This week, I made my first real money online.

$319 to be exact. From a digital product I made myself, in public, from scratch.

At the start of this week, I was doubting everything. What if I go 50 days without a single sale? The only thing I could do was keep following my north star: provide value. To do that, I had to keep shipping.

Day 16 (4/16/25) - The Launch

I came up with a new product: The Job Offer System. A collection of everything I wish I had before I started job hunting— Resume frameworks, interview prep, negotiation scripts. The kind of thing that would’ve saved me weeks of second-guessing.

I’d gotten burned for building before validating in the past with SwipeIQ.io. This time, I was doing it different. No coding. No full build. Just a quick landing page and a preorder link.

I priced it at $29, and launched the preorder. Post-preorder launch? 0 sales.

My content growth was slowing. I hadn’t made a cent after 16 days. My jaw was swollen to hell from wisdom teeth extractions. I could barely walk after a grueling first marathon.

I was tired.

That night, after I exported the above video, this showed up in my inbox:

My first payment through Stripe. 4/15/25 9:22pm

No fucking way.

Day 21 (4/20/25) - Validation

Today, as I write this, I’ve made 11 sales. $319 in gross volume.

Real money. Real customer feedback. Maybe I’m not crazy after all.

I didn’t just earn $319. I broke the belief that I had nothing of value to sell. That’s the part no one talks about. The voice that says: “Who are you to sell something?” I can’t say how/where this challenge will end. But this week, I stopped being a person waiting for permission.

4/20/25 $319 gross volume on Stripe

Why $29?

1. I needed proof that someone would actually pay for a product that didn’t even exist yet.
2. Imposter syndrome: “Who are you to charge for this?”

The biggest truth I learned this week:

A product can contain $10K in value… But if nobody knows about it? If nobody believes it can help them?

It’s worth nothing.

More on that soon.

Week 3 Roundup

Total revenue: $304.26 Main lever pulled: Content + Code (w/ AI) Largest outcome: My first real sale, followed by market validation of the Job Offer System Focus: Building and selling the Job Offer System

In Week 1, I stumbled into content creation after quitting my $350K job at Google. Week 2, I started poking around for what to sell. Ironically, I found signal in career help. This week, I doubled down on that signal — and committed to monetizing.

After a week of nonstop content, coding, and writing, a marathon, and a wisdom teeth extraction… I’ve made real money online.

Lessons Learned

1. Just launch

Every breakthrough for me has come from prioritizing speed over perfection:

• My content
• This newsletter
• The Job Offer System
• Even the marathon I ran this week

I used to live in “sandbox mode” — paralyzed by trying to choose the “right” path. Now? I try, then I iterate.

I planned my exit from Google with this idea: Launch 30 SaaS in 3 years. I built SwipeIQ. SwipeIQ flopped. Content hit, so SaaS took a backseat. Tried fitness content. Tried career content — it hit. So I built the Job Offer System. And here we are.

All in 21 days. It took me a year to even commit to trying entrepreneurship.

2. Don’t fear selling

For the longest time, I associated selling with being a “guru” or “grifter.” I didn’t want to be that guy.

But my psychologist said something that stuck:

You can’t control how people interpret your offer. You can only be transparent.

I was arrogant to think I could be the arbiter of how someone interpreted my offers, my products.

All I can do is present the facts. The decision is up to them.

3. Value is invisible until you show it.

The most important lesson I learned.

This is true for resumes (I talk about it in the Job Offer System). It’s true for products.

People won’t “just get it.” You have to show them. Thursday and Friday, I made sales because I promoted the Job Offer System on Instagram. Saturday? 0 promotion. 0 sales. Sunday? 3 more sales — I demoed the product in my Day 20 reel.

Behind the Build

I built v1 of the Job Offer System in 4 days.

The first commit, 4 days ago.

3,435 lines of code in 4 days.

The secret? AI. (See my toolkit). I committed to building a business solo, at least for the first arc. To do that, I knew that speed wasn’t just a benefit, it was necessary.

Beautiful, manually written code doesn’t give you product market fit.

The ideas, the design, and most importantly, the narrative message within the system might.

AI lets you ideate, curate, and refine rather than writing from a blank page. It annihilates the tedious process of manual coding. For builders who know how to drive it, AI is a 10x force multiplier.

What’s Next?

Validating the Job Offer System at $99: I believe the system is worth over $100. If it helps someone land a $30K raise one week faster, that’s a 379x ROI. (And it has a 30-day money-back guarantee.) But I still have to prove that — through testimonials, through promotion, through sales.

More content funnel: Focused on job hunting, negotiation, and career clarity. However, I want to reframe it — job hunting as a bridge to freedom rather than a destination itself. The pay at Google is what bought me this opportunity after all.

Mentorship: Soft-opened a 1:1 form for those who want personalized help.

What All This Means for You

If you’re sitting on knowledge you haven’t shared — Or a product you’re scared to sell —

Let this little spark I’ve gained here be your signal. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

Don’t need to be ashamed to sell.

Start small. Start now.

You never know what might happen when you do.

🎯 Want Help Getting Paid What You’re Worth?

If you didn’t get a chance to check out the Job Offer System yet — the early $99 price tag is still live here:

→ Get Access for $99

Lifetime updates, 30-day guarantee. Price increasing after more testimonials lock in.

Want to see how I landed those 5 tech offers step-by-step? I break it all down in this YouTube video.

P.S.

This challenge started with a goal: $1K in 50 days.

But it’s never been about the money — it’s about proving I could create something from nothing, on my own.

And now?

The scoreboard says it’s working.