Can you explain your thumbnail creation process, especially after Mr. Beast reached out?
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.
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.
First, I'd recognize that where I'm physically located has virtually no bearing on how much money I can make — there's some impact if I'm from a region associated with offshore workers pitching people used to different price expectations, but assuming it's just me going to a new area, it doesn't really matter where I work or live. Second, I'd spend $184 of the $300 on Maker School — not because I need the info, but because the program bundles something like $20,000 in signup discounts and credits to AI providers. After the $184, I'm down to $116 but now have roughly $3,000 in equivalent credits and discounts, which is basically a 15x return before I've even used the program's actual content. Those credits use API pricing rather than plan pricing, so I'd sign up for something like a Claude Code or Codex plan (~$20/month), and once I burn through the usage limits there, fall back on the banked API credits and discounts, giving me effectively unlimited use of coding tools for at least a month — and if I need more beyond that, I'd sign up for something like Kimi K2 or DeepSeek's plan, which are less intelligent per dollar than a frontier model but plenty for the low-intelligence tasks I actually need. That leaves about $90. I'd put roughly $40 into an Instantly plan and another $40 into mailboxes, leaving about $16, then use a lead-gen platform like Apify (discounted through Maker School) to pull a list of ~15,000 leads. I'd rinse those leads through the Instantly mailboxes every day for the next month — realistically budgeting time for mailbox warm-up — and just focus on outreach daily: hundreds of individual touchpoints a day, religiously checking and responding to replies first thing every morning, sending Loom videos to anyone showing interest, following up relentlessly, and adding responders on LinkedIn and their YouTube to learn everything about them so I squeeze maximum value out of every lead — making my 300 leads perform like someone else's 1,000. Then I'd front-load as many sales calls as possible, offer reasonably low rates to lock in a first client and bootstrap credibility, and over-deliver heavily to maximize the odds of turning it into a retainer. The core insight: if you're even halfway current on this space's developments, you already know more than 99.9% of everyone else, and that's an extremely powerful arbitrage window right now — so join a discount aggregator (doesn't have to be Maker School, though obviously I think it's the best one), and flip as much of your starting money as possible into bootstrapping outreach.
If you’re earning $2,500 per year, you’re essentially being robbed in broad daylight; but if you’re making $2,000 per month ($24k per year), you’re on the lower end yet not necessarily being exploited. To think about your situation, imagine you’re paid $25,000 per year while generating $500,000 in value for the YouTuber—that’s about 5% of the value you create. Most people receive only 1–2% of the value they generate, while strong salespeople earn 15–20% through commissions. My advice for contractor‑partner roles like yours is to aim for 10–15% of the value you deliver, which translates to roughly a 10× return on investment for the client. If the client is smart, they’ll happily pay you $1 to make $10 for them. The mistake many people make is realizing they’re underpaid and then demanding more money outright—a losing approach that comes across as a loss‑based demand and triggers ego or risk‑aversion in business owners. Instead, frame the conversation around growth: remind the client of the results you’ve already delivered (e.g., over $3 million generated together), share your vision for scaling to $10 million, $20 million, or $30 million, and propose a concrete roadmap (start with X, then Y, then Z). Emphasize that you want to take on more responsibility because you believe you can execute better than others, and assure them you won’t take any of their time. Then, at the close, add that you want skin in the game—more upside when things go well, and a corresponding adjustment when they don’t. Present this structure directly to the client. Because you’re leading with growth and a clear path to multiply their business, the likelihood of them agreeing to partner on a new initiative is vastly higher than if you simply complained about pay. In short, if you’re only making a few thousand dollars a year, you are being underpaid; but if you’re earning tens of thousands per month, you’re in a reasonable position. My overall approach to every job or partnership discussion is to focus on mutual growth, not to threaten to walk away unless paid more—that’s blackmail and damages trust. Successful business owners refuse to negotiate with that kind of pressure. When you approach from a desire to grow the pie together, you’ll achieve far better outcomes.
You're sending about four proposals per day on average. If you increased that to 10 per day (2.5× more), you'd see roughly 2.5× more results. Your main bottleneck is the view rate, currently around 12 %; improving your CV, profile, how it stands out, and your writing to avoid generic templates could push that to 20‑25 %. Make sure the first 150 characters show you read the post, give something free, and present yourself as a professional. With a 12 % view rate, 16 viewed proposals translate to about five replies, which is rough but not hopeless. In my early days I sent 20‑25 proposals a day; I would have completed your 30‑day volume in about five and a half days, outperforming you six‑fold on views alone. Even without improving my view rate, that would have yielded roughly 90 views, around 30 replies, and three or four calls—enough to eventually land a deal. You can make up for any shortfall in volume with strategic effort, something I've done since day one. I'd still recommend you do it more effectively, but the principle holds.