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How to Actually Make Money Online in 2026 - Case Study

2025-02-28 · Case study or coaching session · Ali, Aman · recording, 42:49 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: YouTube, writing online and creators, Productivity and time, Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Family, Sponsor segment present

Ali talks with Aman Manazir, a former software engineer who went from a $1,500 Skillshare course in 2020 to about $20,000 a month profit from a YouTube channel and coaching programme, and draws lessons: bias to action, your first three businesses will fail, friction is normal, the timing is never right, enjoy the process, choose hobbies that double dip, and make paid courses and coaching pay off.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Aman's results previewed; who Ali is

  • ★★★ Aman, 23, watched one of Ali's videos as a broke college student, acted on its advice and has now made enough money to quit his job. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali says 99% of people who watch videos like this never take the first step, and 99% of those who start do not stay consistent long enough to see results. (overstated) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Ali's main work now is as co-founder of Sparkle Studios, which is building a suite of productivity apps. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — Aman's journey begins: Ali's income video, self-belief and locus of control

  • ★★★ Aman says watching Ali's video on how much money he made showed him that someone could actually do this, and within that week he launched a Skillshare class. — 00:02:26 · Skillshare
  • ★★ Ali's impression from meeting viewers is that most people who see a video like his income video immediately say "not me, not now". — 00:03:05
  • ★★ Aman says what set him apart may be an absurd level of self-belief: with enough time, effort and work he could replicate at least a little of anyone's success. (hedged) — 00:03:34
  • ★ Aman says it also helped that Ali looked very similar to him on paper. — 00:03:34
  • ★★ Ali calls Aman's belief that, given enough time, effort and work, he could replicate a little of anyone's success a really helpful mindset shift that anyone watching can make. — 00:04:05
  • ★★ Ali explains locus of control: whether you believe the events in your life are controlled by you (internal) or by other people, the environment or the government (external); Aman's mindset is very internal. — 00:04:34

00:05:03 — Bias to action: quitting within a day and a C# course launched in three days

  • ★★ Aman quit his full-time software engineering job within 24 hours of deciding to, sending his resignation letter the next day. — 00:05:03
  • ★★ Aman says he has an almost impulsive bias for action: whenever he decides on something, he immediately starts acting. (hedged) — 00:05:03
  • ★★ Aman drafted a Skillshare course on very basic programming concepts, filmed it in an afternoon, edited it and launched it within about three days. — 00:07:08 · Skillshare

00:08:06 — Brilliant sponsor read

  • ★★★ Analysis is the enemy of action, Ali says, especially when you are just getting started. — 00:08:06

    “Analysis is the enemy of action, especially when you are just getting started out.”

00:09:19 — First income from the internet: $1,500 in four years

  • ★★ Aman's Skillshare course has passively made $1,500 in four years, which he calls good for a few hours of work. — 00:09:33 · Skillshare
  • ★★ Ali says aspiring entrepreneurs generally have a skewed perspective of how successful their first venture is going to be. — 00:09:33
  • ★★ Ali says we only hear from people who have already made it, such as himself, with over $10 million from online courses, and Iman Gadzhi, with over $100 million. — 00:10:24
  • ★★★ Aman says a common mistake is thinking that the first thing you do has to be the last thing you do. — 00:10:53

00:11:38 — Your first three businesses will fail

  • ★★★ Ali says your first three businesses are probably going to fail, and that is a very good thing, as falling off is how you learn to ride a bike. — 00:11:38
  • ★★ If you are trying to make money online and have not yet failed at a few business ideas, Ali says, you are probably worrying too much about analysis and perfection rather than taking action. (hedged) — 00:12:10
  • ★★ Aman: When something said by Chris Williamson, Alex Hormozi or others resonates with him, Aman says, he takes action on it, even as a very basic, shitty version. — 00:12:39 · Alex Hormozi
  • ★★ Aman says it often takes five, 10 or 15 small random attempts before one works; it took him three to four years before one did and he could quit his job. — 00:13:23
  • ★★ Ali had eight or nine failed businesses before building his first successful one in medical school; the failures taught him to build a website, code, accept payments and get customers. — 00:13:52

00:14:15 — The concept of difficulty in entrepreneurship

  • ★★ Izzy Sealey often feels YouTube is hard and concludes she is a bad YouTuber, Ali says, though she has about 700,000 subscribers from about 50 videos; he had 700 subscribers at 50 videos. — 00:14:22 · Izzy Sealey
  • ★★ Ali says many people think that if starting a business is not effortless from day one, they must be bad entrepreneurs. — 00:14:22
  • ★★ Aman values Alex Hormozi's content for the idea of pain tolerance: being able to deal with the discomfort of something not working. — 00:15:06 · Alex Hormozi
  • ★★ Ali says to expect building a business to be difficult: then you are not surprised when it is, while expecting it to be easy makes you far more likely to quit. — 00:15:59

