Author: Curry, TechFlow TechFlow
Original title: 150 Million Views for a Single Article: Dan Koe and His Super-Individual Business
What was the most popular article on X last week?
"How to fix your entire life in 1 day".
The author, Dan Koe, is an American who creates "super-individual" content, teaching people how to support themselves by writing without a regular job. This article had already garnered 150 million views within a week of its publication.
What does 150 million mean? With just over 600 million monthly active users globally, that means one in four users has seen this article.
Some people were curious about how much money he could make. Dan Koe posted a screenshot of his earnings, showing that the X platform paid him $4,495 in 14 days.
150 million views, $4,495. But Dan Koe actually earned over $4 million last year.
The money clearly didn't come from the platform's revenue share.
You've definitely seen the term "super individual" before.
The gist is that you don't need a job or a team; you just need to write down your ideas and creativity and post them online to attract a group of people who agree with you, and then sell courses to them. In the US, this is called a One-Person Business.
Dan Koe is a top player in this field. He has 750,000+ subscribers, 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, and 170,000 email subscribers.
His story is also quite typical. He studied design in college, worked as a freelancer after graduation, tried e-commerce but lost money. In 2019, he started writing on Twitter, but nobody read it, and it took him two years to get some views.
These experiences are part of the content themselves. Failure, struggle, perseverance, and comeback—you can see this narrative structure in any self-help blogger.
Li Xiaolai has said it, Luo Zhenyu has said it, and Fan Deng has said it.
Americans package it as Philosophy and Productivity, while Chinese people package it as "cognitive upgrading," but the underlying structure is the same.
How does Dan Koe make money?
Visiting his official website reveals several product categories: a paid newsletter subscription, two books ("The Art of Focus" and "Purpose & Profit"), and an AI tool he co-founded called Eden.
He used to sell writing courses and a membership community, but they are no longer available on the official website. They may have been removed or merged into the paid subscription.
I couldn't find official pricing data, but the logic behind these types of products is pretty much the same:
Free content filters out those willing to pay, while low-priced products filter out those willing to pay more.
How much does he earn? He tweeted in 2023 that he earned $2.5 million that year. In a 2024 interview with the subscription app beehiiv, Dan also revealed that his annual income exceeded $4 million.
However, considering the size of his fanbase, it's not unreasonable. With an email list of nearly 200,000 people and millions of YouTube subscribers, assuming 5% have purchased paid products, that's nearly 50,000 paying users.
So what do those 150 million views mean to him?
The traffic entry point at the top of the funnel. The $4,495 platform commission on X is a drop in the bucket; what's more important is increasing brand awareness and reach. The real money comes from those willing to pay.
You might ask, who is buying these things?
The answer is definitely someone who wants to be the next Dan Koe.
The goals of students taking these courses are basically "building a personal brand," "monetizing their social media presence," and "escaping the 9-to-5 grind." What they are paying to learn is precisely what Dan Koe is doing.
This model can only work if there is one prerequisite: there are always new people wanting to join.
Just as gym memberships always surge at the beginning of the year, there will always be someone in the "super individual" sector who believes they can become the next leader. Dan Koe's article was published on January 12th, which happens to be the time when foreigners' New Year's resolutions are at their peak.
The title is "Repair Your Entire Life in One Day," what do you think people who click on it are thinking?
Meanwhile, X is also placing bets.
On January 16, a few days after Dan Koe's article went viral, X announced a new policy: the creator revenue pool was doubled, the weight of long articles was increased, and an additional $1 million was allocated to reward the best-performing original articles.
Musk's goal is clear. TikTok has fragmented everyone's attention into 15-second clips, and X wants to do the opposite, retaining users with longer content. Dan Koe commented that the internet has been bombarded with short videos too much, and now it has a chance to rewind.
X likes to hear that.
But what can $1 million buy?
A quick search on X reveals a plethora of imitators. Various AI skill tutorials and inspirational articles have begun to emerge, such as "How to change your life in 2026," "The one skill you need," and "Why most people will never succeed"...
The structure is the same, the style of the pictures is the same as Dan's viral post, and even the tone of "Let me tell you the truth" is the same.
This writing style has even become a meme, prompting everyone to imitate and try it.
It's not surprising, actually. Dan Koe himself said that he uses AI to assist in writing by having the AI interview him, extract his thoughts, and then format them into a highly shareable content structure.
Anyone can learn this method. ChatGPT can generate a "life-changing" article in ten minutes, with correct grammar, complete structure, and can even automatically add a few psychological terms to make it seem more profound.
But it was Dan Koe who became popular, not the imitators.
Why?
One explanation is that building trust takes time. Dan Koe wrote for six years, with real-life failures and a traceable growth trajectory. AI can mimic his sentence structure, but it can't replicate that.
Another explanation is that the super-individual track is too crowded.
When everyone is teaching "how to become a super individual," whether it's about AI tools, credit card opening guides, life improvement, or business strategies, attention will be focused on the top performers. Those who enter early get the meat, those who come later get the soup, and those who arrive even later don't get any soup at all.
Another explanation is luck. Dan Koe stumbled upon the window of opportunity presented by the X algorithm, the New Year's emotional cycle, and the policy impetus for Musk to release a lengthy article. These three things combined resulted in the $150 million being raised.
If it were someone else, at a different time, an article of the same quality might only get 1.5 million views.
One interesting point is that Dan Koe's article was excluded from X's 1 million content reward selection because it was published a few days earlier.
But that doesn't matter to him. His business model doesn't rely on platform revenue sharing; 150 million views have already fulfilled its mission: to let more people know the name Dan Koe and to let more people flow into the top of the funnel.
Who will ultimately receive X's $1 million? According to the rules, it must be an original long article, at least 1,000 words, and the amount will be calculated based on the number of times it is displayed on the homepage of paid users.
To put it another way: You not only need to write well, but you also need to have a large following.
Therefore, it's highly likely that the top players will take it.
This is the structure of the game. The platform needs top creators to prove that "long-form content has potential," and top creators need the platform's traffic to feed their own funnel. AI allows everyone to mass-produce "life-changing" content, but only a very few people can actually make money from it.
What is the role of most people?
reader.
After reading an article titled "Repair Your Entire Life in One Day," I felt deeply inspired and empowered to become a super individual. I then shared, liked, and saved it, before moving on to the next one.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitpushNewsCN
BitPush Telegram Community Group: https://t.me/BitPushCommunity
Subscribe to Bitpush Telegram: https://t.me/bitpush
