#8: Jack Raines - working for Litquidity, losing $150,000 in 1 min, and making money writing

Welcome to another episode of Brain Blast. Today we got Jack Raines, a professional shitposter for Liquidity. He also writes a newsletter called Young Money, which has over 4,000 subscribers. It's one of my favorite newsletters out there, no cap. This is our second conversation because our first one was screwed up because of Argentinian Wi-Fi. So if you're a little confused, deal with it. Enjoy.

All right, Jason, what's up, man?

What's good? Back in America?

Yeah, hopefully with better Wi-Fi this time.

Yeah, I really hope so. It's all good, man. It's good to have you back on here. Um, how's, how's everything going today?

Uh, it's going well. I've been driving all over the place, had to go pick up a Jeep from my dad's place down South Georgia. I Um, he wanted it back whenever I was down in South America. So basically had to go 3 hours down the highway with one of my friends and then drive 3 hours back up, but it's all good. So I'm back in the home base in Atlanta.

Got you. Nice. Yo, so did that Trung Phan, uh, connect happen? For, for the listeners, uh, Jack's been— Jack tweeted at Trung earlier and looked like I, I tweeted about them collabing, maybe something in the works?

So I had ironically messaged him 5 minutes before you replied that, saying like, yo, I don't know what the topic would be, but if you're interested in collabing sometime, um, I think our writing styles would mesh well. And he was down with it. And then we don't have like anything actually planned out yet, but like it's, uh, open-ended for something in the future potentially. But when, uh, when you replied that I sent that tweet to him with like the eyeball emojis and then we both replied that to your tweet. So it was pretty ironic.

Nice, man. I would love to see that happen. That'd be a good article.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

The king of memes. Yeah. I'm still thinking about that meme agency or meme agency. How would, how would they make that happen? I feel like Trung is going to launch a shitposting course or something at some point.

His— he like, what he's actually been doing has been pretty phenomenal. Like, everything he does is trying to funnel attention back to his Substack newsletter because that's like, it's kind of the game everybody's playing. You make as much noise as you can on social media to push everything towards a platform that can be better monetized either through ads or through subscriptions. So people know he does great content, and now he's slowly moving from just doing threads to doing threads, but also like incorporating his Saturday newsletter post. And he's phenomenal, like masterclass, the stuff.

Yeah, he, he's great for sure. Is he doing, uh, paid subscriptions or ads?

I think ads. Um, I read his stuff every Saturday. I don't think he's monetized it yet, and I don't know what exactly that level he's going to do that at. I haven't talked to him about the details, but I know that that's the, uh, kind of the mechanism he's going with right now. It makes sense. He used to write for The Hustle, which is like a huge newsletter company owned by HubSpot. So I mean, he knows as good as anybody what works and what doesn't in this field.

For sure, for sure. Um, so how— last time I talked to you, you had started posting, uh, brilliant posts on LinkedIn, very, very insightful. But yeah, uh, shitposting on LinkedIn, how is, how is that going? Have you been seeing followers and Um, what's, what's been happening?

I got temporarily banned from LinkedIn this morning, actually. So I had a, I had a bit of a, I guess, brain blast, literally be a good word to use for this. Um, but it hit me the other day that I could just start adding as many of the recommended matches as possible on LinkedIn until I hit a limit. And I don't know what the exact number is. I think it's like 250 a week, but I added every recommended connection from my university and from Atlanta or whatever city I was in at the time. Just to see what would happen. And it pops up with warnings like, make sure you're not like using a program or robot adding people or blah, blah, blah on LinkedIn. But at about 250, I hit a limit. So I've done that the last 2 weeks and I'm literally doing it to build as many connections as possible. So when I do put a shit post, more eyeballs see it and people might spread it. And then when I do post like my actual Young Money stuff on LinkedIn, again, more people will see it. But today I was going through mass adding people and I got forced logged out and they said they thought I was using some sort of like auto-add program. And if I was, my account would be discontinued immediately. If not, I'd be back in an hour. So I got back on and then just kept adding people as soon as I was back.

