How to Make Your First $100 Online In 2025

Alston Godbolt made over $200,000 in one year using a three-step process he teaches in this video. He spent nearly a decade in the online business space before figuring it out, and when he was just starting out he struggled to make his first $100 because he did not know what he is about to share with you. If you have been spinning your wheels trying to launch something online, this is the clearest, most practical breakdown of where to start.

This is not a get-rich-quick pitch. It is a repeatable framework: find your niche, build a digital product, and get attention. The good news is that if you can make $100 online using this method, you can scale it to $200,000 using the exact same steps. Alston says making money online is all about repeating step three over and over again.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Six fast ways to find a niche that is right for you, not just popular on Google
The 20-minute niche selection framework Alston recommends for every beginner
Why digital products beat affiliate marketing when you are just starting out
The weekend schedule for building and launching your first product
The 14-section sales page structure that converts, built for free on Gumroad
How to pick the right content platform based on where your audience actually hangs out
Why your personal stories are the one thing that eliminates competition entirely
The fastest way to figure out which online business model fits your skills: finder.platformproof.com

Step 1: Find Your Niche in 20 Minutes

The biggest mistake beginners make with niche selection is spending weeks or months on research without ever taking action. Alston’s directive is blunt: spend exactly 20 minutes on this and then move on. The first 10 minutes are for writing down your interests, hobbies, skills, what you do at work all day, or what you generally want to be known for. The next 5 minutes are for narrowing that list down to two or three ideas. The final 5 minutes are for picking one.

Everything is saturated. Everything is competitive. That should not stop you because what you learn in step three, getting attention through stories, makes saturation irrelevant. The niche is a starting point, not a life sentence. Once you get that one niche to $3,000 per month, you can expand to two or three other accounts. But to start, one niche is the rule.

Six Ways to Find What You Want to Be Known For

Alston lays out six practical shortcuts for finding your niche. None of them require a market research spreadsheet or hours of competitor analysis. Each one starts with what you already know.

1. Look at your interests, hobbies, or passions. Alston’s personal list includes cooking on the Blackstone, coaching his son’s baseball and flag football teams, and finding new ways to make money online. All three are legitimate niche starting points. You already know the vocabulary, the struggles, and the community because you are part of it.

2. Look at problems you have solved for yourself or someone else. One of Alston’s examples is helping his son learn how to fish. Teaching a child a skill is a repeatable problem that thousands of parents face every year. If you solved it, you can teach others how to solve it too.

3. Look at who you were five years ago. About five years before this video, Alston had three kids under three, was working full-time, and was trying to start an online business at the same time. That season of life is a niche. The person going through it right now is searching for help from someone who survived it.

4. Look at what you do all day. Alston used to be a software developer. That job required math, analytical skills, programming knowledge, and working with others. Each one of those skill sets is a niche. If you are an accountant, a nurse, a teacher, or a contractor, your daily work is already a niche someone is willing to pay to learn.

5. Check the magazine or book aisle at your local bookstore or grocery store. Every magazine on that shelf represents a niche or sub-niche you could enter today. Home improvement, personal finance, cooking, hunting, fitness, parenting, travel: all of them are live markets with active buyers.

6. Look at your recent purchases. Alston recently bought Pokemon trading cards because his two boys love Pokemon and trading cards are the source of most of the arguments in his house. That purchase is a niche. Everything you spend money on belongs to a category that solves a real problem for real people.

Real Examples from Alston’s Own Early Niches

Alston’s first niche was security cameras. Kids were breaking into houses around his brand new subdivision and he wanted to protect his home. He started writing blog posts and making YouTube videos about security cameras and video doorbells. One video on that first YouTube channel now has over 250,000 views. The channel has about 2,000 subscribers total, which proves you do not need a large following to get meaningful traffic when you solve a specific problem.

His second niche was small home appliances, which came from his microwave buttons stopping working. He did research on the best microwaves and ended up starting a blog covering stand mixers and microwaves. Neither of these niches was glamorous. Neither was the obvious “make money online” niche. Both worked because they were specific and they came from genuine experience.

Step 2: Build a Digital Product This Weekend

Once you have picked your niche, the next step is figuring out how to make your first $100. Alston’s answer is to create and sell your own digital product. This is not affiliate marketing. This is not a service business. It is a product you build once and sell repeatedly.

Here is why digital products make sense as a starting point. You can create them fast, within a weekend, using free tools like Canva, Google Docs, and Gumroad. They solve specific problems, which builds trust and credibility with your audience. Payments hit almost instantly, unlike affiliate marketing, where you can wait 45, 60, or even 90 days for a commission to reach your bank account. And once someone buys and trusts you, you can sell other products to those same customers on the back end.

