The $240K Shopify plugin

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Updated: May 16th, 2022

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The biggest industry in the world?

Fact #1: According to the United Nations, approximately 140 million babies are born worldwide a year.

Fact #2: An average middle-income family will spend around $13,000 on their baby's first year of life.

Those two facts result in a $1.8 trillion worldwide you might not think much about: babies. Yes, that’s trillion, not billion.

Cribs, baths, breast pumps, strollers, car seats... the number of things parents feel they need to buy for their newborns is endless, and they’re not cheap, either.

The good news: It’s a world of opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Like this mom, who made $150K in her first year with a simple baby product. You gotta read this one. It’s one of the most detailed case studies we’ve ever published.

More examples of baby products knocking it out of the park:

By the numbers:

$7M -> generated by this baby company in just 2 years
$1,600 -> the price of this ‘smart crib’
$150K -> this baby brand’s revenue in its first year

Why you should care:

Babies, well, they just don’t stop coming. There’s an unlimited stream of potential new customers.

Here’s a proven strategy to succeed in this market: simply adapt trends from the adult world. Vegan products are on the rise? Make them for babies. Cupcakes are trendy? Make them baby-friendly.

This would work for virtually anything: subscription boxes, organic food, apps, … You can browse our full database for “baby-able” businesses.

Quick hitters

📦 This former dropshipper made a $240K/year plugin. Kiril identified a hole in the market from his previous work. That hole was shipment tracking. The app has now 1,500+ active installations and just raised $2.5M.

Shopify is so popular that many plugins make a killing: WhatsApp plugin ($29K/month), analytics tool ($12K MRR in just 7 months), custom fields ($42K/month).

🌞 This solar installation business hit $24M/year. Energy prices are at an all-time high and the global concern about the environment are the perfect breeding ground for companies like this to thrive. Alex has trained over 150 people without sales experience to mastery level to get here.

🧴 This $350K/year bath products business started in a kitchen. Their products are sold in 120+ stores (90% of revenue comes from wholesaling). And it all started with a $5K investment. I love these bath/soap businesses because (1) you can start them from your home and (2) need very little initial investment.

Some more examples of kitchen project turned profitable business: whisky and campfire scent soaps ($4.5M/year), homemade body butter ($24K/year), soap bars ($60K/year).

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Big egos with big wallets

Did you know that the average number of followers on Twitter is 707? In other words, growing a Twitter following is hard.

Turns out, people are willing to pay big money to grow that following…

This dude makes $60K/month helping people grow their Twitter followers.

Everyone’s got an ego, but some are bigger than others. The ones with the biggest egos need a big number in their follower count.

The opportunity here: building products and services that will help them get those elusive Twitter followers.

See some examples in this space:

This guy makes $360K/year with a Chrome extension that hacks the Instagram and TikTok algorithm
This pop-up tool generates $72K/year helping people get more followers
This consultancy makes $96K/year teaching people how to grow their social media accounts

By the numbers:

330M -> Twitter monthly active users
25% -> of verified accounts are journalists. Which makes it a great place to get free press
$600K -> Tweet Hunter’s annual recurring revenue

Why you should care:

Three reasons why this is interesting:

(1) This is a very cheap to start type of business. In fact, Tom started it with just $50.

(2) You can replicate this for every social network where the followers count is important. Think LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. There will always be people willing to pay to have a bigger audience.

(3) Building a business on top of a popular platform works. The recent launch of the Notion API was all over the news; there are now 6,000+ active bots on Discord and many of them are used on millions of servers.

Thanks for reading!

meet the author

Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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