50+ Successful Solopreneurs Making $1M/Year [One-Person-Businesses]
The number of searches for the term "solopreneur" has nearly doubled in the last six months.
But what is a solopreneur, and why is this trend taking off?
A solopreneur is an individual who operates and manages a business entirely on their own, typically without employees or partners.
Solopreneurship has become more and more popular in the last few years, and for obvious reasons:
- Zero co-founder conflicts (one of the main reasons startups fail)
- Infinite freedom to experiment, test, try, fail, and succeed.
- Rise in remote work helps in effective delegation (no crazy hours!)
- You own 100% your business
But - can you build a million-dollar business, by yourself, with no employees?
I spent hundreds of hours researching to find out.
The result is a massive list of the richest, most successful solopreneurs in the world, including:
- How they came up with their idea
- What products they sell & how they price them
- Where and how they acquire customers (for free)
- What tools they use to run businesses
Here's the full list:
1. Eric Barone - Stardew Valley ($300M/year)
Eric Barone started Stardew Valley in 2011.
In 2011, Eric started working on the video game Stardew Valley as a way to improve his chances of getting a job.
How much they make: $300M/year
What the business does: mobile video games
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Eric launched a website and a subreddit to share updates and gather feedback from gamers. He leveraged this audience to promote his game, provide gamers with tips on playing Stardew Valley, and address common questions.
Within the first three weeks on the App Store, it sold tens of thousands of copies and generated over $1 million in sales.
Product Pricing
Stardew Valley is priced at $4.99 for iOS and $13.99 on Steam.
2. Nathan Barry - ConvertKit ($25M/year)
Nathan Barry started ConvertKit in 2013.
In 2013, Nathan set a challenge for himself: build a $5K/mo SaaS in 6 months with just $5,000. He got the idea after reading people's complaints about Mailchimp online, and decided to build a product that addressed those.
How much they make: $25M/year
What the business does: Email marketing for creators
How much did it cost to start: $5K
Current team size: 82
Top Acquisition Channels
Initially, Nathan directly outreached to online creators and bloggers, offering to manually help them migrate from their previous email marketing platform to address the main objection.
Affiliate programs then became a core part of how ConvertKit made money and scaled beyond a 1000 customers, with a forever ongoing 30% revenue share on each month a referral is using ConvertKit.
Product Pricing
Convertkit has 3 plans: Free, Creator ($9/mo), and Creator Pro ($29/mo).
3. Gary Brewer - BuiltWith ($14M/year)
Gary Brewer started BuiltWith in 2007.
While searching for his next idea, Brewer naturally looked at other websites for inspiration. While looking through the source code of a website (a neat trick programmers often do), he found a piece of code unique to Java and could deduce that the website was built using that technology. And then it clicked him. He said: "Wouldn't it be cool to know the exact technology every website uses?"
How much they make: $14M/year
What the business does: Website Profiler Tool
How much did it cost to start: $5K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
The main growth push came after Gary showed his website to the founder of AboutUs (an online directory with information from millions of businesses) and he decided to add a BuiltWith link to every record. This 10x'd their traffic. Now, most of his customers come from word of mouth & organic traffic.
Product Pricing
Gary has three subscriptions ranging from the basic one at $295 to a Pro at $495, and a team plan at $995.
4. Oliver Brocato - Tabs Chocolate ($11M/year)
Oliver Brocato started Tabs Chocolate in 2021.
While Oliver was learning how to build e-commerce businesses, one day while he saw a girl on Tiktok talking about sex chocolates (8M views and 2M likes), and he was able to see how the product was available in certain local shops but none online. That was his lightbulb moment.
How much they make: $11M/year
What the business does: Aphrodisiac chocolate brand
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Oliver made sure to design the product in a Tiktok-friendly way. This meant it was easy to explain the whole premise of the product with a short video clip.
Undoubtedly, TikTok is the primary acquisition channel for Tabs Chocolate. He also partners with micro-influencers on social media channels to bring traffic to his site.
Product Pricing
The store's shop section of Tabs Chocolate offers three size variants: 1 box, 2 boxes, and 3 boxes, at $38.99/box, $36.26/box, and $32.36/box.
5. Markus Frind - Plenty of Fish ($10M/year)
Markus Frind started Plenty of Fish in 2003.
Markus started Plenty of Fish in 2003 as a way to improve his résumé. A new programming language called ASP.NET was released, and instead of reading books about it, he went ahead and created the site in two weeks to learn it.
Internet Archive: Wayback Machine, plentyoffish.com, archived December 30, 2003
How much they make: $10M/year
What the business does: Dating site
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Product-based marketing and free access to users was the way Markus got people off the ground.
He introduced the "POF Chemistry Predictor," which used an in-depth questionnaire to assess users' personalities and recommend compatible matches.
This added credibility to the site and was successful in gradually building a legitimate dating community.
Product Pricing
The site was free to use and advertisements were the primary monetization channel.
6. Scott Delong - Viral Nova ($10M/year)
Scott Delong started Viral Nova in 2013.
Inspired by sites like SitePoint which were making $30K/mo through AdSense alone in 2005 (much more than his paychecks), Scott went on to build various sites and started Viral Nova as just another site to make some supplemental income while traveling through Europe. He at the time had no idea it would be as lucrative as it came to be.
