📋 How Pat Walls makes $250k/month

How Pat Got Started

Starter Story is a website that features interviews with entrepreneurs about how they got started and how they’re making money (with revenue numbers).

Pat initially started Starter Story as a side project next to his 6-figure job on Wall Street.

After reading Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, he started implementing 2 hours of deep work before he had to go to his day job.

At first, he saw this as more of a creative outlet than as a real venture. He even built a SaaS-business simultaneously, which he thought would be the thing he could go all in on.

But after a few months, he realized that Starter Story was making him more money with less input.

By October 2018 he had built up a monthly revenue stream of $3,000.

So he decided to leave his job and go all in on Starter Story.

Business Model

Starter Story was initially sort of a blog where Pat shared interviews of how founders got started and what their revenue streams are.

He published each interview as an article and also sent it out as a newsletter.

Initially, he mostly monetized it through sponsorships. In fact, Klavyio sponsored his entire site and newsletter for the first few years.

Later on he switched to a subscription-based model. So people had to pay a monthly fee to get access to all the case studies.

Recently he’s changed his business model again. You now just have to make a one-time payment of $695 to get access to all the case studies.

Or $1,095 to also get all the courses and join their community.

After he went all in on Starter Story, he also built an SEO course called Lean SEO. And he’s since built more courses, making it one of his core revenue sources as well.

Fast forward a few years and he’s built this business into a literal money-machine.

His revenue is probably the best example of hockey stick growth I’ve ever seen.

It took him years to get to about $5k/month, which he achieved in 2020. That grew to $10k/month in June 2020,

And now, just 4 years later, he’s at 250k/month. He attributes this success mainly to smart hires, his sister being the first one:

Growth Sources

Now let’s look at how he’s built a community of raving fans that make him more money per year than some people make in their entire life.

We’ll focus on his initial traffic and growth sources, as this is what you can start implementing today, even if you’re completely new to online community building.

Reddit

The platform that helped him get the first few visitors and newsletter subscribers was Reddit.

He started posting all of his interviews in full length on Reddit. He mostly focused on the r/Entrepreneur subreddit and then simply added a link to his website at the end of the article, telling people that they would find more of these interviews over there.

Not all subreddits allow promotion and some people hated him for posting. But if you’re building something great, you will always attract some haters.

On the flipside, most people loved the case studies.

And then in December 2017, one interview went viral:

Posting on Hacker News also worked well for him, since his target audience also went to the site to read about tech, startups and business.

This is an example of a post that went viral here early on:

SEO

Posting on Reddit and Hacker News worked so well for Pat that he initially didn’t even try to get more people from Google.

That changed in late 2018 when he focused more on SEO. He’s never shared his exact SEO strategy. But he did say that he doesn’t do anything that other SEO experts recommend, like using keyword tools or backlinking.

Whatever strategy he’s using has clearly been working extremely well for him, though.

In September 2018 he got 20,000 pageviews, of which at least 9,000 sessions came from Google.

He shared all of that and announced that he’s quit his job in this thread:

He also shared a few bits of his strategy in this thread. Here are the key takeaways:

• Use Google autocomplete to find keywords

• Write articles optimized for these keywords

• Wait for about 6 months (while still publishing more)

• Check your Google Search Console to find keywords your articles have been ranking for

• Think of similar keywords you could cover

• Use the winning format for 100 more blog posts (his example: 33 Cutest Cat Photos of 2020 can actually be 33 Cutest [INSERT_ANIMAL] Photos of 2020.)

• Scale from here. E.g. you can now write a standalone article about each animal and then 10 more type of lists)

Twitter

As you can see, Pat shared a lot of his business success on Twitter.

In fact, he basically built Starter Story in public. 

As a result, his Twitter feed is a bit like one huge case study of how he’s building his own business.

This is another great way to build a community of fans because it feels like you can sit on his shoulder and follow his journey.

As such, that makes it super personal, relatable and almost intimate as he’s also always been very transparent with his revenue.

