How To Build A One-Person Media Empire

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Today, you’ll learn a 7-step system to launch a one-person media empire.

By investing in your personal brand and growing your online network, you dramatically increase your chances of success in any adventure you pursue.

Unfortunately, most people don’t create content worthy of an audience and don’t have a system to follow. Let’s change that!

People Still Underestimate The Power Of The Internet

By the end of this newsletter, you’re going to learn:

• How James Camp built a one-person media empire

• How to create content that resonates with your audience

• A 7-Step audience building playbook

• A business idea you can pounce on

• How James thinks about income and wealth building

James Camp - Creating A One-Person Media Empire In 2 Years:

James is the Founder and Managing Partner of Gatsby Media. He has built and sold tens of millions of dollars worth of websites and advised on hundreds of M&A deals.

He blew up on Twitter after sharing a case study on a “nano flip” - a term James coined, where he bought a small internet property, made a few improvements, and then sold the site for a meaningful profit.

In the last 1.5 years, he:

• Amassed 72k+ Twitter followers (@jamesoncamp)

• Built a 15k+ subscriber newsletter called Nano Flips

• Generated a sizable income from sharing his expertise with this audience.

There’s a ton of value in growing your online network - business opportunities, connections, investments…the upside is enormous.

(James agrees 👇)

I sat down with James to learn more about his process.

Let’s get after it!

The 7-Step Audience Building Playbook

This process can be broken down into 7-steps:

1) Do interesting things & Document it

2) Find Your Niche Through Rapid Experiments

3) Double Down On Virality

4) Play The Algorithm

5) Own Your Audience

6) Monetize Creatively

7) Syndicate On New Platforms

The Power Of Personal Brand:

I’ve seen hundreds of creators build mini-empires on the internet.

These businesses are simple to set up - they use free (or low-cost) technology, require no employees, and can scale nicely.

Let’s quickly examine a few Twitter native influencers:

• Justin Welsh: In 2019, he walked away from his career as a tech sales executive and began consulting. To get clients, he would post on Twitter and Linkedin. As of 2022, he’s generated $2.5M in revenue, built a 55k+ newsletter, and launched a thriving course business.

• Sahil Bloom: In 2020, Sahil was a Vice President at a venture capital firm with a relatively limited social presence. By 2022, he’d mastered Twitter threads and has grown to 720k+ followers, a 125k+ newsletter business, an agency, and a $10M fund to invest in early-stage companies.

• Trung Phan: Before 2020, Trung had spent his career in tech and banking. In 2020, he joined The Hustle as a writing lead. Since then, he’s grown his Twitter following to 499k+ followers, partnered with WorkWeek, launched a thriving newsletter, and hosts a top podcast with Not Investment Advice.

Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. Media businesses require quality content and extreme consistency.

You must learn how to “play” the platforms and build systems.

But if you take the time to learn this skill, it’ll change your life.

Step 1 - Do Interesting Things And Document It

The best way to get started on Twitter is by doing interesting things in the world and documenting it on Twitter.

238 million curious minds use Twitter daily.

It does not matter what you’re into. There’s a tribe out there for you. It could be:

• Running a restaurant

• Becoming a pilot

• Attending medical school

• Getting a new job

To start, all you have to do is engage.

Summarize an article you read. Comment on other Tweets. Play the game.

Step 2 - Find Your Niche Through Rapid Experiments

Intermediate Twitter is about finding your “thing.”

You’ll often see people refer to themselves as “the writing guy,” “the car guy,” or the “DTC guy.” They didn’t start there - It happens through a series of experiments.

In 2020, James started to post on Twitter. He talked about his background. Things he was working on. His hobbies. Interestests.

Go hard for 4 months. Throw a ton of spaghetti at the metaphorical wall and see what sticks. Look for signs of virality.

Step 3 – Double Down On Virality

At this point, you’ll begin to see some patterns emerge. Some Tweets get engagement. Others fall flat.

