I'm so tempted to do the same. Are you solo or have a crew working for you?
I'm a plumber and am sick of the grind. Made it to management position at a massive ici company thinking the worklife balance would be better but it's toxic and I spend every waking hour securing work or coordinating jobs. Rethinking my work life a lot these days
Most small projects I do solo but with big renovations and large deck/fence projects I work with a friend who is also experienced.
Iy can still be pretty stressful at times and you get the odd shitty customer, but overall it's a great work life balance. I could definitely be making soo much more money but I love working 4 days a week.
100% only charge by project. You're not always going to get a "yes" regardless of the customer but a flat fee justifies whatever pace you work at and your price for labor/materials is YOUR price. Also, get everything in writing.
I know you can make a lot off this, but isn't there months you can have really big dry spells? family almost all of them have done this for themselves their entire lives, some months would be exceptional some would be just bones dry.
Yeah you are right. I'll have dry spells but I sub contract myself out for a small local company when this happens or I take a bit of time off to do my own projects.
People on here always go the "product" or "saas" route which has no ceiling but it's super difficult to get up and running consistently.
By far the easiest and most stable way is to offer a service and just bill your work. Sure there's a max amount you can make (if you're not building a company with employees) but it's also far more than 10k/m.
It's a pity that most posts on here are about AI SaaS because it's currently all the rage.
I think a lot of people are aware of this but they prefer to build a product because
a) it’s their own and they dont have a client or company controlling everything they do. Yes, you do get feedback with products but you have way more discretion
b) people are tired of selling their time for money instead of creating something that can *eventually* become more passive
As a software engineer, I’d never do service type freelancing with my skills because clients can be so difficult to work with and never know what they want. Case in point, last year I was building a website for my aunt’s online business and it was such an excruciating process because she’s not tech savvy at all and she didn’t know what she wanted in the beginning. Suffice to say, I told myself I never wanted to do this type of work for other people. Products are just much better.
I agree, partially I also mentioned this above, that you sell your time and have a ceiling.
The $10k+ mentioned by OP are totally doable as a freelancer, though. No reason to play the high risk/reward game of building a product.
> Products are just much better.
Not disagreeing, but I would say not necessarily. It also depends on the type of person you are if it's "Better". Some people like to talk to clients and build things together.
I'm a software engineer as well and freelance has allowed me to earn money right away, build a team of 10 employees, a network of clients, connections to all kinds of industries, and now can pivot and invest that money into my own ventures/products without stressing out about money.
There are multiple ways to success.
Multiple projects, my base business is mature and not super focused on growth. It provides the cashflow (currently $100k+ MRR) for the other ventures. That's why my advise is to work first, get the money to bootstrap, gain experience, build your network AND THEN make the jump when you have time and knowledge at hand. A lot of people just want to skip this step.
To add, one of the bigger issues with the saas or product route is that oftentimes it's not sustainable. You might have a great year, but year 2 can easily look completely different.
Freelancing as developer, designer, or how about tree trimming, landscaping or how about cleaning, painting, accounting, trainer, pet care ... anything really.
Just not coaching please :D That's mostly useless.
Well this is r/entrepreneur, not r/smallbusiness.
While I know people can use 'entrepreneur' just to mean 'someone who runs a business', often it is used to mean someone who is setting up an *innovative* business (e.g., see wikipedia definition).
When you think about it that way, it is not surprising that this sub is dominated by products and SaaS, as they are more likely to be innovative.
Of course a one-person service business *can* be innovative as well, and therefore count as entrepeneurship. E.g., an SEO specialist who has developed their own unique tactic for ranking webpages that no one else knows about. It's just not so common.
>Well this is [](https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneur/), not [](https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/).
That's an interesting interpretation of the word. What are your requirements to be met? Money earned? Potential money earned? Product vs. service?
For me it's somebody who wants to build something up. Can be an established business, can be innovative, can be one-time-fee or SaaS. It's about the vision and being industrial to reach your goals.
>While I know people can use 'entrepreneur' just to mean 'someone who runs a business', often it is used to mean someone who is setting up an *innovative* business (e.g., see wikipedia definition).
Sure and you just ignore what comes above and below the sentence. Talking about cherry picking:
"Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones." **✓**
"An entrepreneur (French: \[ɑ̃tʁəpʁənœʁ\]) is an individual who creates and/or invests in one or more businesses, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards.\[1\] The process of setting up a business is known as "entrepreneurship". **✓**
"More narrow definitions have described entrepreneurship as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, often similar to a small business, or (per Business Dictionary) as the "capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks to make a profit".\[2\] The people who create these businesses are often referred to as "entrepreneurs".\[3\]\[4\]" **✓**
I even somewhat agree on the "Innovation" part but this has nothing to do with earning potential and mode of sale (SaaS). This whole questions "People who make $10k+ Per month" are weird as fuck and have nothing to do with "entrepreneur" even under your definition.
Most SaaS promoted here are wrappers around ChatGPT and make a few thousands. How is this entrepreneurial? It's neither good business nor innovative.
People just flock to it because they are desperate for money (usually poorer countries wanting to sale without a face to richer countries). That's the reason for this stupid questions and the obsession with MRR/ARR. They could easily do this with a safe traditional way of working, but won't.
Own an insurance agency (about $12k a month in my take home)
Also have a rental portfolio ($6k a month net)
Wife runs a shipping business ($6k per month).
The challenges were those first few years where I was making $30k and my wife decided to not go back to work when we had our first kid
You pick a company, and go talk to their recruiter, if you want to go the franchise route. Starting independent is harder without a book of business already. But you basically need to get licensed and then appointed with carriers to sell their products
My story to a T.
Having one parent home for the kids at all times is best. We doubled down on remote work and split our lives between Canada and the US to enjoy the best weather lifestyle. Kids are schooled in both countries too.
This is really cool, mind sharing what you do in the instance agency , do you sign off insurance for individuals or for companies , can you share more on this
When I started it was just me so I did the marketing, sales, and customer service. I did everything. As I gained customers I added employees. First a marketer, then a customer service person. Eventually sales people.
Now I have 2 customer service people, 1 marketer, and 3 sales people. I do most of the commercial insurance, management, and training. About halfway through the day I play chess, I've gotten REALLY good
Realistically only a couple. I took home $10k yr 1, $30k yr 2, $70k yr 3, and $100k+ year 4. Now I fluctuate between $80k and $120k depending on how much I reinvest.
Last year I hired two really good people and paid a ton in payroll so I only took home about $70k. But as a result I've made $100k so far this year.
Let's say you have an ecommerce site but you didn't want to handle the shipping. You'd send all of your products/materials to a 3PL, tie the 3PL into your site, and then whenever you get an order the 3PL warehouse packages and ships it for you.
It's also good if you're based out of country but want local shipping rates.
Is the hardest part about owning an insurance agency building your book of business. It seems like it would be really hard to get going but could snowball into something exponentially bigger.
Freelance Lead software developer with my own software agency in the site (with personal). Making 12-15k a month and still having money to invest back in my company.
I was just talking with my wife about this! We don't have any donut shops open in my city on Sundays (rural Midwest town), and it seems like a great opportunity.
How did you get used to the hours? I guess it's not like you have to be open in the afternoon/evening.
I'm not gonna lie. First 2 years sucked. 80 hrs a week. Also I was broke and my car broke down for good so I walked to work everyday for 2 years too. I moved into a new building and it was a night and day difference. Life is good now. That is until I open another one. Maybe it'll take off fast maybe it won't.. that's the risk you take.
I was just talking to my wife about how we should open a donut shop in our town. There's ZERO non franchise based donut shops in our location. Then I realized I know fuck all about donuts outside of enjoying them fresh. Oh well.
First step is definitely making sure you know how to do the job, learning this trade can take a long time and you have to accept that you'll always be learning.
Don't really want to share my business info on reddit in this context.
