November 22, 2025

Welcome back Income Insider - today we’re breaking down how Ali Abdaal built a $10m online course empire, I answer the classic question “How do I know if my idea will work?”, and below you’ll find a printable cheatsheet showing why digital products are a far better business model than Amazon, Etsy, or Shopify.

Ali Abdaal breaks down how he’s made over $10 million from online courses in 10 years, starting as a broke med student running tiny in-person classes. He then moved to online courses, platforms like Skillshare and Kajabi, and ultimately built a multi-million-dollar education business.

He stresses that this isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. The core of the model is simple: you’re a teacher who uses the internet for leverage. Your job is to package a transformation (A → B) into a course, price it sensibly, and back it up with a strong offer and guarantees.

Interestingly, creating the course is the easy part. The hard part - and where the real money is made - is traffic and leads. Abdaal shows how big course creators win by publishing huge amounts of free content (YouTube, newsletters, socials) that build trust and send qualified buyers to their sales pages.

He also shares examples of other creators quietly doing millions in niches like writing, productivity, yoga, guitar and more - not just “how to make money online.” His big point: you only need to be a few steps ahead of your students, and you can always learn a skill now and teach it later.

His final advice: don’t start by building a giant course. Start by validating demand with free value - webinars, short email courses, simple PDFs - and see if people actually care. Once you can attract leads and they tell you what they want, then build the course. Traffic first, course second.

You never really know. The only way to get closer to the truth is to see what real people are already struggling with. I always start on Reddit - look for threads in your niche where people keep asking the same questions again and again. Repetition is a signal of demand.

If people are openly frustrated, confused, or stuck, that’s your opportunity. Your job is simply to provide a clear solution to a painful problem. And the more you talk to your target audience - in comments, DMs, forums, anywhere - the sharper your idea becomes. Ideas don’t succeed in your head; they succeed in the real world.

If you want a beginner-friendly way to earn online without overwhelm, download Income Kickstart. It walks you through the exact system I use myself - the same approach helping everyday people build momentum, grow their list, and make those first meaningful wins far sooner than they expected: