How to Make $1.7 Million Per Year With 0 Employees
How Justin Welsh uses Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and 2 simple ecourses to create a 7-figure income
Justin Welsh is responsible for thousands of people quitting their 9–5s and pursuing solopreneurship, myself included.
Prior to building online, Justin was the VP of Sales at PatientPop. After growing it to $50mm ARR in 10 years, he had a massive panic attack and knew it was time to quit his corporate job and build something for himself.
He’s been doing pretty well since then…
By the Numbers
Here’s how his audience currently stands:
In 2022, Justin generated $1.7 million in revenue from 5 sources:
He’s projecting $2.5 million in revenue for 2023.
Attention
Justin first started posting to LinkedIn in May 2019, posting to Twitter in September 2021, and sending emails in January 2022:
Like most creators, Justin started by dominating one platform (LinkedIn) before transferring to others (Twitter and email). Justin was one of the first creators to post on LinkedIn.
He’s also done a fantastic job of converting followers to email subscribers, where he can build trust and plug his paid offers. His CR% from social to email is a testament to how much value he is providing on LinkedIn and Twitter.
He’s currently adding 6,000 email subscribers per month.
The Funnel
Justin has a relatively simple funnel for getting attention, building trust, and converting that trust into money:
Discovery: Twitter & LinkedIn
Trust: Newsletter & YouTube + Podcast Appearances
Products: Courses, Consulting, & Subscriptions
This is a very standard “Publishers” funnel, though Justin’s is pretty basic and doesn’t ever feel like you’re being sold to.
His goal with Discovery is to convert people to his email list. He hardly ever mentions his paid products outside of his newsletter, and even on his newsletter they’re plugged in a non-pushy way (in the footer):
Justin’s entire business is about creating unique content, delivering it clearly, and converting based on sheer audience size.
And it’s working.
Products
1. Courses: $1.3 million
Justin is one of the most systems-driven creators I’ve come across, which makes sense given his background. If you take his courses, you’ll realize there was nothing lucky about his success — it was all planned.
Justin sells 2 courses which were responsible for 76% of his revenue in 2022.
- The LinkedIn Operating System — “Transform your LinkedIn profile into a lead generation machine with The LinkedIn Operating System. This comprehensive course will teach you the system I use to grow from 0 to 400,000+ followers and $4M in income on this untapped platform.”
- The Content Operating System — “A multi-step system for creating a high-quality newsletter and 6–12 pieces of high-performance social media content each week.”
Each of his courses are $150 and can be completed in 2–3 hours. Instead of hours of fluffy content and fancy editing, his courses are short, simple, and jam-packed with tactical information.
To make $1,300,000, Justin sold 8,667 of these courses last year, or 23.7 sales per day.
For Justin, this is a pure numbers game: If he can build an audience of 1 million people and 1% buy a $150 course, that’s $1.5 million in revenue.
An obvious omission: If Justin were to release a course related to building an online business or solopreneurship, he would sell > $1 million in its first year. Easy.
This product may be in the works, but I doubt it. In my opinion, Justin won’t ever create this product for 2 reasons:
- Making money online via an online course about how to make money online is the snake oil du jour. It’s all but a MLM scheme.
- Justin is honed in on one niche: Getting attention online. That’s his game. He’s focused on one (important) piece online business. He owns that space. His content is tactical and replicable.
2. Consulting: $144k
Justin no longer promotes his consulting business on his website.
Compared to his courses, it’s time-consuming and relatively low-leverage (despite charging $1,000 per hour).
I would assume he’s still doing some consulting work on a referral basis, but I don’t know that for sure. I’m curious how much he’ll make from consulting in 2023.
3. Sponsorships: $120k
Justin is currently charging $2,500 per week for an ad slot in his newsletter. There are 2 slots per issue, so he’s currently bringing in $5,000 per week.
At that rate, sponsorships will generate $260,000 in revenue in 2023, but Justin is also adding 6,000 subscribers per month.
I wouldn’t be surprised if sponsorships finish the year north of $300,000.
4. Subscriptions: $103k
As mentioned above, Justin has a system for everything.
He created a database of templates to speed up his content creation and was adding to the database every month.
As an upsell for his courses, Justin started offering the templates for $9/month and now has more than 1,000 people receiving these each month.
5. Affiliates: $25k
Justin isn’t focused on promoting affiliates, but given how many people were asking him about what tools he uses he decided to make a page and add some affiliate links. He only promotes what he’s already using.
It’s not a huge portion of his income, but I’d say the ROI for spending 10 minutes setting up the page has been excellent.
Takeaways
Justin is best known for his unique content and clear thinking. That is why he’s amassed nearly 800,000 followers between LinkedIn & Twitter.
After peeling back a layer, it’s easy to see the intention behind everything he does. Nothing is random — everything fits in his system.
He’s also created a business around his life which, in my opinion, is what makes him such a magnetic person to follow.
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