Digital products can be templates, planners, guides, workbooks, cheat sheets, songs, podcast beats, courses, ebooks, SVGs, or PDFs. The format does not matter as much as the problem it solves.

Alston’s first digital product was a PDF called the 60c Business Blueprint. It helped buyers learn how to get more traffic so they could earn more affiliate commissions. He built it with Google Docs and Canva over a single weekend. He sold it for just $5. That $5 PDF was directly responsible for him making thousands of dollars, both from the product itself and from affiliate sales and other products he offered to those same buyers later on.

How to Build the Framework for Your First Product

Start by writing down all the problems your target audience might experience. Next to each problem, write the best type of digital product that would solve it. Here is a concrete example from Alston: he coaches his son’s flag football team. He needs plays, drills, and a way to teach kids how to throw and catch. The plays could be a series of PDFs. Teaching throwing and catching could be a short video series. Two different products from one real-world problem.

Aim for at least 10 problems in your niche. Then pick the one product that is small and focused enough to finish in a weekend. Do not plan a 100-page course for your first launch. Plan something you can actually ship.

Alston’s weekend production schedule:

Friday: Write the outline and complete the first half of the product.
Saturday: Finish the digital product.
Sunday: Build the sales page.

What Your Sales Page Needs to Include

Alston outlines a 14-element sales page structure. Every element is there for a reason: to take a visitor from curious to confident to buying. Here is the full list in order.

A headline that captures attention
A subheadline that highlights or calls out pain points
An introduction to the problem
Your solution (the product itself)
Benefits of your solution
Social proof and testimonials
Features of your solution
Pricing (Alston recommends between $5 and $27 to start: lower price equals more buyers)
Bonuses (optional when you are just getting started)
A money-back guarantee
A call to action
A frequently asked questions section
A second call to action
A closing statement

You can build this entire page for free on Gumroad, or you can use GBolt Systems starting at $9 per month. Once the sales page is live, build a thank-you or confirmation page that tells buyers their purchase went through and gives them directions for accessing the product. Use Stripe or PayPal to collect payment.

One thing Alston is clear about: done beats perfect. He gets emails regularly from buyers who say they noticed errors on his sales page but bought anyway because they trusted him. Stop waiting for everything to be polished. Ship the thing and improve it with real feedback.

Not sure which online business model actually fits your situation?

Take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com and get a personalized recommendation in under two minutes.

Step 3: Get Attention Through Content

You have a niche and a digital product. Now you need attention so you can start selling. You get that attention by creating content, and the type of content you create depends on where you go to get it. The platforms available to you include YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Each of them gets billions of users every single month. Every platform works. But not every platform will work for you.

Alston’s rule for platform selection is straightforward: go where your target audience hangs out, and go where you like to hang out. Both conditions matter. If you hate being on camera, YouTube and TikTok are the wrong starting point. Pinterest, Facebook, Reddit, or a blog are all legitimate alternatives. If you choose an older platform like blogging, be prepared for it to take a bit longer to gain traction. That is the tradeoff, not a reason to avoid it.

How Platform Awareness Changes the Content You Make

Not all platforms attract the same type of viewer, and understanding this difference will change how you write, record, or design content. People on YouTube, Google, and Pinterest are actively searching for a solution. They know they have a problem and they typed keywords into a search bar to find the answer. If you searched “how to make money online” or “how to start an online business” and ended up watching Alston’s video, that is exactly this pattern at work.

People on TikTok are in a different position. They may be experiencing the symptoms of a problem without yet being aware of the solution. Someone struggling to make ends meet, tired of living paycheck to paycheck, might scroll past a video about side hustles they can start at night and feel pulled in, not because they searched for it, but because the content resonated with their current situation. The content on TikTok needs to meet people at the symptom level, not the solution level.

This is why Alston recommends picking one platform and diving deep before expanding. Become the expert on that single platform, understand its audience, and master its content format. One niche, one platform, one product. That is the starting framework.

The Content Formula: Hook, Story, Offer

Every piece of content you create should include three things: a hook, a story, and an offer. Alston breaks down his own video as the example. The hook was the thumbnail and the title. The story was the three-step guide he walked through. The offer was to follow him and join his live workshop.

The amount of content you need to post to get attention will vary by platform. TikTok and YouTube Shorts typically require more consistent volume before the algorithm gives you reach. Long-form YouTube and blogging may require less volume but reward depth and keyword optimization. Both approaches work. The question is which one you will actually maintain over months, not days.

