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#253 · your niche isn't saturated, your competitors are just bad

youtube ↗Niches

Can a service be scaled to $10K/month? What about saturated niches like video editing? How would I scale them given cheap hourly rates? How do you sell a service with no proof?

The first point: you're claiming the video editing market is saturated. I'd say there are far more new market entrants in AI than in video editing, and many are applying AI to video editing, changing the economics. Is AI just automation drag-and-drop backends, AI agents, or does it encompass all knowledge work? If so, there are many entrants, making it very saturated. However, I like highly competitive markets because they suggest opportunity and money to be made; competitors often do a poor job, so with a little first‑principles thinking you can be vastly better. For example, Upwork is saturated but the average proposal is terrible spam. By improving basic elements—profile picture, message bubble, cover letter, spelling/grammar—you can stand out and dominate. When you do that, you don't need to worry about cheap hourly rates because you'll be in the top 1% of the 1%, following a power‑law distribution. How to charge for outcomes with video editing: I often get pitched outcome‑based deals. The better outreach is to say you've managed channels for big names or done editing for any video, letting you claim views from those channels (even if the views came from brand growth). You can guarantee improvements in metrics like watch time or CTR. For instance, guarantee a lift in average watch time. You take their starting statistic over the last 90 days, run your service for a set period, build a relationship while editing, and by the end they'll know and like you, having worked with you. If you're a thumbnail designer, you could guarantee CTR improvement. Finally, how to start selling with no proof: use the service on your own business. If you were selling cold email, you'd run it on your own business, generate opportunities (e.g., 28 meetings in 4 days for an IT or software firm), then bootstrap that into proof with each client you work with.

videoeditingsaturatedoutcomenoproof

Related answers

youtube ↗Pricing

Is $3 per page a fair price for my WordPress automation service, or should I switch to a monthly/tiered model? Should I offer it for free initially to showcase value? Also, any advice on improving my recording and presentation skills despite limited camera experience?

Regarding your WordPress automation pricing: charging $3 per page (based on your two‑hour effort) undervalues the work because the marginal cost of running the automation is near zero. Instead of billing per run, give the system away for free on a pilot campaign to demonstrate its value, then switch to a tiered monthly fee—for example, around $2,895 for 1,000 campaigns per month. This aligns pricing with the client’s ongoing benefit and avoids messy usage‑based billing. On improving your recording and presentation skills: I was in the same boat—lots of door‑to‑door sales experience but almost no camera time. I fixed it by recording Loom videos daily at high volume. The trick is to mentally flip a switch: imagine an audience listening, just as you do when speaking to a real person, and then talk naturally. Repetition builds comfort, so keep creating content. Beyond that, I’ve been working on Maker School exclusives to reduce churn. I’ve posted long‑form videos (like an hour‑plus content‑machine walkthrough) and plan another exclusive (perhaps a calendar). Tracking metrics shows our monthly recurring revenue dipped from ~305 K to ~34.5 K, indicating a 23.6 % churn that I’m addressing with exclusive content. Even if Maker School vanished, I could fall back on my agency, scaling it to $150‑200 K/month and using that social proof to boost my YouTube channel. I’m also exploring private‑equity and other ventures, but the core takeaway is that the skills I’ve built—community building, content creation, sales process—are transferable to any business model.

pricingautomationwordpressmonthly
youtube ↗Lead Generation

I work with a digital marketing agency that wants to add an AI chatbot to a client's website, but the site gets little organic traffic. Is it worth implementing the chatbot, or should we first focus on getting traffic to the site?

