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How Dan Koe Makes $2 Million per Year Writing 2 Hours per Day
Learn the Secrets Behind Personal Branding, Writing, & Content Systems
Kanishka & Brandon Storey
February 19th, 2025
The phrase “I’m a writer” used to have a negative connotation.
Most people see images of broke, desperate, always-dreaming, but never-achieving, unemployed creatives who just can’t seem to figure out life.
But since the COVID era, a shift in the digital realm took place seemingly overnight.
The writer is no longer sitting in the back seat. The rise of social media and the personal brand have put the writer back in the driver’s seat.
This creator movement is being led by a 28-year-old Arizona native who goes by the name “Dan Koe,” and Koe’s entire business is built on the back of his writing—and his newsletter.
How much has Koe earned as a digital writer since 2019? Over USD 6.9 million. The wildest part? He built this by writing just two hours a day.
Sounds too good to be true?
Here’s the reality: those two hours of writing are the engine of his business. While he spends more time on admin and other projects, writing is what drives his audience, supporters, and revenue.
His earnings—$2 million per year on average—didn’t happen overnight.
It started small and grew over time. He shares his numbers not to set unrealistic expectations, but to show what’s possible when you focus on the right work.
Dan Koe’s newsletter, The Koe Letter, is the cornerstone of his entire content system.
Once a week, Koe sends out an in-depth publication to over 175,000 subscribers on how to turn your passion into profit, with a focus on business, philosophy, and personal development.
Now, let’s dive into how Koe leverages his newsletter as the foundation for his content flywheel, allowing him to seamlessly ideate, publish, and distribute his message to a global audience of nearly 4 million people.
Table of Contents
Meet Dan Koe, the founder of The Koe Letter, Kortex, and The Art of Focus.
Dan Koe has emerged as one of the pioneers of the personal brand movement.
With an audience bigger than the entire city of Los Angeles, at nearly 4 million people, he’s not slowing down anytime soon.
So, what’s the secret to his success?
His writing. But, it’s not just his writing that’s skyrocketed his growth online.
It’s his distribution strategy, his content flywheel, and his systems, all driven by his newsletter, The Koe Letter.
Now, let’s dive into why he started The Koe Letter.
From Twitter to The Koe Letter
Dan Koe first blew up on X (Formerly Twitter). It’s where he got his start in the content game, writing short-form tweets to anyone who would listen – and listen they did.
Before he knew it, Koe had hundreds of thousands of followers.
Koe shared, “I started on Twitter because it seemed like the easiest to do. It's just writing. It's super easy. Anyone can write a tweet. But not everyone can edit a video or record a good video (ultimately, what I wanted to do was YouTube).”
But Twitter wasn’t the end goal. It was just the beginning for Koe.
Koe explained, “I saw Twitter as an opportunity to just get started and kind of refine my ideas. I knew that by building an audience there, it would make it a lot easier to kind of transfer that audience over to YouTube.”
Koe figured out that succeeding online isn’t just about ‘going viral’ on social media. It’s about what he calls “time under attention.” That’s where his long-form newsletter comes in.
“Everyone told me I was supposed to have a newsletter, for various reasons. If you get banned from a platform like Twitter or YouTube (or you lose access to it), you need an email list,” shared Koe.
And, for Koe, email isn’t just a safety net for social media’s insecure and risky audience building. It’s about your true fans.
Co-founder of Wired Magazine Kevin Kelly once wrote about the concept that you don’t need millions of customers to achieve financial success in business. Instead, all you really need is 1,000 dedicated supporters, fans, or customers.
Koe explained, “I think your email list is the only true follower count. All other follower counts don't really mean anything. Your subscriber count means everything. Those are the people that care about you. Those are your 1,000 true fans. 1,000 newsletter subscribers is a direct reflection of the 1,000 true fans.”
Why Listen to Me? I’ve generated over $1 million with email and written over 1,000 blog posts. In my daily newsletter, Storey Time, I teach 3,000+ readers how to escape their 9 to 5 with freelance copywriting. Feel free to reach out to me on X (Formerly Twitter) anytime!
