50K Followers But Broke? How I Made $1.1M in 9 Months

If you’re an influencer with 50,000 followers or more and you’re barely making money, this post will show you exactly how I went from struggling financially with a million subscribers to making $1.1 million in nine months without running ads. I’ll explain the mental shifts and platform changes that transformed my income and how you can do the same.

In my video, I break down the uncomfortable truth about being famous but broke, and the specific steps I took to monetize properly.

This is the guide I wish someone had given me when I was posting viral content but asking my sister to lend me money to keep the business afloat.

The Reality of Being a Famous Broke Influencer

I explain in my video how I launched my Skool community in April 2023 and made $1.1 million in revenue by the end of that year. This wasn’t from ads, sponsorships, or a massive team. I simply put courses inside a platform, added a calendar, ran some calls, and helped people in the community. The product itself is straightforward: a website with courses and community support.

But here’s what most people don’t realize about my journey. Before this success, I was experiencing something deeply frustrating. I had about a million YouTube subscribers, I was getting recognized on the street five to ten times per day, and I could post on Instagram and have 50 to 70 people show up to meet me. By any reasonable measure, I had celebrity status within my niche. Yet financially, I was barely surviving.

During my time in Dubai in late 2022, my videos were consistently hitting massive view counts—one million, 1.7 million, and higher. Other creators were copying my editing style and making response videos about me. All the external markers of success were there. But my income was only around $30,000 to $40,000 per month, and my expenses were matching that amount because of my large editing and content team. There were multiple occasions when my business bank account dropped to just $5,000 to $10,000, and I had to message my sister asking to borrow £15,000 just to make payroll.

This is the hidden reality of many influencers. I spoke to someone with two million Instagram followers who was making only $10,000 per month. You can do all the hard work of building an audience, dealing with algorithm changes, managing hate comments, and sacrificing your privacy, but if you don’t know how to properly monetize, you’ll remain financially unstable despite your fame.

The Fear That Keeps Influencers Broke

In my experience, the main obstacle preventing influencers from monetizing isn’t a lack of opportunity—it’s fear of judgment. I was terrified that if I started selling something, my audience would turn on me. Every day I received hundreds of comments and handwritten letters from people saying my free content had helped them through dark times. The thought of disappointing these people by “selling out” was paralyzing.

But here’s what I realized: the people who get angry when you monetize were never going to support you financially anyway. They’re like squatters in your home who get upset when you ask for rent. The valuable members of your audience—the intelligent, supportive ones who actually want to see you succeed—will be proud when you make money. These are the people who will become customers, share your paid content, and become even bigger advocates for your work.

The shift happened for me when I spoke with an entrepreneur named Andrew who looked at my sales approach and said with genuine enthusiasm that I could be making much more money. Something clicked in that moment. I realized that entrepreneurship and making money weren’t things to be ashamed of—they were exciting challenges to embrace, just like content creation had been.

This fear of monetizing is actually identical to the fear most creators have before posting their first piece of content. You worry about old high school friends screenshotting your videos, family members judging you, or looking cringe. But once you push through and start creating, you realize those fears were overblown. The same applies to monetization. The judgment you fear from selling is just as irrelevant as the judgment you feared when you started creating content.

Why Skool Changed Everything

The platform that transformed my business was Skool. On my first day launching my community there, I made approximately $668,000. Of course, the revenue fluctuated after that initial launch, but the foundation was set for consistent income that didn’t depend on algorithm changes or sponsor deals.

What I discovered is that monetizing through a community platform requires a completely different skill set than growing an audience. You need to learn how to reduce churn—people will join your community, but they’ll also leave if you don’t provide ongoing value. You need to figure out the right pricing structure, how many calls to run, what the courses should contain, and what pinned posts will keep members engaged. These are business problems, not content problems, and most influencers have zero experience with them.

During 2023, I often found myself wishing I could just go back to being a full-time content creator and let someone else handle the business side. I needed someone who understood what reduces churn, how to structure a community, and how to maximize revenue per member. Since Skool was relatively new at the time, there weren’t many people with this experience. Now, after two years of running my community and generating approximately $2 million in profit, I have that knowledge.

The model works because it aligns incentives properly. Instead of relying on sponsors who may or may not fit your brand, or ad revenue that fluctuates with CPM rates and view counts, you’re providing direct value to people who want more from you. Your most engaged fans get deeper access and more detailed instruction through courses and community interaction. In return, you get predictable recurring revenue that can scale as your audience grows.

The Demographic Shift When You Start Selling

One concern influencers have is that monetizing will slow their audience growth. In my video, I explain that this does happen, but it’s actually a positive development. When you start selling, the low-value audience members who were never going to support you financially leave to find another creator who offers everything for free. Meanwhile, the intelligent, supportive members of your audience either become customers or continue following you because they respect your business.

Think about how you consume content from creators you follow. When someone like Ali Abdaal does a sponsorship in his video, you might skip past it, but you don’t unsubscribe or get angry. If the content is valuable enough, you stick around. Some viewers will eventually become customers of higher-ticket offerings. I purchased Ali’s YouTube program for around $5,000, and I respect him more knowing he’s successfully monetized his expertise. That’s the type of audience member you want to cultivate.

Your overall audience might become smaller when you monetize, but the quality of that audience increases dramatically. You’re no longer optimizing for vanity metrics like total follower count. Instead, you’re building a community of people who value your work enough to invest in it financially. These people are more likely to implement what you teach, share your content with others who will appreciate it, and provide meaningful feedback that helps you improve your offerings.

The Moral Imperative to Monetize

I make the point in my video that if you have the ability to monetize your influence and you’re not doing it, you’re actually doing a disservice to yourself and your family. You never know when the algorithm might shift, when your type of content might fall out of favor, or when you might face some kind of controversy. The time to build financial stability is while you have momentum, not after you’ve lost it.

Living by other people’s values and expectations keeps you stuck. Every time I’ve aligned with my own values and standards, my life has improved. The same will be true for you. If you removed all external judgment and could make decisions as if you were “king of the world,” you’d absolutely choose to monetize your influence properly. So why let the opinions of people who contribute nothing to your success dictate your financial future?

The shift from being a broke influencer to running a profitable business required me to develop enthusiasm about making money. For too long, I had internalized the idea that monetizing was somehow impure or would disappoint my audience. But the reality is that the people worth serving—your real fans—want to see you win. They understand that creating valuable content requires resources, and they’re happy to support you financially in exchange for deeper access and more comprehensive teaching.

If you’re an influencer with 50,000 followers or more and you’re making minimal income despite your audience size, the path forward is clear. You need to overcome the fear of judgment, choose a platform that allows for community building and course delivery like Skool, and commit to learning the business skills required to retain and serve paying members. The alternative is continuing to work incredibly hard on content while remaining financially vulnerable, always one algorithm change away from losing everything you’ve built.