, what I did was I started modeling people who were good at this game and even writing things out by hand.
Build a system that sends people to your site while you sleep
I don’t care what the gurus say — SEO still works.
It works better now. Why? Because most people are too busy chasing X virality to bother with it.
Which means less competition for you.
The trick isn’t to write 3,000-word essays about broad topics. Those are graveyards.
Instead, get ultra-specific with problems your ideal client is already trying to solve.
If you’re a chiropractor, don’t write “5 benefits of chiropractic care.” Write, “How to fix neck pain from sitting at a desk all day — without taking Codeine.”
If you’re a leadership coach, skip “Why leadership matters.” Go for “The 3 toxic behaviors quietly ruining your team (and how to fix them before Q2).”
Specificity + problem is how you win.
You’re not here to educate the general public. You’re here to create magnet content that makes your ideal client say, “This person gets me.”
I rank for keywords with articles I wrote in less than 60 minutes. Why? Because they solve the exact question people are typing into Google.
Do that over and over, and traffic becomes a non-issue.
Turn that traffic into an email list
You don’t need 1,000 followers a day. You need 10 people a day joining your list.
That’s 300 a month. That’s 3,600 a year.
That’s enough to make $100,000 a year if you have the right backend in place (more on that later.)
Every article I write has a simple call to action: Click here to download a cheat sheet or sign up for a free course.
The goal? Get readers on my email list. Because that’s how you make money.
Sell something simple (then make it scalable)
You don’t need a 57-module course with 12 bonuses and a 6-year money-back guarantee.
You just need a clear problem and a clear solution.
My first digital product? Was a product about investing in parking slots or making money on eBay. I don’t remember which one came first.
But what I do remember is that this still required roughly 20+ hours of setting up the slides, recording it, writing the sales page, etc.
Instead, if I had to start over today, what I would start with is coaching.
Book a time. Pay me. Let’s fix your problem.
From there, listen. Take notes.
Then turn those patterns into a course.
Now you can sell a practice version of your coaching for $200 — without having to hop on calls.
But it doesn’t stop there. If you want, you can bundle in group coaching and sell it for $500+ upwards.
That alone doubled my revenue without adding more work. I still show up once a week — but now with 10 clients instead of 1.
Use automated emails to sell in your sleep
I hate manually following up with people.
Sounds more like clerk work than leverage to me. So I set up systems that do it for me.
Here’s how: I send automated email sequences.
Every email gives a quick win. Every email builds trust. And every email ends with a nudge: “Want to go deeper? Here’s the next step.”
No pressure. Just a soft pitch. Over and over.
This is where most of you mess up. You think that people are going to buy from you straight away. But 80% of your clients will buy later down the road.
I’ve got clients who have been lurking on my list for over 5 years before buying anything.
At one point or another, everything will just start making sense, and they will start pulling the trigger.
So stop being impatient.
Let’s build your own empire
You don’t need 8 hours a day. You don’t need a team. All you need is a simple system that you can follow and then ruthlessly execute on it.
I built all this writing 2–4 hours a day in the mornings.
The secret? Don’t try to do everything at once.
Rotate between different tasks.
Don’t build a course if you don’t have traffic. Be strategic. Prioritize.
If you can commit to that cycle — consistently — for the next 12–24 months?
You’ll be shocked how far this tiny engine can take you.
Thanks for this Matt! I'm so happy to hear that someone is actually making this model work, because this is how I want to do it too.
I've tried Instagram & YouTube and although I don't mind doing the video stuff it's very draining. I'm much more comfortable with writing (and I actually enjoy it!) which is why I'm giving Substack a go.
I've just quietly started offering a 1:1 and hope that I can build digital products from there. I find SEO really hard, but I do use KeySearch which helps - my topic is very niche but I've managed to get 4 articles ranking on page 1 for the most common search term :)
Have considered a coaching offer. My question is, how did you find the confidence to start offering that. I know I’m sitting on a ton of experience but can’t figure out how to leverage it currently.