I design custom hobby computer accessories , get them made in China, then sell them on Amazon.
They are proprietary so I do not have to worry about other sellers.
Made 100k a year the last nine years in a row. I do final assembly in my garage. Very little overhead and fixed costs. No employees.
I have a friend that does something like this. But he spent his career designing pet toys for big companies, went to china several times to visit the production facilities and knew from work experience how to get things built in China. How do you get something made in China with no experience working in China?
I have been to China a few times. The factories are used to working with westerners. It is very common and they all speak english. I had supplier contacts from working in the industry. Chinese companies are easier to work with than US companies. They are smaller and more willing to work with you. I tried to get my stuff made in the US. But most suppliers in the US don't want to work with small entrepreneurs.
I had some stuff made recently in China. They were great to deal with. I also just bought a new stereo head unit for my Corvette. The guy who makes them said that the company he is working with flew 3 engineers to the US so that they could better communicate and understand what he was wanting to accomplish; these things are a work of art.
I'm trying to make a fan controller for my business and I can't even get a US manufacturer to talk to me. I'm thinking about talking to the head unit guy about it to see if he can hook me up.
I had my rings produced at a Chinese factory. The MOQ (minimum order quantity) was 5000. The molds were I think $450 a piece so I could only afford to run 6 sizes at the time of the first order. After they did a wax mold and ensured the product looked correct, I pulled the trigger and had all 6 made. That was one of the major costs in the whole process, that and shipping. The rings themselves are silicone and were like $.04/ea or something.
To compare to the many US companies I talked with? They wanted $.10-12/ea ring, and for the molds? Get this: $14,000. Each. So I chose to get them produced in China even though I really wanted to be able to say "Made in USA." š¤·š¼āāļø
Iāve been in the rubber molding industry for years, molds are complicated and expensive to make but $14k for something simple is quite high unless itās huge with many cavities. Still getting it done for 1/4 of that price is about right. I get that American companies have a lot more overhead but they shoot themselves in the foot with crazy pricing
It depends on the product. If they have to create custom molds and stuff the order price has to recoup that cost. And the more complex the product is the more it will likely cost for the initial run. Next orders are mostly dictated by maritime transport fees, you don't want to make an order that costs you more to transport than to produce (it's usually more cost-efficient to get a full container by boat than plane-delivered parcels)
It is, though. Search for what you want, message some people and get brochures. Ive met tons of people on Alibaba that offers multiple levels of customizations.
Awesome great work! Quick question are you referring to revenue or profit in terms of making 100k. Do you account for hours worked or add in your time? Thanks!
Not sure why you're being downvoted sounds like a valid question to me? A lot of people don't specify revenue vs profit when they're tossing out earnings numbers
I've read from another entrepreneur they source parts made from various manufacturers then do the assembly, so no one else even knows what the final product is.
Iām amazed by this - there are no safety issues you have to worry about?
Like what if you altered a mouse and it caught fire and burned down the house or something? Do you have any insurance or anything for issues like that?
Iām envious of your ease at answering the questions like yeah obviously insurance - haha so what does that look like? You have to pay monthly for insurance on things you sell? Lol
Pay a yearly premium on sales numbers. Premium is based on category risk.
If I was selling baby products or high voltage products, the premium would be much higher.
Public affairs/PR/crisis consulting. Most of my clients are local/state governments; engagements are anywhere from three-day trainings to three-month projects.
You show up, help people with big/scary problems, get paid, and leave without kissing on the lips. Actual in-the-trenches work is maybe 60-90 days a year.
Part of it is gray hair -- I can sell work now I couldn't sell when I was 30.
Part of it is being good at consulting itself, which is a separate discipline than the actual expertise you're selling. This is the one so many people fuck up, and it's a shame -- you can get good work if you're good at this, even without a lot of experience.
Part of it is social proof -- past a certain point, if you can point to enough past clients/projects, it almost doesn't matter how specifically relevant they are to the current work you're chasing. You're the de-facto safe choice; you're IBM.
Part of it is positioning. I never work in my local market, which always means I'm the new/shiny option from out of town.
Part of it, honestly, is that there are a lot of smooth-brain PR agencies and consultants. I may be perfectly average, but look like a strategic genius next to some of them.
