150 million views, but imitation is not the solution - Dan Koe's personal business secret

A post published on X in mid-January with the title “Fix Your Entire Life in One Day” went viral across the platform. The author is Dan Koe, an expert in “Super Individual”—a personal business model that doesn’t require a team, relying solely on creativity and writing. After a week, this article reached 150 million views. What does this number mean? The entire X platform has just over 600 million monthly active users, meaning one in four users has encountered this post. Many are curious about how much money can be earned from such a large view count.

Dan Koe shared a screenshot of his revenue: in 14 days, X paid him $4,495. But the truth is, last year he earned over $4 million. Clearly, the income doesn’t come from revenue sharing on the platform. So where does it come from?

From a single article to $4.5 million - Dan Koe and the paid audience filtering model

Dan Koe is a leading figure in the ultra-personal business space. He has 750,000 followers on X, 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, and an email list of nearly 200,000 people. However, his success story is quite common: studied design in college, graduated and worked as a freelancer, tried e-commerce but failed, started writing on Twitter in 2019 with little attention, persisted for two years before gaining engagement. These experiences are exactly the content he creates.

Visiting Dan Koe’s official website, you’ll see products like a paid newsletter, two books (“The Art of Focus” and “Purpose & Profit”), an AI tool named Eden which he co-founded, and previously, courses on writing and a membership community. His business structure follows a common logic: free content filters out those willing to pay, low-priced products filter out those willing to spend more. Suppose 5% of his nearly 200,000 email subscribers buy paid products—that’s 10,000 customers. Combined with his YouTube followers and other channels, this number can easily reach 50,000 paying customers.

So what does 150 million views mean to Dan Koe? It’s the gateway at the top of his funnel. Revenue from X’s revenue sharing is the surface, the real value lies behind those willing to open their wallets. Who are these customers? Surely those wanting to become the next Dan Koe—those aiming to “build a personal brand,” “make money from social media,” “escape the 9 to 5 job.” The money they pay to learn is exactly what Dan Koe is doing.

Why imitation becomes a trend but still fails

Dan Koe’s post went viral on January 12, coinciding with the peak of Western New Year’s resolutions. A few days later, on January 16, X announced a new policy: doubling the revenue pool for creators, increasing the weight of long-form posts, and adding a $1 million bonus for top-performing original content. Musk clearly wants to use long-form content to counter TikTok, which has fragmented attention into 15-second clips.

This new policy created an effect: many started copying Dan Koe’s writing style. Posts teaching AI skills, spiritual content began appearing: “How to change your life in 2026,” “The one skill you need,” “Why most people will never succeed”… The structure is similar, the illustrations are alike, even the tone of “I’ll tell you the truth” is identical. This writing style became a trend.

Interestingly, Dan Koe revealed that he uses AI to assist in writing—by having AI interview himself, then extracting ideas and formatting them into highly shareable structures. ChatGPT can produce a “life-changing” article of similar quality in ten minutes, with correct grammar, complete structure, and even automatically add a few psychological terms to sound profound.

But the celebrity remains Dan Koe, not the imitators. Why? First, trust takes time. Dan Koe has been writing for six years, with real failure experiences and a traceable development journey. AI can mimic sentences but cannot replicate these experiences. Second, the personal business field is very crowded. When everyone teaches how to become a “Super Individual,” whether through AI tools, business courses, or life hacks, attention will focus on the top players. Early entrants eat the meat, later arrivals get the broth, and latecomers miss out entirely.

There’s also another factor: luck. Dan Koe hit the right window with X’s algorithm tweak, the New Year’s emotional cycle, and the policy push to promote Musk’s long-form content. These three factors stacked together generated 150 million views. Change the person or the timing, and a similar quality post might only get 1.5 million views.

The shock source game - Who will win in the end

An interesting point is that Dan Koe’s post, being a few days early, didn’t participate in X’s $1 million content reward contest. But for him, that doesn’t matter. His business model doesn’t rely on revenue sharing from the platform. The 150 million views have served their purpose: making more people aware of Dan Koe’s name and pulling more into his funnel.

So who will ultimately receive the $1 million from X? According to the rules, it must be a long-form original post, at least 1,000 words, based on impressions on the paid user’s homepage. In other words, you not only need to write well but also have a large existing fan base. The high probability still favors top creators.

This is the structure of this game. The platform needs top creators to prove that “long-form content has a future,” while top creators need traffic from the platform to nurture their funnel. AI makes it possible for everyone to produce mass “life-changing” content, but only a few can truly monetize it—those who imitate can only repeat formulas, not create real differentiation.

What is the role of most people? It’s the audience. They open the article “Fix Your Entire Life in One Day,” feel inspired, and then may buy Dan Koe’s course or others’ imitations. That’s the endless cycle of this business model.