But nice. What's up?

I was about to say, this is a, so a very like early thing, but in a couple of months I'll have a better idea of how effective the whole LinkedIn game has actually been.

Yeah, for real. What do you do to keep yourself going through the boredom of adding people? It's a very boring process. Do you put on like pump-up music or something?

I just add them. I just give myself 5 minutes of pure boredom to just click, click, click, click, click, like all the way across the rows. It doesn't— it's not— it doesn't take that long because you can just scroll through and hit the button. So, um, it's pretty tedious, but it doesn't take that long, so it's okay.

That's fair. I feel like a lot of this stuff is tedious, but it's worth it.

Correct.

Um, yeah. So are you— you're not running ads on Young Money yet, are you?

No, I probably will by the beginning of May though. My like kind of rounded off number in my head is 5,000 subscribers and I'm at 4,340 right now. So realistically I'll probably hit 5,000 at latest by the end of April at the rate I'm going right now. And I'll probably— I think I'll put out some sort of survey on Young Money to try to get some general reader demographic information, like basic income level, geography, education level, male or female, uh, profession. Just so, like, if you have that information, it makes your ads like— or it just makes your platform way more valuable to advertisers if they know, like, okay, it's like 75% age 25 to 50 males that generally work in finance or consulting, for example. Just kind of spitballing because I don't know for sure. But if you know that, companies that are looking for that demographic will probably pay 50% more to advertise on it.

Got you. Understood. And do you have a strategy about contacting companies and so forth?

So Liquidity uses this company called Bullish Studios to do— they source their ads for them. And a lot of other people use them as well. Dr. Fareed Patel uses them. Rap Capital. And then a lot of like, that's just the meme pages. There's plenty of just like individual creators who use them as well. But like, I've been in contact with them because I work with them some with some of the stuff for Liquidity. So they've told me that once I get to 5,000 plus, try to get some demographic information, and then it'll be easier to come up with a price range. I mean, it might be $250 an article, it might be $500 an article. It really just depends on like what we can convince companies to pay for it.

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, if the good thing about writing a money newsletter is it tends to go to people who have a lot of money, right?

Correct. And there's a massive market for it. So good situation.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Um, yeah, I guess, who, who is your ideal reader? I guess in, in your head, who are you writing for? The audience of one?

Um, I would, I would say myself, honestly, as far as like who I try to target my, like what I write about. It's pretty much everything I write is applicable to me. From an advertising standpoint, um, the typical like young professional, probably male, that's like— I mean, yeah, that's about it. People with, I guess, like kind of that young professional with like money to spend. And then if I advertise, if it's like, like male clothing, or it could be anything from that to a finance app to an exchange to like a money management app that they would find useful. Throw it on there.

Got you. Got you. That makes sense for sure. Um, nice, man. Does it piss you off that Beehive doesn't have comments? Is that something you think about?

Honestly, not really. I actually talked to Tyler, the, uh, like CEO of Beehive. I asked him a couple of months ago if that was something they were looking at. He said they thought about it, but they thought it just added unnecessary noise. If a lot of people wanted to, they could incorporate it. But for me personally, people reply a lot via email and I don't mind like replying to the emails and stuff like that too. Plus I haven't had an issue with this, but if it is public and I get a big enough reader base, I would probably have to deal with like censoring bad comments occasionally and stuff like that. And if it's just in my email inbox, whatever, nobody else will see it. So it doesn't really bug me.

Got you. Yeah. I actually got my first weird comment. It was all sorts of languages, no cursing. They didn't call me a dick or anything, but it was, it was weird.

Okay. That's good.

Yeah. Yeah. So glad about that. But yeah, I guess that is the downside. I do like, like you look at something like Anthony Garci— or Antonio García Martínez and like the comments are like, they're just intelligent, intelligently done. So I appreciate when it comes to that kind of stuff, but Um, so since we talked last, uh, you wrote about Fuck You Money. So, uh, could you just kind of say where your head's at about that?

