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Jeff Goins had 10,000 email subscribers and had earned roughly $12 from them. A coach told him he was sitting on a six figure business, and the fix was a survey asking his list what they wanted, how they wanted it, and what they would pay.
Writers make money through multiple streams rather than one. Jeff earns from book advances, royalties, and online courses, and the courses alone run about a million dollars a year.
Jeff runs goinswriter.com and has written five books, including the national bestseller The Art of Work. He also teaches Tribe Writers, a course on building a professional writing career.
This episode covers how he went from $30,000 a year to $150,000 in twelve months, why he argues against niching down, the worldview framework behind every durable audience, and how long to give a project before quitting.
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Table of Contents
Key takeaways
- Writers earn through multiple streams: advances, royalties, courses, and affiliate income.
- Survey your list on what they want, the format, and the price before building anything.
- Build around a worldview rather than a niche, so your audience follows you as your interests change.
- Teach what is obvious to you, since what feels basic to you is valuable to others.
- Offline relationships drive online sharing, and the follow up matters more than the introduction.
- Jeff took six months to reach 72 email subscribers and twelve months to reach 10,000.
- Book advances scaled from $5,000 to $150,000 across four deals.
- Give a project two years before quitting, since fast results are the exception.
How do writers actually make money?
Through several income streams at once. Jeff earns enough from book advances and royalties to support his family, and the teaching business adds roughly a million dollars a year.
The framing most people use is broken. They assume writing pays nothing or pays millions, and the middle is where working writers actually live.
Jeff knows many writers earning $50,000 to $200,000 annually. Their names are unfamiliar and that has no bearing on the income.
Self publishing was his entry point. His first ebook made $16,000 in six weeks against a $30,000 salary.
Traditional deals came after. The advances went $5,000, then $15,000, then $50,000, then $150,000.
Book sales are real but modest. His bestselling title has sold about 50,000 copies, with roughly 75,000 to 80,000 across all of them.
How do you monetize an email list?
Survey the list and ask what they want, what format they want it in, and what they would pay. Jeff had 10,000 subscribers earning him about $12 a year before he did this.
The answers were specific. They wanted an ebook about how he built his blog, and they named $5.
He priced it lower out of nerves. Two ebooks for $2.99 made $1,500 in a weekend.
The first product was rough. He calls it a minimum viable product, a PDF assembled from a talk he had given.
He replaced it quickly. The full length version made $16,000 in six weeks and about $50,000 that year.
An online course followed. That added roughly $70,000, and the first year totaled $150,000.
Why should you build around a worldview instead of a niche?
Because a worldview survives your changing interests and a niche traps you. Jeff frames it as a sentence: every blank can or should blank.
The trap is concrete. Build a following around cat sweater knitting, lose interest, and you either abandon the audience or start over.
Seth Godin demonstrates the alternative. His worldview is that the system is broken and fixable, which lets him write about marketing, politics, and the TSA without ever feeling off topic.
Tim Ferriss runs the same play. Minimum effort for maximum result carries across work, body, cooking, and learning.
Chris Guillebeau started in travel. The underlying worldview was living unconventionally, which is why the body of work holds together.
Jeff’s own worldview is that every creative person can succeed. One of his five books is about writing and the other four are not.
Should you niche down when starting a blog?
Start narrow as a way into the conversation, while knowing where it leads. Jeff compares it to meeting someone at a party.
Nobody opens with their life philosophy. You find common ground first and build toward the deeper material.
The narrow topic earns attention. Being the best on one specific subject is a legitimate way to get noticed.
The worldview has to run underneath from the start. Otherwise the early win becomes the ceiling.
What should you write about to build an audience?
Teach what is already obvious to you. Jeff was running weekly copywriting sessions for his nonprofit team and only later thought to publish those notes.
The response was immediate. Posts about writing drew comments while his leadership and marketing posts drew nothing.
He assumed everyone knew it. Copyblogger and ProBlogger existed, so the material felt redundant to him.
His audience had not seen it. The framing and the voice made familiar material land differently.
