How Justin Welsh Made $4,000,000 in 3 Years as a One-Man Creator.
A step-by-step breakdown of his journey and process
Who is Justin Welsh and how did one guy earn over $4 million in under 4 years all by himself?
In this piece I’m going to dive into his story and how he achieved all these — from writing online — without all the boring details.
Let’s dive in.
If you’ve spent time on Money Twitter (now X), then you probably know who Justin Welsh is. If not, I’ll tell you.
Ever heard of the term solopreneurship? Well, that’s the term that Justin uses to describe his one-man creator business, and he’s the guy who’s making it cool again.
Justin rejects the idea that one should resign to working a 9–5 for their entire life, slaving away for a salary and never realizing one’s potential.
He talks about this very loudly through his writings because he’s been there and done that.
Justin worked in corporate America, helping build two companies past a $1B valuation and raise over $300M in venture capital. Sounds like important work, right? Well, not to Justin.
He and his wife quit their high-paying jobs and decided to completely redesign their lives with more intention. They bought a house in the Catskill Mountains in NY and drove across the country to begin their new lives.
Justin makes money through his writing in 5 ways:
Products: $2.34M
Consulting: $1.17M
MRR: $197k
Sponsorships: $164k
Community: $130k
So, what exactly did he do?
Picking one content format
New creators think they have to be everywhere, and do everything. Justin didn’t. He picked writing as his main format since that’s what he knew how to do and he went all in.
He wrote every day before he even had a business — about what he’d learned as a CRO of a SaaS unicorn.
Finding the signals
When his writing started to get traction, some stood out, some didn’t. He focused on the ones that stood out and doubled down. He kept writing and talking about them. In the midst of the initial traction, people started to take notice. Then he took the next step…
Offering a service
As business owners started to notice his work about his experience as a former CRO of a SaaS unicorn, the requests started to pour in, he received tons of DM’s and responded to every one of them. This was when he saw his first opportunity to offer a consultation service.
Increasing rates
As Justin took more consultations, his messaging became even more targeted, and his ideal clients found a lot of value in his work, so he doubled his rates and worked less and less.
Now having more time, he sought to figure out how to create an offer that could scale and was more automated.
Following the signal
In an attempt to find a problem to solve for his audience, there were a lot of questions about SaaS sales but even more questions about growing on LinkedIn itself. At this point, he’d grown his LinkedIn account to 20k followers.
He thought it would be an easy info product, and he was right.
He then put together a short course for $50 & wrote posts about it and in the first month, he made $10,482.
Over the next 15 months, he sold about $75k of the LinkedIn growth course.
Tripling the price
After a while, the LinkedIn course became outdated and his audience was asking for an updated version. Charging $50 for the earlier version and delivering more than what they’d paid had created a high level of trust. It was only logical that he increased the price this time around. So he did.
He set the price at $150 and it took OFF!
Aggressive marketing
With his messaging now fully in alignment with his product, it was easy to market with tailored messaging and aggressive content creation. The first launch grossed $75k in 15 months, the second did $186k in 3 months!
Creating a loyal community with social proof
Halfway through the course and at the end, people were encouraged to leave a testimonial and sign up for the affiliate program, which meant that they would earn a commission on every sale they made.
The course since launch has 1,400+ affiliates that have generated $300,000+ in commissions.
A second digital course was born
On a podcast with another entrepreneur sharing how he created content, about 500 people in the audience were amazed by all he’s been able to achieve, and were asking how he created content so seamlessly. This gave birth to his second course — The Content Operating System.
Adding a monthly recurring revenue
It’s great to make a sale of a course, but what’s even better is being able to make recurring revenue from a product you create one time.
Each week, Justin would create content templates for his personal use. One day, he thought, what if he could add this as a subscription product for his existing customers? He then tested it as a $9 upsell on each course and 8 months later it has 2,100+ subscribers.
Almost $19.3k MRR from something I was already doing.
Starting a newsletter
As a logical next step, in January of 2022, Justin launched his newsletter — The Saturday Solopreneur — which at the time of writing this post had 175,000 subscribers.
The newsletter now has a life of its own. Having grown fast with loyal readers and feedback from some of the biggest creators on the planet, Justin is now able to charge upwards of $2,500 for one sponsorship in his newsletter.
With 2 sponsorships each week, he generated an additional $5,000.
Final thoughts.
Although all it took me to write this post is some research into what Justin has publicly shared, through his transparent posts and attestation to his craft by some of the most reputable individuals on the internet, we can verify that all of these are true.
It’s taken 4 years of trial and error, commitment to a singular purpose and constant refinement of messaging and voice.
In Justin’s words, It’s taken 4 years & 4,000 pieces of content, there are days when he thinks it’s all going away and he still thinks he’s an outlier — the creator game overall is tough.
If you find it helpful, please engage in the comments.
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