- Ole Lehmann (The AI Solopreneur)
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- đ How To Earn Your First $1 On The Internet
đ How To Earn Your First $1 On The Internet
Use my scalable process to get to $1, $1.000, $10.000 / month (and beyond)
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Greet from the deep,
The reason why most people fail to earn their first dollar on the internet is that they try to sell a thing theyâve never done to a person that doesnât know them.
And I donât blame them - nobody showed them a better way.
Until today.
In this letter, Iâll show you how to make your first $1 (and $1,000, and ($10,000) on the internet.
Hint: itâs NOT about re-selling McDonalds Szechuan Sauce
Letâs d-d-d-d-dive in! đ¤ż
Your 3-Step Roadmap to Earning Your First $1 on The Internet
Your roadmap from $0 to $1, $1.000, and even $10.000 is simple.
In this email, Iâll talk specifically about how you can reach this income level with a high-value skill (more on that later) - because letâs face it:
Earning $15 one-time from re-selling an ebook isnât a sustainable income.
Hereâs the plan:
YOUR 3-STEP ROADMAP TO EARNING YOUR FIRST $1 ON THE INTERNET
Learn a Skill
Do free consulting
Get Your First Client
+ One simple way to 2X your progress on all of these
1) Learn a Skill
First, you need to identify a high-value service you can offer, like:
Copywriting
Web Design
Video Editing
No-code Automation
Facebook Ads
Search Engine Optimization
McDonaldâs Szechuan Sauce Manufacturer
My 2 cents on this is that you should aim to find a skill that you actually enjoy.
Speed this up with AI: Read the previous edition for a ChatGPT prompt on finding your existing areas of expertise
Then, become decent at the skill of your choice.
How to do this:
1) Consume educational content on Youtube
(just search âHow to [INSERT SKILL OF YOUR CHOICE]â and binge-watch)
But only watching Youtube videos wonât get you anywhere.
You want to watch just enough to have a basic understanding of the skill.
Because the real learning curve comes with the next activitiy:
2) Practice on yourself
And that second pointâŚ
That second point is CRUCIAL.
BecauseâŚ
Thereâs no easier way to build credibility and to sell a service than having done it for yourself.
Want to sell email sequence copywriting?
Write one for yourself.
Want to sell LinkedIn ghostwriting?
Grow your own account to 3,000 people.
SUMMARY: HOW TO LEARN A HIGH-INCOME SKILL
Choose a skill youâre interested in
Binge-watch Youtube
Practice it on yourself
Once you have practiced the skill on yourself and think youâre decent at it, you can look for your first clients:
2) Do Free Consulting
How to NOT get your first client:
Now, hereâs what most people do when they want to get their first client:
They find a prospect and then message them something like:
âHey,
I love what you are doing. Do you need a website designer/copywriter/marketer?
Here are my packages:â
Thatâs just wonât work.
First of allâŚ
âŚif you are really good at what youâre doing, you donât ever need to ask a prospect if they need your service.
Because people who know what theyâre doing know what problems they solve and who they can help.
Secondly, the prospect will think you are lazy as fuck, and that youâre sending cold outreaches to as many people as possible.
(like most people do).
Lastly, the prospect has no idea if they need your service, so they wonât answer.
Why?
Because you didnât explain to them why they need your offer.
So what should you do instead?
Offer free consulting.
You set yourself apart from 99.9% of other DMs if you donât ask the prospect for something, but you give them something valuable.
Your DM should do 1 of 3 things:
3 TYPES OF FREE CONSULTING:
Show them a way to make more money (Example: help them get more customers)
Show them a way to save time (Example: tell them thereâs a better way to do something they already do)
Help them look better (Example: tell them how they could improve their LinkedIn posts)
Speed this up with AI: Read the previous edition about selling in the DMs and to get an AI sales coach)
Now, hereâs the catch:
You canât do free consulting if you donât research the prospect beforehand.
Thatâs why so few people are doing it.