Yeah, so I, um, like, I've, I've been thinking a little bit about it before, like, we talked, and then you asked me what my Fuck You Money level was, and that kind of— when I was thinking about your question, that's what really got the brains turning on what is that. And around that same time, probably a day after We had our call. I read the Nassim Taleb quote about what he called fuck you money, which is, I actually agree with him a lot on it's a middle range and not an upward bound on a chart. But yeah, the easiest way to put it is it's the amount of money where you can sleep well at night without thinking about money. And that can vary from person to person. For some people, it could be $100,000 a year, but you know that you're going to make it and you're not that worried about where the money comes from. For some people, it might be $500,000 or $1 million a year, but I think it's more so like a cash flow number than it is a net worth number. I think net worth is a lot less important than money you have coming in. My net worth could be, say, $100,000, but if I know I'm making like $150 grand this year and I can put some of it back, then the net worth isn't that important. So I think it's a cash flow number and it like lies in a range.

Yeah, I totally agree. If you're not making money but you have money in the bank account, it's just saying goodbye. It's, uh, which is, which is terrifying because, um, you know, I would love to write more. I would love that. But, you know, I'm making, you know, a decent amount, but I'm making less than my rent because I live in a kind of a bougie-ass apartment right now. But yeah, my lease ends in August and I have two options, which is move to New York where it's expensive expensive and my girlfriend and a lot of friends are, or just get a cheaper place and save up and not have to pay rent. So something I've been thinking about quite a lot is what move do I make? But yeah, another question I got based off one of your tweets, underrated aspect of traveling is following 200+ folks on Instagram. How do you think about those kind of friends and making friends when traveling? Because I have those as well, just the transient friendships that come about. It's, it's a weird way. Uh, it's weird.

I would say that there's like, there's kind of the inner circle of friends that I traveled with where it's like, there's like, there's still a group of about 7 guys that I talk to probably weekly that I met in like August or September. And I think travel, like relationships, friendships, stuff like that, just accelerate a lot faster because if you're living in Atlanta and you meet somebody else living in Atlanta you might hang out with them on the weekends for a few months, and then you slowly become pretty good friends, and then they're part of your inner circle. But when you're traveling and you meet somebody at a hostel in Barcelona, Spain, and you're hanging out 5 days straight, like exploring the city, going out at night, just doing whatever, you have like— it's almost like a more aggressive friendship that forms quickly. And there's that common bond of we're both out here traveling, seeing the world, And then if you end up like going to another city or another place with that person, which I've done, like there were probably 7 people that I ended up going from city to city with at some point last fall, uh, that bond becomes really strong. So I have a group text with 5 guys. We did like a 2-week road trip around Central Europe and like we're all still boys. Like we shoot the shit all the time. We have a WhatsApp group, like asking how work's going with everybody, like when somebody taking another trip. A guy I met in Portugal I went to Argentina with for 6 weeks, even though we had in person been together like 6 days total before that, just because we had a lot in common, thought it would be fun. But I think you have those people, you have the ones where it's like you hung out at one spot, you were like good friends, but it was a day or two, and then— or you weren't good friends, but you hit it off and it's a day or two and then you split up. But if you happen to be in the same place as them later, it's like, oh dude, let's go grab a drink. Like a guy that I met in Budapest and then ran into again in Florence. Really small world. Lives in Denver. So when I was going out there to go skiing, I got to— I got to Denver like 4 hours before the bus or the shuttle was going out of Breckenridge, and we went and grabbed a beer and just like caught up. And then there's the people who I follow who I don't even know who they are. I'd like probably met them at a hostel or a bar or something. It'll be like some dude from London or some chick from Argentina, and it's like don't remember who they are. Glad to see they're doing well, but whatever.

Yeah, totally. Um, what's your thoughts on Dunbar's number when it comes to internet friends?