How much they make: $10M/year
What the business does: A site for viral content
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Scott attributed his rapid growth to Facebook when the articles he wrote seemed to hit the virality point every now and then, and attract huge surges of traffic that also helped him make more money through Adsense.
Product Pricing
The site is free for users and Scott makes the majority of his money through AdSense ($2 per thousand views).
7. Amit Agarwal - Digital Inspiration ($10M/year)
Amit Agarwal started Digital Inspiration in 2004.
As a tech employee who could not live with his family in his home city, he quit his stop to start a blog showcasing his technical skills, and eventually Gmail plugins and apps.
How much they make: $10M/year
What the business does: Builds Google plugins for docs, sheets, slides and more
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Amit's blog was attracting 4.5 million page views per month which he leveraged to promote Google workspace add-ons and plugins.
Product Pricing
Amit has around 13 apps. They cost anywhere from $49/year-$79/year and have been downloaded millions of times.
8. Dan Ni - TLDR Newsletter ($5M/year)
Dan Ni started TLDR Newsletter in 2020.
Dan was a stock trader in NYC after his education, but his interest in software and engineering led him to create Scraper API, a tool for developers to extract data from web pages.
After running the business for a few years and scaling it to six figures in revenue, he decided to start a newsletter due to his growing fascination with technology and current news.
How much they make: $5M/year
What the business does: Newsletter
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Dan started by spending small amounts of money on Reddit and Quora ads, which enabled him to reach 1,000 subscribers within his first month. Now - he's moved to a strategic paid ad strategy involving the channels - Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter.
Product Pricing
The newsletter is free for subscribers. It makes a vast majority of its revenue from sponsors of the newsletter with Dan charging upwards of $15,000 for one sponsored placement.
9. Jeff Sheldon - Ugmonk ($5M/year)
Jeff Sheldon started Ugmonk in 2008.
Jeff started a full-time design job right after his graduation and found himself brainstorming about working on high-quality products built with a design-first mentality. He first started with his e-commerce business in which he designed t-shirts for other sites, and eventually but finally entering into work and productivity products in the middle of a recession.
How much they make: $5M/year
What the business does: Design products to help you organize your physical and mental workspace
How much did it cost to start: $5K
Current team size: 1
Top Acquisition Channels
Until Jeff launched his current bestseller product, The Analog, he had relied only on organic acquisition methods - Email Marketing and posting content on Instagram and Twitter. After the launch of Analog, paid social and Google ads have shown positive ROI, and organic methods have been ongoing in a combination with paid methods.
Product Pricing
Ugmonk's products range from phone and monitor stands for work, to note-takers for productivity, ranging from as low as $39 to $800 and upwards.
10. Evan Sutker - Anything Sports ($4M/year)
Evan Sutker started Anything Sports in 2019.
Evan decided there had to be a better way to buy quality, affordable sporting goods online. After searching and reviewing hundreds of products, Evan got fed up with the inconsistencies, markups, and poor customer service and decided to start Anything Sports.
How much they make: $4M/year
What the business does: Sports and outdoor brand
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
A huge growth driver has been positive reviews on Amazon - the brand has hundreds of five-star reviews. This also sends traffic to his website where the product catalog is listed.
Product Pricing
They primarily sell their products on Amazon, with prices ranging from $179 to $1500 and upwards.
11. Pieter Levels - Remote OK ($2.9M/year)
Pieter Levels started Remote OK in .
Pieter had built 70+ projects by the age of 36, and only 4 of them ever made money and grew. From that point onwards, he adopted his now familiar approach to coding and business - building websites quickly and monetizing them from the beginning, and Remote OK was started with the same approach.
How much they make: $2.9M/year
What the business does: Global community of remote workers, with an online directory of places for digital nomads to live in
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Pieter had initially built a simple spreadsheet which was made public and shared on Twitter. When fully developed, he reached #1 on Product Hunt and became the #15 highest-voted product of all time with 1,000 upvotes. After the initial traction, Peter began to capture emails on his site and began sharing job updates to his subscribers. He also remains active on Twitter and engages with his audience.
Product Pricing
Remote OK charges $399 – $4,143 per job post.
12. Dan Koe - Dan Koe ($2.5M/year)
Dan Koe started Dan Koe in 2016.
Eager to choose an unconventional career path and his love for fitness got him to start a fitness YT channel in college, then a freelance course out of his love for web development through which he built an audience, and lot of iterations with failing and succeeding at digital products.
How much they make: $2.5M/year
What the business does: Content creation and digital products for creators
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
At the beginning of his freelancing web design business, Dan used to search for businesses on Yelp and cold-email them.
He now follows a methodical content strategy with newsletters as the long-form writing medium, YouTube videos as the video content medium, and Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for repurposing it to short-form content.
Product Pricing
Dan offers a few free products (newsletter and courses) and generates his revenue mainly from a membership called Modern Mastery HQ ($27/mo) and two courses: The 2 Hour Writer ($150) and Digital Economics ($999 - $8,000)
13. Dickie Bush - Ship 30 for 30 ($2.5M/year)
Dickie Bush started Ship 30 for 30 in 2020.
Dickie started writing online in 2020.
He was writing a newsletter, but after 9 months, he only had around 300 subscribers.
