Author: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow
What was the hottest article on X last week?
"How to fix your entire life in 1 day." Fix your entire life in one day.
Author Dan Koe, an American, creates content about "super individuals," teaching people how to not work a 9-to-5 job and make a living by writing. A week after its release, this article had already reached 150 million views.
What does 150 million mean? X has just over 600 million monthly active users globally, meaning one in every four users has come across this article.
Some wondered how much money this could make. Dan Koe shared a screenshot of his earnings: in 14 days, X platform paid him $4,495.
150 million views, $4,495. But Dan Koe actually earned over $4 million last year.
The money clearly doesn't come from platform revenue sharing.
You must have seen the term "super individual."
It generally means you don't need to work a job or have a team; you just need to turn your ideas and creativity into content posted online to attract a group of people who resonate with you, and then sell courses to them. In the U.S., this is called a One-Person Business.
Dan Koe is a top player in this field. He has 750,000 X followers, 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, and an email list of 170,000 people.
His story is also standard. He studied design in college, worked as a freelancer after graduation, tried e-commerce, and lost money. He started writing on Twitter in 2019, but no one read it. He persisted for two years before gaining traction.
These experiences are part of the content itself. Failure, struggle, persistence, and triumph—you can see this narrative structure in any successful self-help blogger.
Li Xiaolai talked about it, Luo Zhenyu talked about it, Fan Deng talked about it.
Americans package it as Philosophy and Productivity; Chinese package it as "cognitive upgrade." The skeleton is the same.
How does Dan Koe make money?
Open his official website, and you'll see several types of products: paid newsletter subscriptions, two books ("The Art of Focus" and "Purpose & Profit"), and an AI tool he co-founded called Eden.
He used to sell writing courses and membership communities, but they are no longer visible on the official website. They might have been taken down or merged into the paid subscriptions.
I couldn't find official pricing data, but the logic of such products is generally similar:
Free content filters out those willing to pay; low-priced products filter out those willing to pay more.
How much does he earn? In 2023, he posted on Twitter that his income that year was $2.5 million. In a 2024 interview with the subscription software beehiiv, Dan also revealed that he earns over $4 million annually.
But given his follower size, it's not far-fetched. With nearly 200,000 email subscribers and millions of YouTube fans, assuming 5% have purchased paid products, that's nearly 50,000 paying users.
So what is the 150 million views to him?
A traffic entry point at the top of the funnel. The $4,495 platform share on X is pocket change; what's more important is increasing his brand recognition and reach. The real money comes from those willing to pay later.
You might ask, who is buying these things?
The answer is undoubtedly those who want to become the next Dan Koe.
The goal of such course participants is basically to "build a personal brand," "monetize self-media," and "escape the 9-to-5 grind." What they pay to learn is exactly what Dan Koe is doing.
For this model to work, there is one prerequisite: there are always new people wanting to join.
Just like gym memberships always surge at the beginning of the year, the "super individual"赛道 always has people who believe they can become the next top player. Dan Koe published that article on January 12, right when New Year's resolutions are strongest.
The title is "How to fix your entire life in 1 day." What do you think people clicking on it are thinking?
Meanwhile, X is also betting on it.
On January 16, a few days after Dan Koe's article went viral, X announced a new policy: the creator revenue pool doubled, long-form article权重 increased, and an additional $1 million reward for the best-performing original articles.
What Musk wants to do is obvious. TikTok has cut everyone's attention into 15-second碎片; X wants to go the opposite way, using long-form content to retain users. Dan Koe wrote a comment大意 saying that short videos are刷得太狠了, and now the internet has a chance to swing back.
X loves to hear that.
But what can $1 million buy?
Search on X, and you'll already find a lot of imitators. Various AI skill tutorials and inspirational articles are emerging, such as "How to change your life in 2026," "The one skill you need," "Why most people will never succeed"...
The structure is the same, the image style is the same as Dan's viral post, and even the "I'm here to tell you the truth" tone is the same.
This writing style has even become a meme,引得大家争相模仿和尝试.
It's not surprising. Dan Koe himself said he uses AI to assist写作, by having AI interview himself, extract ideas, and then format them into highly传播 content structures.
Anyone can learn this method. ChatGPT can generate a "life-changing" long article in ten minutes, with correct grammar, complete structure, and even automatically add a few psychological terms to appear profound.
But it's Dan Koe who went viral, not the imitators.
Why?
One explanation is that trust takes time. Dan Koe has been writing for six years, has real failure experiences, and has a traceable growth trajectory. AI can imitate his sentence structure, but it can't replicate these.
Another explanation is that the super individual赛道 is too crowded.
When everyone is teaching "how to become a super individual," whether it's about AI tools, guide to success, life fixes, or business insights, attention concentrates at the top. Those who enter early eat the meat, those who come later drink the soup, and those even later get nothing.
Another explanation is luck. Dan Koe hit the window of X's algorithm adjustment, the New Year emotional cycle, and the policy tailwind of Musk pushing long-form content. Three things叠加 together, and 150 million views happened.
Change the person, change the timing, the same quality article might only get 1.5 million views.
An interesting point is that Dan Koe's article was published a few days too early and is not eligible for X's $1 million content reward selection.
But he doesn't care. His business model doesn't rely on platform revenue sharing. The 150 million views have already fulfilled their mission:让更多人知道 Dan Koe 这个名字,让漏斗顶端灌进去更多的人.
So who will X's $1 million eventually go to? According to the rules, it must be original long-form articles, at least 1000 words, calculated based on the首页展示量 of paying users.
Translation: you not only have to write well, but you also need to already have a large number of fans.
So most likely, the top players will take it.
This is the structure of the game. The platform needs top creators to prove that "long-form content has a future"; top creators need platform traffic to feed their funnel; AI allows everyone to mass-produce "life-changing" content, but only a very few can actually make money from it.
What is the role of most people?
Readers.
After reading a "How to fix your entire life in 1 day," feeling inspired to become a super individual, then sharing, liking, bookmarking it, and continuing to scroll to the next one.