I don't know, it's—

it—

that's such a— that's like the hierarchy of friendships, right? Where you have like the different rings or whatever, correct? That's what Dunbar's number is.

Uh, yeah, so the idea is like you can only maintain 150 social rela— good social relationships at any given time.

I think the internet skews it because I definitely have more than 150, like, pretty good acquaintances, I would say, that if I— if they were in Atlanta and texted me, like, I'd love to go hang out with them, or they could crash on my couch or something like that. Um, but I don't talk to them, like, at all. So it's really just like a past bond, but you're still seeing their content or their post online, so they still exist in your head. So I would say the internet I wouldn't say that it doubles Dunbar's number, but it twists it a lot, you know what I mean? Like, because you can still keep up with people without having to actually like physically maintain the relationship, it extends the amount of people that can float back into and out of your life easy. It makes Dunbar's number a lot more transient if you, if you're active on the internet.

Yeah, I definitely agree. Uh, definitely have some internet friends who I feel like I would love to see if I'm in a city, but who knows what happens. Yeah, so always interesting. Um, switching off the topic, uh, I'm, I'm writing an article right now about CCO, um, Creative Commons. Uh, kind of, have you, have you thought about that when it comes to, you know, the Cryptoads project's done it, uh, the Met did it with all their art.

What is that?

Uh, Cryptoads?

No, CCO.

Yeah, yeah. So rather than— so CCO is Creative Commons, and rather than a company trying to copyright their work and make sure nobody uses it and suing them for everything they got, CCO is the idea that you could go build off our work, go build whatever the hell you want, go sell it, do whatever, go use our artwork, and the value will come back to us in the long run. And it's something I'm thinking a lot about. Cryptos did it really well. Jack Butcher started selling sweatshirts with the character on it. And, you know, that's 200,000 new eyes on the project.

So I'm a big Jack Butcher fan and met him. He was living in Atlanta for about 2 months, so I got coffee with him a few times. So I didn't, I didn't know the terminology for it, but he does that with his own artwork, like the visualized value. Like he loves when people like post his charts and graphs, even if he doesn't get credit for it, just because As he's gotten bigger, people know where to associate that, or they'll ask where it came from. And you're right, it does indirectly bring more people back. I, I think it's a great idea. Like, in the Olympics, um, NBC was like— or NBC, or whoever had the contract for the Olympic television contract, was so strict about like where clips could be shown online that there were no highlights popping up on Twitter. And If you're not watching it, you don't even know what's going on in the Olympics versus the NBA where they want everything promoted on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, and it's made the game more exciting. I think like it should be encouraged to share stuff as long as you're not trying to pass it off as your own work, like pure plagiarism. If it's just you're putting it out there and not claiming like ownership of it, I think it's a fantastic idea.

Yeah, I can't agree more. Um, yeah. Just the composability of it. Like you could build off anything. It'd be so much, you know, what if, what if you could just use Disney characters in your work all the time or sell shit or cartoon characters or whatever? Going with a— so best sub-$1,000 purchase you've ever made. You tweeted that. That's a Tim Ferriss question if I've ever heard one.

Yeah, it is.

What was the best response you got?

It's actually a very, very random one, but it was— I can't remember what the name of it was, like an AquaPic or something, but it's It's like, uh, it's basically like a flossing thing that uses like, uh, like propelled water to clean out your gums and stuff. I hate flossing normally, and that was actually something that now that I'm back in Atlanta, I'm looking at ordering one because I thought that it was just a fantastic thing to buy. It's like $50.

Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking of mine. I'd probably say my backpack, like, yeah, I, I kind of balled out on it and got like a a photography backpack. And okay, um, but it just serves me so well. It'll never break. I could fit 2 laptops and an iPad in there, plus chargers. Like, yeah, it's fire.

