Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Making your first $1,000 online is a four-step ladder, not one big leap: prove you can accept a payment for $1, pre-sell an unbuilt product to reach $10, sell that same product to ten people for $100, then trade people for price to close the last $900.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

A complete beginner who has never made a single dollar online and wants concrete sequential steps rather than a big strategic plan.
Someone with an existing skill, hobby, or personal experience (sleep, fitness, relocation, parenting) who has never packaged it into something sellable.
A risk-averse or overthinking person who needs permission to start absurdly small instead of building a whole business before the first sale.
Someone with a small network of friends, family, or acquaintances willing to support a first attempt.

SKIP IF…

You've already made real money online and are past the 'first dollar' stage - this is a beginner on-ramp, not a scaling playbook.
You want a passive, no-outreach way to make money - every mission here runs on messaging real people directly.
You're looking for paid-ads or SEO strategy - the whole method runs on warm outreach to an existing network, not acquisition.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Ali Abdaal's 1K Ladder breaks making your first $1,000 online into four sequential missions instead of one big leap. Mission 1: sign up for a payment processor (Stan Store, Gumroad, Stripe, or PayPal) and ask a friend or family member to pay $1, just to prove you can accept money. Mission 2: use the Kickstarter method, pre-selling a $9 digital product before it exists, to reach $10. Mission 3: sell that same product to ten people to hit $100, which is where most people quit because it means messaging strangers instead of friends. Mission 4 trades volume for price: instead of finding 100 buyers for a $10 product, sell one-on-one coaching or higher-ticket help to fewer people, using a price-versus-people matrix to pick any combination that adds up to $1,000.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 01:29

01 · The $1K Ladder

Ali introduces the four-mission framework (make $1, then $10, then $100, then $1,000) built from a real six-week challenge he ran with his audience.

01:29 – 02:30

02 · Mission 1: Make Your First $1

The first mission is just proving you can accept a payment online - sign up for a processor and ask a friend or family member to support you for $1.

02:30 – 04:25

03 · Setting Up Your Payment Platform

Compares Stan Store (about $29/month, 0% fee) against Gumroad (free to join, 10% cut) and notes you'll also need a Stripe or PayPal account underneath either one.

04:25 – 08:03

04 · Getting Your First $1 Payment

Real student screenshots of first-dollar sales, a sponsor segment for the AI content-repurposing tool Stanley in the middle, then the reminder that this single payment is what unlocks the next mission.

08:03 – 09:28

05 · Mission 2: Make Your First $10

Introduces the Kickstarter method: price a not-yet-built digital product at $9 and pre-sell it to one person before creating anything.

09:28 – 13:27

06 · Digital Product Ideas and Real Examples

Walks through several students' actual $9 pre-order products (an endurance guide, a Dubai relocation ebook, a sleep-and-stress action book) and their real, sometimes underwhelming, first sales.

13:27 – 16:17

07 · Mission 3: Make Your First $100

To hit $100 you sell the same $9 product to ten people instead of one - which means messaging people outside your immediate circle, and where most students in the challenge got stuck.

16:17 – 16:57

08 · Getting Over the Fear of Selling

Student quotes describing the anxiety of posting and asking for money publicly, and the near-universal report that nobody actually judged them for it.

16:57 – 21:10

09 · Mission 4: Make Your First $1,000

The final $900 comes from trading people for price using a price-vs-people matrix, most often by selling one-on-one coaching or expertise-based sessions instead of a cheap scalable product.

21:10 – 21:30

10 · Going Beyond $1,000

Ali closes by noting the path to $100,000 looks different from the path to $1,000, and points to another video for that next stage.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

The 1K Ladder splits making your first $1,000 online into four sequential missions - $1, $10, $100, then $1,000 - so a beginner never has to solve the whole problem at once.
Signing up for a payment processor is the real first hurdle of online entrepreneurship, not building a product - most people quit before they ever have a way to accept money.
Gumroad charges no monthly fee but takes a 10% cut of every sale, while Stan Store charges about $29/month and 0% - the right choice depends on whether you fear losing money or losing a recurring bill.
The Kickstarter method means selling a product before it exists: price it, pitch it as a pre-order, and only build it once someone has actually paid.
One creator made about $120 from a pre-order digital product before writing a single word of it, then spent a week building what he'd already sold.
Selling the same $9 product to ten people is where most beginners quit, because it forces messaging strangers instead of the friends and family who supported the first sale out of loyalty.
To reach $1,000 you can multiply price or multiply people: sell one $1,000 offer to one person, a $500 offer to two, or a $10 product to 100 - same target, four different paths.
One-on-one coaching is the fastest way past $100 because it converts existing expertise into hourly-rate income without needing a scalable audience first.
You don't need to be a professional expert to sell coaching - you only need to be a few steps ahead of the person you're helping.
A recurring pattern across every student's story: the emotional cost of asking for money peaks right after the first sale goes public, not before it.
Most early sales in the challenge came entirely from warm outreach to friends and family - converting a true stranger was universally described as the hardest milestone.