The great thing about Twitter is you can post a lot, do it quickly, and get instant feedback. It is almost irrelevant what you think is important. The market is going to tell you what it wants.

When James started tweeting about a side hustle he was into (flipping websites), he was met with overwhelming signal.

He realized that in 2020, there was a serious lack of information about underwriting and acquiring businesses below $10M.

This became his primary niche, and NanoFlips was born.

Tools to help you measure engagement:

• Twitter Analytics (Free)

• Tweet Hunter (what James uses)

• Hypefury (What I use)

• And many more

Step 4 – Play The Algorithm:

Every social platform incentivizes activities that create engagement and keep people on the platform. For Twitter, that thing is threads.

Threads are a string of Tweets that are all published at once. The purpose of a thread is to make an end-run around the character limitations. It allows you to go deep on a topic and is the primary method of gaining followers quickly.

At this point, you’ve found your niche and have been consistently writing tweets and engaging with accounts in your Twittersphere.

But it's time to level up. To do that, you’ll need a Gameplan. Luckily, James has one:

Top-level creators like James build out content systems to publish regularly. Try to his these weekly goals:

• 2 actionable threads: These will take about 1 hour each to write (~2hrs per week) and drive the bulk of your Twitter growth.

• 3 engagement Tweets per day: Thoughtful observations, comments, lessons, or hot takes about your content focus.

• 1 hour per day of engaging with the platform: Reserve about 60 minutes per day (split into 30-minute intervals) to engage with accounts you follow, comments on your threads, and generally be engaged in the community.

Step 5 - Own Your Audience

You do now own your followers on social platforms. The algorithm can change anytime, and your audience can disappear overnight.

To own your audience, you need to take them off social platforms, and into a medium you control.

One of the best ways to do that is via a newsletter.

James drives his social traffic from Twitter to his newsletter. This alone has grown his newsletter to over 15,000 people.

Here are some tools you could use to set up your newsletter. There are a lot of great tools out there, but I see these most frequently:

• Revue - One-click newsletter signups via your Twitter profile

• Kajabi - A hosting platform for courses and newsletters

• Beehiv - Purpose build newsletter platform (I use this)

Once you own your audience, you have far greater flexibility to monetize your media business.

Step 6 – Monetize Creatively

There are many ways to monetize an engaged audience. I’ll highlight 2 common methods:

• Advertising: Selling advertising inventory in your weekly newsletter. Typically done on a CPM (cost per thousand views) pricing schedule. So if your newsletter has 2000 readers and a 50% open rate, then 1,000 people saw it. At a rate of $50/CPM, your ad inventory is worth $50.

• Courses: Proving education via self-serve or cohort-based formats.

James does both!

But this is where courses can become very powerful. Even with a small community, you can monetize incredibly well if the audience is engaged.

But there’s one more step.

Step 7 - Syndicate Your Content On New Platforms

At this point, you have a system for Twitter. You have a process to consistently create high-quality content and monetize it.

Now, it’s time to expand.

James has a knack for marketing and quickly figured out how to create engaging content via TikTok.

The best part?

He has hundreds of high-performing Twitter threads and newsletters that he can quickly turn into videos.

He’s grown quickly - 8,000+ followers in just 2 weeks.

Take a look at the link in that bio…

That is driving thousands of new visitors back to the newsletter system that he’s already built.

The Capital Handbook 📖: Let’s make some money!

Here’s a business idea for you 💡​​

Once you dip your foot into the creator economy, you’ll see that there are many businesses making between $100k and $1 million that have very little idea of what they are doing on the ops side. You could leverage that gap.

Build a shared services model for back-end business needs.

Put a cohesive management team together that is a one-stop shop for op-ex. Sell fractional access or put together a subscription model. This removes the mental load and allows creators to keep doing what they are doing, which is creating.

“There is a big difference between getting rich and staying rich" - James

James has a very straightforward investment strategy:

Step 1: Create businesses that cash flow.

Step 2: Buy equities or cash flow-positive micro businesses

Step 3: Spend the rest of your time building your audience.

See you next week!