He decided that if people weren’t going to find him, he needed to go to where the people were and double down on it.
The people were on Twitter, so he committed to writing 30 threads in 30 days to grow his account.
That personal writing challenge turned into the foundation of Ship 30 for 30, which started as a Slack accountability group to help people publish consistently.
How much they make: $2.5M/year
What the business does: A cohort-based course in digital writing
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Twitter has been Dickie's main growth lever. He has mastered a formula to consistently reach thousands of people that he can then impact with his newsletter and courses.
Also, a core part of the course involves writing and publishing content every day for a month, resulting in the whole cohort essentially acting as a huge marketing team.
Product Pricing
The course started in 2021 at $50 and is now priced at $800.
Once you sign up for the course, you can upgrade to be a First Mate for $1,999, which has personalized feedback from the founder, along with a full behind-the-scenes walkthrough of how they run their course, and all the tools used.
14. Justin Welsh - Justin Welsh ($3.8M/year)
Justin Welsh started Justin Welsh in 2019.
After handling loads of stress as an SVP of sales, Justin decided to step down from his job and start a consulting business. He started creating digital content from there on, and have been moving forward ever since, releasing courses, building a massive following, and double down on his solopreneurship efforts.
How much they make: $3.8M/year
What the business does: Digital courses.
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Justin posts 600 times a year on Linkedin, over 500 days in a row on Twitter, and recently shifted to a multi-page website to attract search engine traffic. He takes help of a friend to improve the site's SEO.
Product Pricing
Justin offers two courses (priced at $150 each), newsletter sponsorships, and a subscription email. He also occasionally does coaching, advising, and speaking engagements.
15. Kat Norton - Miss Excel ($2M/year)
Kat Norton started Miss Excel in 2020.
Kat started her career in consulting where she taught Excel training workshops for her company around the country. But when COVID lockdowns hit, Kat realized she wasn’t happy with her job.
Kat loved teaching Excel, she liked helping people, and she loved to dance. A friend suggested, ‘What if you put your Excel tips on TikTok?’ 48 hours later, she posted her first 14-second video.
How much they make: $2M/year
What the business does: Microsoft Excels online courses and content
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 3
Top Acquisition Channels
Kat grew primarily on TikTok and Instagram. She did something no one else was doing: taught a boring topic (Excel) in a fun and exciting way (TikTok dance trends). The business has grown through 10 different online courses, Corporate Training programs, and Keynote speaking.
Product Pricing
Kat's courses are priced between $44 and $497. She also offers bundles that go from $497 to $997.
16. Adrian Wood - Modern Producers ($1.44M/year)
Adrian Wood started Modern Producers in 2015.
A former music producer himself, Mordern Producers is Adrian's way of giving back to the music production community and leveling the playing field between up-and-coming, independent producers and the big league industry players. Helping other artists achieve success is the driving motivation for Adrian.
How much they make: $1.44M/year
What the business does: Music production tools.
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Adrain frequently launches giveaways and special offers and hosts various contests to build goodwill among the music producer community. Other channels include Facebook messenger broadcasts, where Adrian gets 80-90% open rates and a 10-20% click rate.
Product Pricing
Adrian's Shopify store houses a vast collection of instruments, kits, labels, and course, and can be browsed at modernproducers.com
17. Alex Redfern - Lingoci(Now known as LanguaTalk) ($1.44M/year)
Alex Redfern started Lingoci(Now known as LanguaTalk) in 2017.
While working at an agency in London, Alex was taking online Swedish lessons with a tutor through a site. However, he wasn't satisfied by the quality of all the tutors there, and only liked one named Isabella. It then struck him that he could build such an online tutoring site, except hire only carefully scrutinized tutors for a better user experience.
How much they make: $1.44M/year
What the business does: Online Language Tutoring
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Alex recognized that taking tutoring lessons isn't an impulse purchase. Only users desperately looking for one, for a practical reason, would search for language tutors. This makes search engine advertising Alex's most important acquisition channel. With time, Alex has still remained consistent on Google ads. However, he also gets a lot of referrals now. When students’ expectations are exceeded, they recommend Lingoci to others, and Alex gives them a free lesson for doing so.
Product Pricing
Lingoci offers a fixed number of 55 minute long lessons for each language. If users prefer to pay for lessons one at a time, they can do this for €23.90 per lesson.
18. Becky Bavli - T is for Tame ($1.44M/year)
Becky Bavli started T is for Tame in 2018.
Becky had been an ex-ad executive and spent most of her days developing ads for her clients. When she found no good product to tame her twins' hair, she wasn't suprised. She had always dreamt of working on something she believed in.
How much they make: $1.44M/year
What the business does: Quality Kids Care Products
How much did it cost to start: $30K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
80% of the sales come from Amazon, 10& in retail, and the rest from her e-commerce store. To drive traffic, she partners with micro influencers and funnels them into an affiliate program. She also makes sure to keep testing her Amazon strategy and get more customer clicks.
Product Pricing
Becky runs a Shopify store where products start from $8.99. There's also a subscription option to the brand, which enables buyers to get 15% off the products.
19. Thomas Frank - Thomas Frank ($2.1M/year)
Thomas Frank started Thomas Frank in 2010.
