From the desk of Harsh Strongman
Subj: The lesson from the fall of Carl Adaugeo from Black Label Logic
A few years ago, there used to be a writer who used to go by the pseudonym Carl Adaugeo and wrote a blog called Black Label Logic.
It was a popular blog and he had a lot of followers on X (was called Twitter back then). He started writing in 2015 and quit sometime in 2022, so about 6 years of work.
He published two Amazon e-books, hundreds of articles, countless podcasts, tweets, and more over the years. And yet – he shut down and disappeared.
Why?
The answer is in a tweet he made that went something like this:
“I make $300k a year. My high level corporate job pays $290k and sales for my ebooks pay $10k a year. Why do I even spend time on this?”
Now obviously I don’t have a screenshot of the tweet because I didn’t realize that he was going to shut his account down and be gone for good, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
But the reason he gave for quitting was explicitly that it wasn’t making him enough money.
Carl is not alone in this. A ton of bloggers disappeared because they failed to make money.
And this is not just true for the blogs but for all forms of art.
The majority of creators, artists, writers, etc. quit their work for the simple reason that they fail to monetize properly.
If something doesn’t make money – it’s the first to be cut off as life becomes busier, responsibilities increase, and money becomes more necessary. A 20 year old can work for little money but a 35 year old can’t. He’s got bills to pay and children to feed.
When a creator shuts down, the big reason is almost always a bad (or no) monetization model.
In Carl’s case – he produced 2 Amazon e-books that he was selling for $5. After Amazon’s insane 30% fee and sales taxes, he was probably making $2.50 a sale.
To even make something as little as $100k a year he’d need to find 40,000 customers per year.
That’s really hard to do even for people who were 20x his size, so impossible for him. Even I couldn’t get 40,000 customers a year. The number is just too big.
Instead what he should have done was create one or two very high value products and sold it for $100-$1000.
With a $100 product, you just need 1000 customers to buy it to make a decent living from your work.
Or a $1000 product and 100 customers.
Getting 100-1000 customers is much easier than getting 40,000 customers even if the price is much lower.
If Carl made a $300 product, he could have easily found 1000 customers for it given the size of his audience and his experience in his field. He would then be making $300k from his blog and $290k from his job.
Do you think he would have still shut down? Of course not.
The product should be so good that people are grateful for you even creating and selling it.
The only thing you have to ensure is that the product is worth at least 10x the price tag. People should be THANKFUL for getting to purchase your product. It should be that good.
For example, here’s a review from a customer of The Art of X who made $60k+ in 2 years from the information in the guide.
The product changed his life. He built a business that pays him in his sleep. He contacted me again a few weeks ago and told me he bought a house with internet money.
Was he THANKFUL and GRATEFUL to have purchased my product? Of course he was.
The same is true for ALL of my products. They aren’t $5 Amazon ebooks and you’ll have to drop some cash on them, but THEY WORK and people are glad they bought them.
That’s the right and virtuous way to do it.
If you like your craft and want to do it for the long run, you need to make some money from it.
Make some great products for a good price point and sell them.
I’m not saying you need to be over-monetized.
For example, this blog isn’t over-monetized. If I wanted to make “real” money from it, I’d be on something like Substack and ask you guys to pay $10 a month to read my posts.
Just do the math. At my size, I could easily get 5000 paid subscribers on Substack at $10 a month and net me $600k a year.
But I don’t. 99% of what I write can be read by you for free. The broke college student who needs help and the billionaire can both read me at the same cost – none.
However if you want a product – that costs money. But you’ll be glad you got it because the products are life changing.
That’s the right way to balance money with the art.
That’s something Black Label Logic could not manage to do and that’s why he shut down and went away.
This is something most writers never manage to figure out. If you read this far, you know more about the writing business than most writers.
Most writers hate on people who sell anything expensive and call them “marketers”.
They don’t realize that marketing is what allows you to create the art in the long run. That’s why most of these guys quit writing in 5-10 years. Output is high in the first 3 years, slowly drops, and then boom – gone.
Let’s be real. Money is motivating.
Even if you have money, it is natural for you to focus your time on things that make money when time is scarce.
The pro bono stuff is first to go when push comes to shove.
In my case I own multiple businesses ranging from affiliate marketing, SaaS, tax/law consulting, etc. and the income from writing is a small fraction of my total income.
If the blog makes $30k in a month, then the other businesses will make $200k a month. So clearly I don’t need to write.
However, I’m not going to bullshit you and tell you that I don’t want to make money.
If I made 0 money from the blog, there would be far fewer articles here because every time I would get busy with work, this is the first thing I’d stop.
In fact, I’d probably stop writing if I made $0 from it (because it would also imply that my writing was making 0 impact on people).
In conclusion
Black Label Logic clearly liked writing. He did it for 6 years. He published hundreds of articles and made countless podcasts.
And then he shut down and disappeared because his life got busier, he had to focus on his job, and his art wasn’t making enough money for it to be worth his time.
If you are any kind of an artist – writer, podcaster, YouTuber, creator, etc., learn from the mistake of Carl Adaugeo and his defunct blog Black Label Logic.
MONETIZE YOUR WORK. Do not be “above” making money. Do not act like selling is “bad”.
Earn a living from your art and do it virtuously. Create products and sell them at a decently high price point.
Make them so good that you can put your heart and soul into selling them. Make them so good that the customer is DELIGHTED when he buys them.
If you can do that you will stand the test of time. You will never shut down.
Hope that helps.
Your man,
Harsh Strongman
Further reading: Why Bold And Determined Shut Down (Biggest Creator Mistake No. 2)
