Mark Manson: How the Blogger Turned Author Made Millions Online From Writing
How Mark Manson became uber-successful in blogging
If you aren’t familiar with the blogger Mark Manson, perhaps you’ve seen one of his f*cking novels on the shelf at your local bookseller:
That’s where I first came across this gentleman. The books were in the bestseller section and I was slightly bemused/shocked at the titles — as I’m sure most people are at first.
But despite their triggering nature, his titles are a great gateway to what his writing style is all about.
“His book is the foul-mouthed, funny-as-hell, dead-on elephant on the best-seller lists.” — Katharine Pushkar
His niche? Contra-self help advice.
Mark takes the best of the best of the self-help publishing industry and “translates some of those ideas into language that your average, overworked 26-year-old will understand.”
And he’s clearly struck a chord with his intended audience.
His best-selling book — The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — has over 9 million copies sold as of last year! Not a bad performance for a blogger.
What’s Mark Manson’s background?
Mark grew up in Texas and later moved to Boston to attain a degree in International Relations. In 2007, he started blogging as a way to enter the digital side hustling world.
And I bet he’s glad he did.
He first started posting about dating advice for a few years and earned a modest income writing and coaching about that.
Later on, in 2010, he transitioned to self-help on markmanson.net and grew from there.
His unique counter-intuitive style slowly led him to gain a large email following. He first wrote a book in 2011 on dating advice for men: Models: Attract Women Through Honesty.
Later on in 2016, he released The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and his stature as a professional blogger bloomed from there. He even hit the #1 New York Times Bestseller list. In 2019, he followed that book up with the subtly titled Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope.
At 35 years old, he’s now a well-established blogger/author and is certainly the envy of many others looking to follow in his footsteps.
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How popular is Mark Manson?
We can get a good handle of how much of an influencer Mark is by looking at his various public metrics.
Newsletter:
- The Mark Manson blog claims he has millions of fans on his list
- Since he’s been running the blog (successfully) since 2010, that’s plenty of time to amass that many readers
- In 2017, he told Forbes he had over 350,000 subscribers
- SimilarWeb’s analysis says his website gets about 1.5 million visitors a month
Mark Manson Instagram:
- His Instagram name is ‘@MarkManson’
- 392,000 followers
- 402 posts
- Many of his posts have over 10,000 likes (hearts)
- He posts self-quotes in the format below (and also on Facebook/Pinterest)
Mark Manson Twitter:
- His Twitter handle is ‘@Iammarkmanson’
- He’s verified on Twitter
- 180,000 followers
- He follows 78 people himself
- Just under 5,000 tweets in total
- Joined in October 2011
- He posts several times per day
- Posts receive hundreds to thousands of likes
Mark Manson Facebook:
- His page name is ‘/markmansonnet’ (same as his website)
- 510,000 people like his page
- 518,000 people follow his page
- A glance through his posts shows he regularly gets 500–1000+ likes on his posts
- He posts daily
- Yes, he’s on Medium — and still active it looks like
- His username on here is Mark Manson
- 20,000 followers on the platform
- He posts about once a month, but may have been a lot more active before
- The posts are syndicated/reposted from his website’s blog
Mark Manson Pinterest:
- His Pinterest username is Iammarkmanson
- His profile gets over 2 million monthly views
- He uses similar posts as he does on Facebook and Instagram
- His Youtube username is Mark Manson
- He has 55,000 subscribers
- He’s posted 165 videos
- Joined in August 2017
- His most viewed video has 60,000 views
- His bestseller book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck has almost 16,500 reviews with 4.5 stars
- He has many translated versions of his books as well
- He’s also on the Amazon-owned Audible with the same books
- Which he narrates himself
- The same Subtle Art Audible version has been reviewed over 130,000 times
- He claimed in 2017 his first book about dating had sold between 50–60,000 copies
- The ‘Subtle Art’ book has over 9 million copies sold currently
Mark Manson net worth & sources of income
Mark hasn’t said many public comments about how much he earns. But he has stated that he works his ass off. He also has traveled extensively to over 60 countries, using his experiences as a source of inspiration.