Takeaway

Four small missions beat one big leap.

THE 1K LADDER

The 1K Ladder turns 'make money online' into four small, sequential missions - prove you can take a payment, pre-sell a cheap product, sell it to ten people, then trade people for price to close the last $900.

01The $1K Ladder

Making your first $1,000 online breaks into four sequential missions - $1, $10, $100, $1,000 - so you build the skill and the confidence one small step at a time instead of trying to solve the whole thing at once.

02Mission 1: Make Your First $1

The entire goal of mission one is proving you have a working way to accept money online - the amount doesn't matter, the mechanism does.
Asking a friend or family member to 'support your business' for $1 is a legitimate first mission, not a gimmick - several students described it as genuinely emotional.

03Setting Up Your Payment Platform

Stan Store costs about $29/month with no transaction cut, while Gumroad is free to join but takes roughly 10% of every sale - pick based on whether you're more afraid of a recurring bill or of losing a cut of future revenue.
You also need a Stripe or PayPal account underneath whichever storefront you choose, and Stripe isn't available in every country, so check the accepted-country list before committing.

04Getting Your First $1 Payment

The friction of signing up for a merchant account is the real gatekeeper of online entrepreneurship - most people never get past this step because opening a payment account feels intimidating, not because the business idea is hard.
You don't need to register a business to accept your first few payments in most countries - that becomes relevant only once you cross a real revenue threshold.

05Mission 2: Make Your First $10

The Kickstarter method means pricing and pitching a digital product before you've built it, then only building it once someone has actually paid for the pre-order.
Telling buyers upfront that it's a pre-order with a delivery window (for example, seven days) keeps the approach honest rather than a bait-and-switch.

06Digital Product Ideas and Real Examples

Nearly every example product came from something the seller already had direct experience with - insomnia, relocating abroad, a hobby - packaged into a PDF, ebook, or worksheet.
A pre-order sale to one supportive stranger or acquaintance is enough to validate that a $9 product idea is worth actually building.
Selling before building means an idea only has to survive a handful of days between the first pre-order and the delivery deadline, not months of speculative production.

07Mission 3: Make Your First $100

Reaching $100 requires selling the same product to roughly ten people, which is where most participants got stuck because it means reaching past friends and family into looser networks - group chats, LinkedIn, Instagram.
Multiple students who hit $100 reported that every sale still came from warm outreach, and that converting a true stranger was the part they hadn't cracked yet.

08Getting Over the Fear of Selling

The recurring lesson from students who pushed through mission three: the thing you want is on the other side of the exact thing you're avoiding, and there's no way around actually doing it.
Every student who worried about being judged for posting or asking for money reported the same outcome afterward - virtually no one they knew actually reacted negatively.

09Mission 4: Make Your First $1,000

$1,000 is just a price times a number of people, so the same target can be hit by selling one $1,000 offer to one person, a $500 offer to two, or a $10 product to 100 - pick the combination that fits the audience you actually have.
One-on-one coaching or paid Zoom sessions were the most common way students closed the remaining $900, because it converts existing expertise directly into income without needing a large audience or a scalable product first.
You don't need formal expertise to sell coaching - being a few steps ahead of the person you're helping is enough, the same logic behind informal tutoring.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

The 1K Ladder: A four-mission framework for making your first $1,000 online: $1, then $10, then $100, then $1,000, each mission unlocking the skill needed for the next.
Kickstarter method: Selling a product as a pre-order before it's been built, using the payment as proof of demand and the delivery deadline as the reason to actually build it.
Price vs. people matrix: A simple grid showing that any revenue target can be reached by trading off how much you charge against how many people you sell to.
Stan Store: A subscription storefront (roughly $29/month) for selling digital products and services with no per-sale cut.
Gumroad: A free-to-join platform for selling digital products that instead takes roughly a 10% cut of every transaction.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

