A viral video claims that five different strategies can put $100,000 in your pocket using the internet. Most videos in this space are pure garbage. But as someone who has been relatively successful building an online business, I sat down and gave it an honest, line-by-line reaction: what holds up, what falls apart, and what the original creator missed.
This is not a hit piece and it is not a hype job. Some of the five strategies genuinely work. Others will leave you chasing your tail for months if you approach them the way the original video suggests. I will walk you through every single one and tell you exactly where the advice goes right and where it goes wrong.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- An honest breakdown of all five strategies and which ones are actually worth your time
- Why shoutouts on faceless Instagram pages are a trap and what to do instead
- The three approaches to running a faceless YouTube channel and which one to pick based on your situation
- Why a 1-to-5 percent conversion rate in sales means you need to reverse-engineer your activity numbers before you ever start
- The single biggest mistake freelancers make on Fiverr and Upwork, and the smarter path to high-paying clients
- How to sell a course built entirely on skills you already have, even if you have never thought of yourself as an expert
- The one-sentence formula that ties all five methods together and points to what actually produces results online long-term
- Not sure which method fits your current skill set? Find out at finder.platformproof.com
Why React to This Video at All?
In the era of the internet, anyone can theoretically make $100,000. The problem is that most people are consuming content that either lists recycled methods with no real-world nuance or outright misleads beginners about how easy the path actually is. The video I am reacting to today is one of the better examples in this space. It is not the worst I have seen. But it leaves out some critical context that will decide whether you succeed or fail with each of these methods.
I have been building my business online for years. I have spent somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 on courses, tested strategies myself, and watched closely what works and what does not. That experience shapes every reaction below.
Method 1: Faceless Instagram Channels
The original video points to faceless Instagram pages as a way to build an audience and monetize it. The concept is real. Huge pages do exist and they do generate income. What caught my attention was the monetization strategy the video recommended: shoutouts.
Here is the problem with shoutouts. Look at actual shoutout pricing on a platform like shoutcard.com: one hour of shoutout exposure for around $100, two hours for $200, and so on. That is active income. You have to sell the placement, set it up, monitor it, and swap it out when the time is up. You are running a small service business instead of building a scalable asset. And to get a steady flow of shoutout buyers, you need millions of followers first. That bar is not easy to clear.
Affiliate marketing is the smarter play for a faceless Instagram page. Pick a niche, whether fitness, pets, personal finance, or something else entirely, and then build a simple funnel behind it. Say you run a fitness page but you are not a fitness coach yourself. Go find a high-quality fitness affiliate program. Instead of charging someone $100 for one hour of shoutout space, you become an affiliate for a fitness influencer. Every time someone signs up through your link, you earn $50. Instead of making $100 in one hour, you are looking at $500 or $600 in a day without having to babysit a post.
The funnel setup is straightforward. You create content around your niche. You offer a free lead magnet, something like a puppy training guide or a beginner meal plan, and visitors click the link in your bio to download it. They hand over their email address to get the freebie. From that point, you follow up with email marketing that promotes relevant affiliate products. That system runs without you having to manually sell and deliver shoutout after shoutout. If you do not have your own product yet, you can purchase PLR (private label rights) mini-courses in your niche, build a simple sales page around them, and sell those instead. The key is building something that earns while you are not actively working on it.
Method 2: Faceless YouTube Channels
Faceless YouTube channels can absolutely work. There are thousands of examples of channels generating real money without a single on-screen face. I have made videos specifically about using AI to create faceless YouTube content, so this is not unfamiliar territory. But I want to be honest about one thing the original video glosses over: faceless channels require far more views and subscribers before they start generating meaningful income compared to channels where the creator shows up on camera.
When you show up on camera and connect with someone watching, you build a relationship faster. That relationship means viewers are more likely to click your links, buy your recommendations, and return for more content. A faceless channel can deliver the same information, but it takes significantly longer to build the kind of trust that converts views into revenue. People want to connect with other people, not with a shadowy figure or a stock footage montage.
If you decide a faceless YouTube channel is the right move for you, there are three real directions to go. First, you do voiceover narration over stock footage or b-roll sourced from a site like Pexels. Second, you build a small production team by hiring a scriptwriter, a voiceover actor or actress, a video editor, and a thumbnail designer. Third, you use AI tools to handle script generation, voice synthesis, and editing. Each approach has different cost and time trade-offs, and which one makes sense depends on your budget and how much you can put in upfront.
One practical risk worth noting: many faceless channels in niches like sports highlights or entertainment clips run into copyright problems. Reused content creates real platform risk. If you are building a faceless channel, original commentary or a unique presentation of information is a safer long-term foundation than repackaging other people’s clips.
Method 3: Sales
The original video mentions sales and I genuinely agree with this one. You can earn $100,000 a year in a sales role. I know this from personal experience. I worked as an admissions adviser for a for-profit university, which is essentially a sales position. My job required making at least 100 phone calls every single day to funnel prospective students through a sales process. That volume is not glamorous, but it is the reality of what high-earning sales work actually looks like on a daily basis.