That came in particularly handy when he launched his course Lean SEO. He had $10k in preorders before he even launched it with just 10,000 followers on Twitter at the time.

These were the results after a week:

Youtube

Another channel he started more recently is Youtube. This is the only place where he currently still shares case studies for free.

And I think it's genius.

He interviews the entrepreneurs in person, allowing viewers to connect with their story more deeply.

As a result, he grew exponentially more quickly here than on other platforms. After reaching 200k subscribers in the first year, he just added another 60k in 2 months (260k at the end of April 2024).

He shared his Youtube start on Twitter but he attributes most of his success to working with the right people and learning from his audience.

For instance, he asked for feedback on his first Youtube video and implemented a few things Ryan Hashemi recommended. These were key factors in getting his channel to 85k subscribers after publishing only 12 videos:

Newsletter Strategy Early On

Pat is one of those people who constantly A/B tests and analyzes every bit of data he can get.

I think that’s one of the reasons for his incredible success: He’s constantly betting on the winning horse.

As a result, his strategies change quite drastically over time as well. But since his early strategy is what will most likely work for you if you don’t have much traction yet, we’ll start with that.

Initially, he used his newsletter to funnel all of his traffic through it. So, in early 2018, he had a sign-up form at the top of his page.

And then he also added a form to each article. Both would get you all the interviews straight to your inbox.

He kept the site pretty much the same for the next few years.

But in 2022 he also added a popup where he offered a lead magnet.

This way he increased the chance of people signing up as they now got something extra for free.

In 2023 he optimized the whole process even more, leading to a jump from 200 to 2,000 newsletter signups per day within just a few months.

Alex Garcia broke down exactly what he’s done in this article. Here’s the summary:

• Signup button in the menu bar

• Signup form above the fold with a clear value proposition

• Lead magnet signup button in content blocks

• Exit popup, full-screen takeover with social proof

• Gated content with a discount to sign up for the subscription

• End case study floating bar with lead magnet

Newsletter Strategy Today

From what I could find, he changed his business model to subscriptions in early 2023. So he doesn’t send the stories as emails anymore.

Now he uses his newsletter to share personal stories and promote webinars or workshops.

His current emails are great. But he's leaving money on the table by not fully using his email list.

Instead of sending the whole case study, he could just send teasers to get more signups for his database.

But since he absolutely loves testing, it could also be that he’ll change that soon again.

And it definitely still seems to be working for him, he recently just reached 250,000 subscribers:

How You Can Replicate His Success

Here are the 3 things to focus on if you want to replicate Pat’s success.

Find platforms where your target audience is

When Pat just launched Starter Story, he got the first bit of traction within just a few months.

He managed that by getting in front of existing audiences. Instead of starting with an empty social media account, he posted in subreddits and on Hacker News, where he could get in front of hundreds of thousands of people every day.

There are subreddits for almost every niche and audience. So this is a great starting point.

Just make sure you respect the subreddit’s promotion rules and give as much value as possible.

Other ideas to get in front of an existing audience are:

• Facebook groups

• Linkedin groups

• Indie Hacker

Use SEO with Google autocomplete

SEO is still the best way to get sustainable organic traffic. While it’s certainly more competitive than 6 years ago, there are still plenty of keywords that are easy to rank for.

Keywords and search volume aren’t static.

There are constantly new ones coming up that aren’t very competitive yet.

Pat doesn’t use any keyword tools. Instead he just looks for autocompletes and then tests a bunch to find winners.

This is a great starting point. Another strategy that works well for newer websites is the KGR method. I covered that in detail in my SEO Crash Course to find low-competition keywords with high search volume.

Document your journey

Building in public almost guarantees a loyal following.

While it might take some testing to figure out what resonates with your target audience, sharing your process builds trust and makes people want to support you.

Sharing revenue or income reports is even better. That transparency is what attracts people like a magnet.

But even just sharing what you’re working on, what you’re struggling with and achieved milestones gets people engaged.

And that makes it so much easier to launch a product or service. Because your audience already feels invested in it.

And they’re excited about the launch.