Colin Theriot – Founder, Cult of Copy Facebook Groups

How does Colin make money online?

Colin runs a popular Facebook group called The Cult of Copy, a free community for copywriters.

Over the years Colin has built up other groups to complement the original:

• Cult Of Copy Job Board
  Job postings for copywriters.
• The Copy Colosseum
  A group where copywriters can get “brutal, honest feedback on their copy.”
• Cult Of Copy: The Second Level
  A group that “focuses on the concept of guru-hood as a business model.”
• Copywriting Training Wheels
  Like the original group but for newbie copywriters.

As of this writing, those 5 groups have a combined ~85,000 members.

Colin monetizes his groups in several ways, as per a 2015 interview on BusinessMentor.com.

The primary monetization method (back then at least) was selling information products to the group:

Whenever Colin wants to offer a new training, or he thinks that a certain product would be good to sell to the group, he creates it, by setting up a live webinar, and he gets people to pay to attend the live webinar, and they get the recording as well. 

Sometimes Colin would team up with other experts and have them deliver the premium training.

Also mentioned in that interview are a few other ways Colin makes (or has made) money from his groups:

• Selling consultation packages
• Premium newsletter subscription
• Paid mastermind
• Selling merch

How much money does Colin make?

From the same 2015 interview on BusinessMentor.com:

This year, [Colin] is expected to make two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand dollars from his Facebook group, which has fourteen thousand members.

$250,000 in a year works out to more than $20,000 monthly revenue.

Given that Colin now has 6x as many people in his groups, his business is most likely earning far more than $20k/month nowadays.

How did Colin get started?

I pieced together Colin’s origin story from a 2017 interview and this YouTube video:

Highlights:

• Colin was working at an internet marketing company “as a graphic designer/SEO analyst/content writer” when he was asked to fill in for a colleague and write a sales letter. He did a good job and was tasked with more copywriting work.
• He learned copywriting on the job for the next two years.
• Then he went freelance “for a few years while starting a little community for other copywriters” at the end of 2012. 
• That community was originally a Skype group but Colin soon moved it to Facebook and it became the Cult of Copy group.
• The group initially was a good source of clients for Colin’s freelance business.
• Colin later started experimenting with other ways to make money from the group.
• His first spin-off group was the Cult of Copy Job Board in 2014.

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What type of online business does Colin have?

Colin runs a multifaceted online business. 

According to our framework it can be broken down like this:

• Freelance (Level 2)
  This is how Colin started out working for himself, offering copywriting services to clients. He found many of those clients via his Facebook group. Later on he also sold consulting packages.
• Authority (Level 4)
  As Colin’s groups grew in popularity, he became known as an authority on the topic of copywriting.
• Digital Products (Level 4)
  Colin has created and sold information products via his groups.
• Physical Products (Level 5)
  Colin apparently tried selling copywriting-themed t-shirts to the group for a while.
• Social Network (Level 5)
  This is the core of Colin’s business. His groups enable people to connect around a shared interest.

Follow the links above for more info and examples for each type of business.