From Passion to Income: how Winson Choong turned a Facebook page into a personal brand — and an income
Six years, 472 articles and 19,000 followers: Winson Choong told a digital media marketing class how a Facebook page about macroeconomics became seminars, recordings and a book deal — and why the money came last. Part 1 of our notes from his three-hour talk.
- Talk
- From Passion to Income: Building a Personal Brand in the IP Economy
- Speaker
- Winson Choong — macroeconomics blogger, renovation-company owner, former business development manager
- Host
- Dr Chan Ler-Kuan, lecturer, BTIS3063 Digital Media Marketing
- When
- 28 October 2026, from 1 pm. Billed as 90 minutes; it ran close to three hours
- Where
- Microsoft Teams, open to all
- Audience
- About 30 digital media marketing and 18 project management students, working adults, and guests from three partner companies
From Passion to Income: Building a Personal Brand in the IP Economy was a guest talk for BTIS3063 Digital Media Marketing, hosted on Microsoft Teams by the course lecturer, Dr Chan Ler-Kuan, on 28 October 2026. It was billed as ninety minutes. Between the speaker’s stories and the class’s questions it ran for nearly three hours, so we have split our notes into four parts. This one covers the personal brand and how it earns; the others take the marketing case study, the career lessons and the economics in turn.
Terms used in this part
- Personal brand
- What people know you for and trust you on — built, in his case, by writing on one subject for years under his own name.
- Stickiness
- How many readers stay and come back, as opposed to passing through once. He values it above the follower count.
- Platform pay
- What Facebook, YouTube and similar platforms pay creators for content. Generous while a platform is short of creators, thin once it is crowded.
- IP economy
- Earning from intellectual property: knowledge turned into things that can be sold, such as seminars, recordings and books.
- Generative engine optimisation
- Writing so that AI assistants such as ChatGPT find your work and cite you — the host’s next step beyond SEO.
Who is Winson Choong?
He calls himself a blogger rather than an influencer, and “a small entrepreneur for now”. He studied accountancy at RMIT in Melbourne about 26 years ago, then worked as an auditor, a salesman, a primary school teacher and a secondary school tutor before the job he calls his most valuable: business development manager, opening markets in Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania for a road-building group. He left employment in 2020. Today he runs a renovation company with 11 workers and writes a Facebook page on macroeconomics that about 19,000 people follow.
Why he started writing
The page began with his father. In 2020 his father, a businessman in his seventies, wanted to pass on what he had learned about work and life during their walks after dinner — but could no longer remember the details. “He shared a lot of good life experience with me, but lacked the details.”
So when Winson started writing that year, in the middle of the COVID lockdown and just after resigning, he set out to record what he saw, observed and analysed, for his two daughters. By the time they are in their twenties he expects to be in his seventies himself, and the details will still be there in writing.
The knowledge behind it came earlier. Sent to Africa alone, with empty weekends and no friends there, he spent three and a half years studying macroeconomics, gold, property and personal finance — “not for an exam, just for my self-improvement”. When a colleague arrived to take over from him, he asked him to carry his books back to Malaysia. They filled a 32-inch suitcase.
How long does it take to build a personal brand?
In his case, six years and 472 articles. He is the first to say 19,000 followers is small next to video creators with hundreds of thousands or millions; he calls himself “a very small potato”. What he values is stickiness: readers who stay and come back.
- 472Articles in six yearsWritten since 2020, mostly on Facebook
- ~100Articles before people sharedWhen, by his estimate, the writing began to travel
- 19,000FollowersSmall next to video creators — but loyal
- ~1,000Seminar attendeesSix online seminars, July–August 2026
His writing started to be shared only after about 100 articles, he said, and the first hundred were not his best. He pointed to a food-wholesaler influencer who has described making thousands of videos before one finally broke through — attention he now turns into sales of discounted products from his factory. Everything starts from scratch, and the only way through is to keep producing good work.
- c. 2013–2016
Three and a half years of reading in Africa
Alone abroad with empty weekends, he studies macroeconomics, gold, property and personal finance.
- 2020
The page begins
He resigns, COVID locks the country down, and he starts writing for his daughters what his father could no longer recall in detail.
- ~100 articles in
Readers start sharing
The point at which, he says, his writing began to be passed on.
- 18 April 2022
The first viral post
The ringgit will weaken as the Fed raises rates: about 4 million views — and few new followers, because nothing was ready to keep them.
- Early 2026
Commentary on a public dispute
2,000 to 3,000 new followers in one burst.
- 2026
The US bond market series
A topic almost nobody else explained, written for beginners. His breakout year.
- June 2026
First seminar, in person
About 35 people, from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru.
- July–August 2026
Six seminars online
About 1,000 attendees in all; the recordings are sold as audio.