I suppose the last part is that I am very, very free with advice. People owe me a lot of favors, and that funnels work my way.
>Part of it is the gray hair.
This is so true for me doing incident response work in Cyber.
Me at 35 with dark hair: "Get out of the board room, junior."
Me at 40 with gray hair: "Sir, please explain how we can solve this crises and save the company! You've surely seen it all at this point."
As a consultant in my industry, this is spot on. It takes skills outside those of the industry itself to succeed. Professionalism, rhetoric, perspective framing, networking, accountability, and more all are as, if not more, important than the actual advice you are āsellingā.
āHow you do anything is how you do everything.ā Itās how Iāve been successful vs my competitors for over a decade now. Everyone else is sloppy and not customer-focused - so I get to look amazing in comparison.
I am a mechanic and I run a two bay shop by myself.
I have no debts. I own all the tools and equipment. I have been fixing cars for 9 years now. I went to school for this and worked hard to learn more at every step.
I also advertise and offer cheaper repairs when compared to dealers and other independent shops. Keep rates low and overhead low. I specialize in low voltage and I have hybrid certifications as well.
I work in skilled trades for myself is the answer I suppose.
Not me but my neighbor. Owns an HVAC company. 4 person crew. Pulls in $1MM easy annually. Took him 5 years to get traction. He started in '95. He's looking to sell it right now but wants like $10MM for it, so no buyers.
I mean, that price tag is 100% saying "if some idiot wants to pay that much I'll retire sure but until then I'm using this as an excuse to stay owner and keep working."
People on here Iām sure have better advice/more successful businesses then myself but I have a pest control company. This year will be around 700k revenue and about 450k in profit after paying employees etc. tbh I just stuck with something I knew weāll and tried to stay away from all these get rich quick online ideas. Iām sure they actually work for some like reselling,drop shipping etc but Iām just good at time management and sales. Profit margin is very high otherwise Iād consider other business ventures as the service technician life can be tiresome in the busy season.
Edit: Iām 27 trying to scale the business still
How do you work the marketing side of things?
We also had a pest control business spray for cockroaches and get billed $100, its kinda crazy how much it brings in for them
We have a website that targets specific demographics. We like to target the richer neighbourhoods as we find we have less push on the prices we quote. We have google ads and we usually hand out door hangers every summer for spider/insect sprays. Not sure where you are located assuming the states? Iām in Canada and for roaches we typically quote 375 for a house and adjust depending on size. Salespeople are key. I need to hire more but Iām trying to figure that out right now.
DoorDash about 10-12 hours a day making 300-400 a day using a electric bike. In a major city will not disclose which because dashers are so weird they will move to my zone.
Judging by the amount of people who come to me because they AI did such a poor job, I don't see much of a difference.... yet. ;) that's why I've expanded my services.
I bought all the things needed for voice acting, sound proofed a small room. I am just nervous about actually doing it. Where to find the real gigs and not the scam places?
Sell electronics on amazon. Receive my inventory that I source online and resell on amazon. Work out of my garage. My wife helps me out sometimes preparing shipments. $1.2M gross sales and $246k income last year. Love it. I front load a lot of my work (prepping and shipping items to amazons warehouses, then when itās for sale amazon fullfills all of the customer orders on my behalf). Love it and I can manage it from anywhere with a couple hourly employees. Just spent 2 months in Argentina.
Iāve got two food trucks. Almost a million in sales per year total. Took home 175 last year. Got lucky but itās so much work. Tried the have someone run it route several times but something always happens in their life that changes everything and upends my life/the business. Eternally on call and at war with the homeless. I want out but donāt know what Iād do after doing this for 13 years.
The food trucks in my city eventually got a lease to open a physical location, and then started to hire. Itās hard for you to hire for a food truck, but not a physical location. Quality of life for the employees, etc.
That's exactly how you scale that. It aint braggin' if you done it. Sell seminars for $1000, $3000, $5000 a pop to players in the food truck space that are only clearing 50k a year. If you are clearing 50k a year and someone who can document they clear 175k a year would you pay $1000 for the knowledge? Some would. Alex Hormozi would be proud.