Yeah, mine, uh, my personal one would either be like the plane ticket I bought to Barcelona back in August, or a good pair of running shoes. I bought some of those, uh, On Cloud— it's like a Swiss brand of shoes, uh, around Christmas, and Fantastic. Like, just my— like, having a just a comfortable, supportive shoe for just walking and running around in is total game changer. So, uh, Kyla Scanlon had commented that, and I think that was the comment that got the most likes too. But she was right, that's a, that's a great one as well.

Facts, facts. Good shoes always help. Um, yeah, are you reading anything good right now?

I am reading 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Have you read it?

I've read part of it. It makes me think weird thoughts.

Yeah, it makes you feel like everything is kind of a manipulation game.

Yeah, it's strange. What have you gotten out of it?

Um, I'm 5 chapters in right now. I just started it a couple of days ago, and then I lost my Kindle on an airplane. Um, so now I'm like reading it on my laptop. I'm about to order— I love my Kindle, so I'm gonna order a new one. But, um, I, I thought you were about to grab a Kindle from the side for a second when I said that. No, but, uh, I don't know. I just think, uh, I think anything about like human interactions and kind of the psychology behind it is very interesting. Um, I'm not like a psychopath trying to just figure out how to manipulate as many people by reading like Dale Carnegie and Robert Greene as much as possible. But I do think that there's a lot of truth, even if you want to ignore it, to that, because people are always inherently, for the most part, out for themselves. Um, I think a lot of the stuff he talks about can be applied like on setting up incentives that are like win-win for people where whether it's you and your boss, like coworker, girlfriend, anything like that. Um, I think understanding how power structures work between people can help you like basically maintain and create better circumstances for everybody involved. Like, I don't think it has to be a zero-sum game where for me to win, somebody else has to lose. You can, you can set up win-win situations in life.

Oh, I couldn't agree more. I, I, um, I like one of them where it was like, don't, uh, what is it? Don't be better than your master or something. Like, yeah, be the apprentice. And, um, yeah, I've made that mistake before and it pissed off the person.

Oh yeah, everybody's been there. And it's, it's annoying that it does that because you being good shouldn't piss somebody off, but people can be insecure and, you know, nobody wants to get usurped by their Padawan or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm pulling up the laws right now. Let's, let's see. I was having a conversation about this with a friend. I'm not going to name his name, but also a Twitter buddy. And he's like CEO of a company and everything and was thinking about it. Let's see. Don't trust friends, use enemies. Damn, that's, that's court attention at all costs. The Trung Phan route. He definitely read that. Um, yeah. Uh, have you read Venkatesh Rao?

No, I haven't.

All right. He is even darker. Um, yeah, he has a book called Be Slightly Evil: A Guide for Sociopaths. Um, okay. Yeah.

Have you read it?

I have.

Yeah.

He's @VGR on Twitter. Um, I, I believe in reading banned books. I believe in reading like the shit that's, that you're not supposed to read. Um, I think it's I think it's, uh, there's like, like you were saying, there's hidden knowledge for everybody. I don't identify as a sociopath. Um, I, I wish I was sometimes, cause I'm like, I have empathy and it pisses me off sometimes. I was like, like I've told my therapist that I'm just like, man, I wish I was supposed to be a sociopath. So I'm not sad. Um, but yeah, there's some stuff in there also. He has one essay that's like about the power dynamics of opening doors for people. And just like really deep, like 10 pages just straight on that. And it's like, that's fucking weird.

Yeah, that is weird.

Yeah, yeah, he's, um, he's a decent writer though. Really, really smart guy.