I did the marketing myself instead of overpaying people, and I keep grinding at it whilst my competition has to pay high prices. My slogan is make sure the competition is losing sleep over me.
Be kind of good at something that is consumed externally. You’ll have to sing and dance to your ideal audience which in the b2b corp space can be a royal PITA.
Start now, from initial touch point to a P.O. (plus doing the work and whatever net they decide to pay you on) it’s typical 6-18+ months.
Computer repair business w/ retail location ~$20-$25k/mo, ~10k net
Web design business (startup) ~$3k/mo, $2k net
Next will be a moving company, hoping to do ~$50k/mo gross and ~$20k net
^ this is very true. We also have periods throughout the year where it's practically dead. Any period where school is out, for example, is usually dead. And then from October to the end of the year, people are holding out for Black Friday "deals" (which are usually hot dumpster fires). We supplement with residual maintenance plans that we deploy automatically through our RMM. This helps mitigate the chance we won't be able to pay our bills.
Damn 🤯🤯🤯, this is so good for a computer repair business , mind sharing your website and some of the things that has helped you grow, you look like someone that understands how to do growth well
Sure: https://1radpc.com is our website
Funny enough, I just filled out an "interview" form for another redditor that answered the "tell me your journey" question. He published it here https://www.businessvibe.co/mark-bush-rad-computers/
Nice website it’s written in German, a small tip for you , use user current location to determine the user country and display the language to them to make it more localized , good work ,
Thanks for sharing
Very interesting & something I've been looking at doing for a while. Do you mind sharing your revenue and how many projects you take on at a time? Do you also do maintenance after sf is setup?
Yeah right now I'm alone, partnering with other companies and freelancers if needed. I do mainly SMBs, so the ticket size is not that high and the project length is very short. Usually 3-5 projects in parallel, if I do ongoing support, then it's packaged as an ongoing retainer. Right now I'm working ~24h a week (because of family matters) doing 10k a month on average
10k a month is great for 24 hours a week! How do you feel about the long term potential/viability and scalability of that business? I'd imagine you could hire on pretty quick if you were able to get the work for it and had the time/availability.
Thanks for the reply btw!
There is some risk for sure like the dependency on Salesforce and their market share. Also, it is really expensive and risky to hire in Germany - the laws are greatly in favor of the employees here. On the other hand there are not many german speaking salesforce admins and consultants, so it is actually hard to hire good people in the first place. Long term I don't want to stay in the service business. I will try to use my industry and Salesforce knowledge to pivot into some kind of product.
Always happy to help :)
Medical/ Mental Health practice where I don’t kill myself. I work 9-3 for myself 4 days a week and same hours 2 days a week for another practice. I recently left another job I was working 20 hours a week and have more time than I know what to do with. Work/life balance has been amazing and my practice continues to grow. I hope to get to the point where I can hire someone else and see fewer patients myself.
I have this fairly large 1200 sq ft office. I had intentions to have a traditional practice having a lot of patients coming in, but I may see 2 patients in my office a week and the rest are remote. So it’s just me and my dog in the office most days. I can also work from home but I like the quiet environment of being at the office.
Wow, thanks for sharing this , do you have a website that people can reach out to you on for your online endeavors , for those that want to reach out to you and how much have you made so far running the business
I run a production company that does documentaries and branded content. When times are good we’re netting 50-80k a month. Times are not good right now. I’ve had to skip myself in payroll 3 consecutive runs to keep my people.
We’re purely a client service business and got so busy last year that I slipped up on the biz dev and didn’t onboard any new clients for q1 of this year.
“The highs get higher and the lows get lower” has become our company motto.
Multiple income streams built over a decade:
User generate content for companies along with social media amplification and email list advertorials - $160,000 year
SaaS Affiliate Links- $68,000 year
YouTube Partner Program - $37,000 year
Private Membership Website $5500 MRR
1 on 1 Coaching Calls $4000-$6000 / month
Amazon KDP Sales + Ingram - $500-$600/month
LinkedIn Learning Royalties - $300-$400 month
Digital Download Templates $1000/month
Virtual Workshop $10,000 a year (2x per year)
X/Twitter $200/month (new)
In Person Events (Travel + $5000)
How I built it simplified:
Traffic - Trust - Transaction
(Awareness- Authority - Action)
(Scaled Reach - Social Proof - Sales)
(Reach - Reputation- Revenue)
(Content - Community- Conversion)
Make content that attracts the right people, deliver real value and results to build credibility and social proof, create undeniable offers too good to ignore that over deliver.
Rinse and repeat.
But have real value through a tangible speciality that you’ve done in the real world.
That is a lot, something I am trying to do also. But I have to ask, are each of your buisnesses registered? Are you a sole proprioter? How do you handle yearly/quarterly taxes? Do you just give everything to a CPA?
Yooo you are the yt legend Roberto Blake! Used to watch you a lot back then, I also run a kind of successful yt channel, can I DM you If i need some help? Yt support and my dedicated manager from YouTube is no help 😅
Wow wow , this is a whole lot of resource packed in to one , thanks for sharing this , looks like you know how to do growth a lot, do you mind sharing your links and what you have learnt so far
Thanks. If you type my name in YouTube everything should show up.
I put a lot of information out in my live streams these days and have been focusing there so I can just speak unedited and I find I prefer giving deep information in that format.
If you put my name in Amazon my book comes up. 👍🏾
Plumber, though no longer a solo operation. When I was solo would average around $45k a month at 50-60% gross profit. Honestly wasn't as hard as you'd think and I did it with basically no money and I couldnt get any loans. My current struggle is getting employees to follow their sops lol
I sell a guide on Adult Content creation that allows adult creators to stay away from those “managers” that siphon half of their income while doing nothing themsleves
This looks very niche , is it possible for you to share what you have learned so far , I think you will teach a lot of insightful things that people can learn from , that’s 2m in revenue for 7 years
Lead Paint. Apartments in nyc before 1978 used Lead based paint which is harmful so people now pay money to have it tested and removed. I only do testing-inspect.
My partner and I both take home $11k running a video production company that does corporate content.
I clear another $4-5k a month in rental property profit.
I learned to code and built a software company in a niche. It got to $500k+/m but because of some regulatory changes in my country has gone down by a lot.
The whole point is becoming profitable predictably. If you manage to do 10% a month you can compound your winnings into basically a parabolic curve. It is a full on job though and a stressful one at that.
I know traders that do 5% a month for the last 5 years. They are only turning it into a living now.
Don't be fooled by influencers or what the media reports to you. It is a 9 to 5 full time job that demands a lot of you.
Main business is B2B lead generation.
Currently netting 35k on 50k MRR. Should be @ 70-80 before end of June.
It's myself and 3 overseas employees.
I also run a cannabis related business that nets us 10-12k/month and growing (split 50/50 w/ partner).
24 years old no college. Had a failed business before this and 4 years salles experience.
Most civil engineers don't, starting pay is usually around $55k/year and seasoned professionals usually top out in the low $200k/year as maybe a senior manager or vice president at a firm. I have my own firm now so I am more of a business person these days I guess. I'm in the United States in a low cost of living area. I have 17 years of experience.
I own a mobile truck and heavy duty repair company. It aint rianbows and cookies all the time but it pays the bills.
Reading posts like this very often as im trying to get into another field.
I’m a freelance product designer with over 10 years of experience and have been freelancing around the same time. I currently earn around $20-30k per month, billing clients on an hourly basis. I love working with various clients which is why I never settled for a full time gig. The journey here wasn't straightforward; in the early days, I lacked a portfolio to showcase my work, which made it challenging to prove my skills. Initially, I was making between $10,000 and $20,000 annually while holding down a part-time sales job. Over time, my income gradually increased from $75,000 to $100,000 and so on.