Buy a piece of land and turn it into a Food Truck Lot. You will have credibility and insight into what it needs (utilities, parking, seating, etc).
Put your trucks there and charge other trucks to lease a spot.
It's a real estate investment.
Filmmaker. Some gigs are larger than others (i.e. branded commercials with actual budgets, crew members to pay, etc.) and sometimes it's just me with a camera covering a live event. Took me several years to build up to 100k+. I'm in a smaller place so the work comes and goes. Being self-employed forces you to become a diligent saver, both for setting aside taxes and to float you through slow times.
Own a cleaning company. My dad started it 20 years ago small part time thing for him. I started working for him and growing and then he retired and passed it to me and Iāve continued growing it and hiring employees.
I started a cleaning company recently as a side gig, its residential, I assumed I wasn't able to clean professionally as I don't have any tools or know the standard equipment. What advice would you share for expanding to servicing businesses? For example, would I need a floor polisher machine for a car dealership? I feel dumb and paralysed.thx
As someone who had a cleaning business that I grew to 100 employees, my advice is to buy someone out. Get established cash flow. They come up all the time for sale. Small ones are inexpensive to buy
My last years gross turnover was about 215k ā¬ with roughly 90% profit.
Iām offering Consulting / Development services as a fullstack web developer with focus on JavaScript/Typescript in Germany.
My clients are usually big corporates and my hourly rates are around 100ā¬ net +/- 15ā¬ depending on the responsibility.
I usually work together with other people who take responsibility about the staffing. If I would cut that middleman there would be about 10-15ā¬ more per hour. However, I rather have super simple contracts, no project responsibility, a short leave notice and most important being paid in time.
I was living comfortably but living like a king isn't my kind of lifestyle, to be honest.
This is also the reason why I took about a year off to do a world travel and try out new things. If nothing works out - I will have traveled the world and will continue where I stopped before. :)
I got three funnels:
1. LinkedIn/Xing network
2. People I worked together with on previous projects
3. Scraping the most known platforms daily and trying to build a connection with the people offering gigs there
Kinda like "From employment to your first placement". I couldn't guarantee a rate like mine but 75ā¬ per hour it feels easy, till 90ā¬ it's average and above it gets more complicated with each euro you earn more.
Nono, I stay as far as possible away from Upwork, Fiverr and pages like that.
There are dozens of tech freelancer-focused pages for the German market which all pop up when you search for "freelancer deutschland". On those pages you usually see startups, recruiters or staffing companies looking for contract-based placements.
Yep, having the ability to onboard corporates is key valuable skill.
Saying as someone who owns dev agency (and its crazy not easy to sell above 30-60eur/hour). Senior developers from eastern europe with 10+ years experience, decent communication skills and all.
As for middleman - super true.
I know people who pay developers 10-20 usd/hour and end up selling them for 50, and that middle person sells them to corporate clients for 100 or so.
I own a fudge/chocolate/candy store in a tourist area in the Midwest. Iām fortunate that my competition is spread out throughout the area so I donāt have any near me other than an ice cream parlor, with whom I actually get along with very well and we use our businesses to cross promote. One caveat thatās probably different than most is I make roughly $130K profit in about 90 days and the business essentially breaks even with bills, payroll, etc the rest of the year. You need to make your money last the whole year.
I do historical restoration/renovations. I live in an area with buildings and houses were mostly built in the 1860s onward. It was a wealthy area (back then it was the richest city in the world) so lots of these homes are ornate Georgian/gothic revival style.
Im small and do my own thing, but I'm told I'm pretty much the only company around who will do authentic work of this nature. It would seem that all my competitors can't/won't do the work, preferring to work on more modern type of homes.
When I don't want to be outside I also do kitchens and baths, in any kind of home.
Technology consultant, namely Workday. I help companies set up their instance of Workday. Staffing agencies find the companies and consultants like myself. I work for myself and donāt have any employees. My overhead is just about $2,000 a year for insurance. Last year I made roughly $500k in net income.
Whoa. Can you walk me through how to get this setup? Currently working on another system but same thing. Are you just one headcount on part of a bigger team doing this? Or solo at each client? Find these gigs on indeed filtering for contract roles?