- September 2026
A publisher calls
A book contract: royalties become the page’s third income stream.
What a viral post is worth — and what it isn’t
His first breakthrough came on 18 April 2022. The US Federal Reserve was raising interest rates, and he wrote that the ringgit would weaken. He set off for Penang; by the time he arrived, the post had been seen about 4 million times.
- ~4MViewsIn about the time it took to travel to Penang
- 3,100SharesEach one a new audience
- 1,200LikesReactions on the post
- 386CommentsWith no plan to turn them into followers
His regret is what happened next: nothing. He did not yet know Facebook’s page tools, and did nothing to turn those viewers into followers. “What a waste.” The second burst came early in 2026, when he commented on a public dispute in the news and gained 2,000 to 3,000 followers. Commenting on current affairs catches the public eye, which is why many creators do it, but the category you choose decides who you attract.
The lesson he drew: decide in advance what a new reader should do after a post takes off, because the spike will not wait while you work it out.
Original beats copied
Early on, a friend told him that if he ran out of ideas he could copy other people’s content, the way countless funny-video pages do.
“Be a copycat, yes, you can get your views. But you cannot be remembered.”
His sales career taught him the same thing. He describes himself as the “legendary sales” of a former employer, with contracts nobody there has matched since, and he credits being different. If your product is not superior you cannot be the market leader — and for a blogger, the content is the product. Borrowing an idea when you are stuck is human, he allowed; a market leader still has to be an original creator.
Find the gap nobody covers
Thousands of Facebook creators talk about shares, gold and property. Nearly all of them, he said, talk about the downstream: price charts, technical analysis, what a price might do next week. He looks upstream, at the economic signals that move those prices three to six months later — the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate policy and, from 2026, the US bond market, which very few writers can explain. A series explaining the bond market simply is what made 2026 his breakout year. Part 4 of these notes goes through his method.
Then he made it simple. Most commentators write for experienced investors in complex language; he writes for beginners, the wide base of the pyramid. He learned that as a tutor, when the owner of a tuition centre handed him the class that could not keep up with the syllabus, and he found that in any class those students are the large majority. So he defines every term, and explains theory so plainly that a newcomer can follow it.
| The P | His choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Original articles on macroeconomics: the Fed, interest rates and, from 2026, the US bond market | An upstream topic few others can explain. Copying would bring views but no memory of him |
| Customer | Beginner investors — the wide base of the pyramid | Most of any class is still learning, so he writes for a newcomer and defines every term |
| Place | His readers are mostly 35 and older, with money and some investment knowledge, and still read Facebook to keep up | |
| Price | Free to read; seminars and recordings are paid | Platform pay is only about 50 US cents to US$2 an article |
| Promotion | Free articles first, paid seminars later | The free writing is the introduction. Nobody pays to hear a stranger |
How does a Facebook page make money?
Platform pay comes first, and it is small: roughly 50 US cents to US$2 an article on Facebook. Platforms pay generously while they are short of creators — YouTubers earned far more ten years ago than they do among millions of channels today — so platform pay should be an income, not the income.
Platform pay
Facebook pays about 50 US cents to US$2 an article. Useful, never the main income: platforms pay well only while they are short of creators.
Seminars
Three-hour sessions full enough that people pay to attend. The first, in June 2026, had 35 people; six online ones followed.
Recordings
Each seminar recorded and sold as audio to people who could not make the date — the part that keeps selling.
Book royalties
A publisher approached him in September 2026. The contract is agreed and the book is being written.
The seminars were the readers’ idea. Early in 2026, followers told him the internet was full of “fragmented knowledge”: one- or two-minute clips that explain a moment but never add up to the whole picture. They asked for a course that would join the pieces.
In June 2026 he ran his first seminar in person, for about 35 people who came from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. By then shares had carried his articles to readers in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, and invitations followed. After pricing venues, hotels and travel he concluded that the real obstacle was time: few people can make the same date. So in July and August he ran six seminars online, for about 1,000 people in all, and recorded them to sell as audio to anyone who could not attend.
The feedback is what he dwelt on. A professional investor in Australia wrote that the seminars gave him “the last puzzle” — the reason he had made and lost money. Experienced stock investors who pay monthly to belong to internet “guru” groups messaged him privately to say they had never considered the bond market at all. He insists he is not a guru himself: he shares information, and his knowledge of particular investments is limited.
Then, in September, a publisher approached him. The contract is agreed and the book is being written; its royalties will be the page’s third income stream.
Keep it a hobby first
He does not recommend going full-time. He writes around his renovation business — some articles while waiting for customers — and suggests the same order to anyone starting out.
