20 Years of Writing Before My First Digital Dollar [Gunnar Habitz]
4 lessons from a seasoned author who had to unlearn everything to earn online
Welcome to the First Digital Dollar Project
Every week, a solopreneur shares the honest story of how they earned their first dollar online. They also join me on Substack Live to dive deeper into their journey.
Each story follows one path from idea to struggle to income. You will see the doubts they faced, the pivots they made, and the exact steps that led to that first sale.
Whether you are still searching for your breakthrough or already building momentum, these stories show you what is possible when you take action.
This post is a guest contribution from Gunnar Habitz , a fellow solopreneur sharing the story of that first sale.
More on the project and the list of contributors:
Since my high school teacher encouraged me after a bad exam result that I was better than that day and I would write a book in the future, writing became my idea to share my thoughts with the world. That was long before digital.
When I started writing press releases for a club and got a side business role as journalist for a weekly newspaper in the 1990’s, my professor of computer science said: “You will never have an academic career.” Back then I helped him publish science books and learned the activities leading to publications. His answer: “You write too flowery, it’s just not dry enough”.
Well, here we go – motivation for me to write anything but science! In 1999 my first travel book came out from a boutique travel publisher for alternative ways of travelling, like the early Lonely Planet series. And from there nearly every year a new travel book, lots of articles in high glossy travel magazines, 100+ theatre critics, 100+ restaurant reviews for so many outlets.
But that was an act of labour. Before writing a single letter I knew the task, the project, the amount to be paid when. I could even predict how long it would take to write a 160-page travel book.
Just: that was not the freedom some gurus for making money online were talking about. I had to find another way to make it more my own way of earning from writing: online and digital.
Lesson 1: Writing can be a job even when it looks like freelance, but that doesn’t mean freedom.
Double disruption from moving down under
Something happened when I moved to Australia ten years ago. That was in May 2016 to explore the place while studying leadership and building a network before starting a new job six months later.
Besides being in another environment to get new ideas and being connected to a writing meetup group, the world of travel started to change – people wouldn’t buy travel guide books anymore. The weekly newspaper in Prague just collapsed. My world became larger beyond German language writing.
My first role in Australia didn’t pay well enough so I knew that one day I had to reinvent myself – not only to find a new role but also for my writing which is meant to take over after my corporate life.
I claim three events for my first digital dollar which I remember today. Let me explain them here.
Lesson 2: Your online business is meant to be a long-term journey, don’t get there just for fast dollars.
Building a Course Business
Following Smart Passive Income guru and podcaster, Pat Flynn, I recognised that I could teach online. As a former university tutor, corporate sales trainer and running the train-the-trainer programs at HP, I had enough teaching power to uncover this new way of creating online courses.
I did exactly the wrong thing any good advisor would say: I started with the tech gear exploring Teachable, Gumroad, ConvertKit and other platforms – typical reaction of a programmer. I learned email marketing and course creation from Amy Porterfield, even had a live question answered by her grabbing my concerns. That was motivation to get started.
While my first online course, Social Selling Starting Now, followed my meetup group training events, it was actually an overkill for regular professionals learning LinkedIn, it was more of a train-the-trainer course. It sold in a handful of numbers only to people I knew, typically added by coaching hours. So let’s not really count that as digital dollars as it was my network and 1:1 fulfilment.
That shifted when I had a virtual birthday book launch of “Lessons I Learnt”, an anthology book with 12 stories of different authors which came out end of 2019 from a publisher in Melbourne but I couldn’t make the gala launch and instead had a Zoom call for my birthday in May 2020 when the pandemic started. For that occasion I created a digital companion of my three book contributions I wrote in English, ironically all starting with an L. Wrapped in the form of an online course with self-recorded audio versions and slide recordings, it was a good value for $10 with digital fulfilment in Kajabi.
And now the miracle happened: one of the participants of the call didn’t say a thing but then bought the product! He even bought the bundle of the digital version plus a paperback sent by post to his address in Switzerland. Yes, I knew him 20 years before that – but didn’t talk to him for many years.
So here we are: the first $10 of a pure online product, bundled with the $49 paperback and shipping costs!
Most people then bought only the online version which encouraged me to build more products online. That even led to the famous social media software company Hootsuite to task me with improving their world-class Social Selling course by adding more lessons.
Lesson 3: Record what you know and create a digital product for that. Share it on Gumroad, Skool or other places for low investment in tech. Gain client feedback and improve.
Becoming a Boutique Book Publisher
As a published author of 20+ books from major German travel publishers like Polyglott, Bruckmann, Vista Point etc I never went into self-publishing back in Europe.
Back then it was perceived negatively to publish a book on your own using services like BoD, long before Amazon KDP came out. I discovered their print on demand service at the Frankfurt book fair in 1998 and produced family occasion books without bringing them into book shops.
My trigger to get started happened in 2023 when I talked about my fairy tale book I once wrote for my wife Alexandra for Christmas 2008 with some friends. They encouraged me with publishing the book as there would surely be no publisher for a crazy book called “The Elixir of Doubled Life” with rats as main characters playing in Prague.
So that’s when I published the book within a week on BoD in German and in Swedish as well as the English version on Amazon KDP. And here we have the very first income of the English version from February 2023 (BoD only reported quarterly; Amazon was my first proof):
This was the starting point of many self-published books with my own imprint (Connect & Act Media) where I kept complete control, only outsourced the editing and the cover design (not anymore).
My latest and in the meantime 33rd book, Reinvent Down Under, reflects on that mentioned time when I moved to Australia and had to find my way.
Funny story: Amazon sends the royalties month by month, even when they are little. Few of my books can be read as Kindle Unlimited which means I get tiny royalties from readers flipping pages. It happened three times that Amazon sent me just one US cent or one British pence as royalties! So we need to cherish not just the first dollar but also the smallest amount we get.
Grateful that I now help clients with publishing their works in my business as book architect – I’m not the builder (they write) but I help with the whole journey from planning the outcome and launching with impact towards getting the book out there.
Therefore I’m now writing my method in a new book called “Write Your Book Backwards”. Stay tuned!
Lesson 4: It is possible to make money online with your own words! Starting small, getting proficient, and the next book would be more successful (hint: it was!).
— Gunnar
By the end of 6 months, we’ll have created more than content.
We’ll have built proof that there are infinite ways to start.
That your background doesn’t determine your future.
That the first dollar is possible for anyone willing to ship, learn, and iterate.
Your story matters.
Your first dollar was a turning point.
Let’s celebrate it together.
More on the project and the list of contributors:
Find out how 20 solopreneurs with different products, different offers, different strategies, different paths earn their first digital dollars.
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Thank you so much for capturing the story - and for inviting me to be part of your series!
You're right in having to unlearn to re-learn the online world...
Amazing story. Gunnar is an inspiration. Thanks for sharing his story Anfernee.