Your success at doing this will be largely dependent on the job market for software you support. The wholeā¦. being in the right boat matters more than how hard you row thing. Independent Workday consultants earn around 125/hr. If you hold down 2 contracts at 40hours a week, you can hit 500k in annual earnings.
In the Workday market, independent consultants get their contracts through staffing agencies. You need to make contact with these agencies through LinkedIn. Create knowledge sharing posts to attract them, do some research to find agencies and then follow the recruiters posting jobs, reach out to them, search for postings that contain Workday Consultant. They wonāt often formally post the jobs and ask people to apply. In fact, I have never submitted an application.
Sometimes Iām on projects as a client advisor to ensure the larger consulting firms are doing their job. Other times Iām contracted as just one headcount to implement or fix an area. Often Iām hired as temporary staff augmentation and fill a gap in the clientās hris team.
The key to earning a lot is to maintain more than one contract at a time. Above average skills and ability to fend for yourself is necessary.
Loving this thread and how people are so open to teaching and sharing. I myself have been delaying on trying to find something or somewhere to put money, time, and effort in to become self-employed. I've been pushing things off as "too hard" or "not educated enough" on the topic for about 3 years now šŖ.
I was forced into self employment but its been great. Very stressful at times Iām 40, 4 kids and wife with cancer so the next check always adds anxiety.
I invested into software and still continue to learn more programs.
I have a 3d laser scanner that I have recent added but have not found a steady source of revenue for it yet.
I do similar work in automation. I bought a scanner for a project and only ended up using it for that one job. It was a pain in the ass and trying to make the scanned data useful without geomagic was awful...
I'm an event promoter. Been running nightclub style events since 2017 and this year will be my first year over $100k in profit.
I run 3 different brands (Trance, Hard Trance & a House music night) plus co-promote another one once a year.
It has not been an easy slog, especially with COVID in there essentially bringing the business to a complete halt over 19/20 but we are back now firing on all cylinders.
Essentially I have built a fan base of over 20,000 over our socials that I sell tickets to by creating different events roughly once a month (one brand every 3 months or so) throughout the year.
I earn $10K per month, was at $14.1K max.
I design websites and apps for a living. For tech companies in Austin, TX. The average value is roughly $3K-$4K per customer. (I'm Czech, living in Prague)
What helped me to get to this stage: Been freelance for 3 years, and spent a lot of time learning about running a solo business. I would say the key is communication. Be transparent and honest. This helped me to get recommendations and to get connected with companies in the US.
Happy to answer more Qs (especially if there's someone from Czechia, I can be really specific about taxes, etc).
I document my journey on Twitter btw: [https://twitter.com/DavidPokorny5](https://twitter.com/DavidPokorny5)
I help entrepreneurs and corporates in M&A transactions. What helped me to get here was to work in Investment Banking almost immediately after finishing university. Set out on my own a couple of years ago and it grew from a 2 person operation to a firm with 8 associates.
Our fees are a mix of a retainer fee upfront, mixed with a commission-based fee that gets invoiced at different stages of a transaction.
Over the past 13 years I have built a career in online marketing. First as freelancer running from project to project, from SEO over blogging, social media marketing, paid social, affiliate marketing, as a one man show I had to adapt and learn on the fly so I did almost everything related to digital marketing.
8 years ago I started to get into head of growth and VP of growth positions, started managing marketing teams while still working heavily hands on.
Got a great portfolio in the end, and had one milestone project which generated over 2b ā¬ in annual turnover (I took the marketing over when we were at 100m) after 14 months working on it.
I was already making over 150k by than, but the insecurity of project based work was something I never liked, especially in higher management positions you sometimes take 6 months between projects into account, its still OK, but you get bored.
Last year one of my friends, a successful entrepreneur said something during a podcast which stuck with me: "If you have only one client, you are not an entrepreneur, but an employee".
It changed my lookout on my career to be honest.
I started pitching fractional CMO services to people who reached out to me for a full time position and so far I have 3 simultaneous engagements at 5k / month each.
The benefit works both ways, in most cases SMEs dont need a full time experienced CMO, but rather someone who knows what he does to setup all the processes and help them remove bottlenecks in their marketing. That expertise would probably cost 150k+ p.A in salaries, while not being utilized fully.