In 2010, while in college, Thomas started a blog to share his experiments in getting the most out of college. Since then, he's applied his interests in productivity and self-development to YouTube, several podcasts, a book, and more. He got the idea of this business when he was trying to build a company's wiki and with the difficulties he faced with Google docs, discovering Notion blew his mind.
How much they make: $2.1M/year
What the business does: Notion resources and courses, SaaS, influencer marketing
How much did it cost to start: $5
Current team size: 3
Top Acquisition Channels
Thomas has been creating content online for over 10 years (first on a website, then a Youtube channel). He then captures those visitors/watchers to an email list by offering some high quality free products like templates, courses, resources and a newsletter; so they can later get promotions about future content and paid products.
Product Pricing
Thomas sells Notion templates that go from $149 to $229. He also has several courses on different platforms such as Skillshare or Nebula.
20. Neville Medhora - CopywritingCourse ()
Neville Medhora started CopywritingCourse in .
Neville was working on Appsumo when he noticed the emails he was sending out weren't converting. When asked to take a shot at trying to improve it, conversions skyrocketed. Encouraged by the success, he created his first online course.
How much they make:
What the business does: Copywriting course and content
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
First students came from his personal network, employees of companies he's been involved, etc. But as someone who's been publishing content online for years, Neville learned how to leverage SEO to get new students for his course, which is his main acquisition channel. Once someone visits the website the main effort is to make them leave their email. Then a 6-month email funnel gets triggered to impact them in the following months.
Product Pricing
Neville's Copywriting Course costs $97/mo or $750/year
21. Ervin Kalemi - Publer ($1.44M/year)
Ervin Kalemi started Publer in 2017.
Ervin holds a degree in computer science and had been employed as a software developer at a startup in Houston before making it back to his hometown Albania to build a virtual social media superhero Publer. This idea came up when his brother needed a publisher to publish social media content for his travel agency, and Ervin, with his past skills and experience, quickly got to work.
How much they make: $1.44M/year
What the business does: Social media management platform
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 10
Top Acquisition Channels
Initially, Ervin had acquired customers through direct outreach on Facebook, sponsored ads, and promotional sales campaigns. Facebook was the biggest social network at the time and Ervin made sure to not miss out on its potential. SEO and Quora were the next most important channels. Ervin made sure to keep a good SEO performance score at all times, and Quora proved to be the real-time FAQ that users need.
Product Pricing
The software has free, professional, and business plans, at $0/mo, $12/mo, and $21/mo respectively.
22. Graham Cochrane - The Recording Revolution LLC ($1.2M/year)
Graham Cochrane started The Recording Revolution LLC in 2009.
When Graham was laid off from a finance startup that ran out of money, he wanted a freelance source of income. Eventually, he started blogging about his experience in studio as an audio engineer while in college. This content resonated with a huge audience on google and youtube, and Graham ultimately decided to monetize them through courses and bootcamps.
How much they make: $1.2M/year
What the business does: Audio Recording Education
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 1
Top Acquisition Channels
Content marketing is the only marketing channel Graham invests his time into. He consistently publishes articles and videos centred around the music market and his niche, and despite not being an expert in SEO, the value he gives out comes back to him in millions of site traffic and YouTube views.
Product Pricing
Graham's course - Mixing University is priced at a one-time payment of $147, which is originally $297 if not on sale. Another course of his, Total Home Recording is priced at $197 and $297 as two respective plans, and Musical Income for $147 as well.
23. Mike Perham - Sidekiq ($1M/year)
Mike Perham started Sidekiq in 2011.
Mike wanted to fix the limitations of existing job processing solutions in the Ruby ecosystem and create a tool that could handle high-volume, asynchronous processing.
How much they make: $1M/year
What the business does: Open source asyc job service
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Mike actively promoted Sidekiq through forums, blog posts, and social media, and shared information about the library's features, benefits, and usage examples. Sidekiq was made available as a gem on RubyGems.org, the central repository for Ruby libraries. He also engaged with the Ruby and Rails communities, participating in discussions, answering questions, and providing support.
Product Pricing
Sidekiq is a mainly free open-source tool for smaller users, but the Pro version costs $995/year.
24. Brett Williams - Design Joy ($1.74M/year)
Brett Williams started Design Joy in 2017.
Brett had started with sharing his design works on social media (even the scrappiest ones). With time, he was able to refine his skills more and more, and fast forward to today he runs this agency with 50 clients as a solo designer and has 10x'd his prices from when he started.
How much they make: $1.74M/year
What the business does: One person design agency
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Brett regularly shared his progress on indiehackers.com, a well-known community for indie makers (who happen to also be his target persona). He replied to questions, shared insights from his own journey, and created a narrative that people loved, as well as a service that people needed. He also remains active on Twitter, and has over 40,000 followers on the platform.
Product Pricing
Brett's course "Productize yourself" is priced at $150 USD, and his agency generates the rest of the cash flow, with monthly plans at $4995.
25. Tiago Forte - Forte Labs ($1M/year)
Tiago Forte started Forte Labs in 2013.
Tiaogo came to believe that practical life skills were one of the greatest areas of need in youth education, but that they required new, more engaging ways of teaching. With the unexpected success of his first course, he ventured into Forte Labs full time.
