From employee to fractional CMO and marketing creator making $6k/mo

Michal Kankowski has done everything from trimming horse hooves to performing standup comedy. But these days, he's focusing on fractional CMO services and a paywalled marketing library.

After six months working on Kickstart Side Hustle — then, just a newsletter — he made enough to go full time. These days, he's making up to $6k/mo from both gigs combined.

Here's Michal on how he did it. 👇

Simplicity vs ease

Building a sustainable business is simple, but it ain't easy.

Once you know that, the only thing standing between you and the future you want is the amount of work you put into it.

The Kickstart Side Hustle (KSH) platform was born out of frustration with the current state of articles about creative and viral marketing. You know, those stories where businesses grew by 100x in months thanks to their creative approach, but they're 70% fluff with 0% nuanced information.

I wanted to dive into the mechanics behind those successes, both physical and psychological. That was a little over four years ago.

Kickstart Side Hustle

KSH is a membership website (1.5k users) and newsletter (6k subs). And it's actually the world's largest marketing library for this particularly niche.

It features hundreds of creative and viral marketing case studies with step-by-step strategies, as well as marketing psychology principles designed to increase conversion rates. Because people don't buy products; they buy emotions.

I make money from memberships. I have also done newsletter ads, but I choose not to do those anymore. To date, the site has generated $120k in revenue, with the current monthly revenue ranging from $2k to $6k, including related freelance work.

The freelance brings in between $500 and $5k. I offer fractional CMO and copywriting services. Most of my clients include founders (53%), marketers (20%), and freelancers (15%), from SMB (88%) and LE (12%).

Oh, and I work as a horse hoof farrier from time to time.

Building the MVP

My MVP was simply a newsletter where I shared my first case studies.

I started with $55 in total, which covered the web server (I used WordPress for the landing page). For email automation, I used the free trial of GetResponse.

From there, it expanded to my current stack:

• WordPress for website

• Hostinger for hosting

• EmailOctopus for email

• Gumroad for payments and membership

• Pabbly to connect everything via API

As this was my first serious website, I faced a lot of challenges building it. But we’re living in the digital era, so everything is "figureoutable" through Google, not to mention ChatGPT.

To validate the idea, I started with a simple landing page to collect emails. I worked on it in my spare time between freelance projects. All up, it took me two days to set everything up and another three days to validate the idea.

Growth

Product Hunt

In June 2020, I launched KSH as a freemium newsletter on Product Hunt and gained 800 subscribers in just three days. Within a month, I made $100 from my $15/year premium tier.

Back then, I didn’t know much about Product Hunt and got extremely lucky — mostly because there weren’t many newsletters being promoted there at the time.

Communities

After validating the idea, I started sharing my content on Twitter and Indie Hackers, mostly by copy-pasting my case studies or sharing my journey.

Pivoting

By October, the product evolved from a newsletter into an archive with an annual membership fee of $50/yr.

Then, I validated the idea of expanding my website with a catalog of marketing psychology principles. I shared a piece of future content in a Facebook group for entrepreneurs and people loved it so much that they paid for memberships. It was my first $1k day.

I started collecting preorders and then, in January 2021, I released the upgraded version of my website and launched it again on Product Hunt. The pricing was set at $99 (psychology) and $149 (psychology + case studies), or $449 for a lifetime deal (LTD).

Product Hunt again

This time I was prepared and did everything right:

• I prepared an animated logo, graphics, video, PH discounts

• I had people prepared to vote for me

• I tweeted about it throughout the day

• I answered every comment

That PH launch generated $10k in a week, allowing me to go full time on KSH.

Influencer marketing

After that, I reached out to various community admins and influencers to create special deals with them. Each deal included a discount and a limited-time offer, resulting in $2k to $15k per deal.

During this time, I was also making $500 to $1k from my Twitter activity by building in public.

Cold outreach

Since then, I’ve mostly relied on cold outreach and additional consulting or copywriting gigs related to KSH. Although the path has been rocky at times, KSH is still slowly growing, and I’m looking forward to doubling down on my marketing channels. 