02:47toolStan Store ↗

02:59toolGumroad ↗

03:20toolStripe ↗

03:41toolPayPal ↗

06:08toolStanley (AI content repurposing tool) ↗

09:01toolCustom GPT - product idea coach ↗

10:35channelLifestyle Business newsletter (1K Challenge updates) ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

16:40

“There is no escape from doing the thing.”

blunt, standalone line about avoidance→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

03:50

“This friction is a gate that holds so many people back.”

names the real obstacle in one line→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

17:17

“You can sell one product for $1,000 to one person, or you could sell a $10 thing to 100 people.”

states the entire pricing framework in one sentence→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

02:17

“I made my first dollar on the internet when I was like 12 years old... and that was my gateway drug into entrepreneurship.”

personal origin story with a punchy metaphor→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

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See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphoranalogystory

In this video, we're going to break down the 1K ladder for the step -by -step approach to make your first $1 ,000 online. If you actually just follow the instructions in this video step -by -step, then I guarantee this will help you start your journey to entrepreneurship, and you might even make $1 ,000 from actually just following the advice in this free YouTube video.

Now, in case we haven't met, hello, my name is Ali. I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur. I've been documenting my journey of making money on the internet since 2017 when I was a broke -ass medical student at Cambridge University.

And a few months ago, we ran a thing for our audience called the 1K Challenge, where we had loads of people all around the world join a six -week challenge to attain to make the first $1 ,000. A lot of them said that the experience of actually making the first dollar, the first $10, the first $100 was completely life -changing.

So the whole idea behind this journey from zero to $1 ,000 is not that you're suddenly gonna get rich off of $1 ,000. The point of it is to give you the baby steps to teach you the skills of independent income generation from you actually doing it rather than just watching videos about it and hoping for the best. In this video, we're gonna break down exactly how to make your first $1 ,000 online, hopefully over the next 30 days.

Even if you've never made money online before and even if you don't have an audience that you can sell stuff to. Now there's lots of different methods for making your first $1 ,000 on the internet, but the one that we like to teach to our students, I think of it as the 1K ladder. And it's based on four missions.

Mission number one is to make your first $1. mission number two is to make your first ten dollars mission number three is to make your first one hundred dollars and you can see where this is going mission number four is to make your first one thousand dollars and the reason i like to go in this sort of step -by -step mission -based fashion is because it allows a beginner to the world of entrepreneurship to dip their toes in one small step at a time all right so let's start with mission number one making your first one dollar online now the execution of mission number one is really straightforward all you basically need is a way to accept payments on the internet and you just need to send a link to someone and ask them to support your business for just one dollar this is the very first thing we got all of our students to do as part of the 1k challenge literally You just need to sign up for a payment processor and you just need to send a link to your friends being like, hey, will anyone support my entrepreneurship journey?

It's just a dollar and some people will pay you money. For example, we've got Marcy who said, today is one of the best days of my life. I didn't think that $1 could bring tears to my eyes.

Just mission one for me, but it's already changed my life because I will not be the same again. We've got Sydney who said, they weren't kidding about this being emotional either. The first dollar brought tears to my eyes.

And then we've got Luca who said, it might seem small, but for me, this is huge. That $1 represents action, commitment and proof that I'm on the next move. I'm beyond excited, full of energy and ready to take on what's next.

These are the sorts of feelings that happen. once you make your first dollar on the internet. For me, I made my first dollar on the internet when I was like 12 years old, when I did like a freelance web design project for some dude I met over the internet.

And that completely changed my life and was my gateway drug into entrepreneurship. So how do you actually make your first dollar online? Well, as we talked about, you basically sign up for a payment provider that you can use to send a link to family and friends and you can ask them to support your business for a dollar.

Stan Store is generally the one that I recommend for complete beginners getting started with making money online. We have like an affiliate deal, free trial type 30 day thing with them. So if you want a free trial, there'll be a link somewhere down below.

low. Stan's pricing is around $29 a month, right? So if you are serious about actually making money on the internet, I'd recommend signing up for Stan.

It's sort of like Shopify, but for like selling online products primarily. But if you are in fact just dipping your toes into the world of entrepreneurship, you can sign up for a platform like Gumroad. which does not have any monthly fees, but they do take a 10 % cut of any transactions you make.