His early work was imitation. He copied Seth Godin, Michael Hyatt, and Steven Pressfield while looking for his own voice.
How do you get your first blog readers?
Build real relationships offline and the online sharing follows. Jeff noticed the bloggers he admired all genuinely knew each other.
He asked a dozen people to coffee. Some said yes, including Michael Hyatt, and some said no.
The relaunch converted those relationships. He redesigned the site, emailed everyone he had met, and many shared it.
That day brought 600 visitors. The following day it was back to six, which is what pushed him toward an email list.
Follow up is the part people skip. Jeff notes that meeting someone once matters far less than staying in touch afterward.
What is the fastest way to your first 1,000 email subscribers?
Get a website, start an email list, and offer a 1,000 word ebook as the incentive. Jeff considers this the baseline most writers never build.
Weekly publishing is enough. Write something new once a week and send it to subscribers.
The lead magnet has a low bar. Take your single best idea, write 1,000 words, and turn it into a downloadable PDF.
Free ebooks still convert. Webinars work too, and they carry a steeper learning curve.
Guest posting drives the traffic. Jeff knows someone who reached 100,000 subscribers in a year writing on Medium.
His own pace was slower. Six months to 72 subscribers, then 1,000, then 10,000 by month twelve.
Is blogging still worth starting?
Yes. Jeff sees no decline in blogging or email marketing across his own numbers or those of the thousands of writers he teaches.
The space is noisier. Hundreds of millions of blogs exist and attention is more fragmented.
Owning your platform still matters. A website is somewhere you control and can send people.
Email trends kept rising. The reported declines are largely myth in his experience.
His students keep converting. Writers move from earning under a dollar a month to thousands a month regularly.
How long should you give a writing business before quitting?
Two years. Jeff picked up that framing and applies it against a culture built on fast results.
His own history explains the number. An earlier blog took four years to reach 250 subscribers and stalled there.
The relaunch changed the inputs. Daily writing, a clear worldview, guest posting, and networking, with a two year deadline.
Results vary widely. One person in his mastermind went from 50 to 260 subscribers in nine months, and another went from a few hundred to 12,000.
The 1,000 subscriber benchmark is three to six months. At twelve months with no traction, examine what you are doing.
Willingness to quit is diagnostic. If walking away is easy, the project probably was not worth starting.
What skills does a professional writer need?
Three: writing, marketing, and basic business sense. Jeff argues no single one of them carries a career alone.
Great content does much of the work. Weak messages get dressed up with gimmicks when the better move is improving the work.
Finance was his own late addition. After nearly five years he learned to track daily revenue rather than trusting the shopping cart.
Charles Handy called this the portfolio life. Writing in 1989, he predicted people would hold five to ten careers rather than one.
Robert Greene frames mastery the same way. The future belongs to people who combine multiple skills in unusual ways.
Delegation follows growth. Jeff hands off metrics work to a team of four and keeps the writing.
Frequently asked questions
Can you make a living as a writer?
Yes, through multiple income streams. Jeff knows many working writers earning $50,000 to $200,000 a year from a combination of books, courses, and related work.
How much do book advances pay?
They scale with your track record. Jeff’s four advances went $5,000, $15,000, $50,000, then $150,000 as his audience grew.
Should you self publish or find a publisher?
Both work and Jeff has done each. His self published ebook made $16,000 in six weeks and roughly $50,000 that year, which is what led publishers to approach him.
How do you monetize an email list?
Survey it. Ask what people want, what format, and what they would pay, then build exactly that.
Should you niche down as a blogger?
Start narrow to enter the conversation, and build on a worldview underneath so your audience follows when your interests change.
How long does it take to get 1,000 email subscribers?
Three to six months in most cases. Jeff took six months to reach 72 subscribers and a full year to reach 10,000.
Is blogging dead in the current landscape?
No. Jeff’s numbers and his students’ numbers keep rising, and email marketing engagement continues climbing despite the reported declines.
When should you quit a writing project?
Give it two years. Most meaningful results take time, and a project easy to abandon probably was not worth starting.
