Single article with 150 million views, Dan Koe and his super individual business

Author: Curry, Deep潮 TechFlow

What was the hottest article on X last week?

“How to fix your entire life in 1 day.” Fix your entire life in one day.

Author Dan Koe, an American creator of “Super Individual” content, teaches people how to stop working, rely on writing to support themselves. One week after publishing, this article has already reached 150 million views.

What does 150 million mean? X’s global monthly active users are just over 600 million, which means one in four users has seen this article.

Some are curious about how much money this can make. Dan Koe shared a screenshot of his earnings—$4,495 from the platform in 14 days.

150 million views, $4,495. But Dan Koe actually earned over $4 million last year.

Clearly, the money isn’t coming from platform revenue.

You’ve probably seen the term “Super Individual” before.

It basically means you don’t need a job, no team, just turn your ideas and creativity into content and post online to attract like-minded people, then sell courses to them. In the US, this is called a One-Person Business.

Dan Koe is a leading figure in this space. 750,000 followers on X, 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, and an email list of 170,000.

His story is quite typical. Studied design in college, freelanced after graduation, tried e-commerce and lost money. In 2019, he started writing on Twitter; no one paid attention at first, persisted for two years before gaining traction.

These experiences are part of the content itself. Failure, struggle, persistence, comeback—this narrative structure is common among successful self-help bloggers.

Li Xiaolai has talked about it, Luo Zhenyu has talked about it, Fan Deng has talked about it.

Americans package it as Philosophy and Productivity; Chinese package it as “Cognitive Upgrade.” The framework is the same.

How does Dan Koe make money?

Visit his official website, and you’ll see several types of products: paid newsletter subscriptions, two books (“The Art of Focus” and “Purpose & Profit”), and an AI tool he co-founded called Eden.

He used to sell writing courses and membership communities, but those are no longer visible on his site—possibly taken down or merged into paid subscriptions.

I haven’t checked official prices, but the logic of these products is similar:

Free content filters out those willing to pay, low-priced products attract those willing to spend more.

How much does he earn? In 2023, he shared on Twitter that his income was $2.5 million. In 2024, during an interview with subscription platform beehiiv, Dan revealed his annual income exceeded $4 million.

But based on his follower count, it’s not surprising. Nearly 200,000 on his email list and over a million YouTube fans—if just 5% buy paid products, that’s nearly 50,000 paying users.

So what is that 150 million views for him?

Top of the funnel traffic. The $4,495 platform revenue share on X is just a small part; more importantly, it increases his brand awareness and reach. The real money is in those willing to pay at the back end.

You might ask, who is buying these things?

The answer is definitely people who want to become the next Dan Koe.

The target audience for these courses is mainly “building personal brands,” “monetizing self-media,” and “breaking free from 9-to-5.” They pay to learn what Dan Koe is actually doing.

This model works under one premise: there are always newcomers willing to enter.

Just like gym memberships surge at the start of the year, the “Super Individual” track always has believers that they can become the next top figure. Dan Koe’s article was published on January 12, right at the peak of New Year’s resolutions.

The title is “How to fix your entire life in 1 day.” What do you think people are thinking when they click?

Meanwhile, X is also betting.

On January 16, a few days after Dan Koe’s article went viral, X announced a new policy: doubling creator earnings pools, boosting the weight of long-form content, and allocating an additional $1 million to reward the best original articles.

Elon Musk’s goal is clear. TikTok slices everyone’s attention into 15-second fragments; X wants to do the opposite—use long content to retain users. Dan Koe commented that short videos are too aggressive, and now the internet has a chance to turn back.

X loves this.

But what can $1 million buy?

A quick search on X shows many imitators already emerging. Various AI skill tutorials and motivational articles are flooding in, such as “How to change your life in 2026,” “The one skill you need,” “Why most people will never succeed”…

The structure is similar, the style of images matches Dan’s viral article, even the tone of “Let me tell you the truth” is the same.

This style has even become a meme, prompting many to imitate and experiment.

It’s not surprising. Dan Koe himself said he uses AI to assist writing—by having AI interview himself, extract ideas, then format them into highly shareable content structures.

Anyone can learn this method. ChatGPT can generate a “life-changing” long article in ten minutes—grammatically correct, complete structure, and even automatically include some psychology terms to seem profound.

But the real hit is Dan Koe, not the imitators.

Why?

One explanation is that trust takes time. Dan Koe has been writing for six years, with real failures and a traceable growth trajectory. AI can mimic his sentence patterns but can’t replicate his experiences.

Another reason is that the “Super Individual” track is too crowded.

When everyone is teaching “how to become a super individual,” whether it’s about AI tools, card-opening guides, life repair, or business strategies, attention concentrates at the top. Early entrants get the most, later ones just get the leftovers, and the very latecomers might not get anything at all.

Another factor is luck. Dan Koe caught the wave of X’s algorithm, the New Year emotional cycle, and Musk’s push for long-form content. These three factors together produced 150 million views.

If someone else had posted the same quality article at a different time, it might only get 1.5 million views.

An interesting point is that Dan Koe’s article, because it was published a few days early, didn’t participate in X’s $1 million content reward contest.

But he doesn’t care. His business model doesn’t rely on platform revenue sharing. The 150 million views have already served their purpose: making more people aware of Dan Koe’s name and filling the top of his funnel with more potential followers.

So, who will ultimately get the $1 million from X? According to the rules, it must be an original long article, at least 1,000 words, calculated based on homepage views of paid users.

In other words: you not only need to write well but also have a large existing fan base.

Most likely, the top creators will take it.

This is the structure of the game. Platforms need top creators to prove “long-form content has potential,” top creators need platform traffic to feed their funnels, AI enables everyone to produce “life-changing” content, but only a few can truly monetize it.

What about most people?

Readers.

After reading “How to fix your entire life in 1 day,” they feel inspired to become a super individual, then share, like, bookmark, and continue scrolling for the next piece.