Have you, uh, have you ever read The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassoni or something like that? I can't remember his last name. No, it's, uh, it was, uh, I don't, I don't agree with everything he said, but it's— I thought it was going to be about like something stupid like some pickup artist stuff or something like that, because it's about kind of the— like, I hate using the term red pill movement because red pill, I think, like the Red Pill like subreddit page or whatever, it's just kind of stupid as hell, like something that incels go by. But his book was actually really interesting because he's like a, like, 50-year-old guy now, like married, 3 kids. So he's not some like basement dungeon loser but it was written about the, uh, kind of like dynamics between like men and women, how like both biology, psychology, like biological clocks, um, like kind of come into play with like— and it reminded me a lot of Robert Greene's book, just from like the power structures at play and how like as we get older, men tend to have more and more leverage in relationships while women have kind of a biological clock for like basically when they can like most easily reproduce or whatever. And how like modern-day culture tries to like change what the power structures are, but in reality, for basically the history of humanity, at least off of first impressions, women are drawn to guys with social standing, confidence, like high income, basically guys that run stuff. And men are initially attracted to women who are the most physically attractive. And then after that, there's more nuance off of that and how, like, in the modern age, um, that gets skewed a little bit because, like, like, like feminism, women empowerment, it has gotten to where, like, women kind of take on some of the masculine traits in a career field, and it sort of skewed the, like, male-female dynamic. And it was, uh, it was just really fascinating to see how this guy's brain worked and how he, like, just thought out how like guys and girls interact. Um, but yeah, same type of thing. I wouldn't say it's quite as dark as like a sociopath book, but it would be something that would probably be frowned upon in 2022. But I thought it was a really interesting book.

Yeah, I definitely, uh, I'll have to think about that or read it. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's like Objectivism, if you've read any Ayn Rand. Um, just like after reading her, like it was like My brain was broken for a day. It was like, you know, her whole idea is what is true is true. Like there's no other thing. And it's like, yeah, you know, sometimes there's gray area, but like sometimes it's a really good mental model to have where it's like truth is truth. You know, that's as simple as it is. Like engineers, you know, I don't know, scientists, like, I don't know. It made me, that and some Naval quote have made me like my idols are, or people I respect, not idols, but just role models, totally change, you know. Just go from, uh, when I was younger it was hip-hop artists and actors or whatever. Now it's, uh, you know, scientists and the Balogies of the world.

Yeah.

What do you think of Balogie's new book coming out?

Honestly, I don't really follow him that much on Twitter, so don't know anything about it. I see him when other people retweet his stuff, but I don't know. I I think he's a smart dude, but I don't agree with everything he says. So I don't really keep up with him. What's it about?

The Network State. So how to start a new country, you know, starting in the cloud and then building out from there.

I personally think that like a lot of the like super intellectual guys kind of like him almost take it too far. And like, I don't want to say like overcomplicate stuff, but like Some of the stuff about like where they think society is going, I just don't agree with. I think that like countries are still going to be countries, states and cities are still going to be states and cities. Like online communities are cool, but I don't think like networks like that are ever going to usurp like, like physical geographic, um, communication. Even if you like meet people online, like you can live like a digital nomad forever, you're gonna meet and like associate with the other people physically in your location. If I'm a nomad like working for an American company living in Buenos Aires, I'm still going to hang out with other people that are in like Argentina, you know.

Yeah, I agree. Um, I do think he's got cool ideas about pseudonymity, uh, in general. Uh, like I have a hot take which, which I'm gonna write about soon, which is just like I think punk6529, like the non-account, I think it's Balaji. And I think he really— he believes in pseudonyms to avoid cancelability. And, you know, if his Twitter account gets banned, like, I think he wants an insurance policy. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Like, I don't think he'd done anything cancelable, but like on the off chance that he gets hacked or something, you know, makes sense.

I mean, I work like for an anonymous meme page, like what it is, on a completely different end of the spectrum, but same type of thing. He like loves being an anonymous figure. Operating on the internet space, so it makes sense.

Yeah. Does he have, uh, I mean, I— you don't have to say, but does he have like a normal account, just a regular profile?

Not that I know of. Uh, he could. I'm not aware of it if he does. I'm sure he has like burners that he looks at stuff sometimes, but no, it's just liquidity as far as I know.

That's wild to think about. Um, Yeah, yeah, that's weird. Yeah. I've been trying to explain that shitposting and memes is a valuable, you know, is valuable for drawing attention and whatnot. And 100%, how do you kind of explain your job when people ask about it?

