The 5 levels of online business

There are five levels of making money on the internet, this is the path from starting your first online side hustle to building a real million-dollar business online. Whether you're a college student, can't find a job already working, or just don't want to wait years to start earning an income this video shows you where to start what skills to learn in order, and how to succeed at each level. I highly recommend going through each level in order because skipping levels is expensive. I lost $30,000 by starting a level five business when I was really only a level two person, but I'll share that story at the end of the video. The first level is learning an in- demand skill and selling it directly. This is how most people make their first $100 online, and it's exactly where I started when I was in college. There are five core skills that run every business: design, development, video, copywriting and operations. Every company needs these, which means if you learn one, you will never struggle to find someone willing to pay you. I chose to start with video. I picked up a camera and asked everybody I knew a simple question. Do you know anyone who needs a video shot? I wasn't confident enough to charge money yet, so I shot the first three videos for free. Not because free work is the goal, but because proof of work was. I shot a church event, a music video, and a nightclub. And I posted everything on my Instagram. Once I had proof, everything changed. I was able to get my first paid gig for $200. From there, I just focused on improving my craft. Better videos, better lighting better audio, and faster editing. The better I got, the more I could charge. And one year later, I was charging $500 per video. So, level one is simple. Learn a skill, get proof of work, post it online, and start sending it to potential clients. You'd be surprised how many people actually already need what you can do. Some of the most in- demand skills I'm seeing right now are app design, AI video, funnel copywriting, AI implementation clipping, and UGC. At this level, the business skills you focus on are messaging potential clients, pitching your services, and delivering quality work. It's simple, but asking a stranger for money is scary. So, if you can get past that, nothing can stop you. Now before we move on, if you're watching this and you're thinking, "Okay, that makes sense, but I don't know what skill to pick or how to actually start." I'm hosting a free live workshop where I'll walk you through what skills companies are paying for right now, how to pick one without overthinking or guessing and how to take your first real steps to getting paid. It's completely free. You can register at wopacademy.com or click the link in the description below. But now, let's go to level two. Level two productize your service. At level one you try a lot of things, but at level two, you get focused. This is where you stop saying yes to everything and start specializing. You turn your skill into a clear offer for a specific customer with a defined outcome. This is often called a productized service with a fixed scope, clear pricing, and defined deliverables. Think of it like a restaurant menu where the meals are set the price is clear, and the kitchen runs the same way every night. Early on in my journey, I realized something important. I could spend 2 days shooting music videos for broke rappers, or I could spend 2 hours shooting a nightclub event and make the same amount of money. Same skill, very different economics. So, I specialized. I focused on only shooting videos for nightclubs. One service, one customer, one outcome. That clarity made everything easier. I made a list of every club in town. I made a simple website. I listed my packages, and I embedded my calendar. And that system helped me hit my first $10,000 month my first year out of college. Nothing about the work changed. Only the structure did. At this level, content starts to matter more. not becoming an influencer but building a personal brand, which is essentially just an online version of your reputation. I'd post things like how this recap video helped X nightclub sell 30 more tickets. I explained what I did, how they used it, and the result they got. Now, when someone found my profile, I looked legit. They understood my value, and they booked calls themselves. This is where the switch flips from you chasing clients to clients finding you. You don't need to post every day or get massive views. You just need the right people watching your content. Level two skills are defining your ideal customer, packaging your offer, outreach and basic sales, and creating content that builds trust. Level two is where income becomes predictable. Now it's time for level three, where we add leverage. Level three is where you stop being the talent and you become the operator by starting an agency. An agency is where you sell the same service, but someone else does the work. For me, that meant signing clients and then hiring other videographers to fulfill. I'd sell a $1,000 package, pay a videographer $400 and then pocket the rest. Same service same outcome, different role. This is the first time I stopped trading time for money. And the skills you learn at this level are hiring, training, and managing projects. If you don't have a clear service, repeatable delivery, and predictable sales, hiring will make your life worse. But when it works, it's the bridge from being self-employed to building a real business. You're no longer paid for what you do. You're paid for what you coordinate. and it's how I was able to make $30,000 in a single month at 23 years old. Level four digital products. Level four is where some people decide to take that experience and turn it into a digital product. A digital product is just a way to package what you've learned so other people can benefit without you having to do the work for them. Digital products can be courses, guides and playbooks communities, or coaching and consulting. The shift is simple. You're teaching instead of executing. The big reason people like digital products is because of leverage. Instead of one client equals one unit of work, you can just create something once and sell it over and over and over again without any extra work. So there's no fulfillment tied to your calendar and no extra