Koe admitted it wasn’t easy to transition from short-form to long-form writing.
“Starting the newsletter was a bit of a grind because I was so used to writing short-form information. When I went into long form, it took a bit to get the hang of it,” explained Koe.
But, like anything, writing a newsletter is a learnable skill, and Koe eventually discovered it is his favorite style of writing.
Koe shared, “As I wrote the first, second, and third newsletter, it started to come to me. And by writing longer, I started to think longer, if that makes sense. It trained my brain to start to think in that way, so the newsletters became easier.”
Content Repurposing: From the Newsletter to YouTube
Koe quickly found out that his goal to get to YouTube and other platforms wasn’t going to be easy. He was already writing short-form tweets, and now he had his newsletter. He knew he had to do something different, so he wouldn’t burn out.
Koe shared, “I realized I don't know how I'm going to start branching out to other platforms because I'm writing this newsletter. I’m writing these posts. They take a lot of time. I can maybe cross-post some to Instagram, but YouTube, that's going to be very time-consuming.”
Koe continued, “After some struggle in my head, I realized I've already written these. I have a backlog of newsletters. Why don't I just turn them into YouTube videos and use them as a script?”
So Koe’s content flywheel was born.
Koe shared, “Since I put so much time and effort into making the newsletter readable and good, then it would transfer over hopefully one-to-one to YouTube, and that seemed to be the case. So that gave me more of a reason to continue writing the newsletter and make it really good because I knew that high-quality content pillar was going to go to other platforms as well.”
Zigging While Others Zag (by Going Long)
One of the most common pieces of advice in the newsletter space is to make sure your newsletter isn’t too long.
Basically, make it short and snappy because people have things to do in their day. And for some newsletters, that’s the best strategy.
But others, like Dan, understand that if the content is good, people will read it, so he goes in-depth.
Koe remarked, “It’s a bit different from other newsletters. I like to go extremely long and do one newsletter a week. I do deep dives on anything from self-improvement to business to philosophy and the occasional things in between.”
Koe shared, “With the newsletter, I’m starting to realize more and more that I like writing really long things, which is kind of counterculture to a lot of the newsletters out there. My goal is to write almost every newsletter over 5,000 words.”
Koe continued, “My newsletters aren't so focused on, ‘Okay, I have to get one out today. Let me write this really quick.’ When they're really short, you kind of give yourself an excuse to procrastinate.”
Koe explained how his newsletter is a core part of his morning routine.
“Writing the newsletter has to be the first thing that I do every single morning. And that determines a lot of how my day goes because if I don't get to sit down and write, then I know that I'm behind. So it's like a forcing function for productivity in that sense,” shared Koe.
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Beyond Business: The Personal Benefit of The Koe Letter
Some people see content as a means to an end. They look at a newsletter as a necessary evil to market their products or services, but Dan Koe sees it differently.
Koe shared, “The newsletter is the cornerstone of almost everything that I do in my day. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up, so it frames my day. I get ideas flowing. My day is good when my writing is good. The benefits of that spill over into so many different other areas of my life. I'm really refining my thoughts by writing in-depth newsletters.”
The newsletter isn’t an add-on to Koe’s business. Instead, it’s the foundation.
“It's the cornerstone of my business in the sense that it’s the pillar where I write the newsletter that turns into a YouTube video. I can refer back to that to get content ideas for the week. Then, I cross those everywhere. A newsletter-first approach is both my business and life philosophy,” Koe explained.
Koe’s Content Goals for 2025
Dan Koe has a newsletter list of over 175,000 people. With such a large newsletter, his main goal at the moment isn’t to maximize growth.
Koe shared, “I don't have too much of a subscriber count goal because my list is pretty large. Anything more is kind of overkill at this point. I'm just writing to write.”
Instead, Koe’s goal is to continue leaning into video content to help grow his software, Kortex.
Kortex is “a second brain for creators” that lets you capture, organize, ideate, and develop your content under a single roof.
Koe shared, “In terms of growth on other platforms, I want to get into reels and videos a bit because of Kortex. Software is visual, so it's easier for me to market that way. So that's the next challenge.”
