How I make money online

Breaking down my income so you can do it too

Alex Costa
September 15, 2025

If it was easy everyone would do it 

Everyone sees the end result.

The videos, the brand deals, the launches.

Most people never see how any of it comes together.

I’ve had many jobs - from landscaping to Domino’s to later being a paramedic and working at Google.

All of which have shaped how I look at work, money, and opportunities.

Once I made my first dollar online, I took all that experience and never looked back.

This week:

🎥 The engine that started it all

🤝 Win-win collaborations

🚀 Turning influence into business

💡 How to start building your own ecosystem

🛒 My shopping cart this week

🚨 New VLOG alert

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TRY EVERYTHING
BUILD ANYTHING

Making money online, let alone anywhere in life, isn’t one big leap.

It’s a series of steps consisting of experiments, risks, and skills you build that lead you to successes and failures.

And then you build on what worked and what didn’t. Then you do it all over again.

And again…and again.

Build the base: YouTube

YouTube is my foundation. Unless you’re MrBeast, ad revenue alone isn’t life-changing.

The real power is building an audience.

And the formula is pretty straightforward:

Find a topic you enjoy and have enough knowledge in to build a library of content
Shoot your content however way you like - see what works, what doesn’t
Stay consistent - high-quality videos → grow viewership → get paid by YouTube’s AdSense + attract sponsors.

Your move: Pick a topic you could talk about weekly for 6+ months.

Publish every week. Don’t optimize for perfect, optimize for learning and consistency.

Don’t be afraid to experiment until you find what works for you and your audience.

Leverage your audience: Brand partnerships

Brands pay to be in front of the audience I’ve built. The key is aligning with products that I not only believe in, but also what would resonate with my audience as well.

How it works: Negotiate flat fees or revenue share deals → integrate the product in a natural way → measure performance for the brand.

Even with a small following, DM brands you already love. Offer to create UGC (user-generated content) for them for free or low cost.

You’re not going to get partnerships right away so keep creating regardless of who responds and who doesn’t - give those potential clients a portfolio to look at and continue to build and refine it.

Turn influence into equity: Forte

There’s a few brands I built as a result of building a large following online.

Forte has been the one that has resonated the most with my audience.

Simply speaking: Audience → find product-market fit → launch → reinvest into improving it. Forte is now both a brand and a revenue engine that I continuously work on and reinvest in.

Use side hustles and passion projects to test ideas. If people respond, double down. The point is to narrow in on the one thing that works best for the community you build.

Taste everything & continue building skills

From landscaping to Google, every job I’ve had taught me discipline, people skills, and problem solving.

The more experiences you collect, the more perspective and skills you have to draw from later.

Don’t skip the “boring” jobs. Each one gives you insight into people, systems, and yourself. Document what you’re learning, you’d be surprised how useful it can be later on years down the line.

Set yourself up to win (tactics)

❝

Winners are those people who make a habit out of doing the things losers are uncomfortable doing.

Jack Canfield

Network

DM people you admire and offer value - you’re probably going to have to do this over and over and over again. Nothing is ever easy but the pay off can be massive.

Work for Free

Your first projects might not pay, and that’s okay. Every opportunity to learn gets you one step closer to your goals.

Upskill

Learn video editing, writing, marketing, essentially whatever it is that you need for the world you want to work in and the people you want to work with.

Stay Consistent

The compound effect is real. Your first 10 (or even 100) videos or posts will be bad, and that’s okay. The point is to keep going, you can’t fail if you don’t stop.