work when more people buy. So at this level the hard part isn't delivery, it's actually getting attention and acquiring customers at scale. Once the product exists, the real question becomes, how do people find this? That's why organic content matters here, especially on YouTube. YouTube content works best when you solve the problem yourself, can show proof that you've helped other people solve it, and can explain it clearly. Now, to sell your digital product and actually turn those views into paying customers, you need to learn soft marketing skills like basic copywriting building funnels, and email marketing. This is the stage where you master driving traffic and turning strangers into paying customers without a sales call. If you learn these marketing skills, you can truly scale any business. Now, some people are ready for digital products earlier than others but for most people, it's best to spend time in the earlier levels. When you go through the earlier levels first, you naturally build a hard skill. You learn how to sell, and you get testimonials from your clients. That makes teaching easier, that makes content easier, and that makes selling feel natural. By the time you reach level four, you're not guessing what to teach. You're just explaining what you know already works and you've earned the right to sell a digital product. Digital products are amazing for generating cash flow. They are highly profitable and they make people millions of dollars, but they are very difficult businesses to sell because they require you as the teacher to run them, which is why a lot of people decide to move to level five. Level five is the highest form of leverage. And instead of teaching the solution, you actually build the solution. Software turns a problem that you understand deeply into a tool that solves it automatically. Think apps platforms, marketplaces, and SAS. Software is powerful because it offers recurring revenue, high margins, no fulfillment per customer, and high exit multiples. Because once it's built, the same product can serve 10, 10,000, or even a million people with no added cost. And this is why the most valuable companies in the world are software companies. But the part most people underestimate is how many skills software businesses require to succeed. To make software work, you don't just need a good idea. You need to be able to design a real product, build it or manage developers who can create a website, write copy that clearly explains the value, market the product at scale, often through paid ads, handle customer support, then listen to user feedback, and reduce churn over time. Software isn't just leverage. It's every part of business at once. Which is why most software founders have to raise money from investors. They haven't learned these other business skills. So they have to hire people to do them for them, which is expensive. So, for you this is where the five levels really come together. If you move through levels 1 through 4, you're not just building businesses, you're stacking skills while cash flowing. Aka, you're getting paid while you learn. By the time you reach level five, you've already learned a hard skill. How to sell it directly, how to package an offer, how to talk to customers, how to do outreach and sales, how to create content, how to manage people and systems, and how to generate traffic at scale. You also have something that most beginners don't. Cash flow. And that matters because when you eventually do decide to build software, you're not hedging your entire future on one idea. You're hedging the bet by using the money you've already earned to invest in building something bigger. So, when you reach level five, building software isn't a gamble. It's a calculated step. Which reminds me of the biggest mistake I made in my journey. I didn't do it this way. When I was still early basically level two, I decided to build a piece of software. I was shooting videos for nightclubs and I noticed how long the lines would be. So, I built an app called Poppin that would let people pay to skip the lines. I spent about $30,000, which was my entire savings at the time, to pay developers to build it. I launched it with one of my clients and the first night it worked. People paid and everything looked great. The next night I showed up and the club owner had replaced my sign with his own sign that said $100 line skip cash only. He cut my app out completely. And at first I thought it was fine because like now I knew the product worked. But then I realized I had no idea how to get customers beyond my existing clients how to build a sales process, how to hire or how to create distribution. The idea was good. The product actually worked. I just wasn't skilled enough yet to make it succeed. I was trying to run before I built the foundation. Now, some people can start with software. If that's really your thing and you're ready to climb every mountain at once go for it. Just understand what you're taking on. To succeed with software, you have to learn all of these skills anyway. That's why I recommend going through the levels in order because each one stacks the skills that make the next one easier. By the time you reach level five, you're not overwhelmed, you're prepared. The five levels of online business is just a pattern that I've seen after interviewing dozens of 20-year-old kids running online businesses. Daniel Bittton started with short form content. Then he started making shorts for clients. Then he started teaching other people how to make shorts. Then he created a software tool, Crayo, that creates and edits shorts automatically. Luke started with sales. Then he started a sales agency. Then he started a high ticket sales training program. And now he's building an AI sales training software. And there's Harry. Harry started with a simple skill, AI video. Then he productized it for software companies. Then he started posting his work on Twitter. Then he created a digital product teaching AI video. And now he's working on his own app. Different people, different skills, same path. So this isn't about picking the perfect business model. It's about acquiring skills, stacking leverage, and increasing the surface area of opportunity over time. When you understand the levels, you stop guessing. You know what to work on next one skill at a time.