How big does my audience need to be to make money?
// The short answer
Much smaller than you’ve been told. What matters is how well people know you. The same offer converts at under 1% with strangers and around 10% with people who already trust you, so a few hundred warm people can earn more than thousands of cold ones.
The maths I use
Say you’ve got 1,000 people and a £1,000 offer. If they’re cold and 0.6% of them buy, that’s £6,000. If those exact same people are hot, it’s more like £100,000.
Same people. Same offer. The only thing that changed is whether they know you.
What that’s looked like for me
Back in 2020, a community of 550 people did six figures in sales within its first year. That was a different business with a different name, so treat it as proof the idea works. It isn’t this year’s figure.
More recently, my YouTube channel never passed 1,000 subscribers between January and May 2026, and I banked £11,479 in those five months. That’s not a lot for five months, is it? But it is when you consider the size of the channel.
So stop counting followers
Your follower count tells you how many people once pressed a button. It tells you nothing about how many would buy from you.
Put the effort into warming up the people you’ve already got. It’s slower to feel good about, and much quicker to pay.
Thinking about a show of your own?
Book a Live Show Chat. Tell me what you’re thinking and I’ll tell you honestly whether it’s worth building.
Build your LivePod