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Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

How to Make $10k/Month as a Writer - Nicolas Cole

👉 [Free live masterclass, Sat 21 Nov] Launch your online business by Christmas and land your first high-paying client by January →

Nicolas ColeguestAli Abdaalhost

Jun 27, 20242h 3mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Why Services Beat Products for Fast Monetization
Ali asks what people get wrong about making money as a writer. Nicolas Cole says writers wrongly think they need a huge following, and argues the fastest path is selling a service to one client rather than low-priced products or books that need volume.
- •Writers wrongly assume they need a million, or even 100,000, followers before monetizing
- •Digital products and books are priced low, so they require high volume
- •Ali says his book sells at roughly £1.50 a copy in royalties on a 15% rate
- •Finding one client who pays $3-5K is faster than going viral
- •Replacing a full-time income is the usual goal, and services get there fastest
Finding Your Information Advantage and Higher-Paying Clients
Using a role play of Ali as a 26-year-old junior doctor, Cole explains the information advantage: the knowledge you take for granted. He says to target affluent business clients rather than price-anchored markets like tutoring.
- •Your information advantage is what you know from your work that others don't
- •Fluency in an industry makes ghostwriting a fast path to monetization
- •Tutoring is price-anchored to low hourly rates and sold to students or parents
- •Biotech startups and pharma executives treat $5-10K as small money
- •Different people, and businesses especially, value money very differently
Undercharging and Learning to Value Money
Cole tells how he undercharged for years, including a $10K white paper where the client had been ready to pay three times as much. Ali shares his own invoice moment, and both discuss how comfort with spending and pricing is a skill that grows with resources.
- •Cole's $10K white paper pitch, where the client was prepared to pay triple
- •Ghostwriting students often can't say "five grand" out loud
- •Ali's $1,200 versus $5,000 invoice story shows how business money is valued differently
- •Cole says spending and investing in yourself is a skill, citing a $68,000 mastermind
- •Ali and Cole compare the growth in resources to leveling up in World of Warcraft
19:08 – 25:26
The ROI of Free Work
Cole argues beginners should do their first projects for free, treating it as a marketing cost. Free work removes friction and pays in experience, credibility, pattern recognition and network instead of cash.
- •Free work in the beginning is a marketing cost, not a loss
- •Pitching for $3K could take nine months, while free work can produce a client reference in a month
- •Getting paid in confidence and network can be worth more than $100 or $1,000
- •The skill is what matters, not the title or the money
- •Ali notes he gets many emails offering free work after the last episode
25:26 – 26:47
The Three Services Every Business Owner Needs
After the sponsor reads, Ali asks how to choose targets who can pay well. Cole says the digital shift means all business owners need content, an email list and a newsletter, and that picking one of these services for one client can replace a large part of your income.
- •There is far more opportunity than people realize, and most give up after one no
- •Business owners increasingly need to build on the internet
- •They want more text-based content, then video and audio
- •They need to move a rented audience to email, best done through educational email courses
- •A weekly newsletter then nurtures subscribers toward buying
- •One client paying three to five thousand dollars a month could replace around half of a full-time income
The Irresistible Offer Script and Warm Outreach
Cole walks through the pitch using a family friend's private practice as the example: anchor the problem first, then the solution, then the price. He says your niche is your network, you should start warm, and he introduces leaks and faucets.
- •Applying on Upwork or Fiverr gives away pricing power
- •Flip the power dynamic by educating the client on a problem they didn't know they had
- •Problem script, solution script, then the price
- •"In the beginning, your niche is your network" and warm leads come before cold
- •Leaks have the problem; faucets know others who do
- •Ask contacts if they know anyone who needs help
Educate, Don't Pitch: Tone, Energy and Abundance
Cole says outreach should read as free consulting rather than a sales pitch, and compares it to dating. He and Ali discuss tone, Looms, scarcity versus abundance, and why being a customer of the person you're pitching helps.
- •Talk in education rather than sales; the bottleneck is that people don't know their problem
- •Spammy scripted DMs fail, while a friendly tone works
- •Abundance versus scarcity energy matters more than whether you're actually full
- •Ali contrasts a chill applicant with one who clamored for a job
- •Being a customer of someone's product greatly raises the odds they read your pitch
Outreach Volume, AI Shortcuts and the Coffee Shop Test
Cole says most people quit after a few attempts, recommending a list of 50 warm contacts or 100 researched cold ones. He argues you can't automate what you haven't done and offers the coffee shop test for messages.
- •Start warm with 50 leaks and faucets; going cold means 100 quality, researched people
- •If 100 people all say no, you have a bottleneck to find and fix
- •Skipping the manual learning with AI makes the shortcut the longer road
- •Cole uses ankle weights as a metaphor for doing things by hand first
- •Coffee shop test: could you say the message out loud?
