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From free DMs to $10K/month: Alex's journey

The Talktome Team·Jul 3, 2026·7 min read

Alex has 62,000 followers on Instagram. That's not a huge account. He's not on any brand deal shortlists. Six months ago he was spending two hours a night answering free DMs about protein intake and sleep.

Today he does $10,000 a month on paid Q&A alone.

Here's how.

Step 1: he stopped answering free DMs entirely

The first move was the hardest. He put a single line in his bio: 'DMs closed. Questions → talktome.bio/alexfit'. His engagement dipped for two weeks, then recovered, then went past where it had been.

Turns out his fans respected the boundary more than they missed the free access.

Step 2: he priced high on purpose

$25 per question. He expected to get roasted. Instead he got a queue.

The fans who paid $25 asked genuinely useful questions — the kind he actually enjoyed answering. His answer quality went up, which made his public answers better, which brought in more fans.

Step 3: he made 80% of his answers public

Every public answer became a searchable, shareable, screenshot-able piece of content. His profile turned into a library.

New fans landing on his page read three or four public answers before they bought. The public answers were the sales pitch.

Step 4: he raised his price four times in five months

$25 → $35 → $50 → $65 → $75. Every time the queue got uncomfortable, he raised it. Revenue kept climbing anyway.

The result

About 150 paid questions a month at an average of $67 each. He spends roughly 90 minutes a day answering. He's earning more than his old salaried job as a coach at a commercial gym — from an audience that's a fraction of the size of most 'successful' creator accounts.

The lesson: intensity beats scale. A small audience that pays is worth more than a huge audience that doesn't.

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