What should I do to grow my thumbnail design business and reach $5K/month?
If you want to hit $1,000 a month with thumbnails, understand that most of the world charges between $20 and $50 per thumbnail - let's use $40 as an average. That means you need to sell about 25 thumbnails a month to reach $1,000. To get to $5,000, you'd need roughly 125 thumbnails monthly, or find clients willing to pay more. The math is simple: 25 thumbnails at $40 each equals $1,000. You can sell them as one-offs or bundle them into packages; 25 is close to the number of posts a daily creator makes, so a single client paying $40 per thumbnail for 25 thumbnails gets you there. The real challenge isn't the math - it's acquiring thumbnail clients. A simple way to build a pipeline is to create thumbnails for creators you admire, then reach out and say, 'I made these for you - I follow your work and have been watching you for a while.' Don't do that for me, though; I'm automating everything and don't see value there personally. But that's what I'd do, and it's how I've worked with my thumbnail designers: they've reached out to me with batches of thumbnails and packaging, and we've collaborated successfully.
I use AI to take the transcript of this video and generate candidate title and thumbnail options. I then apply constraints—no more than seven characters per line (so it doesn’t overflow my face) and exactly three lines—and select the best options from a training set of reasonable thumbnails that must confirm the title. The system then creates three thumbnails, we split‑test them, and pick the winner. It’s fully automated; I let the market choose high performers. The value is that I can produce a ton of content very quickly with zero post‑ or pre‑production—I just show up, answer questions, and deliver value. On the business side: we’ve hit about $500 K this month (still waiting for final numbers, but on track). We’ve landed several big affiliate partnerships that are crushing expectations and bringing in far more money than anticipated. There’s also a major insurance client in the works worth roughly $2 M per year—we’ll confirm once payment arrives. I run an annual promo for Maker School; while the MRR shown excludes annuals, the actual cash flow each month is higher because I front‑load the annual payments. Selling around 40‑50 annual spots at $1 104 each adds roughly $50 K, which combined with community revenue (~$280 K) puts us in a strong position. On a lighter note: the smoke from the Canadian wildfires is clearing a bit, it’s windy, and I was able to go outside briefly. I paused my daily updates after realizing we’d already hit the $500 K milestone in just over a month—a testament to consistent daily effort. My thumbnail system is “goated”: I tested many styles (cartoon, 3D, pixel) and found the 3D approach consistently outperforms, backed by AB‑test data. Faceless thumbnails are interesting too—when I use my face, growth stays steady; when I hide it, I see occasional double bounces, likely due to timing effects. Looking ahead, I’m inviting all the Maker School winners I’ve worked with to jump on calls like the one with Justin (which was rough around the edges—I love the guy but messed up some questions). My plan is to run many interviews and, through sheer volume, make the 100th one the best interview you’ve ever seen. On a personal note: I saw the Odyssey with my girlfriend; I’d expected a political rage‑fest over Elliot Page being cast as Achilles, but the film turned out to be a solid movie despite the American accents—totally fine. The whole experience reminded me how much online outrage is just stupid rage bait. Finally, regarding the Canadian wildfires: they’re tragic but also reveal potential upsides—melting permafrost could unlock arable land for new communities, assuming we improve forest management and stop burning the country down each year. I’m not looking to become a political commentator; that was just a joke. Thanks for watching—I’ll see you tomorrow.
Can I hit $5,000 a month with one or two clients? Absolutely. It's straightforward to do this. Hitting $5,000 a month with a client is almost the entry line to becoming a real agency owner. In the case of the person who asked this, I've had clients who paid me $20,000 to $30,000 a month for services. It's very straightforward and relatively simple: you simply need to provide a multiple on the money they are paying you. If someone is paying you $20,000 a month, as long as you're providing them $100,000, $150,000, or $200,000 a month in comparative value, they will happily pay you that amount. The reason this is difficult for people to understand is that it's at scales and scopes most find unimaginable. I first grasped this idea when my best friend Zach started working with a highly scaling content offer (some sort of automation offer). At the time I wasn't having much success, while Zach was decimating me in every way. I asked him how much money he made with this stuff; he said he made $45,000 last month. I asked how many clients he had, guessing 45, and he said he had one client paying him $45,000. I couldn't understand it because I had no experience with that. The reality is Zach was probably underpaid for the value he provided; realistically he should have been paid two and a half to three times that, given he was making the company millions per month. When you start thinking more about the value you provide and less about the sticker‑shock price, and if you can convince a client that this is true, you start being able to earn, quite honestly, unimaginable amounts of money from the right people who get it.
Your monthly budget varies mainly with outreach volume. Many people find sending 10 Loom videos daily overwhelming, but I never considered it hard when starting out. Think of it like coal miners who just accept mining as their job—your baseline for effort. Not everyone does 10 Upwork applications daily (my month‑one recommendation); we usually taper to 3‑2 per day later. Upwork connects average about $3 each; after boosting and view‑rate adjustments, assume roughly $4 per day if you send four applications daily, totaling ~$240 monthly if done 20 days a month. The idea is that by the time you’ve spent that amount, you’ll likely have landed a client who covers at least that cost, ideally 5‑10×. Add fixed beginner costs of $100‑$250 for Upwork. You’ll need a cold‑email system: I recommend services costing $55‑$60 for mailboxes/domains in month one, then $35/month thereafter (e.g., Instantly, Smartlead). Lead‑scraping services run about $1‑$1.50 per thousand leads; targeting 3,000 leads adds ~$5/month. Putting it together: ~$40 for cold‑email, $50‑$60 for mailboxes/domains, and $100‑$250 for Upwork connects, giving a realistic monthly range of $350‑$400 for a total beginner doing moderate outreach. The biggest variable is how much outreach you actually do.
You need to charge more, proportional to the value you provide. If you solve a $10,000-per-month money need, you can reasonably charge 30%–50% of that, i.e., $3,000–$5,000 per month. From the business owner's perspective, this is a simple ROI: hiring you should yield about a 3x return, acknowledging some uncertainty between the $3,000 fee and the $10,000 value. You can charge a proportion of the value delivered. Focus on profitability by charging significantly more for your services. On the expense side, avoid accruing unnecessary liabilities. Many who sell cold email or lead generation merely wrap a cold email product with minor added value and then bundle in unnecessary costs like email inboxes, platform fees, and domains. Instead, have the client pay for some of those costs so you're not left liable if you don't deliver results or fulfill guarantees. For example, one consulting client guaranteed a client $10,000 but only sought payment after delivering that amount; due to a long sales cycle, the client didn't receive the $10,000 for four or five months, while the consultant's ongoing email costs were $600–$700 per month, totaling $2,400–$2,800 over that period, yielding a 76% margin after COGS. Don't put yourself in that situation.