In this solo video, Nicolas Cole outlines the most beginner‑friendly ways to monetize knowledge online and explains how they serve as foundations for more advanced revenue streams. He recommends starting with either a standalone low‑ticket digital product (typically $99–$350 text and video courses) or a paid newsletter, describing each as a “mini‑digital product” that includes a free informational component plus tangible, premium assets such as walkthrough guides, swipe files, Loom recordings, and AI prompts. Cole then shows how these entry‑level models scale into higher‑ticket offerings: recurring low‑ticket communities, high‑ticket group coaching programs like his Premium GoTraining Academy (PGA), and a full monetization ladder built over years. He stresses the importance of mastering fundamentals before moving to complex models, warns against analysis paralysis, and encourages viewers to start immediately—either by creating a first product or launching a Substack newsletter. The video ends with a call‑to‑action for a free masterclass on writing online, promising frameworks, hooks, distribution tips, and growth‑hacking strategies.
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If you want to monetize information and education in any way, the two beginner models that I recommend, that I would recommend, are either a standalone low-ticket digital product, a $99, but ideally like working up to like a $350 text and video course on a topic. It is the simplest model. It is the easiest model. It has extremely high potential to be lucrative. It's not to say that it's— it doesn't take work. Like, building digital products takes work. I hope that we can help reduce some of that work and we can make it faster for you. But like, you will still have to do things, right? But the reason that I encourage everyone to start there is because every other type of monetization model is really just the advanced version of that. Like our premium GoTraining Academy, that is a high-ticket group coaching model. It's, it's like one of the, if not the most advanced monetization model because the operational complexity is completely different. Okay, what is PGA? PGA is really just an expanded version of a low-ticket digital product. The PGA curriculum and a low-ticket digital product are nearly identical. The value of PGA is all the things that surround that curriculum. It's all the other things. And so why would you jump to a more advanced vehicle when you haven't built the foundation, you haven't practiced the fundamentals, right? What is a, a low-ticket recurring community? Like a school community, right? A school community is really just low-ticket digital products every month. It might not be a full text and video course, but to some degree there's like a recurring element of those same skills, right? So one of the best beginner options is a standalone low-ticket digital product. The other one, if you want a counterpoint, the other one that I think is, is a viable option if you want to start somewhere is a paid newsletter. I think a paid newsletter is the next best or equally as good beginner option. And the reason is because it accomplishes so many different things all at once. Like each paid newsletter you should think of as just a mini digital product. Think of each paid newsletter as like a standalone module. That's really all it is. And the value, the reason why it's paid, is because some portion of the module is information, which you could think of as the free component. It's the commodity component. And the paid component, like the second half of it, the paid component is all the tangible stuff. It's okay, you, you understand the thing I'm explaining to you, but now here's my walkthrough guide. Here's my blueprint. Here are examples. More, more, more. Here's a bonus Loom that I recorded to walk you through how to do this. Here's a swipe file that I'm giving you to reinforce your pattern recognition here. By the way, I built an AI prompt that helps you automate this. All of those tangible things are the same things you would put inside of a digital product. You're just doing the micro version. Or a paid newsletter. So if you're having analysis paralysis, it's like, pick one of those. Either build your first digital product or start a paid newsletter on Substack and realize that either way you're practicing the same skills. And then over time, like as one grows, as one matures, you can add a second one. You can add a second one. Like now we have the entire suite. You know, we have low, low ticket. We have recurring and software. We have paid newsletter, we have standalone digital products, we have high-ticket group coaching, we have like the whole ladder. But we didn't do that overnight. We've been building this for like 5 and a half years, you know. So you have to take these things in, in steps.
Real quick, if you want to write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com. This is a free masterclass I put together sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners like like proven hooks to capture your target reader's attention, where to write online to get the most distribution on your work, and little growth hacking tips to build your social audience and email list faster. Over 100,000 writers have gone through this free masterclass, and many even send us emails afterwards thanking us for sharing such valuable information for free. So click the link below this video to check it out and make this year the year you start seeing success from your writing online.