How much they make: $1M/year
What the business does: Online resource to increase productivity
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 12
Top Acquisition Channels
Tiago runs newsletters with 40,000 subscribers on ConvertKit, and he gains subscribers by writing long, useful SEO friendly content.
His success in selling courses stems from his consistency in writing unique articles and blogs that rank him on search engines.
Forte Labs Newsletter
Product Pricing
Forte Labs' courses are priced at $499 and $999, while Tiago's book is priced at $20 on Amazon (Canada). Other revenue avenues are the affiliate incomes from the site's traffic.
26. Jack Butcher - Visualise Value ($1M/year)
Jack Butcher started Visualise Value in 2018.
After a few years of working on agencies, Jack was operating at a level where he could hear and see what brands were paying for work.
That's when he realized that he could offer 90% of the services his employers were providing, but take home a greater share of the margin if he went out alone.
How much they make: $1M/year
What the business does: A design, consulting, and educational company
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
80-90% of Jack's sales come through organic social. He's spent the last years creating and sharing super unique and recognizable visuals that get a lot of reach. He uses the bio link in all his platfors to direct people to Visualize Value's store.
Product Pricing
Jack has created several courses for designers and digital creators priced at $99 (all come with access to a private community)
27. AJ - Carrd ($1.2M/year)
AJ started Carrd in 2016.
AJ got the idea for Carrd out of a desire to branch out from his routine work of designing and coding website templates. This routine work had become too easy and almost monotonous, prompting him to seek a new challenge that would leverage his extensive skills in a fresh way.
He realized that while he was looking for something different to do, he still wanted to stay close to his core expertise in web design and development. He wanted to build for a simple idea that could serve a broad audience.
This drive to innovate within his domain, coupled with his recognition of users' desires for simplicity and efficiency in web building tools, spurred him to develop Carrd.
How much they make: $1.2M/year
What the business does: Single-page responsive site builder.
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 10
Top Acquisition Channels
Twitter Launch
AJ began by announcing Carrd to his existing followers on Twitter, where he had built a substantial audience through his previous projects, HTML5 UP and Pixelarity. His followers were already familiar with his work and trusted his expertise in web design, making them a primed audience for Carrd.
This initial announcement helped generate immediate interest and sign-ups from his existing network, showcasing the importance of building and engaging with a dedicated follower base over time.
Product Hunt Launch
The real breakthrough in customer acquisition came from Carrd's launch on Product Hunt. Despite an early, unintended posting by a follower when Carrd was still in a "coming soon" state, AJ managed to officially launch it on the platform shortly after its public release.
This launch was meticulously planned to capitalize on Product Hunt's vast community of tech enthusiasts, early adopters, and influencers. The visibility from being featured on Product Hunt led to a significant surge in user sign-ups, site creations, and even Pro plan upgrades, far exceeding the traction generated from the Twitter announcement alone.
Even now, AJ’s recipe for awareness and distribution is very organic and very product-led. He hasn’t really done any marketing, relying instead on word of mouth and low-key viral elements within the experience like the branded URL and a “Made with Carrd” link that appears in each free website footer.
Product Pricing
Offers a free plan and three paid options priced at: -$9 -$19 -$49 per year**
28. Dan Go - High Performance Founder ($1M/year)
Dan Go started High Performance Founder in 2010.
At a time when Dan was employed in a comfortable corporate job, the unfortunate demise of his mother led him to spend a lot of time in the gym. It helped him recover from depressive thoughts and get back his life on track. It was here when Dan decided to quit his job and do something he was passionate about. He ventured into personal training shortly after that.
How much they make: $1M/year
What the business does: Fitness coach for founders and executives
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 2
Top Acquisition Channels
Dan started with marketing his coaching on Facebook, which was a great traction generating source until he couldn't scale due to the 5k friend limit. He then moved to Twitter, where he targets his niche positoning to entrepreneurs on Twitter at a large scale. In just a few years, Dan has posted a record 84000 tweets so far! He also promoted his free video on Twitter, that helped him go from 5000 subscribers to over 20k subscribers in 2021.
Product Pricing
Dan has a self-paced course called Lean Body 90 that sells for $397. Dan also works 1 on 1 with clients to help them reach their goals, the prices of which are high-end but not disclosed.
29. Ryan Milton - TeamFFLEX ($984K/year)
Ryan Milton started TeamFFLEX in 2014.
Ryan recognized the limitations of gyms, from people not being able to afford it to people who aren't able to hire a trainer due to availability issues. Taking this online could be massive. Not physically fit at the time and ready to dive into self-development, Ryan started TeamFFLEX with zero dollars and a lot of drive within.
How much they make: $984K/year
What the business does: Online Fitness Training
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Instagram is the biggest social media channel for TeamFFLEX, with 240k+ followers. The content strategy is a well-balanced mix of humor and testimonials, and serves as a top of the funnel lead generation strategy.
Product Pricing
Ryan has set monthly and yearly packages, starting at $799 for a month.
30. Scott Bartnick - The Five Day Startup ($960K/year)
Scott Bartnick started The Five Day Startup in 2018.
Scott had been employed at a Fortune 500 company, and while being proud of his achievements, he wanted to venture into something beyond that. While he wanted to live his dream of travelling and earning money online, he started many businesses to fund them. Eventually, landing on e-commerce, failing a few times, and realizing the mistakes overtime, he started doubling down on Amazon, and then to ecommerce consulting.
