Scan time: 2-3 min / Read time: 5-7 min
Hey rebel solopreneurs 🦸♀️🦸♂️
Posted an article. Got 200 views. Fourteen likes. Zero sales.
The content was good. The readers were interested. Nobody bought anything.
That keeps happening for one specific reason — and it takes 10 minutes to fix.
⛳️ Here's the scenario
Meet Lisa. She'd spent three years building a following online.
She wrote LinkedIn posts about productivity for new managers. She published articles on Medium about getting promoted faster. She had a small email newsletter with 400 subscribers.
And she had a paid guide — a 40-page PDF she'd put together over two weekends. Everything she knew about landing your first leadership role.
The guide was good. She knew it was good. She priced it at $27.
In six months, she'd sold eleven copies.
She kept giving away her best tips for free. She kept hoping someone would notice the guide existed. The guide page sat there. Eleven sales.
One afternoon she was sitting on a park bench, half-reading her notes, half-watching a dog try to steal someone's sandwich.
The woman next to her glanced over.
"You look like someone who writes things people don't buy," she said.
Lisa laughed despite herself.
Turned out she was a copywriter — someone who writes words designed to get people to take action. She'd spent 22 years helping creators, coaches, and course builders turn free content into real income. (Lisa nearly fell off the bench.)
The woman glanced at Lisa's phone — open to one of her recent LinkedIn posts.
"Mind if I try something?"
She took Lisa's phone, typed for about 90 seconds, and handed it back.
❌ What Lisa had at the end of her posts: "If you want more tips like this, check out my guide. Link in bio."
✅ What it became: "If you've ever frozen up the moment someone asks 'so, what makes you leadership material?' — that question is the whole reason I wrote this guide.
In 40 pages, I show you exactly how to answer it — and 6 others that trip most managers up.
Grab it here: [link]"
Same guide. Completely different reason to care.
Lisa stared at it.
"How did you do that?"
The woman leaned back.
💡 First — your CTAs are invisible right now.
"A CTA is just the part at the end that asks people to do something. Yours describe the product. They should describe the moment your reader is living when they need it most."
💡 Second — describe their exact situation, not your product features.
"People don't buy because they trust you. They buy because something you said made them think 'that's exactly my situation.' Specific enough that they feel understood. Right now your CTAs don't do that — they just mention something exists."
She pulled a pen from her bag and wrote on the back of a coffee receipt.
"Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole mapped out this whole system," she said. "Two prompts. Run them in order. Ten minutes."
Here's what each prompt does:
▶️ Prompt 1 — Write your CTAs: Takes your free content topic and paid product and writes a ready-to-use CTA for LinkedIn, Twitter, and email.
▶️ Prompt 2 — Create test variations: Takes your best CTA and rewrites it three different ways so you can test which one actually gets people to buy.
Lisa opened her AI sidekick and got started.
🎯 Step 1: Write your CTAs
⏱️ 5 minutes
A CTA is the short section at the end of a piece of free content that points readers to your paid product. Most solopreneurs write weak ones because they describe the product instead of the reader's problem. This prompt fixes that.
My free content topic: {e.g. how to stop procrastinating at work}
My target reader: {e.g. new managers who feel overwhelmed by their workload}
My paid product: {e.g. a 40-page guide called "Your First Leadership Role"}
What the product helps them do: {e.g. land their first leadership role
without years of trial and error}
The exact moment they need it: {e.g. when they've been passed over for
a promotion and don't understand why}
Write a ready-to-use CTA for each of the following:
1. LinkedIn (end of post — describe the reader's painful moment,
then offer the product as the specific next step. 3-4 lines max.)
2. Twitter/X (reply to a thread — short, direct, 2 lines max)
3. Email newsletter (3-4 sentences — acknowledge the topic of the
email they just read, then name the exact problem the product solves)
Rules for all three:
- Name the reader's specific painful moment — not the product features
- Use one clear action word (grab, get, read)
- No hype, no "transform your life," no exclamation points
- Plain language — write like one person talking to another
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "I help managers get promoted faster. If you want my full system, check out my guide — link in bio."
✅ After: "If you're doing good work but keep getting passed over — that gap between 'doing a good job' and 'being seen as leadership material' is specific and closeable.
My guide shows new managers exactly how to close it.
40 pages. $27. [Grab it here →]"
Lisa read it twice.
That was the exact situation her best readers were in.
She'd just never said it out loud at the end of a post.
But one strong CTA wasn't enough. She needed to know which angle would actually get people to click. That's Step 2.
🔍 Step 2: Create test variations
⏱️ 5 minutes
Once you have one good CTA, this prompt rewrites it three different ways — each one using a different angle. You test all three to see which one your readers respond to. This is how you stop guessing and start knowing what works.
Here is my current CTA:
{paste the best CTA from Step 1}
Rewrite it 3 different ways. Each version must use a different angle:
Version 1 — The painful moment:
Open with the specific frustrating situation the reader is in right now.
Name the feeling, not just the problem.
Version 2 — The missed opportunity:
Open with what the reader is losing or missing out on by not having
this product yet.
Version 3 — The fastest path:
Open with the idea that there is a shorter, more direct route to
the result — and this product is it.
Rules for all three:
- Keep each version to 3-4 lines maximum
- Same product, same price, same link structure as the original
- No hype, no exclamation points
- Plain language. Specific. Human.
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "Lots of great resources on leadership out there. This guide is one of them. Check it out if you want more: [link]"
✅ After: "Version 1 — The painful moment: You're doing everything your manager asks. The promotion still didn't happen.
The gap isn't your work ethic — it's a set of moves most managers never tell you about.
My guide covers all of them. [Get it here →]"
[Lisa's AI sidekick filled in the remaining versions...]
Lisa looked at her screen.
Three completely different angles.
All for the same guide.
She picked two and pasted them into her next three posts.
🏆 Lisa's results
Before:
CTAs that described the product but not the reader's situation
Eleven sales in six months
No idea which part of her content was closest to getting people to buy
After:
3 platform-ready CTAs written and ready to post in 5 minutes
Three variations to test across her next posts
First month with the new CTAs: six sales — more than half her previous six-month total
Total time: 10 minutes. Not another six months.
Her AI sidekick wrote the angles and the variations. Lisa picked the ones that sounded like her. BAM.
Two prompts. 10 minutes. Free content that made readers think "that's exactly me" — with a CTA they actually clicked.
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'helping you earn more by doing way less' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️