We asked Koe to share some other benefits of the newsletter on his life. He explained how it’s been a great mirror to help him confirm his ideas and beliefs, especially when he sees that it’s helping people transform their lives.
Koe shared, “It's made me realize that people do care about the thoughts that I think aren't that crazy. It's incredible to me when people notice the things in the newsletter that I just wrote willy-nilly, where they weren't the main points, and so it helps me realize I am providing some kind of value.”
“To me, that's what matters the most. When I send a newsletter out, if people don't get anything out of it, then to me it is kind of a waste,” continued Koe.
The newsletter has become an accountability tool for Koe that helps him maintain a certain standard in his life as a pioneer in the digital world.
Koe shared, “I have to focus a lot of my effort on being helpful to other people. A lot of what I do throughout the day is a big part of that. I have to maintain a valuable life, a life that is worth mimicking that leads to lessons that people can benefit from. So, it helps me orient what I do in my life and kind of prevents me from falling into some kind of rut.”
Why He Switched to beehiiv in 2024
So why did Koe switch to beehiiv? One of the main reasons was that his former platform had issues with the email editor, adding a ton of extra work to his newsletter creation process:
Koe also explained how, as a tech founder himself, he recognized that what beehiiv was building was different from the competition.
Koe shared, “I switched for various reasons. And when I was deciding to switch, the first platform that started to come to mind was beehiiv because I see Tyler Denk on social media all the time.”
What initially caught Koe’s attention was the hype beehiiv was generating online in the X (Formerly Twitter) world.
Koe explained, “I like what he’s building, as a founder. While I don't have a direct connection with Tyler, or any of the founders or executives, I like that they're public. I like that they show what they're building, and I like that they listen to what the users want.”
Koe continued, “Tyler Denk is doing something that he knows and he's done before. He knows a lot of the problems that are happening in the space. And even when it didn't have all the cool features that it has today, it was still very valuable for that reason.”
Koe shared how the difference is that other platforms will add unnecessary features without listening to what users want, while beehiiv takes user feedback seriously.
“You could trust beehiiv as a company that they were going to take it somewhere good. It’s the opposite for other companies because they add things that we don't need. Eventually, it gets too bloated, and then people get angry. So it's a good long-term trust thing with beehiiv,” Koe remarked.
Results With beehiiv
We asked Koe to share some of his results since switching to beehiiv in November 2024.
Koe shared, “They've been good. The onboarding was extremely helpful. It was very thorough as well.”
Koe’s experience in switching platforms in times past wasn’t always smooth.
“Before, whenever I would switch platforms, it used to be like, ‘Okay, you import your list, and that's it.’ But with beehiiv, you guys have a deliverability team. They helped me set up specific DNS records and made sure the deliverability was going to be good, and they helped me get rid of a lot of the cold subscribers that weren’t engaging with the newsletter,” explained Koe.
Favorite beehiiv Feature
We asked Koe to share his favorite thing about using beehiiv for his newsletter.
Koe answered, “My favorite feature is being able to easily customize how the newsletter looks when I send it. Because with a lot of platforms, you're limited in fonts. You either have to know HTML or something else to make it customized. With beehiiv, I was able to get my very simple, clean, newsletter that matches my website, so the branding is cohesive.”
But Koe mentioned something unique to beehiiv that he hasn’t yet capitalized on—the Ad Network.
Koe explained, “I'm very purist, and I just like writing on there. But one thing I want to use for Kortex someday is the ability to advertise on the platform, so I like that I get sponsorship offers. They're not something that I necessarily take. I just think that's a really cool feature that I, as a founder, would leverage because I know the power of newsletters.”
So what’s the writing process behind Koe’s seven-figure brand? Let’s break it down.
Koe shared, “On a normal newsletter, I'll go through ideas on my computer in Kortex. I'll usually go back through my Tweets, or I'll go through my highlights from the past week to find an idea I want to write about in the newsletter.”
Once Koe has his idea for the weekly newsletter, he doesn’t just write. He switches into research mode to dive deep.
