I Finally Have a Clear Plan to Make Money Online
For a while, my online business routine looked something like this: settle in on the couch, put on a YouTube video, get inspired, grab my laptop, open seventeen tabs, spiral into overwhelm, and ultimately do nothing.
Repeat indefinitely.
I had information coming out of my ears. I knew about Etsy SEO, print-on-demand margins, digital product funnels, email marketing sequences, and at least four different theories about what “passive income” actually means. What I did not have was a clear answer to the most basic question a person trying to build something should be able to answer:
What do I actually work on today?
That question haunted me. Not because I was lazy. If anything, I was consuming too much. I just could not convert all that learning into a plan that felt real and executable. There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from being highly informed and completely stuck at the same time. It is like owning every cookbook ever written and still staring blankly into the refrigerator every night wondering what to make for dinner.
Something had to change.
The Video That Actually Made Me Stop and Pay Attention
I came across a YouTube video by a creator named Marcus (from Join Marcus) and almost scrolled past it. The thumbnail looked like every other “make money online” thumbnail. But something made me click, and a few minutes in I realized this was not the usual content.
Marcus opened with a line that Tony Robbins made famous: success leaves clues. But then he did something I did not expect. He pointed out that most people who try to model successful entrepreneurs are studying the wrong version of them.
His example was Gary Vee. If you look at Gary Vee today, you get advice about posting a hundred pieces of content a day, going all in on your personal brand, and providing value until something sticks. That sounds inspiring. It is also not what actually built Gary Vee’s business. What built it was Wine Library TV, a consistent video series targeting a specific underserved audience, built on top of an existing family wine business, before he had any brand recognition at all.
Marcus’s point was sharp: the advice someone gives after they are successful is almost never the same as what they actually did to get there. If you copy what they are doing now, you are starting at the wrong chapter.
What you want to study is what they did first.
The Framework: What Did vs. What Do
Marcus calls this the “Money Process.” The core idea is straightforward enough that I could explain it in a parking lot.
Find a business that actually worked. Use AI to analyze not what it looks like today but how it was built in the early stages. Extract the specific actions, traffic sources, workflows, and monetization steps. Then break those down into something you can actually do, in the right order, starting from zero.
The insight that stuck with me was the difference between what a business did versus what it currently does. Big websites today have authority, backlinks, and brand traffic. They can rank for almost anything. But in the beginning, they targeted low competition keywords, built useful tools, captured emails early, and went after longtail search before anyone knew who they were. That early strategy is what you want to replicate, not the empire that came after.
Marcus was also honest in a way I appreciated. He said clearly that most people trying to make money online make nothing, that this takes real work, and that what you are extracting is a path, not a guarantee. No income claims. No “I made $47,000 in my first month.” Just a practical process for figuring out what actually worked and building your own version of it.
That honesty is rare. And it made me trust the framework enough to try it.
The Part Where I Actually Did Something
Here is where my experience diverged from the typical “I watched a video and got inspired” story.
Instead of filing the idea away in my mental archive of good advice I never acted on, I opened Claude and started working through the framework for my own situation. I have been building Splendeur Studio, which includes a print-on-demand boutique, digital products, and content across Substack and YouTube. I have years of experience in fashion, e-commerce, and building things from scratch. What I did not have was a clear, structured plan that connected all of it.
So I used AI to reverse engineer businesses similar to mine. I looked at what successful creators in the beginner entrepreneur space actually built first. I looked at their traffic sources, their content strategies, how they monetized early, and what they focused on before they had an audience.
Then I asked Claude to turn all of that into a strategy for my specific situation.
What came out of that session was three things I had never had at the same time before:
A clear strategy document that mapped out what to focus on and in what order. Not vague advice. Actual priorities.
A focused product plan. Instead of juggling five ideas at once, I landed on one specific digital product to build first. A simple tracker designed for people doing exactly what I am doing, trying to organize their income streams, content, and experiments in one place. Small. Useful. Specific.
A simple execution system. A weekly structure that answers the question I kept getting stuck on: what do I actually work on today?
Three outputs, from one focused working session. That had not happened in months of reading, watching, and researching on my own.
The Simplified Version of the Plan
In case you want a sense of the actual structure, here is how it breaks down:
The foundation is one traffic source done consistently. For me, that is YouTube and Substack together. Not TikTok, not Pinterest, not seven platforms at once. One lane.
The product strategy starts with one product, not a bundle, not a course, not a five-part system. A simple tracker that solves one problem for one type of person. Priced accessibly. Built in a week. Published before it is perfect.
The content connects to the product. Every piece of content I create points back to something people can use or buy. Not in a pushy way. Just logically. If the article or video is about organizing your online business journey, and I built a tracker for that exact purpose, the connection writes itself.
The weekly review keeps it honest. Every week, I look at what got traffic, what got clicks, what made money, and what did not work. Then I adjust. Not obsessively. Just consistently.
That is it. It is not complicated. The hard part is not understanding it. The hard part is doing it week after week without getting distracted by the next shiny framework.
What I Am About to Do
I want to be clear about where I am right now, because I think this matters.
I have not made money from this plan yet. I am at the beginning. The strategy exists. The product idea exists. The execution system exists. What has not happened yet is the actual building, publishing, and testing.
That starts now.
I am going to build the tracker, publish it, create content that connects to it, and document what happens. What works, what does not, what I had to adjust, what surprised me. All of it.
If you have been following Splendeur Studio, this is the part of the journey you are joining. Not the success story looking back. The actual beginning, moving forward in real time.
If you are also stuck in research mode, wondering when you will finally feel ready to start, here is the honest answer: you do not get clarity before you build. You get it while you build. The plan I have now did not come from more research. It came from taking one focused action and letting the work tell me what came next.
The Takeaway
The shift that actually moved me was this: stop asking what you should do and start asking what already worked, and why.
That question, run through the right framework with the right tools, produced more direction in one session than months of scattered learning had.
You do not need a new idea. You need pattern recognition and the willingness to execute on what you find.
If you want to follow along as I build this out, come back here. I will be writing about every step, including the parts that do not go as planned.
And if you want to get a head start on building your own digital products or setting up your online boutique, you can find tools and resources designed for exactly this kind of journey over at www.splendyr.com.
The plan is in place. Time to find out if it works.