What a great question. This is more a consulting and strategy perspective than a building one. Naturally, if you're trying to make more money and thinking, 'Ooh, what's a way to make more money? I know AI is all the rage—maybe we'll add an AI chatbot to our website,' but if the chatbot doesn't talk to anybody, it won't make you more money. You've stumbled on a universal problem for many service businesses: they just don't have any leads. The real point of value, the bottleneck you could fix, is usually lead generation. I don't know how many people visit their site daily, monthly, or yearly, so it's hard to suggest exactly what to do next, but you're on the right track. The usual thinking is: get leads first, then worry about optimizing how you deal with them, nurture them, and improve conversion rates later. In your opinion, what's the best automation to sell? Could you make a video on it? The best automation to sell is something that increases or encourages lead generation, which we discussed. One of the main systems I sell is a cold outreach system where I build distribution for someone from scratch for about $200–$300 a month ongoing. They start with zero leads in their pipeline—usually an agency—and after the system is set up, they get roughly 30 leads per month that want to book calls. This is a game-changer and easy to justify as an investment for companies whose bottleneck is lead generation, like most businesses under $50k–$100k per month in revenue. Think of it this way: I'm solving their most dire problem—no leads entering the business. I charge them $3,000–$4,000 a month, which is fine because without me they wouldn't even have a business making more than $3k–$4k a month. In my experience, the best automations to sell for small to mid-sized businesses are those that help the top of the funnel. If they already have an outbound system but aren't getting many leads, I'd recommend a speed-to-lead system. Anything close to the top of the funnel—whether outbound or inbound—helps a lot, and that's what I'd recommend.

lead generationai chatbotcold outreach
youtube ↗AI & Automation

But for those who do understand that distribution, do you with us? If so, can you please elaborate with an example of the distribution bottleneck? Here your take on how to distribute AI capabilities better.

You can apply this to virtually any business on Earth. If you ask them to walk you through their customer journey from first contact to last, even a monkey could see where AI or automation could help. The core problem today is that we can model these automations but they often produce no intended output—it's just raw image knowledge. If you get on a call with one of these people, watch five minutes of any of my videos, see what they're doing, and you'll immediately think, 'Okay, we can actually improve this significantly, or even reach Einstein-level insight.' That's how it is: most business owners lack the time to watch YouTube videos like we do, or to write out pipelines and similar processes. Getting on a call with you makes it a simple process, yet you'll be surprised how many high‑performing businesses still send most of their emails manually, copy‑paste templates, or rely on administrators who just enter data into standardized government forms—they haven't realized this capability yet. While it's not a complete fix, you can exploit the current market arbitrage by learning just enough to frontload outreach and articulate these solutions, thereby building a strong distribution network. In 5, 10, or 20 years, depending on the economy, that network could survive because clients prefer working with you due to lower friction and ease. In short, distribution is crucial. As an example, Zed started outreach with a low‑level Instantly clone for his own use, sending 15 emails a day limited by one inbox, and couldn't find good free PPC agency communities for real conversation. My recommendation: if you're 15 or 16, get paid inboxes via a platform like Instantly—they've already done the work you're doing, so you can exchange a small fee for immediate scale without rebuilding everything from scratch. It really does make sense.

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youtube ↗Lead Generation

What are the minimum tools needed to start getting clients, and should I focus on Upwork until I get some money coming in?

Josh's approach is perfect if you're not yet in the automation industry, don't have an automation business, or aren't freelancing; your only goal should be to go from zero to one as quickly as possible. Most people in Josh's situation try to jump from zero to a hundred right away, but the strategies for going from 0 to 1 are different from those needed to scale to 100. Josh is looking for a minimum viable strategy—similar to a minimum viable product—to avoid stagnation and quit, because he values feedback loops. This is the way I approach any business model in the 2020s, given how fast everything moves. Regarding your question about minimum tools and whether to focus on Upwork until you earn money: it depends on your financial situation. The quickest path from zero to one, in my experience, is to spam three methods: Upwork applications, cold emails, and community engagement. I call it spamming like a video game because, while quality matters, the law of large numbers ensures results if you send enough outreach. For Upwork, send many applications using a customized Loom video approach—record a short video saying, 'Hey, how's it going? I just saw your post for XYZ; let me show you exactly how I'd solve this.' Highlight your relevant experience (X, Y, Z) and past results. Even if you're new to Upwork, this personalized touch boosts your chances. For cold emails, use one of my offer formulas or cold email templates, then find an audience, split‑test two or three audiences, and gauge reply rates—especially positive replies. You can personalize with AI if you wish; my Nix cold email templates are available via the four‑step cold email copying system. For communities, identify groups and niches you're interested in (e.g., videography, dental clinic managers). Post hyper‑relevant content that provides value without selling immediately. For example, in a dental clinic manager community, share a strategy like 'end‑of‑insurance reactivation' that leaves voicemails about unused benefits. By consistently giving value over time, you become an authority and can start charging for your services. These three outreach methods—Upwork, cold emails, and community posting—constitute the minimum viable strategy for landing your first client.

upworkcold emailcommunity outreachlead generation