"Hussain, I'm thinking of creating a product to help people become more productive. But I think I'll do a bit of free client work so I can get testimonials. What do you think?"

This is one of many conversations I've had over the past 2-3 weeks with some of my friends.

Some are looking to monetize their writing. Others want to monetize their Notion productivity system. And there are a few outliers who want to do design and video editing.

If they asked me this question 12 months ago, I would've said: “It's a smart way to go about it.”

Because, as a beginner, you don't have any social proof. You don't know if your systems work. So it makes sense to offer free work.

But after investing $5,500 on mentors to help me monetize, I realize just how complete a waste of time it is to offer free work.

A few reasons why:

• You won't get a good case study

• You attract low-quality customers and a freebie audience.

• You end up working yourself and not get the results you want.

• Your clients won't take it seriously (because they haven't paid for it).

• Free work clients demand the most and take the least action. You don't want that.

• The people who were willing to pay now see you as someone who's cheap (and they won't buy from you)

But the biggest reason as to why I see it as a complete waste of time is that you don't learn one of the most important skills when it comes to running a creator business: Sales.

If you don't learn how to sell, you'll spend the rest of your life working for someone else who does the selling for you—you'll just get paid less.

My friend, charge money.

Put a price tag on your work. Even if it's cheap. Do it.

If you won't back yourself, no one will.

You do this for a few reasons:

1) Break self-limiting beliefs

The idea of "I'm not good enough" or "I don't have enough social proof to ask for money" will go out the window.

The taste of getting paid to do something you love is enough to flip a switch in your head from thinking "I'm not good enough" to "Sales is good because I'm helping people".

2) You get to see if your offer is actually good

Getting people to test your product for free isn't the smartest thing to do.

Because you don't know if they would've paid for it. You don't know if the only reason they got it is because it's free or if they actually had a problem.

I know when I first started on X, I was one of those freebie people who got every lead magnet they saw on their timeline.

Did I find them useful?

Nope.

Did I go through any of them?

Nope.

Why?

Because I couldn't be bothered…

It's the sad truth, but beginners usually don't have the money and aren't as serious as they say they are (whether they know it or not)

3) You avoid bad clients.

Signing clients and getting paid to do what you love is amazing.

You can get 10 clients, 9 are amazing, and 1 is bad. That bad client will turn your life into a nightmare.

The best way to filter bad clients out is to charge more.

The higher the price, the more you'll avoid bad clients.

Even if you charge $100, you'll avoid 90% of low-quality, low-action taker clients.

Less headaches for you. Better experience for your good clients (because you can focus on delivering a good experience for them).

Win-win.

"But Hussain, how should I get started?"

How To Monetize As A Complete Beginner in 60 Days

1) Learn a skill

You can't monetize if you don't have anything to offer.

I say skill here because I'm assuming you're a beginner, have nothing to offer, have no real-world experience that you can immediately monetize (i.e., being a therapist, a relationship coach, a fitness coach, programmer, designer, etc).

The good thing about the internet is you're not limited to what you were taught in school or the degree you have.

You get to learn any skill you want. and monetize your skills.

People don't care if you have a degree or not. They only care about the results. If you can deliver results, they'll happily pay you.

But here's the thing: you need to get good at what you do.

If you're bad, you won't be around for very long.

So learn a skill.

If you don't know what to learn, start with writing.

It's the foundation of all high-value skills.

• Ads

• Sales

• Design

• Content

• Podcasts

• Marketing

• AI prompting

• Public speaking

• YouTube scripts

• Email marketing

They all depend on how well you write.

2) Get Results For Yourself

The last thing you want to do is to get people to pay for something you're not sure if you can deliver on.

Because if they pay you, and you're not confident in yourself, and they don't get the results you promised them, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

A bad reputation will kill your business in this space.

Again, you want to avoid doing free work because of the reasons I mentioned before.

So the best way to avoid it is to get the results for yourself.

Become your own case study.

If you're a web developer, create websites for yourself.

If you're a copywriter, create landing pages.

Create your own portfolio that you can then use as proof when you're going to sell people your offer.

It's not the best form of proof, but it's a lot easier and faster to get it for yourself than to get through free client work.

It will also help you gain confidence in yourself when you're going to offer it to other people.

3) Create An Offer

This is arguably the simplest, but hardest thing you'll ever do when it comes to monetization.

Because there are so many moving parts that you don't even know where to begin.

So I'll simplify things for you in 6 questions:

1. What is an offer?

It is what your customer will get after paying money.

The best way to think about it is what transformation are they getting?

1. What problem are you solving?

In general, there are 4 common problems you can solve.

Save/make people more money. Save people's time and effort. Getting healthy. Help them get better at relationships (confidence, speaking, etc)

1. Who is it for?

It is easier to sell to one specific person than it is to sell to 100 different people.

This is because your messaging will be directed to that one person. But when you sell to 100 different people, your messaging loses its focus and doesn't capture people's attention.

