Examples of Successful Solopreneurs (and Online Business Ideas)

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While researching this edition of the newsletter, I came across the typical solopreneur success stories:

• Marie Forleo
• Justin Welsh
• Dan Koe

These people all have something in common (aside from being successful solopreneurs):

Their businesses are about teaching you how to start an online business.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But you don't need to teach business to earn a great living online as a solopreneur.

There are thousands of topics/angles you can use to earn a great living, often with less competition...

So I want this list of solopreneur examples to highlight some of the less obvious ways to start a successful online venture.

Let's keep going and I'll show you what I mean...

How much do you think an amateur piano teacher can make?

I went to an online marketing meetup in Thailand many years ago.

One of the speakers was making $20,000 a month from teaching piano.

Not with individual classes…

...but through online courses and YouTube tutorials.

Seeing this person make $20K a month (while at the time, I was probably struggling to make even $1K a month as a freelancer) left me with two big takeaways:

1. It's possible to earn a great income online as a solopreneur
2. There are so many potential topics/niches you can make a living from, not just a few

You can monetize almost any type of knowledge/skill...

Find the intersection between your knowledge, and what people will pay for, and you may have a winning idea.

Passions, hobbies, academic work, previous jobs... these all can become a solopreneur business.

If you want a more advanced version of the diagram above, then check this out below...

It's called Ikigai. This graphic was shared by successful entrepreneur Matt Grey.

It's how he came up with his current business making $3MM a year.

How to find hundreds of topics you can teach online...

Later, while still in Thailand, I met a man in his early 20s making $5,000 a month with a different online course.

This course wasn't even his main business and he only spent a few hours per week on it.

(Earning $5K a month for working just a few hours a week is possible because of leverage. You can record the video course once and distribute it to thousands after.)

And to make this $5K a month, he was teaching the most unexpected, narrow topic:

iPad photography.

His customers were mostly older people in the US and Canada, who just needed help taking better photos with their devices.

So, if you want to create an online business around information/teaching… think about the topics you know. Consider all of the following:

• Past jobs
• Hobbies and interests
• Sports
• Music and art
• Pets
• Professional skills like sales and negotiation
• Technologies you're proficient with (the newer the better)
• Dietary restrictions or health concerns you know
• Any struggle you've been through, like injury rehab
• Any transformation you've been through (e.g. shy/timid, to being a confident public speaker; or overweight and unhealthy to running a half-marathon)

Monetizing your professional knowledge

Here's another route you can take:

If you've built up some knowledge in a job or career, you may be able to monetize that.

Graham Stephan took his knowledge as a real estate broker and began teaching on YouTube.

(For example, one of his early videos highlights how he bought a duplex and rented out half of it, to live rent-free.)

He then pivoted into talking about broader investing and personal finance topics and has earned multiple millions.

Graham has teams/partners now but his start was a classic solopreneur approach: Take a topic you know and start teaching others.

I also used my professional knowledge to start a solopreneur venture

After working for years as a job recruiter, I started a website where I shared tips for job seekers.

I began writing about what I was learning as a recruiter since I saw that millions of job seekers lacked this info.

Then, over time, I monetized the site through:

• E-books
• An online course
• Display ads

I ended up earning more from this website than any job ever paid me, and I sold the website in December 2022 in my first successful business exit.

Problems are potential business ideas

Any time you see a problem you can solve in the market, it could be a potential business.

The problem that I saw when I launched my career advice blog was:

Most job seekers had no idea why they were being rejected for jobs and what to do/change.

So I hopped in the market and tried to solve it, and things worked out for me.

Making millions through simple software

There's another route you can take as a solopreneur that gives you incredible leverage and earnings potential...

Software.

Pieter Levels is a successful solopreneur with a software development background.

I first discovered Pieter during his project to create 12 startups in 12 months, back in 2014.

Many of these projects failed, but some went on to become massive successes, such as:

• NomadList
• RemoteOK

For many years, Pieter ran the above projects as "open startups" meaning that he publicly shared his revenue and expense numbers, and more.

Pieter stopped the "open startup" model in the past one or two years...

...likely because he was earning so much that it became a bit uncomfortable (or unwise) to share.

You don't have to be an expert in ANYTHING to start a successful online business

One of my favorite online entrepreneurs is Pat Walls, who founded Starter Story.

He's seen incredible growth recently and has crossed $2MM in membership revenue.

Pat sometimes mentions his struggles and failures with previous business attempts, before he launched Starter Story.

He wasn't necessarily an expert in entrepreneurship when he began to teach others about the topic, via his website.

Yet he still found a way to be authentic and give value...

He featured interviews with other successful founders.

These founders discussed how they got started, growth strategies, mistakes made, tools used, and more.

The bottom line is:

You don't have to be the ultimate expert to build a community and teach a topic.

If you're just a few steps ahead of most people, you can teach through that lens.

Plenty of successful solopreneur businesses were started with the "I'm still learning this, too" angle.

Did these solopreneurs earn six- and seven-figures by doing EVERYTHING alone?

Not necessarily.

To me, being a solopreneur simply means you have a business without any in-house/full-time employees, without any co-founders/partners, etc.

Solopreneurs can still pay for help and/or outsource key processes to agencies, freelancers, virtual assistants, and more.

Conclusion, takeaways, and how to make money from your online business

The pattern in the examples above is finding a niche you're familiar with and interested in, building an audience through useful content/tools, and then monetizing.

Here is a diagram showing specific tools/platforms you can use to follow this formula:

I hope this helps you start thinking about how to start and grow your online venture.

Got a second? Please comment below and tell me if this write-up was helpful, what else you'd like to see, and any questions you have.

Until next week,

Biron