And so for some of our students who are taking this seriously and who have some disposable income, $29 a month is absolutely nothing. And so you just sign up for Stan. But for others of our students who are like terrified about the thought of losing money and don't want that like monthly subscription going out of their pocket, they sign up to Gumroad and they're okay with just giving away 10 % of their transaction volume.

In addition to signing up with one of these things, you will either need a Stripe account or a PayPal account. Now Stripe is accepted in a bunch of different countries. This is the list of countries that Stripe is accepted in.

And so that would be my recommendation. But if you are not in one of these countries, then Stripe is not yet accepted in your payment region. And you can probably sign up to PayPal, which is accepted in like almost every country on earth.

But this is where we get the first hurdle of entrepreneurship. There is some level of friction associated with actually signing up for a merchant account that lets you receive pins. But trust me, you want to push through the friction of the process because this is how you get started with making money on the internet.

You need a way for people to actually be able to pay you. And the reason when we were doing the 1K challenge, we made this the very first mission is because this friction is a gate that holds so many people back. Just literally the logistical path of signing up for an account for Stripe.

stops people for years for like even thinking about making money on the internet because it seems scary it seems hard it's like oh my god do i have to like register a business and stuff you probably do not have to register a business in most countries you can probably just make some money on the internet if you really wanted to and then once you get to a certain revenue threshold at that point you think about registering a business honestly i would just take your situation ask chat gpt it'll actually give you very reasonable financial advice on this so the idea is step number one you sign up for a payment provider step number two you sign up for a platform like stan or gumro that lets you sell stuff and you create a product called something like support my business and you price it at $1.

And then you go to your friends and family and you say, hey, mom, hey, dad, hey, spouse. This is kind of random, but I am dipping my toes into the world of entrepreneurship. Please, can you support my business for $1?

And then they'll be able to pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay or their credit card or whatever. And now congratulations, you've got $1 into your account. Now, the way we ran this in the 1K challenge is that you had to submit a proof screenshot that you've actually received at least one dollar before we unlocked mission number two which is to make your first ten dollars we sort of did this progressive unlock thing and our students really appreciated having this progressive unlock because it literally forces you to actually take action obviously we don't have progressive unlock in this sort of video but if you're actually serious about making your first thousand dollars online and you don't yet have a way of accepting payments and you haven't yet made even a single dollar I really would recommend just pausing the video right now and doing that before you progress on with the video.

Because otherwise, this video is just going to be one of those other things. One of the other hundred videos that you've watched about how to make money on the internet and yet you still haven't actually made any money on the internet. So what we did is that we got our students to post about how they mission complete.

And we had an automation behind the scenes that as soon as someone posted mission complete with a screenshot, then it would unlock the next mission that they could take part in. For example, we've got Gina, who's an intensive care nurse in Toronto, whose partner wired her like the $1, $2. whatever and this is the screenshot where she made this is the revenue screenshot from one of our students in greece whose husband wired her that one dollar and so she's made a dollar online as evidenced by her stripe account we've got this guy called kevin who's a high school student whose mom and one of his friends supported like this one dollar support my business type situation just receiving that one dollar and like going through the friction of setting up the payment account is like genuinely life -changing for people so if you haven't yet done it i would 100 % recommend so that is mission number one Congratulations, you are now a one -figure entrepreneur.

All right, so before we move on to mission number two, there is one thing that often trips people up along this ladder, which is at some point, you actually have to tell people about the thing that you might be selling. And that is where a lovely little tool comes in that my team and I have been using for the last several months.

It is called Stanley, and they are very kindly sponsoring this video. So Stanley is basically your AI head of content. What it does is that it connects to your LinkedIn, your Instagram, your X account, your threads account, and it learns how you tend to write on those platforms.

And then it helps you come up with new ideas for content that could resonate with your audience. helps you create first drafts of the posts themselves. And the thing that we use it personally for is repurposing.

So I will record YouTube videos, I'll write my newsletter manually, and I do all of these live sessions for a lifestyle business academy that we then have transcripts of. But then if we want to take the stuff that I've already written or said, and we want to just sort of package it up into different formats, that previously used to be a manual process involving a team member, like going through the transcript, figuring out what the key points are, turning it into an Instagram carousel on Canva.