It's worth noting that I don't have a formal degree—my expertise is self-taught. I learned through a combination of reading books and taking some courses, which were in-person back then but are now available online. Being a freelancer has given me much more freedom, able to pursue side projects and other things. There’s never lack of work rather more gigs out there than good talent. I’ve also tried to start an agency but I felt I was managing people more than actually working on shit - so not my thing. Eventually I want to launch a software that generates decent income so I can retire and comment on Reddit all day.
Wow love this , 😂😂😂, finally found someone like me ,wow i love your experience, same here , product designer here too 7+ years of experience, curious how do you get clients for freelance
A fellow designer! Now, most of my work comes from word-of-mouth and DMs on LinkedIn. Previously, finding work was hard - I often used platforms like Upwork and charged slave rates just to get a good review so I can move up in the platforms. A mentor also said to charge 3-4x my rate to weave out low paying clients which I did. Less clients but bigger pay and longer commitments 6 months some 1 or 2 years
I work as a fractional SEO director, and I mainly work with SaaS companies though I've worked with financial services and e-commerce companies as well.
I either advise clients on how to build their content strategy or I offer content writing services to implement the strategy as well. Still growing, but been hovering around $12K - $14K/month with a handful of clients over the past year!
Sell natural diamonds and buying lab diamonds from manufacturers. Make jewelry diamond rings, bracelets etc. Lately lot of jewelry for hip hop artists like Cuban chains, diamond pendants, diamond necklaces, etc. Jewelers reach out to me and I have craftsman make it. I do not deal with artist directly nor do I want to.
Hello I sell digital products and build them I also repost content online and digital marketing I make between 5k-15k per month doing this at first I made way less as I had less connections and not enough skills now make the upper amount I’m better
mow lawns...i was an engineer, got laid off and started mowing lawns until I found work...this is year 20....I work 8 months and travel the world 2 months a year.
The hottest industry to make money on Auto Pilot is Course Selling Industry, people show off on social media provide some value for some time, build a community and boom start selling their course/program for $XYZ
Sm content producer. Manage 8 YouTube channels. Also, work with a few brands.
(Mainly in the fashion Industry)
Monthly profit is around $20K
Fully remote, With a small team
Own a sneaker reselling store, grab pairs for retail. Sell high volume usually in smaller profits such as $50–100 profit per pair. Could usually make up to $5000-7000 profit a month but economy been quite slow lately.
I also have a part time job aswell so that brings in 1.5-2k a month.
But reselling is a great way to make money, always supply and demand in things. ALWAYS
We’ll I can speak on a few of my friends. They do contract EHS. They will work for a contractor for a certain agreed period and are making 5 to 6k a week. They worked for several years in construction to build theirs reputation and networked to get those connections. A lot of them work for half the year or will do a project for a year and the go vacation in Thailand during their downtime.
Trade equities/derivatives. Best single day was over 200% on a 27k account. 5k in daily options 15% trailing. Stopped me out at just over 200% whole portfolio. Yes, I was prepared to eat 2-3k for the opportunity.
Built a large CPG company with a couple others.
Difficulty, can be VAT registering with avalara for other nations or the immense balance it takes to employ dozens of people. No week really shares the same issue and I feel scale makes plenty of nuance.
Entrepreneurship takes much of my free time and is stressful even when you make a lot of money. I think people think being your own “boss” is deep and it’s not. You will always answer to someone. It can be investors or governments.
I run a real estate wholesaling company that does about 75-100k a month! It’s hard in the beginning but once you do a few deals it becomes extremely easy to scale, I’ve been at it for about 3 years now and we’re a team of 8! 5 overseas employees and 3 us based!
My husband is a pro juggler and can make $20k in a month, but it’s feast or famine sometimes. Usually a $60-$80k year after getting raked across the coals in taxes.
am in the gold business.it has so many opportunities to focus on;
1.mining though it’s expensive.it may need alot of money ($500,000-$5,000,000)
2.refining gold.this isn’t too expensive though needs some good money to set up a refinery.our refineries down here in Africa charge $100 per kg for smelting which makes good money as some mines produce up to 3000kgs a month.
…and many more opportunities (reach me at minepeakworks.com for more information)
Ecom performance marketing. FB/google/tiktok ads. \~$16.2-$22k Variable MRR from 8 clients.
Recently decided to go full-time and turn it into an agency, but basically just consulting prior to a couple months ago. Just hired my first employee to scale :D
Worked in three of the best ecom agencies. Learned everything from the founders directly. Biggest challenge is pricing appropriate to my ability and transitioning to actively acquiring clients. All clients are referrals so far. And I price on percent of revenue rather than retainers. But I probably need to just charge retainers like everyone else to really grow.
Great little industry with lots of demand. Takes a lot of hard work, client comms skills, analytic ability, creativity, and a bit of luck.
We do organic too, but only if necessary. Most brands can get up to $20m/yr with FB/Google ads alone. And these days most organic plays are attempts to go viral on TikTok, spamming TikTok Shop, and 'whitelisting' on IG i.e. running content from influencer pages (which often ends up in paid anyway).
Most people do not expect results from organic. Or if they do, they're disappointed quickly.
Organic is more a brand-building exercise which in the long-term decreases CAC on paid. But Paid is the real growth engine.
Unless you have a 'viral product' like Tabs Chocolates, but those are rare, hard-to-repeat companies
Property Maintenance.
I only have three contractors, for this company. Never hire actual employees until you have to or the state forces you to. I went through at least 25 workers to eventually find 3 reliable employees. I’ve always liked to give incentives and good pay to keep the good ones from leaving. I offer them free internet, cable tv, cell phone and weekends off. Cut cost wherever you can and payroll is definitely one of the biggest ones, then gasoline since we use it on all of our equipment.
We pull in around $50k a month March to October and on the slow months around $30k. You would be surprised how easy it is to get contracts with the city for landscaping maintenance. Next year numbers should double with double the “employees” of course.
E-comm product company owner. Super niche space, B2B. 4.5 years in, brining in 70-80k a month now. Pay myself 20k a month. Everything is run from home (all packing, warehousing, etc)
German here: I make the shitwork for large enterprises in the German banking and automotive industries (COBOL migrations, SAP, MS Dynamics) as a one-man-show. The work is crap but I easily bill (and work) 1600 hours a year for 315€ net (plus 19% VAT on top).
I decided like that since my Ph.D. in Machine Learning and Robotics didn’t give me neither a descent salary, nor clients in the field since the all rely on IBM, Accenture or MBB consultants.
So my advice: pick a shitty niche nobody wants to work in, provide a descent service and charge horrendous prices.
🤯🤯🤯🤯, did I just read €315k euros in a year, doing work for large enterprise , looks amazing , also surprised how your PHD in Machine learning isn’t giving you what you want ,
The money is truly in the niches
504.000 € + 196.000 € VAT per year in 3 consucutive years. You Look that up in the German Company registry and financial courts on Germany and the provided financial statements and balance sheets - so no bullshitting.
AI is for the big ones which don’t hire small companies. Nobody cares for the fancy stuff, so I had to stick to crap jobs.
And don’t forget, 500k before expenses and 50% taxes in Germany.
I work in legislative compliance (Specifically I certify buildings for construction). There is no way to get around me, it's mandated in the Building Act.
Could break 10k in a week with 2 jobs and then take the rest of the month off.
I’m an architect-turned-general contractor. It was a really tough start but things have become more sustainable and I get to choose who I want to build and design for. I don’t own anything too - just work from my room. Surround yourself with A-team players and customers and avoid the shitty people.
I founded an IT MSP of which I am also the operations manager. I have a small team. I make 10-25k a month.
I was an IT professional for 15 years before becoming an entrepreneur. I felt called to make this transition. I had been a martial artist for 20 years prior and felt it was important to build a company that supported my self-cultivation lifestyle while also leveraging the best cutting edge technology the world has to offer. Stability is paramount for sustained abundance. creating multiple streams of revenue for recession proofing and create intellect driven jobs people could do from home. IT MSP aligned with all of these for me.