Here is what most people do not want to hear about sales: your conversion rate is somewhere between 1 percent and 5 percent. That means for every 100 people you talk to, somewhere between 1 and 5 will actually buy. Before you start, reverse-engineer your numbers. If you need to close five sales a day at $200 per sale to hit your income target, and your conversion rate is 2 percent, you need to be having 250 conversations a day. Map that out before you start so you know exactly how much activity the income requires. Going in without that math done is how people quit three weeks in and say sales does not work.
Sales is also competitive and involves constant rejection. It is not a path you walk into tomorrow and immediately make $100,000. It is a skill you build over time through practice, feedback, and continual refinement. But here is the upside that makes this one genuinely compelling: the income ceiling on a skilled salesperson is almost nonexistent. Top earners in sales are selling everything from cars to enterprise software and pulling incomes that most online businesses would be envious of. There is nothing stopping you from reaching that level if you commit to mastering the skill over time.
Method 4: Freelancing
Yes, you can make $100,000 per year freelancing. But it is going to be hard, especially getting off the ground. And the path most people take, which is signing up for Fiverr or Upwork and waiting for clients, is probably the hardest version of this path available to you.
Here is why those platforms work against you. Fiverr and Upwork are races to the bottom. There is a massive supply of freelancers from all over the world willing to do the same skills for less and less money. Clients come to those platforms specifically looking for the cheapest option. If you are a graphic designer, a video editor, a copywriter, or any other creative or technical professional, competing on price against the entire world is not a sustainable business model. You will find yourself defending a $15-per-hour rate against 200 competitors before you ever land your first meaningful client.
The smarter approach in 2023 and 2024: create content that shows your work. If you are a graphic designer, make TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, or Instagram Reels showing your process. Do a timelapse of you building an illustration or designing a logo. When people see your work in action, they self-select as potential clients. Because they found you through content rather than a bidding platform, they are not trying to negotiate you down to $5 an hour. They already value what you do before they ever contact you.
Here is a specific example: if you write YouTube scripts, do not list your services on Fiverr. Go to TikTok instead. Show people the framework you use. Walk them through how you structure a hook, build out a middle, and land a clear call to action. The people who watch that video and reach out are already convinced you know what you are doing. You can charge $100 per hour from a position of demonstrated authority instead of defending a low price tag against hundreds of competitors. The content does your selling before the conversation even starts.
Method 5: Sell Your Own Course
This is the method I agree with most strongly. Selling a course based on skills you already have is one of the most accessible paths to $100,000 online, and most people dramatically underestimate how many skills they have that other people would pay to learn. If you have ever thought “I know how to do this but nobody would pay me for it,” you are almost certainly wrong.
Here is a concrete example from the video: my next-door neighbor is an accountant with deep knowledge of cost accounting and small business financials. He could create a course on that topic and sell it to small business owners who are overwhelmed by their books. He does not need to hire a production company or build a fancy website first. He can hop on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube Shorts and start posting about cost accounting basics. He offers a free checklist in his bio. People click, they get the checklist, they hand over their email address, and he follows up to tell them his course will save them hours every month and potentially thousands of dollars in accounting errors or accountant fees.
This works with any skill. Cooking, cleaning, organizing, parenting, woodworking, coding, gardening, fitness, music. If someone out there is struggling with something you do naturally, there is a market for your knowledge. The key is not going to Udemy and listing your course in a marketplace where you are right back to competing on price. The smarter move is to host your course on a platform like Teachable, Kajabi, ClickFunnels, or SamCart and drive traffic to it yourself through organic content or paid ads. You set your own price and you own the customer relationship entirely.
On the topic of buying courses yourself: I have spent somewhere around $30,000 to $50,000 on courses over the years. I have gotten value out of every single one, not because every course is perfect, but because I went in looking for what I could actually apply. A lot of people expect a course to instantly make them money. It does not work that way. A course is a compression of someone else’s experience that helps you get to the doing phase faster. If you approach it with that mindset, the investment almost always pays off. The mistake is thinking the course does the work for you instead of you using the course to do the work more intelligently.
Not sure which of these five paths fits your actual skills and situation?
Answer a few quick questions and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.
The Formula That Ties All Five Together
After working through all five methods, here is the pattern that kept coming up: the people who will actually make $100,000 with any of these strategies are the ones who create unique, original content for a specific target audience, funnel that audience to a landing page, collect their name and email, and then follow up through email marketing with relevant products and offers.
It does not matter whether your product is an affiliate offer, a digital download, a course, or a coaching program. The mechanism is the same. You attract an audience by being genuinely useful in a specific niche. You give them a reason to share their email. And you build a relationship through follow-up communication that eventually converts into sales. That cycle is what produces compounding income over time instead of a one-time payday.
The faceless Instagram creator who skips the funnel and just posts shoutout links will plateau. The freelancer who only pitches on Fiverr without building any content presence will compete on price forever. The person who collects emails from day one and consistently delivers value to their list has something that grows even when they are not actively working on it.
Which Method Is Right for You: A Decision Framework
Not every path fits every person. Here is how to think through which of the five actually makes sense for where you are right now.