If he could turn back time 🎶

If I were starting again, I’d focus only on one marketing channel at a time. Here are the best options, in my opinion:

• Ads: quick return

• Influencer marketing: quick return

• SEO: long-term

• Twitter, LinkedIn: a lot of work, great for community, works great if done right

• Instagram, TikTok: if you master the art of virality, these platforms can yield amazing results.

The #1 rule is this: Go where your consumers hang out.

Time management

As an indie hacker, time management is crucial. And the most important time management habit is calendar scheduling.

Create blocks of time for your most important tasks and organize them into theme days, so you can focus more effectively.

Here's an example

• Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday: Spend 80% of your time on SEO tasks

• Thursday and Friday: Spend 80% of your time on product development. 

• In the remaining 20% of each day, complete daily tasks that need to be done.

This simplified time-management system works better than 99% of other tools, systems, or courses. You'll be amazed at how much you can achieve by avoiding constant task-switching.

The "Agency Trap"

The biggest mistake I made in this whole process was one that is very common among inexperienced entrepreneurs. I fell into the "Marketing Agency Trap."

After achieving my first significant success with KSH, where I made close to $20k in a month, I decided to focus solely on product development and hired a marketing agency to handle the marketing side of the business.

Within two months, they had spent my entire budget, completely misaligned their content with my brand, and didn’t bring in a single client. I was devastated. That time, I fell into a "desperation spiral," where I began chasing quick buck instead of focusing on long-term goals. This led to poor decisions, the wrong clients, and, ultimately, poor long-term results.

It also became one of the most profound periods of soul searching in my life, during which I went through various states of depression.

Your mood affects your success

Thanks to that period, I’ve learned how essential it is to manage my emotional state. 

When you’re in a great mood, your mind is in an 'abundance state'—everything seems possible and you find answers to any question. But when you’re in a bad mood, a 'lack state,' your mind shrinks and you can’t find solutions to even the simplest problems. The lower you go, the fewer options you see, until the very bottom where you can only see one solution to your life situation — and you know which one I mean…

If I had to start over, I would have prioritized building significant savings — at least 12 months' worth — to maintain a strong mental state.

Advice for new founders

I spend my time analyzing indie hackers, so I have a lot of advice.

Seek community

First, surround yourself with successful, driven people. This could be in real life, on IH, or even on Twitter (ekhm… I mean X). Look for simple solutions to common, painful problems — Reddit and Amazon's 1-star reviews are great places to find them.

Get an education

Second, get familiar with how other founders validate their business ideas and acquire their first 100 users. I recommend reading this article.

Once you have validated your idea, find the best strategies to scale your business. You can explore platforms like Indie Hackers, StarterStory, or KSH to find these insights.

Find mentorship

Reach out to people in similar, but not identical, niches and ask them what worked for them. Build mentor-like relationships with them.

Hedge your bets

Before going all-in with your business, either work on it during weekends until it earns the same as your full-time job or save the equivalent of ten months' worth of expenses.

Manage your time

Now that you know what to do, schedule the next three months on your calendar with themed days and time blocks, and grind until it works.

Focus on one strategy

Focus on 1 strategy at a time. Work hard at it for at least 1-2 months. Stay consistent.

Optimize

Evaluate what works and what doesn’t, tweaking your approach daily. Reach out to your mentor whenever you encounter a problem.

And remember: Luck favors those who hustle their way to a solution.

What's next

I’m currently working on upgrading our marketing psychology section with better UX, more information, and an incredibly easy-to-understand structure. 

Other than that, I’m aiming to at least double our current revenue by the end of the year by going all-in on increasing traffic through social media. 

I’m also working as a fractional CMO for a mobile app (niche undisclosed), and I’m curious to see where it leads.

For more, you can check out my website, Twitter, LinkedIn, or this 60-page article on creating an MVP and getting your first 100 customers.