On his ‘about’ section of his website, he claims he doesn’t use ads, freelance, or sell his work to other publications to remain completely independent of censorship.
It’s hard to find out what his total net worth is, as he hasn’t disclosed it. This website estimates he makes over $2 million in revenue per year and is already worth $7 million.
But take it with a grain of salt, as it’s not stated by Mark himself.
From what I can see, his main sources of income are:
- Book sales: digital/physical/audio
- Public speaking events
- Paid newsletter membership ($4 per month) — he gives a LOT of digital goods away to new members
- He formerly sold online video courses “about relationships, anxiety and social skills” for $29.95 per month
- He used to do paid coaching as well
- Youtube paid ads
- Social media sponsored posts — unconfirmed, as I haven’t seen evidence of this, but it’s certainly a possibility as he has so many followers
How did he become successful?
Mark’s been working his ass off writing, filming, and blogging for about 13 years now. He mentioned that people often think he’s lazy as he’s led a life of travel and learning.
But the truth of the matter seems to be the complete opposite.
We can see from all the social media accounts he is active on above, the man works hard. He’s also managed to learn 2 other languages in the last decade.
So to recap his progression:
- Spent a lot of years studying philosophy as a hobby
- Wrote and coached about dating advice for 3 years
- Got tired of the industry and switched to self-help in 2010
- Wrote 1 book about dating (with a unique angle) in 2011, and over time sold 50–60,000 copies
- Continued writing high-quality self-help articles on his blog with his semi-controversial language and unique style
- By 2015, gained over a hundred thousand email subscribers and got a publisher book deal for The Subtle Art of Giving a F*ck
- Continued blogging about self-help, doing coaching and guest speeches
- Wrote a second book in 2019
- Is continuing to blog and write
What were Mark’s success factors?
If we look at all of the different work and history of Mark, we can see some common factors that we often do with successful online entrepreneurs:
- Find and do what you love — Mark always had an interest in philosophy and self-help. It’s why he started the dating advice business — but left it due to its boring nature and toxicity. He switched to self-help with meshed with his life long reading interests.
- Find a popular niche — self-help is a hugely competitive industry because it’s such a common topic.
- Differentiate yourself — Mark’s style is certainly unique in a sea of constant-positivity self-help.
- Work hard for years — His first big success came in the form of a book in 2016 — almost 9 years after he first started blogging (although he certainly made moderate success before that in 2011).
- Have a clear monetization path and stick to it — If you view Mark’s social media accounts and website, everything leads back to his newsletter and books — He doesn’t use ads on his website, he doesn’t bother with other forms of income anymore. His paid newsletter works and works well, so he stuck to that strategy.
- Interact with the audience — One of the features of his newsletter is the ability to ask questions to Mark, which he occasionally gets around to answering. He also offers anyone to email him directly even if he’s too busy to reply — he states he will read every single one, eventually.
- Personality — If you view any of Mark’s properties, you always see his face. Putting a face to a name is another way to stand out and differentiate yourself. It establishes trust and authority — no hiding his opinions behind a wall of anonymity.
- Audience — Mark had over a hundred thousand subscribers by the time he released his most successful book. This also likely helped him land the deal with a publisher — as he was able to get significant sales from day 1. But it took him years of blogging to get that audience in the first place.
Some favorite Mark Manson quotes
- “Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”
- “The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”
- “Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another.”
- “To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action.”
- “Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.”
- “If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.”
- “Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”
- “Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.”
- “Challenge yourself to find the good and beautiful thing inside of everyone. It’s there. It’s your job to find it. Not their job to show you.”
- “If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.”
Takeaway
All of the above might seem obvious, but that’s for a good reason — it works. The hard part is doing it consistently for a long time.
But it leads back to the same formula that I keep seeing over and over again in many of these online success stories:
Time + Repetition + Quality = Success
If you want to be successful as a blogger, it's going to take a lot of hard work, consistency, and the ability to fulfill a need in your audience. If you can do that over the long run, you’ll surely find success in one form or another.
Good luck and happy blogging!
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