1. How much are you charging?

Name your price and justify the price.

1. What should you include in your offer?

Only what you need to get them from Point A → Point B

Nothing more, nothing less.

1. How to structure your offer?

Think of your customer journey.

What do they need to know and in what order to get from Point A → Point B

Now, there are obviously more moving parts, and we can go into more details on how to create your offer.

But this is more than enough for you to start creating your first draft of your offer.

4) Get Beta Testers & Charge Low

When I first started going viral on X, I didn't have an offer in place. I didn't know how to sell. I didn't know anything.

All I knew was how to write threads that go viral. That's it.

So when I was talking to a friend who also wanted to learn how to write threads, I didn't know what to charge.

I was thinking of doing it for free.

But then I remembered a random quote, "If you don't feel comfortable charging people, then you're not charging enough".

So I put my fears and self-limiting beliefs to the side and said "$500/month for 4 calls".

I thought they'd say it's too expensive…

But to my surprise. They found it reasonable. We ended up working together.

He smashed his first month, renewed for a second month, and smashed it again.

To this day, he's been one of the easiest clients I've ever coached.

Later, I signed a couple more clients.

Want to know the funny part?

I didn't even have a structured mentorship in place…

I custom-made the plans for each client as the weeks went by.

So each client got a different experience and saw different aspects of the thread-writing process.

5) Refine The Process

As your beta-testers go through your process, you'll notice a few things:

1. What they liked

2. What they struggled with.

3. What things they had in common.

Your job now is to refine and streamline the process.

In my case, I spent 2 months (December and January) refining my thread-writing process.

I wrote ~30,000 words about every single step, thought, and process I have on how I write threads.

Now I'm confident enough in my process that I'm offering cohorts and launching my first digital product next month.

6) Increase Prices

You've now got yourself as a case study, beta testers who gave you their thoughts on the process, and refined the process to get results faster, easier, and more consistently.

Now you're ready to increase your prices.

As I said, I started with $500/mo for coaching, and I was doing ghostwriting for $250 per thread.

But as I got my 4th 1-on-1 coaching client, I was charging $750/mo.

Now I charge $1,250/mo for 1-on-1. And my ghostwriting services are now at $3,000/mo.

Again, this didn't happen overnight.

I was slowly refining my process, getting results, getting better at my skill, and increasing my prices. It took me almost 5-6 months to reach the position I'm in now.

The reason why you want to slowly increase your prices is because you will always have to justify why you changed your prices.

When you increase, you can say: "The process has gotten faster, easier, and more reliable".

But when you lower your prices, people will immediately think that your offer isn't good enough.

What I like to do is:

Higher prices = more exclusivity and more access to me

Lower prices = less exclusivity and less access to me.

Which leads me to my next point…

7) Create low-ticket items

This might seem counterintuitive at first, but this will help you sell more.

Because the higher your prices, the fewer people can afford you, and/or the more skeptical people become of you.

But when you create lower-ticket items (i.e, eBooks, 30-minute courses, webinars, workshops), your reader gets to see what you have to offer before investing the big bucks with you.

You have to keep in mind, not everyone can afford $3,000/month on mentorships.

$3,000 is some people's monthly paycheck. So you need to be ethical. When they invest in you, you have to be invested in them.

Show them that you know what you're talking about and do not hide behind high-ticket offers only.

When you do low-ticket offers, you get to build trust.

People will naturally sell themselves to your higher-ticket offers.

And if you're anything like me my friend, sales doesn't come naturally to you.

So this is a golden opportunity for you to get high-ticket clients without looking desperate or sounding sleazy.

8) Evolve As You Go

One concept that blew my mind:

Offer fatigue.

That is when people get tired of seeing the same offer over and over again.

If they didn't buy the first time, why would they buy the second time?

And if this happens for months on end, you unintentionally trained them not to buy that product or service. Not good.

But when you create different offers, you keep things fresh and new.

So, create different offers as you evolve.

I know I won't be only selling "How to write threads" courses or offers.

I'm already thinking of running another group coaching program, but this time, instead of having a thread-writing group coaching, it's going to be a 30-day writing challenge.

I'm also looking on creating offers on writing on social media, newsletters, sales emails, and creating offers.

It's only natural to do it.

Because when you view your offers as you helping your reader solve their problems, you realize that you'll need to create more offers to keep helping them.

That's all for today. Thank you for reading, and enjoy the rest of your day.

I'll see you on Sunday with our normal schedule :)

- Hussain

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P.S.:

I wrote this letter today in 2 hours because I was inspired by the conversations I had with my friends and didn't want to lose the idea.

So if it feels "incomplete," that's why. I didn't take my time writing this as I usually do with my letters.

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P.P.S:

One last thing…

If you're interested in me hosting a workshop showing you how to create your first offer and sign your first client...

Let me know by replying "Interested".

If there's enough demand, then I'll host a workshop.