8 businesses generating thousands of dollars in just a couple of months

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Updated: September 27th, 2022

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8 businesses generating thousands of dollars in just a couple of months

That’s the dream, right? To start a business that makes money right away.

Well, the good news is that it’s possible. But, what does it take for this to happen?

The one thing that all these businesses have in common is that they were able to spot a very obvious opportunity in the market. Whether because they did some research or simply because while working they were able to detect a gap in the market. A demand that wasn’t properly served.

We’ve put together a list of examples to showcase how to start a business that generates income as soon as possible:

This eco-friendly junk removal service generated $23,5K in 2 months

What is it? A premium, eco-friendly, residential, and commercial junk removal company dedicated to giving back through donating the stuff they pick up to local charitable organizations.

How they came up with the idea? These founders initially started a digital marketing agency focused on working with contractors. That work helped them spot a need for socially conscious, junk removal services. With both having previous experience in construction they took the leap to start a junk removal service using the truck of one of the founders.

How did they grow initially? Here’s where their skills and experience helping contractors build their businesses online came in handy. Since this is a local business, the marketing cornerstone is working on having a perfect Google My Business profile.

Regarding their website, they went crazy and created 75+ pages of content. Content strategy is huge for service businesses. It builds authority, helping your site be the first choice for Google when someone is looking for the service you offer. They have pages for every service they offer, and every location we service. The hustle paid off.

This e-commerce plugin reached $600/month in just 4 months

What is it? It’s basically like the Wheel of Fortune from the classic TV game show. For a chance to win a prize or discount, visitors enter their email addresses and spin the wheel.

How they came up with the idea? After a couple of failed projects, this developer decided to find existing successful products that have proven the market, but that might not serve all the market. Which is what could provide an opportunity.

Having noticed the lucky wheel popup format was gaining popularity. He even read on Starter Story about how a founder mentioned how Spin-a-Sale “was the driving force in our email growth”.

The opportunity? The most popular “wheel plugins” were only available for Shopify and not other platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Squarespace.

How did they grow initially? He’s been able to attract customers through email outreach and forum/Facebook group participation. The target? Websites already using plugins that also help conversions/opt-ins, people who are proactively trying to improve their website conversions and are also willing to pay for a solution.

This email marketing tool hit $4K MRR in 4 months

What is it? An AI-based cold email marketing tool.

How they came up with the idea? This agency founder had a constant worry that once a project was finished a new one may not arrive. To steer away from spending money on ads and avoid Linkedin spamming, decided it was time to try something new: email marketing.

The problem? He was writing the same messages again and again, for 6 hours per day. Once the pattern in the messages was obvious, why not make a tool to write them?

How did they grow initially? It wasn’t hard to find “email people” on Facebook and Twitter, and of course, he also reached out to other email marketing agencies because if he had this problem, they also have it. In 35 days 750 people were on a waiting list.

After that, he doubled down on the same strategy, but this time included more data (from their website, Linkedin, etc) to make the emails more personal. As a result, he 3x’d the response rate.

This digital inheritance management tool reached 480K/year in 12 months

What is it? An app that helps people easily get a list of all your assets and instructions on how to locate them (once you’re no longer in this world).

How they came up with the idea? The founder was looking for a solution for digital legacy management and was surprised most people were using do-it-yourself hacks, such as storing information on their computer, on flash drives, google sheets, or even printing on paper.

How did they grow initially? Only in the first 3 months after launch, they tested 14 different acquisition channels. They stuck with only those that performed well: search ads (high buying intent), content (the service needs some customer education), and PR (it’s something pretty unique, media loves these).

This chat plugin made a gross profit of over $20K in just 10 months

What is it? An all-in-one solution for companies to connect with their customers.

How they came up with the idea? This founder really didn’t like website chats. Tired of having to use a different method to contact each company, he decided to build a solution that integrated the tools that people already use: WhatsApp, Twitter DMs, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, etc.

How did they achieve it? Thanks to sharing his progress on sites like Reddit and Indie Hackers, he was approached about offering a lifetime deal on AppSumo, this channel has brought most of its revenue. However, there are also other strategies in place, like releasing a WordPress plugin that also generates leads, or getting as many positive reviews as possible on sites like Capterra, AppSumo, Google, and TrustPilot.

This Shopify app generates $12K/month 7 months after launch

What is it? A Shopify app that helps merchants have an accurate and reliable data tracking setup using data layers, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and many other tools.

How they came up with the idea? Their data-focused agency started receiving many customer requests from Shopify stores. So they decided to productize the service to make it scalable.

How did they grow initially? They noticed that most Youtube videos about Google Analytics were very generic, so they decided to create specific e-commerce-focused videos. Those quickly dominated the searches and started bringing in 8-10 leads per day with just a couple dozen of daily views. It’s great to see how when you tackle a specific problem you don’t need great numbers to achieve success.

This super niche marketing agency yields $15K/month in profits in just 3 months

What is it? A full-service digital marketing agency exclusive to the professional painting industry.

How they came up with the idea? Having owned a marketing agency since 2008, and after working with a few painting businesses as clients, this owner noticed a common trend; they were good at generating results for that type of business.

So, why not branch out and start a business just for that type of customer?

How did they grow initially? Since he had a background in running paid search campaigns it was relatively easy to dial in their target demographics and create custom audiences from contacts they compiled. These contacts were obtained from industry associations and by manually searching Google for qualified candidates. This took weeks of manually building out spreadsheets (hey, nobody said it was easy).

Finally, they also decided to purchase targeted contact lists and to their surprise, the conversion rates were as good as the other sources.

This side project Hit $2,500 MRR in just 90 days

What is it? An email finder tool with an automation layer designed to help B2B salespeople build lead lists faster for cold outreach.

How they came up with the idea? This is the classic story of a developer that has a bunch of projects going on. One (a tool to find emails from Twitter users) started to get some traction. But it was too niche.

That, however, made him see an opportunity for “an email finder that doesn’t suck” and started working on it.

How did they grow initially? Well, of course, he used his own solution! I started to get emails from followers of niche influencers, people who replied to certain tweets, or competitor tools. Great move.

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Quick hitters

(1) This genius product grew its sales by 469% in the last 6 months. This story is a great example of how creating a great product won’t guarantee to find success. To achieve this incredible growth it was necessary to make two big changes: (1) the founder left her job and started working on the business full time and (2) she hired an expert to complement some of her lack of knowledge in the e-commerce space.

Sometimes there’s no need to make drastic changes, small transformations can also move the needle: this agency doubled its revenue after updating its messaging, optimizing processes helped this founder to grow his Amazon business by 75%, and by simply implementing ads this website generates 50% more income.

(2) This founder bought a couple of websites and now makes $70K/month with them. We’ve shown similar case studies in the past. Buying a business is so overlooked as a way of owning a business. If you’re interested in it, this founder shares in great detail his criteria and tips to buy a website.

More examples of entrepreneurs who took this path: This guy bought a Shopify app and grew it to $1M/year, and this other guy bought his friend’s business for $2,5K and now makes $100K/year.

Thanks for reading!

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David Bustos

Hey there! 👋 I'm David, and if you ever got an email from Starter Story, I probably wrote it. With a background in working with startups and writing, being part of this team is kind of a perfect fit for me.

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