How much they make: $960K/year
What the business does: Amazon Consulting Services
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Scott had also been an ex-founder of a social media marketing agency that grew to over a 100 clients! This made him learn the growth strategies of the platform, and Instagram, until recently, constituted a major acquisition channel for thefivedaystartup as well. (His combined social media channels have grown to over half a million followers!)
Product Pricing
Scott has a 1:1 consulting session priced at $500/month, a $3800 optimization consultation, and a $5000 amazon starter consultation package.
31. Lucy Bloomfield - 10k Customers ($720K/year)
Lucy Bloomfield started 10k Customers in .
After walking away from her previous company, Lucy wanted the capital to fund another venture, which led to freelancing, and then consulting her skills that she had learned in the past. From there on, Lucy had begun building her program.
How much they make: $720K/year
What the business does: Get Ecommerce Customers
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Lucy has grown the company from scratch with just two channels: Facebook ads and phone calls + emails.
Her FB ads don't advertise a program, rather they talk about solving a problem, after which gives her leads an opt-in form. Her ""phone getting"" email strategy is super simple, the script of which Lucy has mentioned in the case study below.
Product Pricing
Lucy first establishes the right applicant fit for her program, and suggests her pricing post that. In order to submit an application, her leads follow the steps on her website: tenthousandcustomers.com
32. David Perell - Write of Passage ($600K/year)
David Perell started Write of Passage in 2019.
Discouraged with his GPA scores in college, David unlocked his passion for writing after completing Tiago Forte's course - Building a Second Brain. Armed with the note taking system in the course, David's writers block disappeared, after which he launched his a weekly newsletter and published various essays.
How much they make: $600K/year
What the business does: Online writing school
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
A vast majority of people find David on Twitter. It's what he calls the top of his funnel for his professional life, where he shares his journey, challenges, and learnings for the audience. Podcasting, publishing essays online, and his two weekly newsletters are his other linchpins to the marketing of Write of Passage.
Product Pricing
Write of Passage sells three different packages for their cohort: $4,000 for cohort-only access, $5,000 which includes access to one cohort + 3 months of post-cohort support, and $9,000, which gives you lifetime access to cohorts.
33. Joel Griffith - Browserless ($600K/year)
Joel Griffith started Browserless in 2017.
Browserless was something Joel stumbled upon while building other things. At the time, he was building a wishlist app for his family to create birthdays and holidays list, which required gathering items across the internet in one place. As a developer, he couldn't find an easy way to do that and the existing options were costly.
How much they make: $600K/year
What the business does: Web Browser Automation
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
After seeing no results with paid search advertising, Joel spent all his time on support and content. He published elaborate guide blogs that have trafficked well on Google. He has mentioned a few blog examples in his interview with Starter Story.
Browserless has also gained major traction as a result of Joel keeping it open-sourced. This gives users (mostly developers) a lot of time to try out the service and see if they need it. Keeping it open-sourced has cost Joel monthly subscriptions, but as a developer finds it a great way to encourage retention.
Product Pricing
The software pricing is divided into three plans: Free, $250/month, and a premium plan that bigger businesses need, the pricing for which is custom according to the requirements.
34. Christopher Thomas - Eli Mason ($540K/year)
Christopher Thomas started Eli Mason in 2014.
Christopher bought this business from the original founder in 2017 after he fell in love with their products at local bottle shops. He was struggling to make a good cocktail on his own, and this was the first one his wife also loved!
How much they make: $540K/year
What the business does: Premium cocktail mixers
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
The biggest sales drivers have been Facebook and instagram ads, and Christopher, realizing that he wasn't an expert in it, hired a team to work on it. This became a winning move and along with great product reviews, the brand started to shine in front of potential customers.
Product Pricing
Christopher sells home bar kits, mixers, syrups, cherries, bar tools, and more, with products starting from $9.99
35. Shannon Mattern - Web Designer Academy ($504K/year)
Shannon Mattern started Web Designer Academy in 2015.
Shannon experienced a panic attack at her job, and decided on to start freelance web design business on the side (as that is what she actually loved about her job). Eventually, she started with her free 5-day website challenge, and kept reiterating over and over, still while working in her job.
How much they make: $504K/year
What the business does: Video tutoring platform for business owners to build their websites and market themselves
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 1
Top Acquisition Channels
Shannon has been consistent in nurturing her small email list and keeps iterating on her engagement campaigns. SEO has also been a channel she has put a lot of effort into, but the biggest returns have been from publishing free pieces of content that bring her traffic which enables her ideal customer to value her brand rather than seeing it as a push-seller.
Product Pricing
Shannon generates revenue through 1:1 client work, affiliate commissions, and her courses. By the 3rd year of working on WDA, Shannon had reached six-figures in revenue, enough to quit her day job and go in full-time!
36. Ruiyi Chin - Easlo ($504K/year)
Ruiyi Chin started Easlo in 2021.
While in school, Ruiyi often used Notion — a note-taking software platform — to organize his lecture notes.
After using the tool repeatedly, he quickly realized that Notion could be customized for various purposes. He decided to fiddle with the program’s functionality and produced basic templates, like a budget and habit tracker.
He then started promoting the template to his growing Twitter followers and posting on Product Hunt to spread the word.