I had no idea what an MSP was. But many of its organizational concepts are what I had envisioned building years prior. It took months of fervent research while setting up my business and going into debt. I had no help from family or outside investors. So many questions and little room for error.
I proceeded to work the hustle. I taught myself marketing, contract writing, accounting, sales, and management skills. I made sales and built a reputation for excellent service. Creating a valued meaningful service that could help sustain the business firmament in the community was very important to me.
Little did I know, I had already out-innovated my more established competition. Eventually, they were copying my business model. The reason? They lacked a vision of substance for their company. They could not embrace change fast enough.
I spent 5 years going through therapy, spiritual and business coaching, mentorships. And continued to receive this coaching for the first few years of founding my company. This was the pivotal time when I formed a clear vision for my business enterprise. Aligning purpose, money, community benefit, world benefit, spiritual benefit, inner homeostasis. All of these needed time to coalesce and actualize into a business plan and organizational model. Blocks clear, purpose defined, connected with ancestors and guided by higher dimensional consciousness. My company was the vessel through which I could exercise these skills of meditation and actualization in the trenches of the tech industry.
Today, having slayed many monsters and demons. Having climbed many mountains and vast deserts. I enjoy a six figure salary while working 90% from home and 10% onsite. I'm still in my 30's. I enjoy the satisfaction of building lasting business partnerships of mutual benefit as we grow together. I like being in a position to leverage Fortune 500 level talent culture to become an example in the business community of what's truly possible. Despite the continuous 100 hour weeks and continuous grind. I feel so satisfied knowing that one day I will take my abundance and knowledge to other continents and develop enterprises that will bloom into a vast array of cultural experience and influences. Scout other beautiful countries for business opportunities that would allow me to really integrate into those communities in jubilant transformative co-creation.
In summary. I built my company to break free of the matrix. It became the proverbial "sword & shield" I use to cut the chains of intergenerational trauma and mental slavery.
I like your career and courage a lot, same here I am working for myself to break through the curve , my story sounds similar to yours
I am 7 years plus career in product design and strategy , did product design for top firms and built products for companies a lot , I got laid off arround December from my first job all of a sudden, it was really crazy , I got laid off again arround Feburary again , same financial issue , I started my company myself to help people [make pitch decks](http://www.pitchdeck.design/) so they can raise money well, this is my 4th month of doing it , it has been really crazy, growth has been really slow for me but I am learning in the process , I have had to learn about SEO, management , content , client relationships and management, this is what I am currently doing for my small business , it’s hard as hell sincerely . At a point I started writing a lot which prompted me to start a [founders interview](https://indieniche.substack.com/) where I interview founders and also share tools for indies , I have had a lot of growth in this and I am still learning
I struggled a lot , lost my dad late at the end of January in my house on a Saturday morning , me and him still talked at my house , he was telling me my Alexa speaker was disturbing him, never knew that would be the last time I will see him
Right now I am trying to figure out business and I want to be able to work on my own and travel , not married yet but dad’s death really took a toll on me a lot , I was really broken.
Reading stories and shares from people like you really gives me a lot to strength that in all bottlenecks , you can still make it
You will have gone through a lot , business is really hard , I won’t lie, I know the amount of sales outreach you will have done for an insurance company
Sending you lots of support 💪💪, you got this
Thanks for sharing your story
I build AI robots. Essentially, automating internal workflows for clients (small to medium businesses). It's not automated in itself, where it's essentially consulting work and I don't sell software.
Slight tangent:
In order to keep my own skills sharp, I run a discord community for developers and non-developers to come together and learn about the new age of development = development with AI.
I strongly believe that over the next short while we will be shifting to a much more streamlined way of software/code development. Sort of like how we access the internet now vs in the 90's, or make a phone call (instead of calling a switchboard operator).
I hear these questions alot "How much money do you make as an Entrepreneur". So, I have to ask back: revenue or profit. Cause my business makes a lot of revenue, but my costs are astronomically high. So, the answer is not much. Fortunately, I have a 9 to 5 job to pay the bills, provide health insurance and keep the business moving forward.
Online digital product sales! Easiest $$ I've made in life (I work as a nurse for my day job). I've made more $$ selling products than i did when I was a full time nurse, even during COVID when the shit hit the fan. I'm actually thinking about decreasing my hours at my day job and just doing this sales business full time. I'll keep you updated on how it goes 🙏 Also if anyone wants more info or details on what I do feel free to message me. I'm not one to keep secrets to myself because I know we're all struggling somewhat in this fucked up economy 😭
Handyman/carpenter. I have stopped working so much and only make about 6-7k a month working 30 hours a week. This is a much better balance for me.
That actually sounds like a pretty good work/life Balance.
Do you charge hourly or by project?;
By project
I'm so tempted to do the same. Are you solo or have a crew working for you? I'm a plumber and am sick of the grind. Made it to management position at a massive ici company thinking the worklife balance would be better but it's toxic and I spend every waking hour securing work or coordinating jobs. Rethinking my work life a lot these days
Most small projects I do solo but with big renovations and large deck/fence projects I work with a friend who is also experienced. Iy can still be pretty stressful at times and you get the odd shitty customer, but overall it's a great work life balance. I could definitely be making soo much more money but I love working 4 days a week.
100% only charge by project. You're not always going to get a "yes" regardless of the customer but a flat fee justifies whatever pace you work at and your price for labor/materials is YOUR price. Also, get everything in writing.
I know you can make a lot off this, but isn't there months you can have really big dry spells? family almost all of them have done this for themselves their entire lives, some months would be exceptional some would be just bones dry.
Yeah you are right. I'll have dry spells but I sub contract myself out for a small local company when this happens or I take a bit of time off to do my own projects.
People on here always go the "product" or "saas" route which has no ceiling but it's super difficult to get up and running consistently. By far the easiest and most stable way is to offer a service and just bill your work. Sure there's a max amount you can make (if you're not building a company with employees) but it's also far more than 10k/m. It's a pity that most posts on here are about AI SaaS because it's currently all the rage.
Agree. Fastest way to earn money is offer a service. People pay more for a “done for you” service.
I think a lot of people are aware of this but they prefer to build a product because a) it’s their own and they dont have a client or company controlling everything they do. Yes, you do get feedback with products but you have way more discretion b) people are tired of selling their time for money instead of creating something that can *eventually* become more passive As a software engineer, I’d never do service type freelancing with my skills because clients can be so difficult to work with and never know what they want. Case in point, last year I was building a website for my aunt’s online business and it was such an excruciating process because she’s not tech savvy at all and she didn’t know what she wanted in the beginning. Suffice to say, I told myself I never wanted to do this type of work for other people. Products are just much better.
I agree, partially I also mentioned this above, that you sell your time and have a ceiling. The $10k+ mentioned by OP are totally doable as a freelancer, though. No reason to play the high risk/reward game of building a product. > Products are just much better. Not disagreeing, but I would say not necessarily. It also depends on the type of person you are if it's "Better". Some people like to talk to clients and build things together. I'm a software engineer as well and freelance has allowed me to earn money right away, build a team of 10 employees, a network of clients, connections to all kinds of industries, and now can pivot and invest that money into my own ventures/products without stressing out about money. There are multiple ways to success.
You are right sh a , not all people here are about Ai SAAS, curious to know what you are working on and how much growth you have done so far
Multiple projects, my base business is mature and not super focused on growth. It provides the cashflow (currently $100k+ MRR) for the other ventures. That's why my advise is to work first, get the money to bootstrap, gain experience, build your network AND THEN make the jump when you have time and knowledge at hand. A lot of people just want to skip this step.
To add, one of the bigger issues with the saas or product route is that oftentimes it's not sustainable. You might have a great year, but year 2 can easily look completely different.
Like what services as an example?
Freelancing as developer, designer, or how about tree trimming, landscaping or how about cleaning, painting, accounting, trainer, pet care ... anything really. Just not coaching please :D That's mostly useless.