Choose faceless Instagram or YouTube if you are comfortable producing content consistently but are not ready to show your face on camera. Understand that you will need to build a funnel behind the channel to monetize it well, and expect a longer ramp-up period than a face-to-camera channel would require.
Choose sales if you are motivated by competition, do not mind rejection, and are willing to make a lot of phone calls or send a lot of outreach before you close your first deal. Do the conversion math before you start so you know exactly how much daily activity your income goal requires.
Choose freelancing if you have a specific skill that businesses or individuals need. Skip the Fiverr race to the bottom. Spend 30 to 60 days creating content that demonstrates your skill on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Instagram Reels. Let inbound interest replace the bidding wars.
Choose a course if you have deep knowledge in any area and you are willing to build an audience before you ask for the sale. The course itself is almost secondary to the content you create to build trust first. That content is what drives buyers to your door.
If you are not sure which one fits your specific skills and situation, that is exactly what the Finder tool is designed to help you figure out in under five minutes.
Find Your X
Every person reading this has a skill, an experience, or a knowledge base that someone else would pay to learn from or benefit from. The hard part is not the information. It is identifying which path fits your actual situation and then building the right system around it. The Platform Proof Finder walks you through a short set of questions and matches you to the method most likely to produce results given your real starting point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it realistic for a complete beginner to make $100,000 online?
It is possible but it is not fast. Any of the five methods in this video can eventually produce $100,000 in annual income, but each one requires building a real skill first. A beginner will need to invest time in learning before the money shows up consistently. There is no honest version of this where you start on Monday and see five figures by Friday.
Why are shoutouts a poor way to monetize a faceless Instagram page?
Shoutouts are active income. You have to sell each placement, deliver it for one or two hours, and then sell the next one. You also need millions of followers before brands will pay meaningful rates. Affiliate marketing with a funnel is passive by comparison. You set it up once and it can generate commissions without requiring you to manually sell and manage each placement individually.
What is a sales funnel and do you really need one for affiliate marketing?
A funnel is a sequence of steps that takes someone from stranger to buyer. For affiliate marketing on Instagram, the basic version looks like this: post in a niche, offer a free lead magnet in your bio link, collect the email, and send a series of follow-up emails that recommend affiliate products. Without the email collection step, you are entirely dependent on the platform’s algorithm to put your posts in front of potential buyers. With an email list, you own the relationship and can reach your audience whenever you choose to.
What is a realistic conversion rate to expect in a sales role?
In most sales roles, you can expect to close somewhere between 1 percent and 5 percent of the people you contact. That means if you make 100 calls in a day, you might get 1 to 5 yeses. The exact number depends on lead quality, your script, and how long you have been developing the skill. Reverse-engineer from your income goal: figure out how many closed sales you need per day, divide by your conversion rate, and that tells you how many conversations you need to be having daily.
Why should freelancers avoid building their client base on Fiverr and Upwork?
Both platforms put you in direct price competition with freelancers from all over the world, many of whom will work for far less than you need to earn. Clients come to those platforms looking for the cheapest option. Creating short-form content that shows your actual work attracts clients who already see your value before they ever contact you, which means they are far less likely to negotiate over your rates.
Do you need to be a recognized expert or influencer to sell a course?
No. You need to know more than the person you are teaching. If you have been doing cost accounting for small businesses for ten years, you know far more than the small business owner who has never touched a balance sheet. You do not need a credential or an existing following before you start. You build the audience and the authority simultaneously by creating content that demonstrates your knowledge. The course is what you sell once people already trust your expertise.
What is the difference between selling on Udemy versus hosting your own course?
Udemy is a marketplace, which means you are competing on price and visibility with thousands of other courses on similar topics. Udemy also controls pricing through platform-wide discount sales that you cannot opt out of. When you host your course on a platform like Teachable, Kajabi, or SamCart, you set your own price, own the customer relationship, and keep a far higher percentage of every sale. The trade-off is that you have to drive your own traffic through content or paid ads instead of benefiting from Udemy’s existing user base.
What is the single most important thing to do regardless of which method you pick?
Build an email list. No matter whether you go with faceless Instagram, a YouTube channel, freelancing, sales, or a course, the people who consistently reach $100,000 online have an audience they own and can contact directly. Social media platforms can change their algorithm, suppress your reach, or suspend your account. An email list belongs entirely to you. Start collecting emails from day one, even if it is just a simple opt-in form attached to a free resource in your niche.
Read Next
If affiliate marketing stood out to you as the most interesting piece of this reaction, there is a lot more ground to cover on how to actually promote your links without spending money on ads or relying on a platform algorithm to do the work for you.
Read: 17 Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Links For Free In 2024
Sources
- Original viral video reacted to: “5 Ways To Make Your First $100,000 Online” (YouTube)
- Shoutcard.com: shoutout pricing platform for Instagram pages
- Pexels: free stock footage and b-roll resource for faceless YouTube channels
- Fiverr and Upwork: freelance marketplaces discussed in the video
- Teachable, Kajabi, ClickFunnels, SamCart: course hosting platforms recommended as alternatives to Udemy
- Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof: host commentary and analysis throughout
Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.