AI Summary
5 min readThe $1M AI Book Business Nobody's Talking About
Joe Poplis was a 20-year-old computer science student stocking shelves for $11 an hour when he stumbled onto an idea that would change everything. In July 2022, he met with a publishing company that was making $2 million per month selling books — and they weren't using AI at all. Poplis realized he could do the same thing with AI-generated content, targeting a demographic most tech founders ignore: middle-aged moms on Pinterest. Within months, he had built a book brand valued at $930,000, with $390,000 in profit and 70-80% margins.
Finding the Idea and Validating the Market
Poplis didn't stumble into this business by accident. During high school in 2020, he had already started working with GPT-3, building a deep understanding of how AI could integrate into different business models. When people began reaching out to him on LinkedIn about his OpenAI experience, he started charging for AI consulting advice. That consulting led him to the publishing company that showed him their numbers — and the lightbulb went off.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:18) **Joe's Background and Business Model** - 20-year-old CS student who built a $930K book brand using AI and Pinterest
- 2 (02:37) **Origin Story: From GPT-3 Beta to Publishing** - How a consulting gig led to the book idea
- 3 (04:00) **The Hockey Stick Growth Curve** - From $40 to $1K/day in four months
- 4 (05:14) **How to Get Into AI-Generated Books** - Joe's framework for beginners
- 5 (05:46) **The First Book: Learning by Doing** - How Joe figured out book creation from scratch
- 6 (09:05) **Profit Numbers and Business Valuation** - The financial breakdown
- 7 (10:00) **Pinterest Advertising Strategy** - The core marketing machine
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Meet The Kid Who Made $1M with ChatGPT
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In this video, I head out to Toronto to meet Joe Popelas - one of the only kids who ACTUALLY made $1M with ChatGPT. He shared everything about how he found the idea, how he started it, how he advertises it, and how anyone can take advantage of the goldmine that is AI automation and ChatGPT generated ebooks. This is one of the craziest business ideas I've seen in a minute, hope you guys enjoy this one!
Follow Joe 🎥 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@joepopelas 📱 TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@joepopelas
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Sharing ideas that make money!
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