But now we actually get Stanley to do most of the heavy lifting for this because he can just take the transcript and he can already create a first draft of a which saves my team quite a lot of time, which means all the team have to do is the quality control, making sure it's legit and then running it by me to make sure that this is actually a reasonable representation of what I actually believe.

And so for example, you can use this for carousels, which generates short punchy lines, and you can also use it to write whole long form LinkedIn posts or Twitter posts, for example, and that gives you the content in more of a fleshed out way. Obviously I still go in there and change a little bit of stuff, but it's super nice having the first draft to be able to edit rather than having to write it from scratch.

The other cool thing about Stanley is you can actually just straight up text him. So if for example, I'm out on a walk, I can literally send an iMessage to their Stanley phone number.

And so if I've got an idea somewhere, I'll just text that idea to Stanley and then Stanley will already have a first draft in my voice based on how I write on social media platforms that will give me more inspiration for what I actually wanna say in that post. So if you're into this whole repurposing thing and if you spend absolutely ages rewriting the same idea that you've sort of said in one format and trying to rewrite it for other formats, then a tool like Stanley can save you a load of time.

If you'd like to check it out, there's a link down below and thank you so much Stanley for sponsoring the video and let's get back to it. Next, we come to mission number two, the Kickstarter method. You put a product on Kickstarter and people give you money for a product that is not yet created.

They essentially pre -order the product. And Kickstarter is a good way for entrepreneurs and businesses to validate a product idea before actually building it. And so basically for mission number two, we are applying the Kickstarter method and we are selling a product for $9.

This can be any kind of digital product you want. We're selling it for $9, but crucially, we are not yet building the product. We are just trying to get one person to pay us $9 as a pre -order for a product that we have not yet created.

And then obviously we tell them it's a pre -order. And then once we get the money, at that point, we spend a week or however long it takes creating the product. And we send it to them with our thanks for them supporting our business.

Again, you go on Stan's store, you create a new product, you figure out what the product is going to be. You whip up the sales page, you price it in $9. And then you send the link around to friends and family and see if anyone wants to buy this thing or pre -order this thing before you actually build it.

And by the way, if you're struggling with ideas for what this $9... digital product is going to be, don't worry about it. We have made a custom GPT just for you.

Well, it's not actually just for you. It was actually for our students in the 1K challenge, but that's long gone now. And so you just talk to the custom GPT.

It'll ask you a bunch of questions about like your background, your experiences, your passions, et cetera, et cetera. And then it will give you a bunch of different ideas and it will even help you write the pre -order page or the sales page for your $9 product. So I don't have any ideas should absolutely not be an excuse and a reason for you to not take action on this thing where I'm literally handing it to you on a platter and not even asking you to pay any money for it.

So here are some examples of some of the products that our students in the 1K challenge made. For example, we have Mingyao. Mingyao is like an endurance runner or something.

And so he built this sort of three by three endurance focus formula pre -order thing. He says, when I published it in the morning and sent the link to a few friends, I had my doubts. But within the hour, I already had my first sale.

I thanked my supporter and kept busy for the rest of the day. I didn't check the income page until later in the evening. It's still a pre -order, but the response surprised me.

There's actually a demand for my offer. 16 people have put their trust in me. And the last count, it was approximately 120 US dollars.

So in Mingyao's case, he literally made his first $100 without having created the product yet because he just offered a pre -order link to his friends and family. And the friends and family were like, oh, this looks sick. Sign me up.

They paid him the $9. And then he spent a week like actually putting together the product and sending it out to them via email. And they were all happy.

And he was happy because he got the money and they were happy because they got the product and they got the chance to support a friend. We have this post from Grace. who made $10 from a digital product, what I created, your first 90 days in Dubai, an ebook on the rookie mistakes I made when I first moved and how you can avoid them.

It's everything you need to know before booking that ticket to buy. I'm sharing all of these as like real life examples of real people just like you who decided to try and take a leap and decided to actually try and make money on the internet. And no, I'm not trying to sell you any course on this thing.

uh the 1k challenge was like a one -off thing that we ran last year we might run again this year at some point so if you're interested in maybe joining you can sign up for my email list a video like this is kind of targeted at the complete beginner that's probably been thinking about starting a business for a while and trying to make money for a while but if you haven't yet taken that first step what i'm hoping is by seeing these kinds of stories of real people it will inspire you to actually take action don't wait for us to do the challenge before you actually take action on this if you are at this point in the video anyway grace's biggest fear going in that i wouldn't get a single sale at one point i even thought about buying it myself i'm glad i didn't What actually happened, I told myself I only needed one sale to start.