I usually keep it very vague at first because it's kind of all over the place. I'll just say something along the lines of like, I write for a living, or like, I write online. And as they ask more and more, I'll tell them. But it's sort of like a complicated thing to say, oh, like, I write this finance blog, but people pay me to cross-post my content. But I also edit a newsletter for a meme page where I get paid to write sponsored deep dives for companies. And it's just, it's a lot of words that like, you would understand everything I just said because you also operate in the internet space, but Most people don't, and that's just like a very just different thing to say that you do. Um, so I usually just say like, I write online about finance, and then as they ask questions, I'll answer them so it's easier for them to understand it as they go.

Um, so how, how did that start, cross-posting your posts on other people's? Like, are these ones that you've already posted on Young Money?

So yeah, it actually is all my old stuff. And also you said the thing about memes. I was, uh, I keep a running Excel spreadsheet of like different ideas to write about. I've got like a backlog of like 74 different things right now, but I had one, I was making sure it was on there, but the memes of production and talking about how like being able to incorporate like memes and just social media zeitgeist into your work is a good way to like basically help market it or help it get more attention without having to pay for marketing. Um, but anyway, they got me, they got me off track a little bit. What was your question again?

Uh, cross-posting.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

How'd you get started doing that?

So this guy that, uh, he's an anonymous guy, but he runs a newsletter called The Alpha Letter, and I'd done some stuff with him before I really started writing. He was writing a finance letter, and somebody like, we had a mutual acquaintance who told him about my ridiculous SPAC trading run, so he actually interviewed me The week that my account peaked right around $400,000, I should have known when somebody was interviewing me about it that that was the top. But, um, I started writing after that and he saw my stuff and liked it and he wanted me to guest post one time on his, on his thing. And his audience loved it. And he said, hey, like, I'll pay you. It's like $300 a week to cross-post like one article a week. And I was like, okay. And I thought about it and I said, could I just post my old stuff? Cause it's not like your audience was seeing it. And he was like, yeah, that's fine. So then it hit me that I could just start recycling old content. So I reached out to, or I had Dr. Parikh Patel actually put me in touch with another person with a pretty big newsletter. Can't say who they are yet because it's not a done deal yet, but about doing content. And I said that I would do one cross-post and help them write one Twitter thread a week for $1,000 a week to see if they would bite on it. Like, bump the price up. And they were okay with the price point. And I'm working on like a, like sample to send over to them right now. But I'd keep like, I've got, once you have more and more income streams, a bigger audience, and you kind of get a feel for how much people are probably making on ads, it gets easier to bump your price up. Like I had another guy that I was on a call with at lunchtime today who wanted me to do a guest post. And I told him, I was like, I'll straight up put this one on your thing for free. Um, if you like credit my newsletter, Twitter account, whatever. And then I said, if your audience likes it, I'm down to make this a weekly thing where either we negotiate a flat fee or an ad revenue split to just do this going forward. And the rationale behind it makes sense. Say that somebody makes— to keep it simple, say someone makes $1,000, um, per advertisement on their newsletter. If they use one of my posts, they didn't have to do any work other than like copy pasting what I send them into their thing. And for me, I don't have to do any additional work because it's old stuff I've already written and they're getting an ad on there. So we just split that ad money. Or if they're doing more or less $1,000 a week, we make it a flat $500. And then like over time, if they grow, bump it up to $750 or $1,000. But as I've kind of figured this out, if people reach out to me, I try to push the conversation towards doing that because It's the easiest way to make more money without having to do any additional labor. Like being able to sell old stuff you write is just a phenomenal way to generate money from writing online by leveraging other people's audiences.

Yeah, that is, uh, some, some fire. I, uh, wow. Yeah, that's incredible. I need to, uh, figure out, figure out how to do that and start thinking about that shit.