When to go full-time — his order
- A hobby
- A part-time income
- only once the part-time income is higher than your salaryA full-time income
“Income is always the last reward from your hard work.”
The page is one of what he counts as nine types of income, from a salary he pays himself to property and gold. Part 3 maps them, together with the career that came first.
Questions from the class
A student asked how a newcomer to AI, digital marketing and social media should start. His answer: AI and digital marketing are tools. The foundation is knowledge of your subject. Then learn to sell, because “sales and marketing is not only selling products — it is selling yourself, selling your ideas”. Get some sales experience whatever your field, engineering and IT included, and only then use AI and social media as the channels.
Asked whether the blog came before the seminars: yes, and it had to. Had he walked into the market announcing a macroeconomics seminar, nobody would have known who he was, whether he had the knowledge they needed, or whether it was worth the money. The free writing is the introduction.
What the host added
Dr Chan explained why she had invited her project management students too. Graduates can build an IT product but often cannot market it or present it — “the bridge to the customer is missing”. AI can now produce content quickly, she said, but explaining something well is a skill built over years. She noted that she and the speaker both changed careers, and that switching gives you a broad, helicopter view of the market.
She sees Malaysia as short of intellectual-property brands in economics, tax planning and business, and long on “gurus” who learn a little and dress it up in jargon. Her own path ran from a Blogspot blog around 2008, to a travel blog that still earns passive income from Google AdSense and led to work with brands such as AirAsia, Legoland and IKEA, to Substack today. Early movers earn the best commissions, she said; as a market crowds into a “red sea” they shrink, and she expects the same to happen with AI.
What she is building now she calls “AI influencing power”: how quickly ChatGPT and other models find your writing and treat you as an expert in your field. It goes beyond SEO, being found by Google, towards what is now called generative engine optimisation.
What the class does next, with AeroGreen Asia
The talk is coursework. Students must describe his background; analyse his segmentation, targeting and positioning and his use of the 4Ps or 5Ps; explain why Facebook suits his market; and propose a KPI framework with the tools to measure it. Part 2 works through the marketing mix and sets out one such framework from his own figures.
The group project is real. AeroGreen Asia, an agriculture technology company working with IoT and a partner of the faculty, offers gold, silver and bronze sponsorship packages, and students must find real companies willing to sponsor its work. Dr Chan’s reasoning: Malaysia has gone from food exporter to food importer, and between the haze, the monsoon rain and the floods Johor Bahru has seen, growing food with technology is worth backing. The non-written final exam is a two-page report on a real prospective sponsor, assessed by Dr Chan and AeroGreen Asia together. Project management students will meet a partner who runs a tax and audit business, and build a prototype for a real problem in it.
Her instruction echoed the speaker’s: go to the ground. A list of companies copied from Google Maps will not do; approach the business owners. Falling at school costs nothing, she told them. Falling in the market costs trust.
If you run a community page
Most people who read this blog run a confession or community page on Facebook — the platform he built on — and his rules carry over directly. Post consistently, and accept that the first hundred will be practice. Be the original voice in your niche rather than a repost account. Know exactly who you write for. Give before you ask. And decide what a new reader should do on the day a post takes off. When a page does have a loyal audience, letting readers pay to be read first is one way it can earn from it.
Common questions
What was the “From Passion to Income” talk about?
It was a guest talk by blogger and entrepreneur Winson Choong for BTIS3063 Digital Media Marketing on 28 October 2026. He explained how six years and 472 articles on a Facebook page about macroeconomics built about 19,000 followers, and how the page grew into seminars, recordings and a book deal.
How long does it take to build a personal brand?
In his case, years. He wrote for six years, and about 100 articles, before people began sharing his work, and his breakout came in the sixth year. He compared it with a creator who made thousands of videos before one went viral: consistency comes before attention.
How much does Facebook pay per article?
Winson Choong said he earns roughly 50 US cents to US$2 an article from Facebook. He treats platform pay as one income stream, never the main one, because platforms pay less as more creators join them.
How do you turn a Facebook page into income?
His sequence: write useful, original content for free until people know you; listen to what readers ask for; then sell something deeper. For him that meant paid seminars, recordings sold as audio and a book contract, on top of a small payment from Facebook for each article.
Should I become a full-time content creator?
Not at first, he advised. Keep it a hobby, then make it part-time, and go full-time only when your part-time income is higher than your salary. He still runs a renovation business and writes in his spare time.
Do I need AI skills to start?
He called AI and digital marketing tools. The foundation is knowledge of your subject, then sales and marketing skill — learning to sell yourself and your ideas. AI and social media are the channels you use once you have something worth saying.
Sources
- AeroGreen Asia — Facebook
- Personal branding — Wikipedia
- Marketing mix — Wikipedia