So I pitched it to my mom and she bought it. Did Grace's mom really want to spend 90 days in Dubai? Probably not, but she did it to support her daughter.

And so her daughter now made $10 on the internet. Amazing. Obviously, pitching to your mom is not a viable business strategy for building your million dollar lifestyle business over the long term, but it is a great way to get started.

And again, the idea here is we're taking baby steps to make that first dollar, that first $10. Another example, this guy Tobias created this thing called the gentle boundary system. How it felt?

He felt excited and nervous. His biggest fear going into this was nobody would care. What happened?

Almost nobody cared. But after stressful days of rewriting my entire pre -order sales page over and over, I finally posted it on Instagram and almost immediately an old friend bought it. Turns out she just mainly wanted to support me, so I'm not sure it really proves there's a market there.

But hey, baby steps. It's all part of the process. Exactly.

This is 100 % true. You could just start a service -based business and just sell a $1 ,000 product to one person. But a lot of times, especially if you're a bit of an overthinker, especially if you like to do things right first time, and especially if you like, you know, a little bit more risk -averse, entrepreneurship can feel very scary if you just plunge into the deep end.

But it becomes very manageable if you just spend $1. and then nine and then another few and then another small steps here and there we've got alessandro who sold 18 days to better sleep and less stress we've got vicky who sold a guide to polycystic ovarian syndrome for women where her first sale came from a friend who recently got diagnosed they've got dominic who made a simple app that lets you organize folders on your mac we've got susan who made a 13 kg weight loss meal plan that she sold to her friends and family and so you can just see that a lot of these are just like random products where someone has taken a thing that they've done already or that they have some level of experience in, and they've packaged up their knowledge or their insights into either a notion template or a PDF or a worksheet or a mini app or, you know, super simple things like that.

Crucially, in mission number two, you are selling the product before you build it using the Kickstarter method. We had some of our students in the course being like, but isn't this a scam? Like, how can you possibly sell something before you build it?

I was like, well, it's only a scam if you're like misrepresenting it to people, right? You're telling them. I don't yet have this built, so this is a pre -order, but you'll get it within seven days.

And then once you get a sale, it gives you a good reason to actually build a product within the 70s, right? Easy enough. So at this point, we are one -figure entrepreneurs because we've asked friends to support us for a dollar.

And we are now two -figure entrepreneurs because $1 plus $9 equals $10. So you've now made $10 on the internet when you hadn't made any money on the internet before. This, again, is absolutely life -changing.

Now, mission number one and mission number two are really, really, really straightforward. Almost everyone in the challenge got through mission number one and mission number two. Mission number three is where things actually get hard because mission number three is you're going to take your $9 product, which you've now built because, right?

Because, you know, like someone pre -ordered it and then you built it within seven days by, I don't know, using whatever you needed to build it. You now have a product that you can actually sell. And so to become a three -figure entrepreneur, to make your first $100 online, you are going to sell this to 10 more people.

And so you need to find 10 people to buy your $9 product. This is where loads of students in our 1K challenge lost their minds because they were like, oh my God, I can't possibly find 10 people. You probably can because you can just message people that you know, your friends and family.

uh people in group chats if you have a network on linkedin you can post on linkedin you can post on your instagram stories you can post on like whatsapp groups for example we have a sue who says i can't believe i did it this one was hard because i pivoted and had to do two products but we did it the feeling is so surreal and i actually teared up a bit she made 113 dollars i asked what advice would you give someone struggling to reach the 100 mark she says reach out to people i know it's intimidating and getting a no is soul crushing But oddly enough, once that happens, you get over it super quickly and it will no longer matter.

Completely agree. Next, we have Omar, who did this alchemy type product. Turn everyday items into 10 unforgettable experiences that spark curiosity and connection with your child or something like that.

So he's like a parent and so he's doing this sort of parenting product. He said, I've hit the $100 mark and become a three -figure entrepreneur. How it feels?

Honestly, it's a bit mixed. I'm proud of the consistency, but it's been tough. All my sales came from warm outreach to friends and family, unsurprisingly.

I haven't yet sold to a stranger and that's been the hardest part. Seeing views on clicks, but no unknown buyers. Still, I'm pushing on.