It takes time to:
Visit a prospectâs website
Look at their profile
Create a solution for them
But because it takes time, few people are willing to do it, which means it works really well when you do it.
So, to recap:
1) Find a prospect
2) Research them
Once youâve done that, itâs time to craft your outreach messageâŚ
How to Craft Your Free Consulting Outreach Message
Each outreach message should contain 4 things:
4 INGREDIENTS OF ALL SUCCESSFUL OUTREACH MESSAGES
ONE compliment about your customer
WHAT youâre suggesting to your customer
WHY your solution is better than their existing one
HOW to implement your new solution
For example, if you were offering Search Engine Optimization, you could write a DM that says:
âHey Ole,
I just poked around your website (which has some great blog content about X by the way) and I was wondering why you donât include a bulleted overview in the beginning of your blog articles?
It would be a simple way to increase website visitors by 10-30% because search engines prefer articles with such bullet points.
If you could let me know your website team memberâs email, Iâd happily help them fix this (of course, free of charge).â
Why wouldnât your prospect reply to this email?
Youâre offering them free value, showing your expertise, and making it easy to accept your offer.
Now, you might say:
âThatâs cool, Ole, but how does this help me earn my first $1?â
If you do free consulting for 50 prospects, I guarantee you that at least 10 of them will ask you what you offer.
And thatâs when you tell them what you do and how it benefits themâŚ
âŚand suggest that you should get on a call.
SUMMARY: HOW TO DO FREE CONSULTING
Donât âpitchâ prospects about your service
Offer them free consulting / helpful advice instead
Write powerful cold outreaches with the 4 ingredients of all successful outreach messages
3) Get Your First Client
On the call, you do even more free consulting for the client, and point out problems and solutions for them.
Important: never, EVER, point out a problem without a solution - you want to be known as a problem solver, not creator.
Eventually, the prospect will ask you:
âWhat do you offer?â
or
âWhat would it cost for me to hire you and solve all these problems for me?â
Boom. They want to hire you.
Now, this is where you need to be honest with yourself:
How good are you at this skill?
If youâre a 5/10, offer the client to solve the problem for free (I recommend this to most people).
If youâre better than that, you can take some money, but Iâd still do at a discount because itâs your first time doing this skill for somebody else.
âOle, I still havenât earned my first $1 yetâŚâ
Hang on for 1 more minute.
Because as you get better and better at this service, and you start to get your clients results, your outreach/free consulting becomes easier and easier.
Eventually, youâll be so good that you can tell your free client:
âI have 3 prospects who want to pay me $500 per month to do SEO for them - Iâd love to continue work with you, can you match that price?â
And thatâs how you earn your first $1 eventually.
How to earn your first $1,000 and $10,000 on the internet
The cool thing about this approach is that you can do it over and over again.
Over time, you get better at the skill, so you deliver better results, and can charge higher rates - and thatâs all it takes to get to $10,000 / month.
Speed this up with AI: Use the Arnold Automator on Anabolics to streamline your business processes and increase your margins
SUMMARY: HOW TO GET YOUR FIRST CLIENT
Continue to do free consulting on the call
Start doing free or cheap work for the prospect
Increase your rates as you get better at your skill
Repeat the above 3 steps to get to $10,000 / month
Cheat Code: Document Your Journey
The one thing I didnât tell you yet is that you can speed up this process 2-10x if you build an audience online around the service you offer.
Share what youâre learning and what results youâre getting.
This increase your free consulting reply rates and helps you build trust with prospects faster than a horny cheetah.
Itâs easy:
More content = more eyeballs on your work.
More eyeballs on your work = more clients for you
Wrap up
Today, you learned how to earn your first $1 on the internet.
This might be the longest newsletter Iâve ever written, so I hope it was valuable to you - please let me know in the poll further down!
This NL was a little less focused on AI but many people voted to learn more about todayâs topic.
While you are reading this, Iâm most likely chilling inside a weird cave in Ibiza.
Keep diving,
Ole
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