How Thomas Frank Makes $2 Million/ Year With Notion

Thomas Frank makes money through education of Notion. there, end of story :)

But there are tons of websites that do it, so why is Thomas any special?

First off, what is Notion?

Deep breath...Notion is a versatile productivity tool that combines note-taking, project management, task lists, and document organization into one platform. It allows users to create various types of content, including text, tables, lists, kanban boards, calendars, and more, all within customizable pages. Notion is known for its flexibility and adaptability, making it popular among individuals, teams, and businesses for organizing information and collaborating on projects.

Competitors?

AI, EverNote, Trello, Slack

According to multiple different interviews, Thomas Frank gets roughly $2million/ year and some change in (mostly) promoting Notion. E.g:

How does Thomas Frank do it?

This is similar to our thoughts on Charlie Chang and that Thomas is the main brand here, so everything that Thomas does is going to be aimed towards promoting Notion. Indirectly as well through organizational content, study guides etc.

Videos, interviews, media, websites are directing you to Notion in some way shape or form. Look at his main webpage (the homepage picture is the top picture on this webpage). No fluffy pictures, no sparkling copy, here is what I do and here is the proof.

5 things that are extremely noticeable and within the "brand":

I’m an author, YouTuber, and Notion expert.
I create in-depth tutorials and templates for Notion that help people be more productive and organized
learn Notion
Notion templates
nice list of logos featuring businesses who have featured Thomas

So, who is Thomas? Someone who knows Notion.

Each link on his mainpage directly goes towards Notion in some way. One took me to a nicely title index which then once clicked on one the titles took you to a huge page filled with content. Here is one of the links:

Then we have Youtube. Thomas Frank Explains which is about...Notion and productivity. The title page is clever because it states "Become A Notion Expert" and Thomas is right by the side of it- subliminally cool and again, keeping with the brand that Thomas is your go to guide. There are 247k subscribers and video views ranging from 20k-1million. And where do the main page Youtube links direct you to? Yep, his main website:

We also have ThomasFrank as a Youtube channel which does study, daily processes, organizational skills. It has 2.97 million subscribers with videos ranging from 1-7million views.

Organizational skills...matching well with Notion and other similar types of software (which would be a cool way to branch out). Why not Thomas Frank Slack? or Thomas Frank Twillo? I see that you are building a sort of processes type of brand so now expand :) So instead of just Notion can Thomas Frank be also associated with other productivity softwares?

Again, some of the links on the main page of this Youtube channel goes to Notion! Also, one of the playlists is...Notion.

It is also a good idea to use Youtube because Notion is very visual. Even though posts are cool for some, you are also making sure that the moving visual aspect is covered.

So it is an enclosed loop trying to keep you within it. Which is not a bad thing by any means.

So where are the sales coming from?

This idea comes similar to the one in The $100 Startup book where someone created a whole digital product regarding EverNote- made $100k in a year. It was fully indepth content in English. Oddly enough people seem to direct themselves towards people who discuss certain products in detail. Companies have websites and content but there are tons of channels and websites dedicated to their products. Take Microsoft Word. Place "Word Tutorials" into your fave search engine and you find millions of results.

Everything on Thomas's map is dedicated to a specific audience and that audience is niche but willing to learn. Flipside to this, if you have invested time in a product then it is going to be more difficult for competitors to come in and change your software to theirs.

So we have:

very targeted niche
very targeted channel and website
a person who is positioning themselves as a leader in product knowledge
website and channel look professions, clean and unclutters (which again is a subconscious views to show that organizational skills are being used)

So now we have trust and we can see the links:

So we have the following:

freemium- so we get tons of free templates and some other ones are then paid for
Adsense through Youtube (minimal due to the niche nature and click through rates with low traffic)...but on the main site? Might get some decent money as long as the subject and advertiser amount matches.
affiliate links- one to Notion
newsletter- an even more niche audience that are a higher chance to buy you products. It is also a great way to insulate yourself from Youtube changes. They will also be your audience. According to interviews, 30,000 customers bought just a squeak over $2 million in templates
probably throw in some sponsorship on the Thomas Frank main website

It seems like the newsletter is the main source of revenue. But the free templates sound like they are the warmth in the sales prcoess. Coupled with informative videos/ content then you can understand why a relative low amount of customers trust Thomas.

As always, we hope Thomas Frank all the best. Want to check out more ideas and dicussions on digital products? Check out the Jasonera blog here.