Welcome to the emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship. Advice for others. Just keep doing things and learning.

If you can't get a warm outreach sale, it might meet a rethink or it might just be a niche audience thing. For me, I'm still aiming for that unknown first unknown customer and we'll celebrate it when it happens. Then we have Vernon.

Vernon had a cool product. What was Vernon's product again? I think it was this like mini guide on how to speak up at work.

He says, I'm blown away. I completely created my offer a few days ago and started watching Mission 3 videos over the weekend. I got to the sending messages lesson and made sure I emailed at least five people.

In the end, I shared it in a few group chats. I sent a few one -on -one DMs. I posted on LinkedIn and even logged into Facebook for the first time in ages and shared a post about it there.

It definitely helped that I managed to make three sales and doing Mission 2, but I've reached the goal in less than 24 hours. We asked Vernon, what was the most difficult part of Mission 3, i .e. trying to get 10 sales for your $9 product?

I was completely and utterly unstressed about posting, very, very relaxed. But now more sales have come in? Holy shit.

The stress levels have increased beyond all recognition. Now I'm more worried that everyone will think the product sucks. Plot twist, it sort of kind of will because it's my first digital product and that's okay, wonderful.

And that bugs me because some of the people who have bought aren't just professional peers, they're actual peers. What was the most useful thing from the course so far? One of the many recurring themes from all of the different calls, Ali's calls, the expert session, the freedom calls was, the thing you want is on the other side of the thing that you are avoiding.

There is no escape from doing the thing. Nah. What advice would you give to someone struggling to reach the $100 mark?

Similar to the lesson I shared from your center. Are you sure you've told as many people as you possibly could about your offer? And don't worry about sharing or posting online.

The majority of people aren't even trying to achieve what we set out to do. Far fewer have stuck to it long enough to reach the goal. Don't let the reason we don't achieve our goals be that we were too worried about other people's opinions.

So super simple, right? For $1, you just like ask a friend to support you for $1. For $10, you just create a pre -order page for a $9 digital product.

And then for $100, you just try and sell it to 10 people. And yeah, this takes a little bit of a hustle. And like, this is, you know, the skill that you were - developing as an entrepreneur here is the skill of actually reaching out to people and trying to sell a thing and putting yourself out there on the line and this is really scary and if you haven't done it before it's even scarier and you're gonna think oh my goodness what are my colleagues gonna think what my friend's gonna think what's my family thing gonna think all these people are gonna laugh at me behind their back all the students we had in our challenge had those worries and then the ones that actually posted and did the thing and made the money they were like oh No one actually cared.

I was just massively overthinking and like over worrying about what the people think about me. And just no one gave a flying fuck, which is amazing. So liberating.

And that can be the way that you make money on the internet. So now we finally come to mission number four, which is the hard part. How do you go from 10 random people in your friends and family and network buying like a crappy $9 digital product to actually making $1 ,000 online?

Well, you got to basically make 900 more dollars. Now at this point, what I introduce people to in our little challenge is the Christ versus people. Matrix, shall we say.

So this is price and this is people. So let's say $1 ,000 just to keep the numbers around. How do you make $1 ,000?

Well, you can sell one product for $1 ,000 to one person, right? You can sell a $1 ,000 thing to a single person. Or you could sell a $500 thing to two people.

Easy enough. Or you could sell a $330 thing to three people. Or you could sell a $250 thing to four people.

or you could sell a $200 thing to five people, or you could sell a $10 thing to 100 people. And it's really hard selling, you know, if you thought selling your $10 digital product to nine people was hard, like good luck trying to sell it to 100. I think one of our students in the challenge actually managed to do that.

But she already had like 50 ,000 followers on Instagram. And so like, was able to just post on her Instagram and like 120 people bought her PDF thing. And she made $1 ,000.

Amazing. I suspect. you don't have 50 ,000 followers on Instagram.

So it's probably not the position that you're in. And so firstly, people's minds were absolutely blown by this very simple graph that like, if you want to make $1 ,000, there's actually, you know, it's just a case of like, how much are you charging and how many customers are you getting? And the way that we encourage people to make this $1 ,000 was basically to do one -on -one coaching, where you basically sell your time on a Zoom call and you become a sort of mini online coach for anything that you are an expert in or that you think that you're good at.

that other people might potentially be willing to pay for your expertise is. For example, this is a quote post from Kelsey. Hello, everyone.