How much they make: $504K/year
What the business does: Notion templates and tutorials for creators
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Ruiyi started by sharing his first templates for free, which he advertised on Twitter to attract followers.
He also used Product Hunt to get the word out. He studied YT videos and Twitter strategies to get the word out for his brand.
Today, his Twitter page has over 290k followers, and his Product Hunt page has 16k+ followers.
His followers are mostly creators and small businesses who like to use Notion as their digital brain.
Product Pricing
Ruiyi's flagship product is the Second Brain template priced at $130. His less-expensive templates — such as Bullet Journal, costs $20, and Finance Tracker, costs $40. He sells all these templates through Gumroad.
37. Alex West - CyberLeads ($504K/year)
Alex West started CyberLeads in 2020.
While working as a developer for a startup, he realized the company had new needs popping up every single day. So the solution initially aimed at building a database of tools that could help startups find tools and services to solve all types of needs. Over time, it has evolved into a product for agencies that are looking for hot leads to pitch their services to.
How much they make: $504K/year
What the business does: A database of 1,000+ handpicked companies that just raised millions and are looking to outsource. Delivered to your email every month
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Alex's traction-generating channels have been through his practice of documenting his journey which he has been doing for years, blogging almost daily. Same on Twitter, which is the channel that brings him the most customers by far. He also had a decent rise in traffic after a mention on the My First Million podcast.
Product Pricing
There's a Free plan that offers a small amount of leads per month, a Do It Yourself ($297/mo) plan that offers around 1,000 per month, and a Done For You ($2,997/mo) plan that includes the cold emailing service
38. JD Busch - Busch Global ($12M/year)
JD Busch started Busch Global in 1995.
John's passion for entrepreneurship and business growth motivated him to create Busch Global first as a franchise and a development partner. His early successes demonstrated the potential of franchising, inspiring the business idea.
How much they make: $12M/year
What the business does: Franchise growth consultants
How much did it cost to start: $20K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Networking, through building relationships and connections with potential clients has been a critical factor that has driven and will continue to drive the success of Busch Global. However, the business still does SEO and updates to their website regularly.
Product Pricing
Offering clients solutions that present scalable, intelligent growth.
39. Ali Abdaal - Ali Abdaal ($4M/year)
Ali Abdaal started Ali Abdaal in 2017.
Back in 2017 while Ali was still a student at Cambridge University. He was studying to become a doctor (his dream was to specialise in plastic surgery). Back then, he started creating videos to help other people with studying and passing exams. This is when he started his first business with his brother, 6Med, a platform to help people pass the entrance exams and get into medicine.
How much they make: $4M/year
What the business does: Productivity and self-improvement mentor
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 4
Top Acquisition Channels
Ali approached YouTube growth with a very analytical approach. He studied that a channel with 1M subscribers has 4,000 uploaded videos. This means, on average, you’d need to have uploaded 418 videos to get 10k to 100k subscribers and 152 for your first thousand subscribers. After he figured out these statistics, Ali started uploading videos at least twice a week, once he got serious about becoming a YouTuber. This, with his content strategy combined, enabled him to hit 10k subscribers with just 91 videos in 6 months.
Product Pricing
Ali's income is generated through 17 streams, including YouTube ads, affiliates, etc. He also has created different online courses priced at $995 and $4,995
40. Cory Stout - Woodies ($2.28M/year)
Cory Stout started Woodies in 2012.
Cory had previously launched a semi-successful watch brand. Due to his watch business, he traveled a couple of times to China, and after one of the trips, he came back with the idea for wood sunglasses. Wood sunglasses seemed awesome so Cody tried to jump on them early. He was able to sell 8,000 glasses in a week with a launch on Groupon.
How much they make: $2.28M/year
What the business does: Wood sunglasses
How much did it cost to start: $5K
Current team size: 1
Top Acquisition Channels
Cory's primary acquisition channel is Amazon, where he gets around 100 new customers every day. His essentials to succeed on Amazon are:
- Beautiful images (minimum 5) especially lifestyle images
- Keywords in your title (but it still needs to sound human)
- Competitive price (contributes to high conversion rate)
- NOT having 1-star reviews
- DON'T STOCKOUT
Product Pricing
Woodies are priced from $35 to $75.
41. Ameer Hamza - Allbe Canada ($1.2M/year)
Ameer Hamza started Allbe Canada in 2001.
Jordan's background is in nutritional science as a lecturer at a medical school, which gave him the foundation to understand the complexity of human health and nutrition. However, the true motivation behind founding Allbe Canada came from something other than his professional background, when his mother was diagnosed with a chronic disease. The reality that her health could be improved by altering her lifestyle habits, including nutrition, was a major wake-up call. He began researching extensively, exploring the potential of dietary supplements in supporting overall health. The idea for Allbe Canada sparked during this time, to create a product that could support people's health naturally and holistically.
How much they make: $1.2M/year
What the business does: Supplements and Nutrition
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 1
Top Acquisition Channels
Jordan's investment in SEO has reaped benefits in the form of 50k website impressions in the last 3 months. Facebook ads have been particularly effective for Allbe Canada as well.
Product Pricing
With a wide selection of health food products, Allbe Canada offers vitamins and supplements starting from 29 CAD.