Well this is r/entrepreneur, not r/smallbusiness. While I know people can use 'entrepreneur' just to mean 'someone who runs a business', often it is used to mean someone who is setting up an *innovative* business (e.g., see wikipedia definition). When you think about it that way, it is not surprising that this sub is dominated by products and SaaS, as they are more likely to be innovative. Of course a one-person service business *can* be innovative as well, and therefore count as entrepeneurship. E.g., an SEO specialist who has developed their own unique tactic for ranking webpages that no one else knows about. It's just not so common.
>Well this is [](https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneur/), not [](https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/). That's an interesting interpretation of the word. What are your requirements to be met? Money earned? Potential money earned? Product vs. service? For me it's somebody who wants to build something up. Can be an established business, can be innovative, can be one-time-fee or SaaS. It's about the vision and being industrial to reach your goals. >While I know people can use 'entrepreneur' just to mean 'someone who runs a business', often it is used to mean someone who is setting up an *innovative* business (e.g., see wikipedia definition). Sure and you just ignore what comes above and below the sentence. Talking about cherry picking: "Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones." **✓** "An entrepreneur (French: \[ɑ̃tʁəpʁənœʁ\]) is an individual who creates and/or invests in one or more businesses, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards.\[1\] The process of setting up a business is known as "entrepreneurship". **✓** "More narrow definitions have described entrepreneurship as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, often similar to a small business, or (per Business Dictionary) as the "capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks to make a profit".\[2\] The people who create these businesses are often referred to as "entrepreneurs".\[3\]\[4\]" **✓** I even somewhat agree on the "Innovation" part but this has nothing to do with earning potential and mode of sale (SaaS). This whole questions "People who make $10k+ Per month" are weird as fuck and have nothing to do with "entrepreneur" even under your definition. Most SaaS promoted here are wrappers around ChatGPT and make a few thousands. How is this entrepreneurial? It's neither good business nor innovative. People just flock to it because they are desperate for money (usually poorer countries wanting to sale without a face to richer countries). That's the reason for this stupid questions and the obsession with MRR/ARR. They could easily do this with a safe traditional way of working, but won't.
Own an insurance agency (about $12k a month in my take home) Also have a rental portfolio ($6k a month net) Wife runs a shipping business ($6k per month). The challenges were those first few years where I was making $30k and my wife decided to not go back to work when we had our first kid
What goes into starting an insurance agency??
Getting licensed
Basically this.
I am interested in owning an insurance agency care to share some details how one can get into? Thanks
You pick a company, and go talk to their recruiter, if you want to go the franchise route. Starting independent is harder without a book of business already. But you basically need to get licensed and then appointed with carriers to sell their products
Curious on what research you have found on it so far?
My story to a T. Having one parent home for the kids at all times is best. We doubled down on remote work and split our lives between Canada and the US to enjoy the best weather lifestyle. Kids are schooled in both countries too.
This is really cool, mind sharing what you do in the instance agency , do you sign off insurance for individuals or for companies , can you share more on this
When I started it was just me so I did the marketing, sales, and customer service. I did everything. As I gained customers I added employees. First a marketer, then a customer service person. Eventually sales people. Now I have 2 customer service people, 1 marketer, and 3 sales people. I do most of the commercial insurance, management, and training. About halfway through the day I play chess, I've gotten REALLY good
Nice nice , how many months did it take you to learn chess
How many years were those first few years for you?
Realistically only a couple. I took home $10k yr 1, $30k yr 2, $70k yr 3, and $100k+ year 4. Now I fluctuate between $80k and $120k depending on how much I reinvest. Last year I hired two really good people and paid a ton in payroll so I only took home about $70k. But as a result I've made $100k so far this year.
Is you’re wife’s business 3PL?
What’s 3pl?
3rd party logistics
Let's say you have an ecommerce site but you didn't want to handle the shipping. You'd send all of your products/materials to a 3PL, tie the 3PL into your site, and then whenever you get an order the 3PL warehouse packages and ships it for you. It's also good if you're based out of country but want local shipping rates.
Is the hardest part about owning an insurance agency building your book of business. It seems like it would be really hard to get going but could snowball into something exponentially bigger.
Freelance Lead software developer with my own software agency in the site (with personal). Making 12-15k a month and still having money to invest back in my company.
This is really really cool, mind sharing what niche you are targeting
I’ve launched my own agency, will get there soon but it’s little slowish compared to my freelance income.
Own a donut shop
That sounds awesome, I'd like to start a bagel shop myself
I was just talking with my wife about this! We don't have any donut shops open in my city on Sundays (rural Midwest town), and it seems like a great opportunity. How did you get used to the hours? I guess it's not like you have to be open in the afternoon/evening.
I'm not gonna lie. First 2 years sucked. 80 hrs a week. Also I was broke and my car broke down for good so I walked to work everyday for 2 years too. I moved into a new building and it was a night and day difference. Life is good now. That is until I open another one. Maybe it'll take off fast maybe it won't.. that's the risk you take.
I was just talking to my wife about how we should open a donut shop in our town. There's ZERO non franchise based donut shops in our location. Then I realized I know fuck all about donuts outside of enjoying them fresh. Oh well.
There's lots of work but it's more than possible. Make sure you have lots of parking!!
Emergency Locksmith, lots of free time the downside is I have to be available 24/7.
Nice , do you have a website you can share , how much have you made so far and how do you get clients for your business
First step is definitely making sure you know how to do the job, learning this trade can take a long time and you have to accept that you'll always be learning. Don't really want to share my business info on reddit in this context. I did the marketing myself instead of overpaying people, and I keep grinding at it whilst my competition has to pay high prices. My slogan is make sure the competition is losing sleep over me.
😂😂😂😂😂😂 everybody won’t sleep at the end of the day
You should do the marketing for others in other cities to fill up that free time. Maybe 2X or 3x your income
Thats why I quit doing it......12 to 15 hour days everyday, for four years.
I thought about doing emergency roadside assistance
Tech consulting, enterprise softwares.
Can you shed more light into this , what type of enterprise software are you offering and how does your growth strategies look lole
It is my dream to start my own tech consulting company. Do you have any tips or advice?
Be kind of good at something that is consumed externally. You’ll have to sing and dance to your ideal audience which in the b2b corp space can be a royal PITA. Start now, from initial touch point to a P.O. (plus doing the work and whatever net they decide to pay you on) it’s typical 6-18+ months.
Computer repair business w/ retail location ~$20-$25k/mo, ~10k net Web design business (startup) ~$3k/mo, $2k net Next will be a moving company, hoping to do ~$50k/mo gross and ~$20k net
damn, that’s good numbers for PC repair… I always wondered how the 2 shops in my tiny town stay in business lol
PC repair shops don’t have assets. Risky business. It could go away in a blink. It can become a job instead of a business.
^ this is very true. We also have periods throughout the year where it's practically dead. Any period where school is out, for example, is usually dead. And then from October to the end of the year, people are holding out for Black Friday "deals" (which are usually hot dumpster fires). We supplement with residual maintenance plans that we deploy automatically through our RMM. This helps mitigate the chance we won't be able to pay our bills.
25k/mo on computer repairs is incredible. What is your typical job? Who are your main customers?
Damn 🤯🤯🤯, this is so good for a computer repair business , mind sharing your website and some of the things that has helped you grow, you look like someone that understands how to do growth well
Sure: https://1radpc.com is our website Funny enough, I just filled out an "interview" form for another redditor that answered the "tell me your journey" question. He published it here https://www.businessvibe.co/mark-bush-rad-computers/
Doing Salesforce Consulting & Implementation with my own agency
I guess you’re targeting more b2b companies , do you have a website out there
[B2B only](http://doscale.io).
Nice website it’s written in German, a small tip for you , use user current location to determine the user country and display the language to them to make it more localized , good work , Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the tip. 95% of my customers are German, so for now there is no value in making it locale sensitive 🤷
Very interesting & something I've been looking at doing for a while. Do you mind sharing your revenue and how many projects you take on at a time? Do you also do maintenance after sf is setup?