The biggest thing is like, you can't really, you can't really force the first one. You have to have somebody reach out to you. Like it was kind of out of the blue saying that they liked my my stuff, wanted me to potentially cross-post one, and then you go from there. But if you have anybody that you know has a big newsletter that says they like your work, try to channel the conversation that way and offer to do like 1 or 2 guest posts for free. And then if their audience likes the work, like it's on Substack, gets a lot of likes, if they get a lot of email replies and they like it, then you say— if they're doing an ad model or if they have like a subscriber-based model and people are paying, say Hey, like, let's make this a regular thing. Let's come up with like a price point and I'll send you one every Sunday afternoon. Um, but yeah, it's— I think it's the best. The other thing too is like, it's, uh, it's free marketing. You literally turn marketing, which is normally an expense, into a revenue stream. Like, you're getting credited for your work and they're paying you to put it there. So you're feeding off of their audience and monetizing their audience. It's, uh, Pretty incredible way to do it.

Yeah, yeah, for real. Yeah, I'm writing for Late Checkout right now, which has been awesome. Good opportunity. Greg's been really helpful mentoring me as well. Just going to continue writing for others. It's a good time. Yeah, it's good to know about pricing though. I feel like, like I said, I tweeted this the other day, like as an English major, they taught me nothing about pricing myself on the internet. They taught me about 1,800 books. And it pisses me off. So it's good to know.

I think as a general rule, like always pitch a dollar amount that seems a little bit too high. Like the first one I did with the Alpha Ladder, he pitched $200. I said, let's bump it up to $300 and just jumped it a little bit. He was cool with that. I didn't really know how much he was pulling from ads, but now that I have like, I have a kind of ballpark idea. Like if somebody has 50,000 subscribers, they can probably make $2,000 per ad post at least. So I would probably ask for either $500 or $1,000, just depending on what I think they would work with for a cross post. But ask for more than you think you can get because they can always talk it down. Like they say $1,000 is too high, maybe $500 becomes reasonable. But if you start with $500, they might try to talk you down from that. So I think it's always like kind of try to highball the offer on this stuff.

Yeah, for real. For real. I actually got 2 inbound requests today for the first time. Like, I guess. Yeah, that was like, I guess when it rains, it pours.

No, that is how it goes. It's nice.

Yeah.

When it's happening.

I'll keep you updated on what happens with that. We'll see. I've been— so I've been playing around. I just wrote Funeral of a Crypto Punk for late checkout, you know, with Greg's help and everything. But I've been playing around with the idea of releasing short stories about the internet and crypto and like just kind of playing around with that. And, um, it's like it just is a whole different— not, not a different newsletter, but like, uh, just a side project. And I don't even know the right way to like market that or, or how to do that correctly, but if you have any thoughts, uh, yeah, throw them out there.

It's, um, I I don't know. It's almost like you, you really just have to find ways to get— this is going to sound almost like a Yoda type of comment, answer without giving you an answer. But the truth is that I figured out it's really hard. Like you can't just ask your audience, hey, would you like this? Or how should I do this? You have to find ways to put information out there and then gauge the engagement off of that. Like for me, it's the emails that get the most replies to them. I know did well, or if the open rate's higher, the title was probably a little bit better. Um, the tweets that do well, I usually put either a good quote or the right people with big audiences retweeted them, or— and it's, you're always playing this game of like, it's almost like little A/B tests constantly going on in my head. Um, they're not necessarily like well-thought-out scientific experiments, but just kind of like being cognizant of what seems to be received better than other stuff. So I think it's going to take like a little bit of trying to put that material out there in a few different ways, and then once stuff starts gaining traction, lean into that and lean away from the other stuff.

100%. Um, yeah, yeah, I guess that's all the major questions I had for you, man. Um, but it was, uh, it was really solid talking. I appreciate your time.

Oh yeah, man, for sure. Thanks for having me on, and I'm glad that I actually could talk the whole time without my internet cutting out 12 times.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Go check out Jack at youngmoney.co. Is that it?

Yep, youngmoney.co. Yes, sir.

Hell yeah. All right, thanks, man.

Yeah, man. See you, Jason Levin.