Why Your Story Is the One Thing That Eliminates Competition

Alston addressed the saturation concern directly. Everyone who looks at this three-step process eventually asks: how do I compete with people who have been in this niche longer than me? The answer is your personal story.

Throughout the video, Alston told stories. His first digital product. His early niches in security cameras and microwaves. How he got attention. You connect and build trust through your story. Two people can sell the exact same information to different audiences because the stories are different. Your audience is not just buying information; they are buying access to someone who has been where they are and figured out how to move forward.

The formula is simple: share your story, get attention, and make money. That is it. Alston ran that loop to $200K in a year. The same loop works at $100 and it scales from there.

Honest Drawbacks

This three-step process is real and it is repeatable. It is also not instant. Alston spent close to 10 years in the online business space before he cracked the version of this that produced $200K in a single year. The 20-minute niche selection rule is good advice, but choosing a niche that genuinely interests you will matter a lot more when you are on your 50th piece of content with no sales yet. Picking something just because it looks profitable is a fast way to quit before the results show up.

Building a digital product over a weekend is genuinely possible. It is also real work. The sales page alone has 14 sections that need to be written thoughtfully. Gumroad makes it free to start, but the content of the page still requires clarity about who you are helping and why your product solves their problem better than what they can find for free.

Getting attention through content is a long game on most platforms. If you expect 10 posts to produce $100, you will be disappointed. If you commit to one platform, one niche, one product, and give it consistent effort over several months, the framework works. The people who fail this process are almost always people who never got past niche selection, not people who executed all three steps and hit a wall.

Find Your X

If you are still figuring out which model, niche, or product type fits where you actually are right now, start with the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com. It takes about two minutes and gives you a personalized starting point based on your skills, schedule, and goals.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it realistically take to make your first $100 online?

It depends on how quickly you complete each step and how much traffic you can generate. Some people who already have an audience make their first sale within days of launching a product. Beginners starting from zero typically take weeks to months before a sale comes in. Alston does not promise a timeline, but he does say the framework is the fastest path he has found after 10 years of testing different approaches.

Do I need to be an expert to create and sell a digital product?

No. You need to be a few steps ahead of the person buying from you. Alston’s first product was a $5 PDF about traffic. He was not the world’s top expert on traffic. He knew enough to help someone who knew less than him, and that was enough. If you have solved a problem that other people in your niche are still trying to figure out, you have a product.

What is the best free tool for building a digital product?

Alston used Google Docs and Canva to build his first PDF product. Both are free. Gumroad handles the sales page and payment collection, also for free. You can go from idea to live product without spending a dollar, which is exactly the point of starting with digital products instead of a physical inventory business.

How do I know if my niche is too competitive to enter?

According to Alston, you do not need to worry about this. Everything is competitive. The reason saturation does not matter is that your personal story differentiates you from everyone else in the niche. Two people can be in the same space selling similar things to different audiences, purely because of how they show up and what they share about their own journey. The niche itself is not the moat. Your story is.

Should I start on one content platform or multiple?

Start with one. Alston is direct on this point. Pick one platform, become an expert on it, and do not expand until your primary channel is producing consistent results. Spreading yourself across three platforms before you have traction on one is a way to make slow, scattered progress instead of building real momentum in one place.

How much should I charge for my first digital product?

Alston recommends pricing between $5 and $27. Lower prices produce more buyers, which means more people experiencing your product, more testimonials, more trust, and more back-end sales later. He sold his first PDF for $5 and that $5 sale opened doors to thousands of dollars in follow-on revenue. Start low, build trust, then offer higher-priced products to the same buyers.

What do I do if nobody buys my digital product at first?

Keep creating content. The attention step is what drives sales, and attention takes time to build. If you are consistently posting and still not seeing any sales after several months, look at your messaging: does your content clearly name the problem your product solves? Are you including an offer in your content? Are you sending people to the sales page? Most stalled launches are traffic problems, not product problems. Fix the content first before assuming the product is wrong.

Can I cover multiple niches once I get started?

Yes, but not at the beginning. Alston says he gets this question often and the answer is yes with a condition: wait until your first niche is producing $3,000 per month before adding a second account or topic. Starting with multiple niches splits your attention and slows progress on all of them. One niche first. When it is working and you have systems in place, then you expand.

Sources

Video: “How to make your first $100 online In 2025” by Alston Godbolt, published on YouTube at youtu.be/AFthRTFJF8o
Free tools mentioned: Canva (canva.com), Google Docs (docs.google.com), Gumroad (gumroad.com)
Paid tools mentioned: GBolt Systems (starting at $9/month), Stripe, PayPal
Content platforms discussed: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, blogging