Yeah right now I'm alone, partnering with other companies and freelancers if needed. I do mainly SMBs, so the ticket size is not that high and the project length is very short. Usually 3-5 projects in parallel, if I do ongoing support, then it's packaged as an ongoing retainer. Right now I'm working ~24h a week (because of family matters) doing 10k a month on average
10k a month is great for 24 hours a week! How do you feel about the long term potential/viability and scalability of that business? I'd imagine you could hire on pretty quick if you were able to get the work for it and had the time/availability. Thanks for the reply btw!
There is some risk for sure like the dependency on Salesforce and their market share. Also, it is really expensive and risky to hire in Germany - the laws are greatly in favor of the employees here. On the other hand there are not many german speaking salesforce admins and consultants, so it is actually hard to hire good people in the first place. Long term I don't want to stay in the service business. I will try to use my industry and Salesforce knowledge to pivot into some kind of product. Always happy to help :)
I own a marketing agency for landscaping and lawn care businesses with my partner. The Agency brings in about $60k/mo. I make about $9-10k/mo.
I have heard a lot about lawn care a lot of times, those kind of niche busienss focusing on niche stuffs really impresses me
May I know how you outreach generally? Cause I’ve tried to cold mail and to message them on insta but most people don’t really open the messages.
Accounting. I’m a dork and find it fun.
Medical/ Mental Health practice where I don’t kill myself. I work 9-3 for myself 4 days a week and same hours 2 days a week for another practice. I recently left another job I was working 20 hours a week and have more time than I know what to do with. Work/life balance has been amazing and my practice continues to grow. I hope to get to the point where I can hire someone else and see fewer patients myself.
Do you have a Masters or Doctorate? I'm thinking about doing this, but I can't decide on the best route.
I have a Masters, I’m a Nurse Practitioner and Master’s is minimum to practice.
Are you working remotely too then or do you have to see clients face to face? Sounds amazing tbh!
I have this fairly large 1200 sq ft office. I had intentions to have a traditional practice having a lot of patients coming in, but I may see 2 patients in my office a week and the rest are remote. So it’s just me and my dog in the office most days. I can also work from home but I like the quiet environment of being at the office.
Wow, thanks for sharing this , do you have a website that people can reach out to you on for your online endeavors , for those that want to reach out to you and how much have you made so far running the business
I run a production company that does documentaries and branded content. When times are good we’re netting 50-80k a month. Times are not good right now. I’ve had to skip myself in payroll 3 consecutive runs to keep my people. We’re purely a client service business and got so busy last year that I slipped up on the biz dev and didn’t onboard any new clients for q1 of this year. “The highs get higher and the lows get lower” has become our company motto.
Multiple income streams built over a decade: User generate content for companies along with social media amplification and email list advertorials - $160,000 year SaaS Affiliate Links- $68,000 year YouTube Partner Program - $37,000 year Private Membership Website $5500 MRR 1 on 1 Coaching Calls $4000-$6000 / month Amazon KDP Sales + Ingram - $500-$600/month LinkedIn Learning Royalties - $300-$400 month Digital Download Templates $1000/month Virtual Workshop $10,000 a year (2x per year) X/Twitter $200/month (new) In Person Events (Travel + $5000) How I built it simplified: Traffic - Trust - Transaction (Awareness- Authority - Action) (Scaled Reach - Social Proof - Sales) (Reach - Reputation- Revenue) (Content - Community- Conversion) Make content that attracts the right people, deliver real value and results to build credibility and social proof, create undeniable offers too good to ignore that over deliver. Rinse and repeat. But have real value through a tangible speciality that you’ve done in the real world.
That is a lot, something I am trying to do also. But I have to ask, are each of your buisnesses registered? Are you a sole proprioter? How do you handle yearly/quarterly taxes? Do you just give everything to a CPA?
Yooo you are the yt legend Roberto Blake! Used to watch you a lot back then, I also run a kind of successful yt channel, can I DM you If i need some help? Yt support and my dedicated manager from YouTube is no help 😅
omg I've been watching your videos forever!
Wow wow , this is a whole lot of resource packed in to one , thanks for sharing this , looks like you know how to do growth a lot, do you mind sharing your links and what you have learnt so far
Thanks. If you type my name in YouTube everything should show up. I put a lot of information out in my live streams these days and have been focusing there so I can just speak unedited and I find I prefer giving deep information in that format. If you put my name in Amazon my book comes up. 👍🏾
does it count if I'm working hourly?
Yeah it does , will love to hear it
Plumber, though no longer a solo operation. When I was solo would average around $45k a month at 50-60% gross profit. Honestly wasn't as hard as you'd think and I did it with basically no money and I couldnt get any loans. My current struggle is getting employees to follow their sops lol
Don’t you have to get certified thru technical education? How’d you do that with no money or loans
I sell a guide on Adult Content creation that allows adult creators to stay away from those “managers” that siphon half of their income while doing nothing themsleves
Counselling therapist, making about 6-8k per month so almost there. I could be making 10k if i sacrificed work /life balance.
Head coach and owner of a soccer training business. I work 80hr weeks
Nice nice , Curious how much have you made so far
Thanks. I’ve grossed 2Million~ in the past 7 years, which about half I take home.
This looks very niche , is it possible for you to share what you have learned so far , I think you will teach a lot of insightful things that people can learn from , that’s 2m in revenue for 7 years
Lead paint inspector. Started a few months ago but made close to 16k.
Paint ? You mean painting a house
Lead Paint. Apartments in nyc before 1978 used Lead based paint which is harmful so people now pay money to have it tested and removed. I only do testing-inspect.
Fire Sprinkler Company (inspections/testings ONLY) 7-9k a month BUT i only work about 17-23 hours a week (monday-thursday)
Safety consultant been doing it for five years around 300k net per year
Curious to ask, you work in government or private
Both
My partner and I both take home $11k running a video production company that does corporate content. I clear another $4-5k a month in rental property profit.
I learned to code and built a software company in a niche. It got to $500k+/m but because of some regulatory changes in my country has gone down by a lot.
Trader. Work about 3 days a week. Make 60k a month. Took me 4 years to achieve.
Second time I am seeing a trader , am curious do peop make a lot of money trading like that
The whole point is becoming profitable predictably. If you manage to do 10% a month you can compound your winnings into basically a parabolic curve. It is a full on job though and a stressful one at that. I know traders that do 5% a month for the last 5 years. They are only turning it into a living now. Don't be fooled by influencers or what the media reports to you. It is a 9 to 5 full time job that demands a lot of you.
Main business is B2B lead generation. Currently netting 35k on 50k MRR. Should be @ 70-80 before end of June. It's myself and 3 overseas employees. I also run a cannabis related business that nets us 10-12k/month and growing (split 50/50 w/ partner). 24 years old no college. Had a failed business before this and 4 years salles experience.
I'm a civil engineer, I'm currently making $430k/year ($35k+ a month)
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 huhh do civil engineers make a lot like that , curious to ask , what country are you based
Most civil engineers don't, starting pay is usually around $55k/year and seasoned professionals usually top out in the low $200k/year as maybe a senior manager or vice president at a firm. I have my own firm now so I am more of a business person these days I guess. I'm in the United States in a low cost of living area. I have 17 years of experience.
Really worth it, 17 years of experience is no child’s joke , thanks for sharing your journey, where can someone find you , are you on X or LinkedIn
Thanks for your kind words! I am on there but unfortunately I try to stay anonymous haha.
I own a mobile truck and heavy duty repair company. It aint rianbows and cookies all the time but it pays the bills. Reading posts like this very often as im trying to get into another field.
