Justin Welsh made $10,482 in his first month selling a $47 course.
Not $500. Not $5,000. Forty seven dollars.
The same price as dinner. Less than a tank of gas. So cheap that 30,000 people have bought his courses without needing a single sales call.
This isn’t how course creators are supposed to make millions. But Welsh learned something the night he collapsed at 36: doing what everyone else does nearly killed him.
So he built a business that couldn’t.
The Night That Changed Everything
December 2018. Justin Welsh, 36, VP of Sales at PatientPop. Team of 150. Just driven $60 million in revenue. Four hours of sleep per night. No vacations in two years.
His wife watched him collapse on their living room floor.
“I was hallucinating. I was terrified. I was convinced I was dying.”
The hospital visit confirmed what his body was screaming: the startup grind had broken him. Panic attack so severe it mimicked a heart attack. His system had literally shut down from stress.
Six months later, he was unemployed by choice, sitting at his kitchen table, wondering what to do with his life.
The 15-Month Accident
Welsh started posting on LinkedIn in early 2019. Not because he had a plan. Because he had stories.
Stories about building PatientPop from zero to $60 million. Stories about hiring 150 people. Stories about the deals that worked and the ones that exploded.
For fifteen months, he posted daily. Sometimes twice. No product. No course. Just a guy sharing what he’d learned in the trenches.
“I thought I was building a consulting practice around SaaS and healthcare startups. That’s what I knew. That’s what made sense.”
By April 2020, he’d grown to 21,000 followers. His inbox told a different story than he expected.
For every message about SaaS strategy, ten asked the same question: “How did you grow so fast on LinkedIn?”
Welsh did what most creators would never do. He listened to what people actually wanted instead of what he wanted to teach.
The $47 Test That Broke Every Rule
On April 16, 2020, Welsh uploaded The LinkedIn Playbook to Gumroad. Filmed on his laptop. No fancy production. Priced at $47.
“I honestly didn’t think much about it. I figured I’d make a few hundred bucks.”
First day: $732. First week: $3,841. First month: $10,482.
At $47, something strange happened. Nobody asked for refunds. Nobody requested coaching calls. Nobody complained about support. They bought, implemented, and sent thank-you messages.
Welsh had accidentally discovered what happens when you price below the permission threshold.
Think about it. At $2,000, you need your spouse’s approval. You need to check your bank account. You need a sales call to feel confident.
At $47? You buy it like a book on Amazon. No discussion. No hesitation. No buyer’s remorse.
His conversion rate hit 3-5% of his audience. The industry average for high-ticket courses? 0.5%.
When Success Demands a Pivot
Welsh faced a choice. Keep pushing his SaaS expertise, what he thought gave him credibility, or lean into what people desperately wanted to buy.
“The market was screaming at me. I just had to listen.”
He rebuilt the course as The LinkedIn Operating System. Raised the price to $150. Still no calls. Still no support. Still no community.
30,000 people have bought it.
The math is beautiful in its simplicity. 30,000 sales at $150 average price = $4.5 million. From one product. That runs itself.
Compare that to the typical high-ticket creator. They need 2,250 sales at $2,000 to hit the same number. But those sales require discovery calls. Sales teams. Customer success managers. Ongoing support.
Welsh keeps 89% of every dollar. High-ticket creators keep 30% after their team takes their cut.
The Lifestyle Leverage Nobody Talks About
Two years into his journey, Welsh’s paid community was generating $15,000 monthly. Growing fast. Members loved it.
He killed it anyway.
“Managing a community meant being available. Slack notifications at midnight. Drama between members. It was becoming another job.”
The community generated $630,000 before he shut it down. Most creators would call that insane. Welsh calls it clarity.
Every feature that requires his presence gets cut. Every system that can’t run without him gets killed. The constraint of freedom drives every decision.
This discipline shows in his current routine:
- Morning: Write and post content
- Mid-morning: Handle admin
- Noon: Done for the day
Three hours. Every day. That’s it.
The $10 Million Breakdown
Welsh’s revenue isn’t mysterious. He publishes it openly:
Digital products: $6.75 million LinkedIn OS, Content OS, Creator MBA. The first two at ~$150. The MBA at $897 (launched once, made $1.6 million in a week).
Newsletter sponsorships: $795,000 The Saturday Solopreneur. 185,000 subscribers. $2,500 per sponsor slot. Two sponsors per issue.
Consulting (stopped): $1.17 million High-dollar SaaS consulting he quit once products scaled.
Dead community: $630,000 Killed to protect his lifestyle.
But revenue doesn’t tell the whole story. Welsh’s 3,200+ affiliates generate $600,000 of his sales. His email list alone is worth $2 million annually between sponsorships and product sales.
Early buyers become his sales force. His content becomes his funnel. His products become his freedom.
The Pattern Hidden in Plain Sight
I studied Welsh’s content for patterns. Found something interesting.
Remember that first $10,482 month? Welsh posted about it publicly. Not to brag, but to prove the model worked.
This transparency became his moat. Every month, he shares revenue.
When creators see someone making millions at $50-150 price points with 89% margins, they pay attention.
Building Your Low-Ticket Machine: The 90-Day Test
The Welsh model isn’t about courses or LinkedIn. It’s about understanding that reach times low friction equals freedom. Here’s how to test it:
Week 1-2: Find Your Product Look through your last 30 days of DMs, comments, and emails. List every question you’ve been asked twice or more. The question that appears most frequently? That’s your first product. Welsh discovered his LinkedIn course this way—people literally told him what they’d buy.
Week 3-4: Create Your MVP
- Record 2-3 hours of screen-share tutorials, OR
- Write a 30-page actionable guide, OR
- Build a 10-email sequence solving one specific problem
Welsh’s first course was casual screen recordings on his laptop. At $50, nobody expects Hollywood production.
Week 5-6: Price for Impulse
- $27-47: Pure impulse territory (coffee money)
- $47-97: Considered impulse (dinner money)
- $97-147: Small decision (requires trust but not permission)
The price that makes you think “this is embarrassingly cheap”? Start there. You can always raise it later like Welsh did.
Week 7-8: Test Without a Funnel Post about your product three times:
- Monday: Share the problem it solves with a story
- Wednesday: Give away one tactic from inside the product
- Friday: Open cart for 48 hours with direct purchase link
No complex funnel. No webinar. Just “here’s what I made, here’s who it helps, here’s where to buy it.”
Week 9-12: Build the Daily Machine Pick one platform. Post every single day at the same time. Not “when you feel like it.” Every day. Welsh posted for 2,000 days. You’re starting your clock now.
Track what resonates. When people ask questions, note them. When posts get engagement, analyze why. You’re building two things simultaneously: an audience and a product roadmap.
Success Metrics to Track:
- Conversion rate: 2-3% of engaged followers should buy at impulse prices
- Margin: Should be 85%+ (platform fees only)
- Time investment: No more than 3 hours per day total
- Support tickets: Near zero if priced correctly
The difference between your current model and Welsh’s isn’t skill or luck. It’s the decision to price low enough that buying requires no friction, while building reach high enough that volume compensates.