I Finally Found the Cheat Code to Monetize (Small) Audiences

You can earn $5,000 a month with 3,000 email subscribers

Listen to the deep dive:

For years, I had a small audience. And it drove me nuts.

I watched people with massive followings pulling in six figures while I sat there on the sidelines with my few hundred (maybe a couple thousand) subscribers.

It felt like I was working twice as hard for a fraction of the results.

The worst part? Their content wasn’t even as good as mine.

Today, I still have a small audience. But the difference is that I cracked the code to monetize it.

Chasing followers is a waste of time

Social media is a gentleman’s instrument contest.

Everywhere you look, you see people bragging about how large theirs is. I’m talking about the audiences, obviously.

You’re brainwashed in the “the bigger, the better” narrative.

It makes sense on paper. More people should mean more money, right?

Maybe you spent hours trying to write a social media post that goes viral. Maybe you spent a bit of money on ads to get more eyes on your content.

But the game is rigged.

I have a YouTube video that raked in over 100,000 views. People love it. Over 2.2k likes. WOOHOO!

But you know what? That video didn’t bring me a single client. Not a single penny.

Other articles I wrote got less than 1,000 views and brought in email subscribers and customers.

Vanity metrics are bullshit.

Stop vomiting value

Creating content feels like vomiting.

Everyone screams “add valueeeee!”

So you move your free line. You give away more free stuff than your competitors.

You think that if you just gave enough away for free, people would feel obligated to buy. Give all your hard-earned knowledge out for free. And pray they’ll pay you in return.

You post:

• Post daily tips

• Create more lead magnets

• Reply to everyone via email & DMs

It’s a rat race. And frankly, it’s exhausting and feels like you’re spitting on your knowledge.

You’re here for the leverage. Not for running on a hamster wheel.

By doing this, all you get is more people consuming without ever converting. They’ve come to expect free stuff. Now, when you finally offer a paid product, they’re not interested. Worse, they drop you a couple of f-bombs.

You’ve trained them to see your content as something that’s always free.

Don’t do it.

You’ve been brainwashed

It’s not your fault.

Influencers brainwash you to believe that you need to:

• Lower your prices

• Give away more free value content

• Create content to inflate your follower count

I’m here to tell you that all this is not true:

• You don’t need a massive audience.

• You don’t need to compete on price.

• You don’t need to give away everything for free.

Refuse to play on the same field as influencers. You need something totally different.

Find the die-hards

I was exactly where you are.

Hustling hard. Burning out. Convinced my small audience wasn’t enough to make real money.

I tried everything—low prices, ads, creating more content—but nothing worked. I was grinding myself into the ground for pennies.

Then I realized I didn’t need more customers. All I needed was to sell more products to the die-hards in my audience.

I focused on releasing more offers with the people who already knew me, and suddenly, I didn’t need to chase new buyers.

The same people kept coming back, spending more.

This approach blows everything else out of the water for two simple reasons.

First, it creates long-term loyalty. Instead of fighting to get new customers all the time, you’re building a foundation of people who come back. You focus on the depth of your relationship and the depth of your insights.

It’s a win-win for both.

Selling to existing customers is 10 times easier than trying to find new customers.

They already bought from you. They already know and trust you. They already know the drill.

Second, it’s sustainable. You’re not burning out, you don’t have to chase trends all the time. You don’t have to compete on extravagance or low-ball content. Instead, you have the freedom to share ideas with people who believe in what you do and respect your expertise.

$3 per sub

I have a small audience. 5,300 email subs by the time I’m writing this.

But each email subscriber earns me $3-4 dollars each month.

The reason is simple: I always have something to offer. I’ve created a catalog of products.

When someone joins my list, they’re getting a daily email. They’re short to read. 3 minutes or less. They deliver an insight and close with a pitch.

Now, you might ask how you’ll be able to do the same thing?

You can’t. At least for now. The best way to eat an elephant is to eat it bit by bit.

When I started, I had zero products in my catalog. I had zero subscribers. You have to start somewhere.

Keep things simple.

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How to start building (and monetizing) a small audience

First, you start by solving one problem for a specific audience. Don’t go too broad or you’ll be lost in the noise. Be laser-sharp. Ideally, be so sharp that you have no direct competitors.

As an example, I started with solving the note-taking problem for creators. I went deep on it. My main “competitors” were productivity gurus. But their approach wasn’t tailored to my audience.

I wrote a bunch of Medium articles around it. They took off. I added thousands of new subscribers to my list and then pre-sold my note-taking course.

You want to build an email list from day 1. Let people subscribe to your newsletter so that you can keep building trust.

Once you start getting some traction on your content, start by creating a first product.

Then, after they’ve bought that first product, keep showing up. Go deeper. Create more products that naturally solve more of their problems.

You don’t have to have it all figured out upfront. You’ll learn as you build.