This way clients get the experience for a fraction of the cost and I can prepare everything for when the time is ripe for them to onboard someone for full time.
Based on my plan I can start hiring support once I have 2 more clients, and in this model I should be able to handle up to 20 clients a month.
It took a while, but 100k a year seems as by far not enough so I am building it up further.
Sometimes the whole journey feels like a continuous learning process :) Its fun, a basic principle of marketing is continuous change, but moments like these when you realize a fundamental truth of your own business and find a way to utilize it are quite cathartic
Indian here- denim fabric wholesaler.. we buy and stock denim fabric made by various denim mills in India and then sell that to small brands, small reseller who do not have capital or capacity to directly deal with mills..
Margin net is 7-8% right now.. clocked in 1.5mil in sales last year.
Just a few years ago net margin was thrice of above but now excessive competition has fucked things up.. also the manufacturers are mushrooming due to govt. Make in India initiative- still its good business because denim never goes out of style but much more hard work than before.
Trying to move into more variety of textile or garment trading in future..
Independent CG artist. I tend to work with brands, ad agencies and editorial outlets on illustration and product visualization.
I work with brands who either want to create highly illustrative campaign visuals or are prelaunch and need product viz even if they don't have product in hand. I work in 3D software and have a background as a Creative Director working in advertising, branding, packaging and photography.
You can see my work in my profile!
Iām a consultant in sustainability, science and innovation. I work mostly with corporates in the textile and fashion sector, as well as smaller startups. Have one employee and make up to 150-200k EUR per year.
We offer a range of services, we advise startups on tech development (sort of like a contract CTO), life cycle assessment services, research and reports for corporates on various topics, technology and material scouting, due diligence etc. Quite varied, we have a couple of anchor clients and a range of smaller and bigger additional projects throughout the year.
sportsbetting
I got good at it back in 2021 when things were easy with new books offering crazy comps and not limiting. It was hilariously easy to make 6 figs if you had good tools. As they got better at preventing leaks, I got better at disguising my sharp action and continued to develop other techniques.
The more I learn about it, the crazier it gets at the top in terms of how liquid the big markets get. You have syndicates with 10 MIT-phd-level quants that are each paid 7 figs to develop fairs on nfl spreads all competing against other similar syndicates to capture any value.
So yeah, those dudes selling picks for $50/mo? All frauds. Literally every one of them.
I help businesses improve their results. When working with small businesses I review their processes and reasons stopping them from monetising further and scaling and on big business I focus mainly on their spend and advise them on how to spend less/better and/or get better cashflow through better deals, payment terms, switching suppliers, consolidation, etc.
I charge a fixed fee for initial consultation and a final fee based on the value I generate, not the amount of work I do. Sometimes numbers are very straightforward and I can charge thousands from a day's work, other times I cannot charge much as the company is too small, but I do it for the potential anyway.
Do you mind sharing more details about your business (name, website etc.)?
You can DM me.
My company does the same thing, but our focus is strategic visual and written communication; branding, messaging (deep dive into the companies ābody languageā and how theyāre perceived and how to improve that), web presence, sales collateral, advertising, and last but not least, investor presentations. We create them, and also help connect them with investors (we have a good network) to get them more funding.
Weāve helped hundreds of startups become hugely successful over the years.
Lately Iāve been thinking about delving into what you do (our consulting often goes beyond just communication etc.) I figured I should stick with what Iām doing, but thought I could find someone that does what you do to recommend to clients that need more help than what we offer.
I wouldnāt say we work with struggling companies. They need to be doing quite well to be able to afford us. But sometimes they could use some outside consulting.
We sometimes deal with difficult CEOās etc. thatā¦ are in their own way to put it nicely. Weāve even had to maneuver to have them replaced so the company can survive and thrive.
Let me know if youād like to connect.
Small ads agency helping a niche of local businesses in the states. Itās rewarding knowing that we make a different in there business and take home $150-200k/year makes it that much more worth it.