- •Cole says outreach channels aren't dead; they work for people who do the work
Hybrid Agencies and Blending Services with Digital Products
Cole says his biggest mistake at his ghostwriting agency was continuing to scale services instead of adding digital products once the business ran itself. He describes the flywheel in which products educate customers who then hire the agency.
- •His first agency reached about $180K a month in 18 months
- •At $60-80K a month with a small team he and his co-founder were working an hour or two a day
- •Services scale linearly with headcount, while digital products have no marginal cost
- •A mix like $60K services and $40K products is far more profitable
- •Product buyers who find it harder than expected convert into service clients
Pricing and Pitching a Done-for-You Video Agency
Ali floats an idea for an agency producing talking-head videos for businesses. Cole recommends a brand channel with multiple presenters, selling a library of long-tail content rather than channel growth, a wide gap between price tiers, and targeting mid-sized funded companies.
- •Frame the channel around a category with several contractor presenters, not one person
- •Set format rules up front to cut subjective edits from many stakeholders
- •Sell an asset and outcome library anchored to long-tail searches, not volume or follower growth
- •Widen price tiers, for example $5K a month for small clients and $50K for enterprise
- •Target companies at roughly $10-100M, found via Crunchbase, and start with your network
- •Cole says one of his agency's biggest mistakes was a $5K-a-month top offering
Why Keep Building: Growth, Tipping Points and Not Selling
Ali asks why Cole still cares about growing his business. Cole says he wants to know he can reach eight figures, objects to quoting lifetime revenue as annual revenue, and says he prefers cash-generating businesses to selling.
- •He wants to prove he can reach an eight-figure business
- •He dislikes people citing lifetime revenue as annual revenue
- •Ali compares the pursuit to playing a video game on very hard difficulty
- •Growth tipping points can make a business less profitable and less fun
- •Cole prefers owning cash-generating machines to a one-off sale
Traditional vs. Self-Publishing: Does the Math Work?
Ali describes his Penguin deal and what the publisher delivered. Cole argues most of that can be hired externally, that traditional publishing mainly offers status and access to the New York Times list, and that owning a library with 100% royalties often wins in the long run.
- •Ali credits Penguin with 36 translation deals, bookstore presence and some media placements
- •Cole notes editors and designers can be hired freelance and bookstore placement depends on author leverage
- •Ali says his audience drove the sales that got the book on the list
- •Cole's napkin math suggests self-publishing royalties can outpace an advance
- •Cole cites predatory contract terms he was offered and says he'd stress-test taking money upfront
Finding Feel-Good Productivity and the Perfect Book Title
Cole asks how Ali came up with the book's concept. Ali recounts the path from The Productivity Equation to Feel-Good Productivity, then both discuss why the title should come first and how a category-defining title works.
- •The book began as The Productivity Equation and was rejected by US editors as boring
- •A proposal consultant pushed Ali to boil it down to making everything fun
- •Ali read the papers himself and landed on the broaden-and-build theory
- •The title came about two and a half years in, forcing a retrofit of the second half
- •Cole's title formula combines a category differentiator with a subtitle that promises a result
Owning the Feel-Good Category and Expanding the Library
Ali asks whether to stay the productivity guy or expand. Cole says to own the category, not the person, citing Ryan Holiday with stoicism, and to extend into adjacent ideas like feel-good discipline while testing them with smaller books first.
- •Grow the category itself, and let the association with you follow
- •Brand extension into distant categories is risky, so choose adjacent ones like time management or discipline
- •Pair words that don't usually go together, such as feel-good discipline
- •Make later books conceptually distant enough from the first, as with Mark Manson's similar books
- •Test ideas through e-books, videos and threads before a bigger book deal
Hybrid Publishing and Cole's Self-Publishing Numbers
Ali asks about hybrid publishing, which Cole dislikes as a hedge. Cole shares his self-published results, including roughly a quarter million dollars from his book, and a missed audiobook opportunity.
- •Cole calls hybrid publishing a hedge between two games
- •His self-published book has earned roughly a quarter million dollars
- •About 20% of sales go through his own site at 100% revenue
- •An advance back in 2020 would have been only about $20-50K
- •He skipped the audiobook and estimates it could have added about another $250K
Overcoming Self-Doubt and Writing in Immersive Sprints
Cole asks how Ali dealt with his inner critic while writing. Ali describes imposter syndrome, support from a coach, editor and agent, and applying feel-good principles to the process, then explains why immersive sprints beat daily short sessions.
- •Public reviews made a book feel scarier than YouTube videos
- •Ali compared his first drafts to Dan Pink's finished work and doubted his credentials at 26
- •A writing coach, external editor and agent gave emotional support
- •He made writing fun with a walking pad, Hyde Park dictation and a team retreat
- •Week-long sprints avoided the startup cost of re-loading the project; editing works better in small doses

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