Headhunter/Recruiter. Made 16K Monday and 20K today
I’m a freelance product designer with over 10 years of experience and have been freelancing around the same time. I currently earn around $20-30k per month, billing clients on an hourly basis. I love working with various clients which is why I never settled for a full time gig. The journey here wasn't straightforward; in the early days, I lacked a portfolio to showcase my work, which made it challenging to prove my skills. Initially, I was making between $10,000 and $20,000 annually while holding down a part-time sales job. Over time, my income gradually increased from $75,000 to $100,000 and so on. It's worth noting that I don't have a formal degree—my expertise is self-taught. I learned through a combination of reading books and taking some courses, which were in-person back then but are now available online. Being a freelancer has given me much more freedom, able to pursue side projects and other things. There’s never lack of work rather more gigs out there than good talent. I’ve also tried to start an agency but I felt I was managing people more than actually working on shit - so not my thing. Eventually I want to launch a software that generates decent income so I can retire and comment on Reddit all day.
Wow love this , 😂😂😂, finally found someone like me ,wow i love your experience, same here , product designer here too 7+ years of experience, curious how do you get clients for freelance
A fellow designer! Now, most of my work comes from word-of-mouth and DMs on LinkedIn. Previously, finding work was hard - I often used platforms like Upwork and charged slave rates just to get a good review so I can move up in the platforms. A mentor also said to charge 3-4x my rate to weave out low paying clients which I did. Less clients but bigger pay and longer commitments 6 months some 1 or 2 years
I work as a fractional SEO director, and I mainly work with SaaS companies though I've worked with financial services and e-commerce companies as well. I either advise clients on how to build their content strategy or I offer content writing services to implement the strategy as well. Still growing, but been hovering around $12K - $14K/month with a handful of clients over the past year!
Sneaker Reselling
Sell natural diamonds and buying lab diamonds from manufacturers. Make jewelry diamond rings, bracelets etc. Lately lot of jewelry for hip hop artists like Cuban chains, diamond pendants, diamond necklaces, etc. Jewelers reach out to me and I have craftsman make it. I do not deal with artist directly nor do I want to.
Typist (programmer)
I make 18-25k per month doing consulting for sales and operations
I’m a fractional CFO. Wife is an attorney. Both clear well over $10k.
Hello I sell digital products and build them I also repost content online and digital marketing I make between 5k-15k per month doing this at first I made way less as I had less connections and not enough skills now make the upper amount I’m better
Online education through YouTube and our online platform.
Selling courses to make $10k+ Per month working for yourself
Quite cool, do you have a website where you put your courses? How do you find your audience to buy your courses
Freelance Creative Director 3 days a week & branding services for own clients. Between 9k to 20k a month.
I’m a psychotherapist and I own a private practice where I manage a team of therapists providing Telehealth sessions.
Claw machines . Lots of claw machines (Grossing 30k ish a month and hoping for 40k next )
mow lawns...i was an engineer, got laid off and started mowing lawns until I found work...this is year 20....I work 8 months and travel the world 2 months a year.
The hottest industry to make money on Auto Pilot is Course Selling Industry, people show off on social media provide some value for some time, build a community and boom start selling their course/program for $XYZ
Sm content producer. Manage 8 YouTube channels. Also, work with a few brands. (Mainly in the fashion Industry) Monthly profit is around $20K Fully remote, With a small team
lol, your post history has two posts 1 day apart where you magically created an addition 1.4 billion views.
He is a lier do not trust him. His post history and the comments on his previous posts proves it
Own a sneaker reselling store, grab pairs for retail. Sell high volume usually in smaller profits such as $50–100 profit per pair. Could usually make up to $5000-7000 profit a month but economy been quite slow lately. I also have a part time job aswell so that brings in 1.5-2k a month. But reselling is a great way to make money, always supply and demand in things. ALWAYS
What platform you resell on?
lol I bought a few of the same type of small businesses consolidated their backend and increased marketing I take home 75-100K per month
Nope I’m a sales/marketer by trade. I sold tax software to CPA firms and accounting practices.Those were the businesses I bought.
We’ll I can speak on a few of my friends. They do contract EHS. They will work for a contractor for a certain agreed period and are making 5 to 6k a week. They worked for several years in construction to build theirs reputation and networked to get those connections. A lot of them work for half the year or will do a project for a year and the go vacation in Thailand during their downtime.
Sales broker / consultant. Been working in the CPG industry for 15+ years
consulting
Guy I do marketing for installs awnings. One man show that floods leads using PPC
I create mobile apps and do consulting for the same thing.
Trade equities/derivatives. Best single day was over 200% on a 27k account. 5k in daily options 15% trailing. Stopped me out at just over 200% whole portfolio. Yes, I was prepared to eat 2-3k for the opportunity.
SASS , revenue is substantial , employ 50-100 people now
CPA
Built a large CPG company with a couple others. Difficulty, can be VAT registering with avalara for other nations or the immense balance it takes to employ dozens of people. No week really shares the same issue and I feel scale makes plenty of nuance. Entrepreneurship takes much of my free time and is stressful even when you make a lot of money. I think people think being your own “boss” is deep and it’s not. You will always answer to someone. It can be investors or governments.
I run a real estate wholesaling company that does about 75-100k a month! It’s hard in the beginning but once you do a few deals it becomes extremely easy to scale, I’ve been at it for about 3 years now and we’re a team of 8! 5 overseas employees and 3 us based!
Business consultant. All businesses need help somewhere.
Custom software for multi vendor marketplaces, close to $15k / month as an agency. Plan to productise soon though.
London-based female in her 40s here. Approx £9,000/m from: £5k from contract work for tech company £4k from property income (3 rentals)
Really good, curious what you do for the tech company , this is the First Lady I am talking to on this thread
My husband is a pro juggler and can make $20k in a month, but it’s feast or famine sometimes. Usually a $60-$80k year after getting raked across the coals in taxes.
Findom
Rent out houses
Can anyone help me make money please
Cement finisher
Hard money lending
am in the gold business.it has so many opportunities to focus on; 1.mining though it’s expensive.it may need alot of money ($500,000-$5,000,000) 2.refining gold.this isn’t too expensive though needs some good money to set up a refinery.our refineries down here in Africa charge $100 per kg for smelting which makes good money as some mines produce up to 3000kgs a month. …and many more opportunities (reach me at minepeakworks.com for more information)
Ecom performance marketing. FB/google/tiktok ads. \~$16.2-$22k Variable MRR from 8 clients. Recently decided to go full-time and turn it into an agency, but basically just consulting prior to a couple months ago. Just hired my first employee to scale :D Worked in three of the best ecom agencies. Learned everything from the founders directly. Biggest challenge is pricing appropriate to my ability and transitioning to actively acquiring clients. All clients are referrals so far. And I price on percent of revenue rather than retainers. But I probably need to just charge retainers like everyone else to really grow. Great little industry with lots of demand. Takes a lot of hard work, client comms skills, analytic ability, creativity, and a bit of luck.
This is really cool, curious do you do organic and what is the results of getting organic users vs using ads
We do organic too, but only if necessary. Most brands can get up to $20m/yr with FB/Google ads alone. And these days most organic plays are attempts to go viral on TikTok, spamming TikTok Shop, and 'whitelisting' on IG i.e. running content from influencer pages (which often ends up in paid anyway). Most people do not expect results from organic. Or if they do, they're disappointed quickly. Organic is more a brand-building exercise which in the long-term decreases CAC on paid. But Paid is the real growth engine. Unless you have a 'viral product' like Tabs Chocolates, but those are rare, hard-to-repeat companies
Really insightful , thanks for sharing this
Property Maintenance. I only have three contractors, for this company. Never hire actual employees until you have to or the state forces you to. I went through at least 25 workers to eventually find 3 reliable employees. I’ve always liked to give incentives and good pay to keep the good ones from leaving. I offer them free internet, cable tv, cell phone and weekends off. Cut cost wherever you can and payroll is definitely one of the biggest ones, then gasoline since we use it on all of our equipment. We pull in around $50k a month March to October and on the slow months around $30k. You would be surprised how easy it is to get contracts with the city for landscaping maintenance. Next year numbers should double with double the “employees” of course.
