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Waddup Part-Time Creators!

Welcome to the newsletter where I talk about writing, marketing, psychology & creating on the internet if you work a full-time job. This week we're talking about keeping the day job and creating premium offers.

In today's email:

• Why you should keep the day job
• Incredible content for the week ahead
• How to price your offer as a solopreneur
• Something I've never done before...

Read time: 4 minute

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Part-Time Creator Game-Plan

You Shouldn't Quit Your Day Job to Create on the Internet (Do This Instead)

97.5% of YouTubers don’t make enough to reach the U.S. poverty line.

I’d guess for independent writers that data is worse. A survey revealed that 54% of “traditionally-published” authors (and nearly 80% of self-published authors) earn less than $1,000 a year.

Mr Beast, Ali Abdaal and Justin Welsh's massive success are the exceptions, not the rule.

But yet the existence of these folk makes us feel hopeful. We can do it if we just put in the work, right?

Well the answer is, I don’t know, but as someone who has had some mild success online, here’s what I’d do if I wanted to get started writing on the internet alongside my day job.

From years of learning, failing and learning some more...

1. Reps

If you want to get good enough to make money from this thing, you must hit level one of the craft: competence. It's level for people to be able to read your work.

No, not to make money. Not to get attention. Definitely not to go viral. Just to meet the basic level that any would be willing to read your work.

To do that, you need to get the basics right:

• Formatting
• Headlines
• Flow

Every piece of content has a certain standard that you must meet as a creator, the first step is hitting that standard consistently. How? Put in the reps.

Show up every day for the next 2 years. Then you’ll hit level 1.

2. Interrogate the craft

As you begin to write more and more, you’ll find that you start getting inquisitive about other writers. You’ll start to notice how they do certain things.

• How they approach their headlines
• How they position themselves
• How they write content

Absorb everything you learn. Don’t copy. Understand. Find how they do things and build from it. Ask yourself if you’re writing would improve by using some of the techniques they use.

Test everything. Every idea you have. Don’t be scared. At this level you have very few people watching. Test, test and test again. Don’t let fear hold you back.

3. Implement

Learning is as good as your ability to implement.

Let me tell you a story. Three years ago, I had an ambition to read a book a week for a year. My only goal was to read A LOT. But the thing is, reading tonnes of books wasn’t actually my problem.

The real problem? I hadn’t identified the problem I had. Lol, idiot.

You see I was reading to improve my chances of being successful in business. But (and it’s a big but) and I hadn’t identified why I wasn’t. Instead of asking that question I just decided the solution was to read a lot.

It wasn’t until a few years later I started understanding my real problems which allowed me to progress more in the last 6 months than any other time period in my life.

4. Bleed

I don’t mean actually bleeding before anyone gets weird.

The concept is about giving, sacrifice, and work. You know the more I get into this content game the more I realise that in every endeavour I’ve done before I didn’t really try.

• Showing up isn’t trying
• Failing once isn’t trying
• Writing 5 articles isn’t trying

This week I’ll hit my 943rd article on Medium. Yep, 900. I bet over half of them I wasn’t really trying. You’ve got to show up and for the time you’re locked in, you’ve got to give it everything you’ve got.

For those 45 minutes, give it everything. Wrack your brain for the best you’ve got. Work. Work because that’s all you’ve got.

5. Play forever

Fun is great for productivity. Do you know what’s better? Need. It’s got to the point where today, I need to write. I can’t not. It’s a way of me processing my thoughts.

Writing is my function for thinking.

It means it’ll never leave me. I’m reliant on writing to go about my day. To process my thoughts. To live.

That’s how you play forever, you use writing as a mechanism to think and then when you get up every morning and think, you’ll write anyway. If you love to do that (and it’s quite addictive) you’ll do it forever.

And only by playing forever, you get to the highest level of yourself. And likely make more than you ever imagined you could.

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Pumped for the week ahead

• The $200 million man.
• ​Paul Graham's best ideas.
• ​Warren Buffet's university talk.

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Economics 101

This Is How You Create a Premium Offer As a Solopreneur in Year One

I’ve just finished watching Air.

The Amazon Prime premiere, tells the story of how Michael Jordan landed a deal with Nike, one that would eventually net him $400 million per year in passive income. No, I didn't accidentally add a zero there, $400 million, $400 million?!

Making him a billionaire and the greatest basketball player of all time. Not bad. But it got me thinking about offers and seeing as I’ve just opened up Alex Hormozi’s book '$100 Million Offers', I’ve got some thoughts on how the average Joe can use this in their small solopreneur business.

1. Don’t compete on price

The go-to option for most people creating an offer is to add a discount.

They price it at $200 and decide that a $50 off discount will compel people to purchase (I've done this myself). Likely it will but if you are basing your pricing off the rest of the market, you are playing a game of who can charge the least.

That’s when you get in a tale spin, a race to the bottom. When you price yourself alongside everyone else, guess what happens? You become like everyone else.

You don’t want people to compete on price, you want to create your own lane so nobody can compare what you do with what they do. Do that and you make a category of your own.

2. Charge as much as you can

This makes me cringe. I hate the thought of charging as much as I can.

But I believe it's linked to the money behaviours of our parents and our parent’s parents. It’s hard to stomach the idea of charging money for the things you make. As someone that’s always worked a day job, I find it hard to price things.

But here are my thoughts:

Price things based on the value you think they warrant. Alex Hormozi sold the blueprint for improving gyms around the US. He charged them $42,000. I know, $42,000 is about the average income. More. How on Earth can you charge $42,000 for a product?! Here's the catch, on average those gym owners made $239,000 extra each year.

So $42,000 is 17.5% of the first-year growth. And those gym owners go on to see the benefit of the product every single year post being in business.

If you’ve got a product that will save people $2,000 over the next 12 months, you could reasonably price it at $350.

This is my new framework for charging. I won’t go as high as 17.5% because I’m not Alex Hormozi but I think 10% is a good starting point.

3. Pain first

People buy on emotion.

Human beings have pain in all areas of life: health, wealth, and relationships are the core three. If you want to sell something you must leverage pain.

• Ask yourself what position your buyer is in
• Figure out what their main drivers are

If your product promises to help someone lose weight, it’s not enough to say ‘feel happier and healthier’. It’s sort of ‘meh’. It’s about bringing to life the everyday pain people have:

4. Learn to copywrite

Framing is everything when it comes to offers.

You can have the same thing on paper; one sells for $3000 and the other for $30. The art, like everything is in the way you frame it. The best way to do that is to learn copywriting.

Learn the art of selling by words.

That includes understanding the importance of specificity, urgency, discounts, scarcity and much, much more.

If you can learn how to wrap words around what you sell and compel people to buy from you, you’ll be able to increase the perceived value of your product or service.

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Content of the week...

Thanks a bunch,

Eve

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I've never done this before...

There are two things I wish I knew sooner:

• How good tacos are
• How important storytelling is

I've doubled down on storytelling this month and my views are up 29% and I'm about to crack a $3.7k month on Medium (2nd highest this year).

The best storyteller I know? Parker Worth.

I'd highly recommend you check out Parker's StoryTelling Course (Just launched).

I won't go on about it. You've likely seen Parker's work. He'll be one of the biggest creators in 2024. His course is a total steal. Get it before it's gone.

P.s. prices go up after tomorrow, so grab it today whilst it's the cheapest it'll ever be.

x10 your storytelling

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