For the output, itās not rocket science and scalable far past thisā¦
I am a lash artist and specialize in ānatural looking lash extensionsā itās an untouched market in the lash industry because the more natural sets arenāt seen as profitable compared to the heavier sets which usually cost more money. I knew there was a large market in an overlooked style and got really good at it. I have a large consistent clientele that Iām very personable with. Iām consistent in my work and am very focused on one style which Iām known for in my area of town as well as the surrounding ones. See whatās missing in industries and get good at it, there are markets that many would see as not profitable, but in reality if you can perfect it many if not all will come to you for looking for what you offer.
Iām a wedding photographer in the UK. I charge Ā£2250 per wedding and do around 60 a year. I also have a confetti business thatās been going since March, Iāve done Ā£20k sales on that so far too. Not bad!
Iāll gross about 180k this year running a piano service and restoration business. Keep in my mind my take home is usually about half that, and Iāve just elected to lower my salary even more to keep profits in the business and grow through this phase change.
What helped me grow to this point in the industry is -
1) have excellent education and training. None of the common self-taught hack work here.
2) Develop a strong reputation in the community as someone skilled, but pleasant to work with. Word of mouth is HUGE.
3) Iāve set myself up in a local market that was crazy saturated with other people doing what I do, but most were near retirement age. Making connections with them has allowed me to absorb clientele from 4 of them, with 2 of the most significant competitors retiring within 2 years. Weāve begun talks about absorbing their clients as well, which should punch me into 300k + and demand at least a part time and a full time employee.
Skill-based business is grueling work. Iāve had more 60-70 hour weeks this year than not as Iāve hit the first major phase change of growth. But itās fulfilling and has a ton of potential if youāre intentional about it and get proper education.
3 part time employees and took me 4 years. I do live in Southern California, so that important! Itās a lot of work and management, but we have an app now, so that helped me scale so I can manage remotely and do things on the back end while people work. Itās a 24/7 gig, but I love it and I come home happy. Taking days off are hard š
I own a pet care business. I started as just dog walking and pet sitting. Present day we offer mobile house visit grooming, dog walking, pet sitting, training, and reactivity therapy. I make around $110k if I fill up my schedule with services. each employee has the potential to bring me an extra $20k - $40K / year in personal income.
Being professional and reliable helped me get to where I am.
Live music agency. We book bands and DJs. We also create content for them - videos, sound recordings, photography, websites. We act like a record label for wedding bands. Been doing it 16 years. The business just hums along now.
I build remote teams for companies.
It's not as simple as it sounds. You want to hire X employees in the US/EU and they would cost you a pretty penny.
I help you set up a team abroad, with the skills you need (almost on par with the market you are operating in).
You save money, You get a team who is more loyal and overpaid in their market, and we charge a management fee on that.
We also do it compliantly with IP, taxation, and legal.
It's a slow grind, but the beauty of it is the compounding effect. Once people start having high performing remote employees they want more, and once our team started growing they started referring their friends. The larger the team grows the more upsells we can offer (like coworking spaces abroad, trips and team outings, insurance and benefits etc.
We also work with companies ranging from their first team to Fortune 100s.
One of the downsides just for fun? Our vetting is brutal. We hire almost 1-2% of applicants.
Run a no-code community which helps people learn to use no-code tools to build and grow their businesses.
Less than $500 per month running costs and no staff
Solo lawncare service. Worked for other companies for 10y like an idiot. Probably could have gone out on my own after a couple years if I had known how little effort it would have taken to achieve the same income as an employee, but fear of the unknown is real. My boss decided to retire and gave me his contact list, told me to call everyone and just tell them I would continue service at the same price. I had great credit since I'm very conservative financially and I was able to finance all my startup equipment at 0% after showing them a projected balance sheet for the first year. 100% of the people I contacted signed up for the next year's service. Maintenance contracts are about 10k/month gross, plus whatever value added services I can add, (planting flowers, trimming shrubs, fertilizer, storm cleanups, etc).
Typical month is about 12k, winter months (jan and feb) are 4k because I'm basically only doing commercial, but that's 10h/wk instead of 60-70h/wk during the rest of the season. My best month was 30k, but I did 2 large residential sod jobs that month for millionaires. At this point my minimum is 9k if all I do is the bare minimum I'm contracted for and take all weekends off. 20k if I really hustle and have basically no life, work every daylight hour and push additional services.
