This 4-Phase Strategy Helped Me Build a Profitable Online Business in Under 12 Months

I've been reflecting a lot on the past 12 months of my journey, and realized how I almost gave up on becoming a creator. I was trying month after month, for nearly a year, and nothing was working. I wasn't getting any attention on social media, and I wasn't making any sales like other creators were promising.

Just last year, I decided to do things differently. To go about building this little one person startup business the right way. So, I'm going to share with you the simple strategy that helped me build a profitable online business in just 12 months

When I first started, I had no system in place. I was randomly posting content, throwing together digital products I?thought?people wanted, and hoping something would work. Sometimes I’d get a few sales, but most of the time, nothing happened. It wasn’t until I broke everything down into?four phases—researching, building, testing, and scaling—that I started seeing real results.

Now, my system brings in?thousands of leads every single month, and I’m going to walk you through how I built it over the course of nearly a year.

March - May: The Research Phase

Before I started creating content or selling anything, I spent?three months studying?what actually works. I didn’t just watch what big creators did though—I analyzed?why?they did it.

Here’s what I discovered:

• Focus on one topic and build content pillars.?If your content is scattered, your audience won’t know what to follow you for. Stick to one niche and go deep.
• Post daily and engage with others.?The fastest way to grow is by showing up every day and interacting with people in your space. Be social on social platforms.
• Repackage and reuse content.?Your best ideas should be used more than once. Turn a blog post into a thread. Turn a thread into multiple short posts. Good content should be reused.
• Read through forums and community chats.?This is where people share the exact problems they have. You can learn what those pains are, the words they use, and key phrases.

Most people skip the research phase and jump straight into creating. This is a mistake because they don’t know what they need to build and who they are building it for. By studying what works, you’ll save months or years of trial and error. You don’t want to find out five months later that no one wants the products you spent several more months building. That’s a whole year of building and marketing a failed product.

June - August: The Creation Phase

Once I realized what was working and what my target audience wanted, I had a solid strategy of what I needed to do. This is where I spent the next three months creating digital products (both free and paid) and building the marketing funnels.

This is what I learned:

• Your marketing funnel needs to be frictionless.?Confusing landing pages, messy checkouts, and weak CTAs kill conversions. Make the customer’s journey easy for people to buy.
• Your content should sell without selling.?People don’t want a sales pitch—they want solutions. Write about strategies, insights, and experiences that lead naturally to your product.
• Build products based on demand, not assumptions.?I used to create things I thought people needed. Then I actually started listening to my audience and learning what they really needed.

Creating content, products, and marketing became so much easier because I had a clear understanding of what I needed to do based on the research phase. Instead of guessing, I knew what to create and how to position it. I knew what words to use, and how to phrase things. I knew the exact problems my audience had, and how they explained it. Every question they asked was another insight that made marketing so much easier.

September - November: The Testing Phase

Now it was time to put everything to the test. Everything I learned from the research phase and everything I built in the creation phase. I put it all together and spent?90 days running experiments?on content, funnels, and sales strategies.

This is what I learned:

• Every post should lead somewhere.?Your content isn’t just for engagement—it should drive traffic to your profile, email list, or product page. It’s the bridge that connects people back to you.
• Lead magnets attract a ton of leads.?The moment I started offering free products, my email list and follower count skyrocketed. But instead of waiting for people to find it on my website, I offered it directly on the platform they were already on (X).
• A well-designed funnel gets way more upsells.?The best time to make a sale is right after someone signs up for something free. Upsells immediately boosted my monthly revenue.

For the first 30 days of testing my new system, nothing seemed to work. It’s like everything I did was a complete failure. At times, I felt like giving up and scrapping the whole system and starting all over. But I kept adjusting, kept refining, and eventually, the system started running on its own. My content was getting leads, the messages were converting, and the entire marketing system was bringing in money. Everything was hitting and I was so damn happy that it finally started to work.

December - February: The Scaling Phase

Once I knew that my system worked, I knew it was time to scale it up. I was dribbling out content, and had mediocre landing pages and copywriting. The email marketing wasn’t very good at all, but I didn’t want to spend too much time on it without knowing the system at least worked. But now, I knew I had to polish it up because it did work.

Here’s how I’m doing it:

• Posting daily and linking back to my products.?Every piece of content should have a purpose. Whether it’s growing your list, making a sale, or building trust—it all adds up.
• Running giveaways to build my email list.?The bigger your list, the more sales you’ll make. Social media traffic easily disappears, but email subscribers .
• Optimizing landing pages and funnels for higher conversions.?Small tweaks—like adjusting CTAs, testing different copy, or simplifying checkout—can make a huge impact on sales.

At this point, the hard work was done. Everything was built, and now it's just about repeating the process that works and making it better as I go. You don't need to make it perfect the first time around, you just need to make it good enough. The moment you find success, you have to analyze why it worked and test other areas in your marketing to see if it works there too. You have to optimize the entire funnel—from social media content to landing page copy, images, and the actual product you're offering. The scaling phase is all about making it incrementally better than before, easier to run, and running the system as often as you can to scale your business.

What I Learned After a Year of Building

It’s hard to know what needs to be done when your in the middle of creating and testing. You’ll second guess yourself so many times, and you’ll want to change things up based on gut feelings rather than data driven decisions. But, in hindsight, this is what I learned.

• Researching first saved me from months of wasted time.?I didn’t guess what my target audience wanted—I studied my market day after day. That gave me a huge advantage.
• Building products became easy once I knew what people actually wanted.?When you listen to your audience, they’ll tell you what they wish someone created, and what they need.
• Testing wasn’t just about numbers—it was about confidence.?At first, nothing seemed to work. But I kept going, tweaking, and adjusting until it did.
• Scaling is just repeating what works.?Once you find a strategy that works, you double down on it instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

The Biggest Mistake You Can Make

Most creators fail because they quit too soon.

They post for a month and give up when they don’t see results. They launch a product and abandon it when it doesn’t sell right away. They run a few lead magnets and think, “This isn’t going to work.”

But the truth is—you just have to keep cranking the engine until it starts running.

Success isn’t about getting lucky on the first try, it’s about?testing, improving, and repeating?until the system starts working for you.

Want to See How I Did It?

If you’re serious about building an audience and a business that actually makes money, focus on?researching, building, testing, and scaling.?And if you want to see the system I use and learn how I get followers and leads every single month, you can access the video for free?here →

Remember, don’t give up just because things don’t work right away.?Keep refining, keep building, and keep testing.?It’s just a matter of time before you build something that works for you.

Best of luck to you.

Amado Aguilar

Thinking of creating an online business? Join my newsletter to learn everything about e-commerce for creators. From growing an audience with social marketing, to selling your products with several product marketing strategies.

https://learn.theonepersonstartup.com