🧑‍🎓 How this student is making millions with AI

GM. This is Work "After" Work, the newsletter where business insights hit harder than the Cha-Cha Slide at a school dance.

C’mon y’all.. slide to the left!

Here’s how we’re starting the week:

• 🤖 AI written books

• 😂 Meme of the day

HEY AI, WRITE ME THIS BOOK

All right, who's ready for a banger?

Everybody say “I”

First, I'll hit you with the punchline: this college student started a $1 million business selling AI written books.

Did your jaw just drop? Cause mine did too.

Now, the craziest thing about all this is the product he’s selling isn’t unique. Virtually anyone can figure out how to write a book with AI (I’ll show you how). It’s how he markets his e-books.

I guess that famous saying, “Marketing is everything.” is actually true.

Who’s he marketing to?
Middle aged moms - something I know this audience might be just a little better at 😉

Here’s the cliff notes version of how this all came to be:

One day, Joe Popelas (our college student) went to meet with a publishing company where they showed him they were making $2 million a month doing “stupid simple” stuff.

Popelas came out of the call with two thoughts:

#1 He didn’t realize how many books people actually bought online

#2 He was going to do the same thing but without the overhead - with AI

And that’s exactly what he did. Popelas started in August of 22’ and by September he had “written” 40 books.

A few days after Christmas was the big one. It was his first $1,000 a day in profit. Pretty crazy for just 4 months!

So, literally the one million dollar question is “How can I do this too?”

Well you’ve come to the right place because I’m about to spill the beans like your neighborhood Karen does to the cops.

Step #1 - Turn ChatGPT into J.K. Rowling

ChatGPT is useful but only if you know how to use it. Get familiar by reading their user guides and learn how to use this tech to your advantage!

When Popelas wrote his first book it was terrible. It’s not as easy as prompting ChatGPT to “write me this book”... but it’s close! Let me explain.

You don’t need to write the outline or most of the content in the book. You just need the right prompts.

To get the outline of your book use Google Trends and Pinterest Trends to find strong niches (like Keto Diets or Self-Care) and input this prompt:

This is what it will spit out:

Then you need ChatGPT to write each chapter of your book. That prompt will look something like:

You’ll get back something along the lines of:

You’ll do this for each chapter in your outline.

*Make sure to tell ChatGPT any qualifiers in the prompt such as:

• What style you want it in. Have a specific author you want the AI to write like? Tell it!

• How long you want the book to be

• What tone you want the book to be in (funny, serious, genuine, all of the above)

• How you want the reader to feel after every chapter

This part is really up to you and your creativity.

ChatGPT will soon generate images as well with DALLE-3 but for now you can use MidJourney! Popelas doesn’t use any pictures in his e-books but I think they are useful depending on your topic.

Step #2 Create and run ads

This is virtually Popelas’ only expense. The only other costs he pays for are ChatGPT 4 and a proofreader he hired online.

Popelas only uses Pinterest ads to market his books. Think about all the untapped potential out there - Facebook, TikTok, Google, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, etc.

For setting up Pinterest ads watch Tutorials on YouTube - here’s a good one!

These ads bring me to the next step.

Step #3 Create a banger landing page

Those ads you created are going to direct buyers to your landing page. This is where you’ll sell people on why they should buy your e-book. You’ll highlight everything to entice the potential buyer to buy your e-book or bundle.

Your landing page will be the source for almost all your income. If you’re getting a high bounce rate (70-80%) it means you have a landing page issue.

Popelas says “It’s almost impossible to sell if you don’t have a landing page”... so it’s gotta look professional.

One of my friends is actually insane at web design (he’s a software engineer for a Fortune 100 company) and does accept some adhoc projects on the side sometimes. It obviously won’t be free but lmk if you’re interested and I can ask.

And if you’re not a techy person and want to DIY - follow these steps:

1. Buy your domain off a site like GoDaddy (if you can find a .com for cheap that’s the best! If not, just use a .co)

2. Setup a professional email - this costs $6/mo with Google

3. Choose which website platform you want to use. Popelas uses Typedream and links to his Whop store page (so users are directed to his Typedream landing page from his ad and when they click “Buy” it redirects them to Whop)

Alright, now you’ve got the steps! Here are some quick fire follow-ups from ya boy:

What about competition?
There’s a huge market for this. Popelas is only marketing on Pinterest, the 15th largest user platform with only 465 million users. Facebook has 2.9 billion.. I know where I’d try this.

• Popelas has made ~$400k in profit.

• He posted his business on a marketplace and got an offer for $930k, which blew his mind! Now he’s working with an investor who is buying 40% of this book brand and is building another!

• His profit margin is around 70-80%. The only expenses are ads, his proofreader, and software tools.

• To create a full book it costs around $3-$5

• Popelas doesn’t see the market anywhere close to saturated yet. He thinks that will happen in a few years and if you act now your brand will already have so much recognition it won’t matter. This is why you have to act now if you want to do this!

More Helpful Links

• Book Creation Tutorial on Popelas’ YouTube channel

• FAQ’s and the tools he uses in his Discord channel

Hope you enjoyed this one cause I sure did! Let me know your thoughts in the comments section of the newsletter!

Are you looking to start investing in stocks, and build wealth?

Public is by far the BEST place to start. I’ve been using them for over 2 years now and they make investing in stocks sooo easy. My favorite feature is what they call “social investing” where you can see what other rich and smart people are buying and buy the SAME exact thing. Removing any guesswork!

• They have no fees

• You can buy fractional shares, so you can buy portions of a stock for as little as $1

• The simplest and easiest app design out there

AND if you sign up using this link and deposit just $1 and send us a screenshot we’ll send you $20 on us :) (just reply to this email!)

MEME OF THE DAY 😂 

HIT THE INBOX OF 30K+ ENTREPRENEURS

Advertise with Work “After” Work to get your brand in front of business owners and freelancers. Our subscribers are highly motivated to make money and are always looking for their next interesting product or tool that can help in the journey. Get in touch today.

That's all I got for ya today folks!!

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.