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How to make your first $1,000 online

2026-09-07 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 21:30 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present, AI

Ali teaches the 1K ladder from his team's 1K Challenge: make a first $1 by asking friends to support your business, $10 by pre-selling a $9 digital product before building it, $100 by selling it to 10 more people, and $1,000 through one-on-one coaching, with students' results at each step.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — The 1K ladder: four missions from a first $1 to a first $1,000

  • ★★★ The point of making a first $1,000, Ali says, is not to get rich but to learn the skills of independent income generation by actually doing it rather than watching videos about it. — 00:00:29

  • ★★★ Ali's 1K ladder has four missions: make your first $1 online, then your first $10, your first $100 and your first $1,000, so a beginner can start one small step at a time. — 00:00:59

    “I think of it as the 1K ladder.”

00:01:29 — Mission 1: set up a way to take payments and ask friends to support your business for $1

  • ★★★ For mission one of the 1K ladder, Ali says, sign up for a payment processor and send friends a link asking them to support your entrepreneurship journey with a dollar. — 00:01:38
  • ★★ Students of the 1K Challenge such as Marcy and Sydney said making their first dollar online was one of the best days of their lives and brought tears to their eyes. — 00:01:38
  • ★★ Ali made his first dollar online at about 12 with a freelance web design project for someone he met online, which he calls his gateway drug into entrepreneurship. — 00:02:07
  • ★★★ For complete beginners serious about making money online, Ali recommends signing up for Stan Store, which he likens to Shopify for selling mainly online products. — 00:02:37
  • ★★ Stan Store costs around $29 a month, Ali says. — 00:02:37
  • ★★ For those just dipping their toes into entrepreneurship, Ali suggests Gumroad, which has no monthly fees but takes a 10% cut of every transaction. — 00:02:37
  • ★★ Alongside Stan or Gumroad you need a Stripe or PayPal account; Ali recommends Stripe where it is accepted and PayPal, accepted almost everywhere, elsewhere. — 00:03:06
  • ★★ Setting up payments was the first mission of the 1K Challenge, Ali says, because the friction of signing up for an account holds so many people back. — 00:03:35
  • ★★ Ali says you probably do not have to register a business in most countries to make some money online; think about registering once you reach a certain revenue threshold. (hedged) — 00:04:04
  • ★★ On whether to register a business, Ali would describe your situation to ChatGPT, which he says gives very reasonable financial advice on it. — 00:04:04 · ChatGPT
  • ★★ In the 1K Challenge, students had to submit a screenshot proving they had received at least $1 before mission two, making their first $10, was unlocked. — 00:04:33
  • ★★ Ali urges viewers who have not yet made a single dollar online to pause the video and do mission one first, or it will be one more video about making money watched without making any. — 00:05:03
  • ★ 1K Challenge students who made their first dollar included Gina, an intensive care nurse in Toronto, a student in Greece paid by her husband, and Kevin, a high school student. — 00:05:32

00:06:01 — Sponsor read for Stanley

00:07:58 — Mission 2: the Kickstarter method, pre-selling a $9 digital product; students' products

  • ★★★ Mission two applies the Kickstarter method, Ali says: sell any digital product for $9 as a pre-order without building it yet, to get one person to pay. — 00:07:58
  • ★★ To pre-sell the $9 product, Ali says, create it on Stan Store, write a sales page and send the link to friends and family before building it. — 00:08:36 · landing page
  • ★★ Ali offers free the custom GPT made for 1K Challenge students: it asks about your background, experiences and passions, suggests product ideas and helps write the pre-order page. — 00:09:05 · ChatGPT
  • ★★ 1K Challenge student Mingyao, a runner who made an endurance product, took about $120 from 16 people pre-ordering it, his first $100 without having created the product. — 00:09:34
  • ★★ 1K Challenge student Grace made $10 from an ebook, Your First 90 Days in Dubai, on the rookie mistakes she made when she first moved there. — 00:10:04
  • ★★ Ali says the 1K Challenge was a one-off his team ran last year (2025). — 00:10:33
  • ★★ Ali's team might run the 1K Challenge again this year (2026). (hedged) — 00:10:33
  • ★★ After Grace's mother bought her Dubai ebook, Ali says pitching to your mum is not a viable long-term business strategy, but it is a great way to get started. — 00:10:57 · lifestyle business
  • ★ 1K Challenge student Tobias posted his pre-order on Instagram and an old friend bought it at once, though he doubted it proved there was a market. — 00:11:32 · Instagram
  • ★★ Entrepreneurship can feel very scary if you plunge into the deep end, Ali says, but becomes very manageable in small steps: one dollar, then nine, then a few more. — 00:12:01
  • ★ Other 1K Challenge products: Alessandro's 18 Days to Better Sleep and Less Stress, Vicky's guide to polycystic ovarian syndrome, Dominic's Mac folder app and Susan's 13 kg weight-loss meal plan. — 00:12:01
  • ★★ The students' products package something they have already done or have experience in as a Notion template, a PDF, a worksheet or a mini app, Ali says. — 00:12:28 · Notion
  • ★★★ Selling a product before building it is only a scam if you misrepresent it, Ali says: tell buyers it is a pre-order they will get within seven days. — 00:12:53
  • ★★ Almost everyone in the 1K Challenge got through missions one and two, Ali says; mission three is where it gets hard. — 00:12:53