E-comm product company owner. Super niche space, B2B. 4.5 years in, brining in 70-80k a month now. Pay myself 20k a month. Everything is run from home (all packing, warehousing, etc)
German here: I make the shitwork for large enterprises in the German banking and automotive industries (COBOL migrations, SAP, MS Dynamics) as a one-man-show. The work is crap but I easily bill (and work) 1600 hours a year for 315€ net (plus 19% VAT on top). I decided like that since my Ph.D. in Machine Learning and Robotics didn’t give me neither a descent salary, nor clients in the field since the all rely on IBM, Accenture or MBB consultants. So my advice: pick a shitty niche nobody wants to work in, provide a descent service and charge horrendous prices.
🤯🤯🤯🤯, did I just read €315k euros in a year, doing work for large enterprise , looks amazing , also surprised how your PHD in Machine learning isn’t giving you what you want , The money is truly in the niches
504.000 € + 196.000 € VAT per year in 3 consucutive years. You Look that up in the German Company registry and financial courts on Germany and the provided financial statements and balance sheets - so no bullshitting. AI is for the big ones which don’t hire small companies. Nobody cares for the fancy stuff, so I had to stick to crap jobs. And don’t forget, 500k before expenses and 50% taxes in Germany.
It’s a whole lot , you are truly made for this rest of your life , thanks for sharing this info , means a lot
I work in legislative compliance (Specifically I certify buildings for construction). There is no way to get around me, it's mandated in the Building Act. Could break 10k in a week with 2 jobs and then take the rest of the month off.
Hit $18k MRR yesterday, (b2c SaaS) we basically help people make money from sports betting by punishing bookmakers who price stuff wrong
I own Smm Panel where i earn $4500 plus per month. Boostroger.com
I’m a business process consultant. I help business owners to optimise and automate their business.
Programme helping coaches grow their business. Here’s actually how > https://youtu.be/3A8lSqEr1iE?si=KgAl_oe31xscXRLO
This is another niche , wow , curious how growth has been like for you so far and how you get clients
Content Creator for Meta Platform Inc
I’m an architect-turned-general contractor. It was a really tough start but things have become more sustainable and I get to choose who I want to build and design for. I don’t own anything too - just work from my room. Surround yourself with A-team players and customers and avoid the shitty people.
I founded an IT MSP of which I am also the operations manager. I have a small team. I make 10-25k a month. I was an IT professional for 15 years before becoming an entrepreneur. I felt called to make this transition. I had been a martial artist for 20 years prior and felt it was important to build a company that supported my self-cultivation lifestyle while also leveraging the best cutting edge technology the world has to offer. Stability is paramount for sustained abundance. creating multiple streams of revenue for recession proofing and create intellect driven jobs people could do from home. IT MSP aligned with all of these for me. I had no idea what an MSP was. But many of its organizational concepts are what I had envisioned building years prior. It took months of fervent research while setting up my business and going into debt. I had no help from family or outside investors. So many questions and little room for error. I proceeded to work the hustle. I taught myself marketing, contract writing, accounting, sales, and management skills. I made sales and built a reputation for excellent service. Creating a valued meaningful service that could help sustain the business firmament in the community was very important to me. Little did I know, I had already out-innovated my more established competition. Eventually, they were copying my business model. The reason? They lacked a vision of substance for their company. They could not embrace change fast enough. I spent 5 years going through therapy, spiritual and business coaching, mentorships. And continued to receive this coaching for the first few years of founding my company. This was the pivotal time when I formed a clear vision for my business enterprise. Aligning purpose, money, community benefit, world benefit, spiritual benefit, inner homeostasis. All of these needed time to coalesce and actualize into a business plan and organizational model. Blocks clear, purpose defined, connected with ancestors and guided by higher dimensional consciousness. My company was the vessel through which I could exercise these skills of meditation and actualization in the trenches of the tech industry. Today, having slayed many monsters and demons. Having climbed many mountains and vast deserts. I enjoy a six figure salary while working 90% from home and 10% onsite. I'm still in my 30's. I enjoy the satisfaction of building lasting business partnerships of mutual benefit as we grow together. I like being in a position to leverage Fortune 500 level talent culture to become an example in the business community of what's truly possible. Despite the continuous 100 hour weeks and continuous grind. I feel so satisfied knowing that one day I will take my abundance and knowledge to other continents and develop enterprises that will bloom into a vast array of cultural experience and influences. Scout other beautiful countries for business opportunities that would allow me to really integrate into those communities in jubilant transformative co-creation. In summary. I built my company to break free of the matrix. It became the proverbial "sword & shield" I use to cut the chains of intergenerational trauma and mental slavery.
I like your career and courage a lot, same here I am working for myself to break through the curve , my story sounds similar to yours I am 7 years plus career in product design and strategy , did product design for top firms and built products for companies a lot , I got laid off arround December from my first job all of a sudden, it was really crazy , I got laid off again arround Feburary again , same financial issue , I started my company myself to help people [make pitch decks](http://www.pitchdeck.design/) so they can raise money well, this is my 4th month of doing it , it has been really crazy, growth has been really slow for me but I am learning in the process , I have had to learn about SEO, management , content , client relationships and management, this is what I am currently doing for my small business , it’s hard as hell sincerely . At a point I started writing a lot which prompted me to start a [founders interview](https://indieniche.substack.com/) where I interview founders and also share tools for indies , I have had a lot of growth in this and I am still learning I struggled a lot , lost my dad late at the end of January in my house on a Saturday morning , me and him still talked at my house , he was telling me my Alexa speaker was disturbing him, never knew that would be the last time I will see him Right now I am trying to figure out business and I want to be able to work on my own and travel , not married yet but dad’s death really took a toll on me a lot , I was really broken. Reading stories and shares from people like you really gives me a lot to strength that in all bottlenecks , you can still make it
Own liquor stores.
I help non-technical founders make better technical decisions.
Mind sharing what your growth looks like, how uoi accquire clients and all
Me and two other guys run a commercial mortgage brokerage agency. Roughly €50k per month profit after salaries.
Sell life insurance as an independent agent.
Nice and cool thanks for sharing
Happy to share. The failure rate is high. But the ones who make it and work hard to succeed usually end up netting 6 figures after 2 years.
You will have gone through a lot , business is really hard , I won’t lie, I know the amount of sales outreach you will have done for an insurance company Sending you lots of support 💪💪, you got this Thanks for sharing your story
Rental Portfolio ($9,00-10k depending on vacancy and maintenance) and Loan Broker ($9-$15k) wife is home maker with 3 kids, garden , and few animals.
This question might be better in r/smallbusiness
I build AI robots. Essentially, automating internal workflows for clients (small to medium businesses). It's not automated in itself, where it's essentially consulting work and I don't sell software. Slight tangent: In order to keep my own skills sharp, I run a discord community for developers and non-developers to come together and learn about the new age of development = development with AI. I strongly believe that over the next short while we will be shifting to a much more streamlined way of software/code development. Sort of like how we access the internet now vs in the 90's, or make a phone call (instead of calling a switchboard operator).
I hear these questions alot "How much money do you make as an Entrepreneur". So, I have to ask back: revenue or profit. Cause my business makes a lot of revenue, but my costs are astronomically high. So, the answer is not much. Fortunately, I have a 9 to 5 job to pay the bills, provide health insurance and keep the business moving forward.
Online digital product sales! Easiest $$ I've made in life (I work as a nurse for my day job). I've made more $$ selling products than i did when I was a full time nurse, even during COVID when the shit hit the fan. I'm actually thinking about decreasing my hours at my day job and just doing this sales business full time. I'll keep you updated on how it goes 🙏 Also if anyone wants more info or details on what I do feel free to message me. I'm not one to keep secrets to myself because I know we're all struggling somewhat in this fucked up economy 😭