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 showed him their stats: they were making $2 million in revenue selling books. "That was a complete eye-opener for me," Joe says. "I didn't realize how many people bought books per month." The kicker? They weren't using AI at all. Joe had been working with GPT-3 since 2020 and immediately saw an opportunity. By December 28 of that same year, he hit his first $1,000 profit day. Today, his book brand is valued at $930,000, he's made $390,000 in profit, and he's selling 40% of the business to an investor — all while generating every single book with ChatGPT.
How the Books Actually Get Made
Joe is blunt about the process: "It's not as easy as just putting into ChatGPT, 'write me a book on whatever.'" His first attempt was "probably the worst book anybody could ever read" — no congruency, no structure. He learned by buying competitors' books and studying how they were organized.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:15) **Introduction to Joe Poplis and his AI book business** - A 20-year-old computer science student made over $1M selling AI-generated ebooks.
- 2 (02:22) **Origin of the business idea** - Joe discovered the potential of AI-generated books after meeting a publishing company.
- 3 (03:45) **Early growth and first profits** - Joe generated $40 in September, then hit his first profitable day on October 3rd.
- 4 (04:55) **How to start with AI-generated books** - The best approach is learning generative AI models and finding a niche with emotional appeal.
- 5 (08:19) **Business finances and profit margins** - Joe has made $390k profit with a 70-80% profit margin.
- 6 (09:15) **Marketing strategy with Pinterest ads** - Majority of revenue comes from Pinterest ads using consideration and conversion campaigns.
- 7 (10:37) **Competition and market saturation** - Joe is not worried about new competitors due to brand momentum and loyal customer base.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Meet The Kid Who Made $1M with ChatGPT
📚 The Case Study Collection - https://www.starterstory.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=joe&yts=true
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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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