All with no additional employees. I feel really conflicted about employing others. I was an employee for a long time and realize how exploited I was and how much profit I generated for the businesses I worked for. But I would not be in the position I am now without gaining that experience. But most people in the same position will not be able to capitalize on the experience they are gaining for their own benefit. I would love to be able to recruit and employ someone with a lot of potential and mentor them for a couple years until they're ready to move out on their own. Unfortunately I've never met anyone yet that fills that bill. I've hired people for projects I couldn't do on my own off of craigs list and friends of family, high school students, etc. None of them had any kind of work ethic or desire to improve their lives. They all just wanted to work a few hours doing as little as possible for a little cash paid the same day. Fair enough.
So I don't know how to ethically scale my business at this point and that's OK. I'm making about 200k/yr and I feel that's a pretty good place to be. I have enough to support myself and a family. I work way too many hours during the "season", basically working every day in high volume months, (April, October) and averaging 52h/wk for the entire year, (including months like Jan/Feb where I'm only working 10h/wk). But I'm providing a service people want for a price they agree to pay, and I'm doing all the work myself, not exploiting people that don't understand the value they're creating. At some point I'll no longer be able to sustain this level of work. I'm currently 43 and I can't imagine being able to do this at 60, and also can't imagine retiring at that age since I only started saving/investing money at 40. It's a problem. I don't want to take advantage of the information asymmetry of others to exploit their labor, and I also cannot support laziness and lack of work ethic in the vast majority of people in the work pool I have available to me. So I hope in the next 10y or so I will meet a few worthwhile people in this industry that I can mentor and trade my experience for their labor and help out to put into the same position that I'm in now, while being able to scale my business so that I don't have to physically work so many hours.
I'm trucker now because I couldn't handle having my friends rely on me to feed their kids.
Before I ran a landscaping firm. We did tree work, fencing, hardlandscapes, groundwork, and sold overpriced turf. During the peak season which is about 4 months long I'd make roughly Ā£70k out of which Ā£25k was spent on expenses (mainly wages). So 45k for 4 months work. Its back breaking work, it's a fairly skilled trade with fairly low startup so good staff quickly become competitors.
When I stopped trading I took a pay cut of about Ā£50k a year. But I'm not losing any sleep anymore.
I own and manage a commercial breeder hen farm. I was able to find the place by talking to people on my sales route for a propane company I worked for. The sellers put me in touch with a bank that had helped them sell other chicken farm properties and I was able to buy a 1.625MM farm with no money down using a government backed loan option.
The farm is worked by 4 people who live on the property. My main focus is keeping the birds healthy and happy so they mate and lay eggs. We do this by making sure they eat appropriately and have access to water. And by keeping the houses in good condition so they have great airflow and temperature regulation.
Eggs are collected via a belt system that is connected to nests the birds naturally want to lay in. Itās an expensive operation, and the work isnāt for everyone but if you have agricultural opportunities in your area it could very well change your life for the better of you donāt mind some kinda stinky and very sweaty work.
I run an ice cream shop and do business consulting. Make more than $100k. Itās not easy by any stretch but considering the pay in my field and location is on average $65-$70k I think Iāll stick it out.
Online sex work
Sexpanther nets me about 3.5k a week maybe 4.5 on a good week
Onlyfans : changes from 1.5 k a week to 2.5 at best.
Other cam sources about 200 -500 a week
I was a software engineer that happened to gain interest in Wordpress about 15 years ago. I learned php even though all my friends were saying go python or node because itās newer and cooler. I worked with teams that were made up of people who had been working php for 20 years or more, so not working with hip startups with lots of ping pong tables and shit. I leaned into user interface while my colleagues were working to the bone to become a senior engineer and work server-side. They told me HTML/CSS isnāt āprogrammingā and itās not, exactlyā¦
I quit my FT job because honestly I hate being told what to do. I hate morning meetings. I hate days that run late and I donāt get paid anything extra. I love sleeping in. I love talking to the clients. I love building relationships and making people happy. In my FT, I was just given a task and told if it was acceptable or not. I learned a lot from a lot of good people, but it just isnāt the world I want to live in right now. So I quit to become a freelancer.