00:13:27 — Mission 3: sell the product to 10 more people; getting over the fear of selling

  • ★★★ Mission three of the 1K ladder: to make your first $100 online, find 10 more people to buy your $9 product. — 00:13:30
  • ★★★ To find buyers for a $9 product, Ali says, message people you know, friends, family and group chats, and post on LinkedIn, Instagram stories and WhatsApp groups. — 00:13:58 · LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp
  • ★★ Ali completely agrees with a 1K Challenge student that once you get a no, you get over it super quickly and it no longer matters. — 00:14:23
  • ★★ 1K Challenge student Omar, a parent selling a parenting product, reached $100 with all his sales from warm outreach to friends and family and none yet to a stranger. — 00:14:23
  • ★ 1K Challenge student Vernon reached the $100 goal of mission three in less than 24 hours. — 00:15:21
  • ★★ 1K Challenge student Vernon says the most useful thing from the challenge was a recurring theme of its calls, including Ali's: the thing you want is on the other side of the thing you are avoiding. — 00:15:21
  • ★★★ Students who feared what colleagues, friends and family would think found, once they posted and made money, that no one actually cared and they had been massively overthinking, Ali says. — 00:16:28

00:16:57 — Mission 4: the price versus people matrix and one-on-one coaching

  • ★★★ For mission four Ali introduces the price versus people matrix: $1,000 can come from one product at $1,000 to one person, $500 to two people, and so on down to $10 to 100 people. — 00:17:11

    “the price versus people matrix”

  • ★★ Selling a $10 product to 100 people is really hard, Ali says; he thinks one 1K Challenge student managed it, but she already had about 50,000 Instagram followers, and 120 people bought her PDF. (hedged) — 00:17:48 · Instagram

  • ★★★ To reach $1,000, Ali's team encouraged one-on-one coaching: sell your time on a Zoom call as a mini online coach in anything you are expert or good at. — 00:18:09 · Zoom
  • ★★ 1K Challenge student Kelsey completed the challenge at £1,185 by quoting £400 for a 90-minute coaching session or £1,500 for six 60-minute sessions. — 00:18:37
  • ★★ Kelsey later joined the Lifestyle Business Academy, recently quit her job and now makes tens of thousands of dollars online with a similar coaching offer, Ali says. — 00:18:37 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ 1K Challenge student Susan, a psychotherapist, made her $1,000 from her $10 meal plan, a couple of psychotherapy clients by Zoom and about five fitness clients. — 00:19:24 · Zoom
  • ★★ 1K Challenge student Aman, good at public speaking, made his $1,000 offering public speaking coaching. — 00:20:14
  • ★★ Ali used to do private tutoring, helping younger children prepare for maths and physics exams, because he was good at passing exams at school. — 00:20:14
  • ★★★ You already have things you are good at that people will pay you to coach them in, Ali says: you do not need to be an expert, just a couple of steps ahead of them. — 00:20:38

00:21:08 — Making $1,000 differs from making $100,000

  • ★★ The way you make your first $1,000 online is very different from the way you might make your first $100,000, Ali says. — 00:21:08

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 1K Challenge · 1K ladder · Kickstarter method · price versus people matrix

Also: Projects: Lifestyle Business Academy

Organizations: Instagram · Kickstarter · LinkedIn · PayPal · Shopify · Stripe · University of Cambridge

Concepts: landing page · lifestyle business

Places: Dubai · Greece · Toronto

Products: ChatGPT · Gumroad · Notion · Stan Store · WhatsApp · Zoom

Also centred on 1K Challenge: Earning Your First $1,000 Online Changes Everything · Why Pay For Bootcamps When You Can Learn For Free?

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