I'm officially at £1 ,185, meaning I've completed the 1K challenge. Amazing. I freestyled a bit and quoted £400 for a 90 -minute coaching session with me or £1 ,500 for six 60 -minute sessions.

The £750 you see below is my first £1 ,500 client who agreed to pay in two installments. Amazing. This is the most I've ever made online after over 10 years of trying to make money online.

I'm so grateful for the skills I learned on this course. Interestingly, Kelsey then later joined our lifestyle business academy and she's actually recently quit her job and is now making tens of thousands of dollars online with this similar -ish kind of coaching offer. Then we had Susan.

OMG, I cannot believe it. With a week and a half left of the challenge, I've met the target of a thousand dollars. Five weeks ago, I was overthinking everything.

Scared of asking for money, scared of how I was going to do this alongside full -time employment, scared of posting on me talking to a camera on Instagram. But I was determined that I will put all my into it and do whatever Ali tells me to do. Thank God he didn't ask me to jump into a fire.

I made a decision that I will overrule my fear and doubt and just follow the instructions even when I didn't want to. I feel like I jumped off a cliff, massively out of my comfort zone at every stage and still out of my comfort zone, but I'm learning so much, including do it even when it makes you cringe. The Instagram posts, the asking for money, the follow -up emails, the first Zoom calls.

So in her case, the $1 ,000 consisted of sales of my $10 product, which was the meal plan, a couple of psychotherapy clients because she's a psychotherapist via the one -on -one Zoom call thing. and about five fitness clients that paid me £100 for a month's worth of accountability, including through Zoom calls, and for me to help them get started with weight loss.

Don't let your mind, your doubt, the self -fear stop you. So many times I've had to say to myself, I don't give a flying fuck I'm doing it anyway. I know you can all do it too.

Amazing. Then we have Aman who says, this feels unreal. I hit the 1K mark last night.

One month into the challenge, my mind is still expanding with what's possible. I put together a coaching package. I posted on LinkedIn and I did some shameless outreach.

One of these got a DM response. We hopped on a poll and now he's my first high -taker client for speaking coaching. Amon is good at public speaking and he was offering public speaking coaching to whoever wanted to buy it.

And he made his thousand dollars that way. And so the whole idea behind mission four is that instead of trying to sell a scalable digital product, you're taking that pre -existing expertise and you're offering tutoring sessions about it. Like I used to do private tutoring back in the day.

I was good at passing exams when I was in school. And so I helped younger kids. with their maths exam preparation and their physics preparation and stuff.

One of my friends was really good at the piano and so he offered piano tutoring back when we were kids. And so like, you know, this stuff is not hard, right? Like you already have a thing that you're good at or a series of things that you're good at.

There are people out there that will totally pay for you to be a mini sort of coach or teacher for them to help them out with the thing. You don't need to be an expert in the thing. You just need to be a couple of steps ahead of where they are.

And this is how a bunch of our students in the 1K challenge actually made their first $1 ,000. Again, if you have no idea what your expertise is, there's a link to the GPT down below. You can check it out.

And so there's no excuse for not doing this. But this is the 1K ladder. This is how you make your first $1 ,000 online.

Now, obviously, the way you make your first $1 ,000 is very different to the way that you might want to make your first $100 ,000. And so if you are interested in the step -by -step plan for how to actually make $100 ,000 on the internet, as well as just $1 ,000 on the internet, there's a video over here that breaks down the plan.

in the sort of step -by -step details. So check that out over there. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video.

Bye -bye.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Ali Abdaal opens by promising that following this video step by step could put a real $1,000 in your pocket, then backs it up with the actual four-mission ladder he ran with a group of real students, along with their actual screenshots, actual dollar amounts, and actual meltdowns along the way.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

01:29list

The 1K Ladder

Mission 1: make your first $1
Mission 2: make your first $10
Mission 3: make your first $100
Mission 4: make your first $1,000

Four sequential dollar-amount missions that turn 'make money online' into a series of small, provable steps instead of one abstract goal.

Steal forany beginner onboarding sequence where the real barrier is starting, not the eventual target amount

08:05concept

The Kickstarter method

Sell a digital product before it exists: price it, describe it clearly as a pre-order with a delivery window, and only build it once a real payment has landed.

Steal forvalidating any product idea without spending time building it first

17:37model