00:16:18 — The idea of friction

  • ★★ Aman says it is surprisingly non-trivial to get anything done: it often takes five to ten attempts before it happens. — 00:16:28
  • ★★ Aman says not to be satisfied with trying to try, such as making a channel account: do what is necessary to achieve the outcome rather than seeing the effort as enough. — 00:17:15
  • ★★★ Ali says there is friction at every step of anything, and most people drop off when they meet it; those who see it as normal and work through it are far more likely to succeed. — 00:18:00 · friction
  • ★★ At Part-Time YouTuber Academy meetups of about a hundred people, Ali says, most tell him they have not been consistent for months, but never that they have quit YouTube. — 00:18:00 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:18:23 — The timing is never going to be right; Aman's blog, newsletter and channel

  • ★★★ Ali says "not yet, not right now" takes dreams to the grave because the timing is never right; doctors with children told his medical school that the timing for kids is never right. — 00:18:43
  • ★★ Aman says that thinking the timing is not right is procrastination in disguise: for almost everything, the timing is never quite right. — 00:20:11
  • ★ Aman: In the weeks after his Skillshare class Aman also launched a blog and an email newsletter, building the website with Webflow. — 00:20:11 · Skillshare
  • ★★ Aman started a weekly email newsletter, Thoughtful Thursday, which is still running. — 00:20:48
  • ★★ Aman's first YouTube video, posted in July 2020, was on why the MacBook Pro is perfect for computer science students; he calls it terrible quality. — 00:21:17 · MacBook
  • ★★ Aman recalls Marques Brownlee saying that if you stick with anything for ten years it is hard not to succeed, so he set out to post a video every week. — 00:21:47
  • ★★ Aman: In his first year on YouTube Aman made 20-something videos, posting consistently, and had perhaps only about 100 subscribers. (hedged) — 00:22:15

00:22:34 — The harsh truth about making money online: sacrifice, repetition and Beeminder

  • ★★★ Ali says going for an extraordinary outcome often takes more work than most people are willing to do; almost everyone he has met who made enough to quit their job had to sacrifice something. — 00:22:45
  • ★★ Ali did not sacrifice time with friends and family but did sacrifice Netflix and TV: at university he set a rule never to watch TV shows on his own. — 00:22:45 · Netflix
  • ★ Aman calls consuming a lot of self-improvement, productivity and self-development content underrated. — 00:23:14
  • ★★ Aman credits much of his progress to a Thomas Frank video about being charged by the app Beeminder if he did not wake up on time. (overstated) — 00:23:43 · Thomas Frank
  • ★★★ Aman set Beeminder to charge his credit card $100 for every week he did not post on YouTube; he has paid it over $1,000 for missed weeks. — 00:24:12
  • ★★ Aman has posted only about 90 full-length videos, less often than Ali but over a longer period, and went 16 or 18 months before his first video reached 100K views. — 00:24:49
  • ★★ Aman tells Ali there is value in saying the same thing over and over: he needed to hear "just stay consistent" every week from Ali's channel. — 00:25:30
  • ★★ Aman often says the same thing in every video on his own channel and gets comments that he remakes the same video every month, but says repeating it is what you actually have to do. — 00:25:59

00:26:16 — Your YouTube feed reflects your priorities; enjoying the journey

  • ★★ Since your YouTube feed reflects your priorities, Ali suggests checking whether your homepage shows content aligned with your goals and actively paying more attention to content that is. — 00:26:28
  • ★★ Aman was late to work several times because he was so engrossed in writing video scripts in the morning, and took long lunch breaks to work on his channel. — 00:26:50
  • ★★ Aman: If every part of the journey had been a slog he hated, Aman says, his channel would not have worked out at all. — 00:27:50
  • ★★ Ali's answer to how he built his channel alongside a day job is Naval Ravikant's idea: find the thing that feels like play to you but looks like work to others. — 00:27:50 · Naval Ravikant
  • ★★★ Ali says it is impractical to do something for a long time if you hate it and find no way to enjoy the process, the whole concept of his book Feel-Good Productivity. — 00:30:20 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:30:21 — Choose hobbies that let you double dip

  • ★★ One of Ali's hobbies at university was hackathon side projects with friends: on a mini holiday they tried to build an app that could make money within 24 hours. — 00:31:17
  • ★★★ If you care about making money online and have limited time, Ali says, find hobbies that double dip, fun and with the potential to make money, rather than hobbies that are simply fun. — 00:31:50