42. Mads Phikamphon - Model Prices ()
Mads Phikamphon started Model Prices in 2022.
Inspired by a big site for comparing IT prices, Mads decided to build something similar but for model trains as a side project to work on. Initially, he wasn't sure which niche to focus on, but he ended up with model trains because had an interest in them, and with so many models of them in the market, it was easier to build a bigger website.
How much they make:
What the business does: Website for comparing model train prices
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 1
Top Acquisition Channels
The site's current traction comes from posting on relevant Facebook groups and SEO efforts that have started to pick up. Model train enthusiasts have been very happy with Mads' site and users keep coming back by word of mouth due to this.
Product Pricing
The site is free to use but has more than 1,000 shops and more than 100,000 products at various prices.
43. Craig Adam - Craig Adam ($720K/year)
Craig Adam started Craig Adam in 2015.
Craig was desperate to leave his 8-5 construction job and was earning just enough to make ends meet. This business wasn't his first one, he had experimented with a lot of internet businesses, starting first with an eBay business. Eventually, he stumbled upon the Amazon FBA idea through an FB ads mastermind group, and since then has been pursuing his goal of financial freedom.
How much they make: $720K/year
What the business does: Kitchen tools and utensils seller
How much did it cost to start: $
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Adam has implemented an email list-building strategy that has helped him acquire customers. His process starts with generating QR codes for the products, building a ManyChat flow to engage with customers, emailing customers when a new product launches, sending them to his email opt-in page, providing the customer with a free/discount code, and lastly following-up to ask customers for their reviews.
Product Pricing
Craig sells kitchen tools and utensils on Amazon with a minimum order value of $11.
44. Adam Bryan - Urban Tastebud ($612K/year)
Adam Bryan started Urban Tastebud in 2012.
Bryan discovered subscription boxes while working on a gluten-free menu blog. His article about the best gluten-free subscription boxes became successful, which led him to focus on niche-specific subscription boxes.
How much they make: $612K/year
What the business does: Affiliate marketing blog
How much did it cost to start: $210
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Bryan had studied and implemented tried-and-tested SEO strategies for his blog posts and performed impressively on Google searches. Pinterest is the primary social media marketing channel which constitutes over 12% of the total traffic on the site each month, and the rest from majorly google searches and channels like Tiktok which Bryan has been experimenting on.
Product Pricing
Adam earns up to 72% net profit on average a month through affiliate commissions on the various products and tools he includes, all with varying prices.
45. Gina Horkey - Horkey HandBook (Fully Booked VA) ($588K/year)
Gina Horkey started Horkey HandBook (Fully Booked VA) in 2014.
Gina started a virtual assistant side hustle while working a full-time job in personal finance. She documented her journey and soon gained a following of like-minded individuals. This led her to launch a VA foundation course, which has grown into a 7-figure business.
How much they make: $588K/year
What the business does: world-class Virtual Assistant training
How much did it cost to start: $205
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Gina markets her educational products to her email list of 30K+ subscribers, conducts regular webinars promoting them through social media channels, and bringing in new leads through this funnel. She has employed dedicated employees to pull together everything and free time for herself.
Product Pricing
Gina offers her VA program at $997 as a one-time payment and also has various courses like VA Foundations for $497 as a one-time payment, social media for VAs at $197 one-time, and many more.
46. Priscilla Blevins - Keto Girl Nutritionist ($540K/year)
Priscilla Blevins started Keto Girl Nutritionist in 2019.
While working as a healthcare specialist, Priscilla saw the need for support among patients with thyroid imbalance. This led her to develop a passion for the keto diet as it is essential for women with Hypothyroidism & Hashimoto’s. Seeing improvements in the initial clients she coached, she decided to help such patients through her private program.
How much they make: $540K/year
What the business does: Weight Loss Coaching
How much did it cost to start: $300
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
90% of clients come from Instagram thanks to finding a super niche target audience: women who have a thyroid imbalance. She also utilizes an email subscription with the freebie being a 3-day meal plan that includes my basic principles of the Keto Girl Method; gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and keto. This had proven to help people and she began sending out 5 email sequences checking in on their progress, providing client testimonials and program FAQ.
Product Pricing
Priscilla charges $4,500 per client for her high-ticket group coaching program.
47. Luke Van Der Veer - Website Rental Coaching ($504K/year)
Luke Van Der Veer started Website Rental Coaching in 2016.
The daily workload at his 9-5 job at General Electric as an HR left Luke unfulfilled from his career, and while he was searching for a profitable side gig, he realized that websites are like digital properties. With a top-ranking lead generation website, he could rent it to local businesses and earn a steady monthly income. Luke quit his job at the 6-month mark and hit six figures by the one-year mark of starting this business.
How much they make: $504K/year
What the business does: Website rental business
How much did it cost to start: $8K
Current team size: 0
Top Acquisition Channels
Customer attraction is done entirely with search engine optimization, which helps Luke rank high on Google for certain keywords. Then he captures those leads and finds small and medium sized businesses who are already paying for leads to offer them the website that's already generating leads organically.
Product Pricing
The common flat fee range is from $500 per month to $5,000 per month, depending on the target niche, city, lead volume, and lead quality.
We documented 153+ solopreneurs into a spreadsheet, so you can search, sort, and filter by:
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