“I’ll research YouTube titles to get a better hook and angle for it. I’ll look at my past content and see how I could frame it in a more compelling way. I go and research stuff. I save YouTube videos to watch later. I save Tweets. I save any information that could be relevant to that thing, and then I break it down,” Koe explained.
3-Step Writing Framework: Painpoint, Insight, Action
Once Koe has his idea (and his research is complete), how does he structure the newsletter?
While some people just write whatever they feel, Koe takes a very formulaic approach, with three steps.
Koe shared, “The general structure is pain point, insight, action. I usually start with the pain point. The introduction is usually very pain-point centric. It could be a personal story. It could be a statistic or whatever I think is most relevant to explain that pain point in a compelling way.”
For part two, Koe shared, “Then, the insight: what's the ‘aha’ moment that leads to them thinking, ‘Here's what I was missing relating to this topic.’”
Finally, with step three, Koe concluded, “And, then, step by step, how do you overcome the pain point? That's the general writing process.”
Advice for Anyone Looking To Start a Newsletter
We asked Koe what he recommends to those who are thinking about starting a newsletter.
Koe shared, “Start immediately. You don't need a lot of followers because the thing about long-form content is that you can always refer back to it when it's written.”
Koe explained how a newsletter is something you can repurpose and refine later on. And rather than waiting till you’re a great writer, start your newsletter now to develop your writing skills.
Koe remarked, “Even if you're writing to nobody, you would be surprised how many more ideas you will have (for anything else that you're doing) simply because you're allowing your mind to think longer. You think in a different way when you start writing newsletters.”
Koe continued “You’ll get all of your main ideas out in those first 10, 20, 30 newsletters. And, then, you can rinse and repeat and make them better as your writing gets better, or you can put them on all different platforms and just reap the benefits of long-form content in general.”
“Time Under Attention”: The Power of Long Form
We’re told in 2025 that everyone wants short-form everything.
Short tweets. Short reels on TikTok. Quick, bite-sized content rules all, but Koe argues that long form is still on top.
Koe explained, “A lot of people focus on short form nowadays, but you don't have what I call ‘time under attention.’ If people watch a week's worth of reels from you, you've maybe held five to seven minutes of their attention (and that's split across different topics and ideas).”
Koe continued, “If they read one newsletter (if it's a longer newsletter) they're spending 15 minutes with you on one topic. Who are they going to trust more? The person they watched one 60-second reel from on self-improvement, or are they going to trust the person they spent 15 minutes with who really opened their mind and caused them to actually change?”
Koe shared how you don’t need to start with short-form content first before you start a newsletter. You should just start a newsletter today to start developing your content engine.
Koe explained, “If you don't have a long-form platform yet, just start with a newsletter because, then, you can build up your ideas that can be put on other long-form platforms.”
Advice for Anyone on the Fence About beehiiv
We asked Koe what he’d say to someone on the fence about using beehiiv. He was quick to answer, “I’d tell them that there isn't any other option. I don't think the competitors of beehiiv have all of the features that you will find necessary as you grow.”
“Some don't allow automations — you can't connect with Zapier. They're a closed platform. You are on their platform, or they don't allow you to post that newsletter to your website like beehiiv.”
Koe explained how beehiiv helps him post his newsletter simultaneously to his email audience and to his website as a published web page, allowing him to maximize distribution.
“I like to share my newsletter as a blog post after I post it, so more people can find it. If the newsletter is good, it's not that people are going to read that and be like, ‘I don't have to join the email list.’ They're now more likely to join it because they like the newsletter,” shared Koe.
Koe closed out by stating, “If you're with an email platform that only sends newsletters and doesn't host them, then you either skip out on that or you have to create your own blog, which could just take up a lot more time in general. So just go with beehiiv.”
After 5 years of building an email list of 175,000 on other platforms, Dan Koe switched to beehiiv to help him build a sustainable brand long term.
Koe realized he needed to simplify his tech systems if he was to continue scaling.
By leveraging beehiiv’s intuitive email editor, native distribution systems, and innovative founding team, Koe was able to turn his focus back to the one thing that elevated him to the forefront of the creator movement—his writing.
Want to launch a seven-figure newsletter like Dan Koe? Get a 30-day, free trial of beehiiv now.
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