00:32:08 — You won't know until you try

  • ★★ Aman did not expect writing educational content and coming up with frameworks to be enjoyable, but it is. — 00:32:14
  • ★ Ali knows many people who count themselves out of business because they do not know what they would really enjoy. — 00:32:14

00:33:03 — The truth about courses and coaching

  • ★★★ Aman: Midway through his fourth year, Aman's biggest inflection point was realising he could spend money on knowledge. — 00:33:03
  • ★★ Aman's first unlock was realising he could read business books on sales and marketing, such as Russell Brunson's and Alex Hormozi's, to level up in business. — 00:33:33 · Alex Hormozi
  • ★★★ Aman's first paid investment was Captain Sinbad's YouTube coaching programme; he missed none of its 24 calls, and he says Sinbad later called him probably his best client of over 100. — 00:34:02
  • ★★ Aman: Captain Sinbad taught Aman to negotiate sponsors and told him he could teach getting internships and jobs in software engineering. — 00:34:44
  • ★★★ Aman: Seeing that helping someone land a $20,000 to $30,000 internship makes that knowledge worth as much, Aman launched his software engineering accelerator programme. — 00:35:13
  • ★★ Aman says loss aversion holds people back from paying for programmes: many would spend an hour on a bus to avoid a $20 Uber but would not spend an hour on a $50 freelance gig. — 00:35:46
  • ★★ Aman: To weigh the risk of a paid programme, Aman points to guarantees, refunds, reviews and testimonials, and reasons that a few thousand dollars a year from it means it has paid for itself. — 00:36:15
  • ★★ Aman says you can pay someone three to five years ahead of you to download their knowledge and get ahead. — 00:37:09
  • ★ Ali says Alex Hormozi has invested hundreds of thousands in programmes, aiming to be their best student ever and eventually outpace the instructor. — 00:37:09 · Alex Hormozi
  • ★★ Ali's friend Nicolas Cole says everything he has paid for has been ROI positive because he made it so; he pays $68,000 for a mastermind. — 00:37:09
  • ★★ Ali calls Aman one of the most consistent students in the Part-Time YouTuber Academy accelerator, who prepares a document of his problems before every call. — 00:37:40 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Ali says you get out of a programme what you put in: when he pays serious money for anything, it is guaranteed to be ROI positive because he will make it so. — 00:38:09

00:38:37 — Aman's income

  • ★★ Aman: In June 2024 Aman joined Charlie Morgan's coaching programme, which taught him sales, conversion and fulfilment; he went from barely $5,000 to $6,000 a month and $20,000 in the hole for 2024 to profit. — 00:38:38
  • ★★★ Aman's business made about $30,000 a month in revenue from July to September 2024, $22,000 in October, $55,000 in November and about $36,000 so far in December, with expenses of about $10,000 a month. — 00:39:08
  • ★★★ Aman has made about $20,000 profit a month for six months, almost double his full-time income as a software engineer. — 00:39:08
  • ★★ Aman: In a May 2024 life-update video Aman set $4,000 a month profit as his freedom number, a term from Million Dollar Weekend; he has far exceeded it. — 00:39:40
  • ★★ Aman values his new sense of security and his freedom and flexibility, having hated asking his boss for days off. — 00:40:09

00:40:56 — Final advice

  • ★★★ Aman recommends investing in your own skills through educational programmes you value rather than putting the money in the stock market. — 00:41:16
  • ★★ Aman says $1,000 in the S&P 500 makes about $50 a year, while invested in your own knowledge and skills it can return 10 to 100 times. — 00:41:50 · S&P 500
  • ★★★ Aman says his case shows it is still possible to build a profitable YouTube channel from not much, though it takes time and effort and is not easy. — 00:41:50

In the description and comments

  • ★ Replying to a viewer who expected the case study to be someone who bought Ali's course, Ali says Aman bought his course too. — creator comment

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Mentioned

Central: Aman · bias to action · Skillshare

Also: People: Alex Hormozi · Captain Sinbad · Charlie Morgan · Chris Williamson · Iman Gadzhi · Izzy Sealey · Marques Brownlee · Naval Ravikant · Nicolas Cole · Russell Brunson · Thomas Frank

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Million Dollar Weekend

Organizations: Netflix · Sparkle Studios · Y Combinator

Concepts: friction · locus of control · loss aversion · negative visualisation · passive income · play, power, people · unfair advantage

Places: Hong Kong

Products: Anki · Beeminder · MacBook · Quizlet · S&P 500 · Things 3 · Todoist · Webflow · YouTube AdSense

Also centred on bias to action: If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This · 7 Life Lessons I Know at 30 But Wish I Knew at 20 · How to finally start your first business in 2026

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