I went from a five-figure monthly income to six figures in just half a year.
On July 7th, I posted a thread about my income that exploded with over 200k views.
https://x.com/Pluvio9yte/status/2074187522956226920
I think the reason it went viral is simple: the contrast between my age and income. I'm writing this not to show off, but to disclose my journey and insights over the past year while gaining some followers. In self-media, public promotion isn't something to be ashamed of.
I'm not trying to prove anything either. I used to care about others' opinions, but now I feel that if someone doesn't believe you, even if you shove evidence in their face, they'll just say it's photoshopped. So it's pointless. I can only guarantee that you will learn something from this article.
Admittedly, there are many big shots who earn much more than I do. To be honest, I can't compare to them yet; this income is the limit of what I can currently achieve.
I want to talk about two main things in this article:
- Compound Interest Thinking
- Self-Media (Content Creation)
Let's talk about my personal experience first
Just Graduated — Still doing cyber manual labor
I graduated from a top-tier university and started working this time last year. I landed a total package of 600k RMB. It sounds like a lot, but after taxes and insurance, the actual take-home pay each month wasn't that much.
Plus, my mentor kept mentioning layoffs, which made me very nervous. So, I was always exploring stable side hustles.
During school, I formed an outsourcing team with some grad students and PhDs I met through competitions to earn extra cash. It wasn't until I started working that I realized I couldn't balance both.
Moreover, right when the Claude Sonnet 3.x series and Claude Code were being promoted, AI drastically accelerated productivity, and non-enterprise level demands on the market began to depreciate severely.
I realized that outsourcing is actually manual labor. Although it pays more, it doesn't offer compound interest.
The Turning Point — Starting to do things with Compound Interest
Around October or November last year, Anthropic and OpenAI both stepped up, entering the Sonnet/Opus/GPT model race, and the AI track was just beginning. At that time, it seemed not many people on Twitter were sharing AI content. So, with a give-it-a-try attitude, I started sharing AI-related content. Back then, I wasn't doing self-media; I was probably just being a living person.
By December, I reached 10k followers (in about a month). Up to that point, I had zero monetization; it was purely out of passion. I even paid quite a bit of tuition learning how to do self-media.
Now, let's break down Self-Media
Self-Media — Earning the first pot of gold
I was almost ready to give up. I found that sharing high-quality content every day was meaningless except for follower growth, and it was wasting my time. Then the turning point came: I discovered Twitter's DM feature and found many brands contacting me. Then I started taking sponsored posts.
Positive feedback brought motivation. I continued writing high-quality content, starting a positive feedback loop: writing content -> sponsored posts -> gaining followers. Earning money gave me more motivation to write content, and content helped me gain more followers.
At that time, I hadn't realized this was a virtuous cycle of compound interest.
Browsing Twitter — Learning while writing
Twitter has many excellent bloggers sharing high-quality insights. I learned a lot about making money, especially regarding account monetization.
@imwsl90 Wesley once said that public monetization is like selling yourself. At that time, there were channels for GPT Team subscriptions, and he would basically shout about it every day. This was likely the seed of my understanding of traffic monetization. It turns out that the lowest form of traffic monetization is taking sponsored posts; the real treasures are far beyond that.
Traffic is just the starting point; the series of industrial chains built around traffic is the ultimate moat for making money.
I came up with this sentence myself, but I think everyone who wants to build a personal IP or do self-media should remember it.
The Bottleneck — I finally got it
It took me four months to figure out the traffic monetization issue mentioned above. The earliest traffic monetization I saw last year was from Tao Ge @sitinme and aigocode. Building an API proxy station around an IP probably generated several million in revenue.
At the time, I didn't realize how precious real needs built around traffic are.
Proxy stations are a real need, international SIM cards like Giffgaff are a real need, and hardware like OpenClaw is a real need. These are all things people sell on Twitter. The account is the foundation, and these real need products are the exit.
OK, having discussed this, I believe you have the most basic understanding. This is the simplest way I can explain the topic of traffic monetization.
How to get traffic — Everyone has their own way
The best at getting traffic is @Leobai825. After a brief exchange, I found that Tianci is indeed leagues ahead in terms of getting traffic and cognition. Within just one month of establishing his proxy station, he completed the cold start and achieved six-figure profits.
Moreover, I agree with his thinking regarding tokens. So, I studied his path and eventually discovered that after selling tokens for so long, he wasn't actually selling tokens at all.
If you want to know what he's selling, consider it homework for this article. Go through all his early tweets about building proxy stations, and eventually, you'll find what he's selling.
His personal IP is just the first node to complete the cold start.
Later, I saw Yihui join Gefei's community to do overseas web development. Yihui is likely familiar to everyone; he already had tens of thousands of followers. His first Web SaaS site got several orders right after going online.
But unlike the traditional SEO tactics of Gefei's community, most of his traffic didn't come from the community; his followers helped his product complete its launch.
This finally made me realize the price of traffic and helped me make a decision. Those who know me know I've done overseas web development, joined Gefei's community, and reached $1,000/month in April.
But why did I give it up? Because I realized that, in my understanding, you still need to go to the source of traffic. And self-media is the source of traffic.
That's what I have to say about self-media. Of course, the benefits of self-media go far beyond traffic; it's your public business card and helps you build connections. For example, the content you post attracts certain people. If you're an entrepreneur, you'll attract entrepreneurs; if you post spicy content, you'll attract people who like that, right?
There's too much to say about self-media content; it's a huge topic, so we won't dive deeper here.
In the list of the most valuable skills for the next decade, compound interest thinking often appears alongside self-media, AI, and long-termism.
A brief chat about Compound Interest Thinking
Doing self-media is a matter of compound interest. Every piece of content you post can attract people, and your followers are growing, which is essentially expanding a traffic pool. This is a process of compounding.
If you have a job but your daily work is just repetitive tasks and you aren't growing from it, then what you are doing does not have compound interest.
If you are building products or doing SEO, every piece of user feedback and every optimization step in the conversion path is a process of compound interest.
If you can do things and learn from them at the same time, then you are doing something that accumulates.
In short, anything where you only trade time for profit does not involve compound interest. If you are still young and have a choice, I don't recommend such behavior.
Small Summary
Surprised? Haha. Usually, a Twitter post like this would end with a WeChat ID or a QR code to start a group. But I don't really like socializing, and I don't have time for community management. After thinking it over, I decided against it.
Besides, even if I charged 99 RMB per person for a group, how much would 100 or 200 people really bring in?
This article is a summary of my eight months on Twitter. I've grown a lot, and my life has improved significantly. I no longer worry about hotel prices when traveling, and I didn't hesitate to hire a personal trainer for my health. Twitter has brought many changes, and I feel very lucky.
I've also met many excellent friends and like-minded people on Twitter. I'm happy that my first stop after entering society was like this, rather than the internal struggles and petty schemes of a corporation. Although those things still happen objectively, I basically don't care anymore. My side hustle and the constantly compounding self-media have given me this confidence.
Gratitude to everyone who follows me and to the bloggers on Twitter who have taught me so much. Thank you; I wouldn't be who I am today without you.
Finally, if you've read this far and haven't followed me yet, I've wasted my effort writing this high-value content.
Special thanks to:
泊舟、Rachel、柿子