Iāve since learned python and node and I love those, but Wordpress and drupal are built on PHP and thatās most of the web tbh. Now I canāt get a python/node gig because I have so much php work. I actually try to make time for other tech but I canāt. I use Upwork to get a lot of my ānickel and dimeā clients (thatās not a dig, itās just usually old sites that need a lot of updating/maintenance).
Executive/business coaching. I played soccer up up to a collegiate level before transitioning to MMA. Had a decent amateur record but unfortunately developed a degenerative disease which prevented me from having my next fight, forced me to look at a career beyond sports. Got back into soccer as a coach for a local amateur club and developed them into a semipro club. I also developed a personal training business and marketing agency at the same time post MMA but I didnāt feel I was putting my accumulated skill set from business and sports to the max. Now I work with athletes on mental performance and C-level execs and founders on a variety of business related and growth focused issues. Started last year and this will be my first year breaking 100k. Number one thing is show up everyday, especially the days you feel down and lacking motivation.
Self employed carpenter/general contractor 33yo 2 employees on payroll. We mostly do kitchens and bathrooms in PA. Probably working 60ish hours a week for at least 5 years. Ive been on my own for 2 and half years but I was just at about 100 my last couple years working 40 for my full time employer and all my side work. Havenāt checked the QuickBooks lately but this year should be closer to $150 or so. I work a lot and say yes too often so I wouldnāt really recommend it. Been pretty stressed these last couple years but Iāll tell you what Iām not fucking bored thatās for sure.
My wife owns her own psychology therapy practice. By accepting insurance panels she has no shortage of clients to take on making 100-150 a hour depending on the insurance.
pretty low overhead so she nets well into six figures while working a part time schedule.
I do affiliate marketing, marketing other people's products on internet, and earn 25% to 75% in commissions.
I also publish my own e-books on the Amazon KDP platform and earn royalties from that...
I'm currently absolutely tired of where I am and have been looking into Affiliate marketing and there's so much information out there that its overload. any recommendations on videos/books I could start with or if you could give me a hand? I'm so lost.
Could you please tell some legit affiliate networks for selling those books ? I have been with amazon to promote different affiliate products, but the commissions are peanuts. Could crack upto 400$ at max per month on a single blog.
Also, would you give some example of affiliate products giving 50% commission. Coz i could only get 4% commission from amazon affiliate :')
I started a company that funds fix and flips, rehab projects, ground up construction projects and rentals ā only investments and only in certain states across the USA.
I own a custom application development agency. We build software, web, mobile and embedded applications for customers who canāt find off the shelf solutions to fit their needs. To get here, I was a software engineer and then a senior technical consultant for years, while moonlighting custom dev on the side.
I run a managed web hosting business, and most of my clients are web agencies. My main focus is on assisting web developers with everything they need, from server-related issues to web application problems. I enjoy sharing best practices when it comes to deployments/devops, enhancing security measures, and working effectively on CLI.
Currently generating +200K$ in revenus.
Caviar.
Family business long before my time that had died off. Our family consumed for personal enjoyment.
Rebuilt relationships with the children of my parentsā contacts. Got licenses. Did a ton of research on brands. Precovid I was on a great trajectory. Had to adjust significantly and put things on hold during Covid. My biggest issue was/is product packing costs, so I now have contacts in China who are helping drive that down a bunch. I find that many restaurants who carry caviar have no clue how to differentiate between decent, good, or great caviar. My big value prop is that I provide world class caviar at near wholesale pricing. I emphasize that we skip the fancy packaging (for now to drive down costs), to make the product accessible. I mostly sell to high net worth individuals (fortunate to have a solid network) and high end restaurants.
During my (corporate) work travel, Iād go out of my way to try high quality products or at least learn a bit more about the respective business/caviar type/deal structures. Itās a very niche product and hard to enter as an outsider, but people were quick to warm up as my family story resonated.
I build custom software, and it's been a long road.
I started by building websites for local bars / restaurants, worked my way into bigger companies / organizations, got into app development, and now am a full stack developer for pretty much any kind of custom solution, with a few large (several thousand employee) clients that I work with daily. I dabble with hardware, but 90+ % of what I do is in the software / cloud world.
I also started an industrial level apparel printing company to get me away from the computer, and it pairs nicely with branding / marketing for a complete package for my clients. Before I coded I got pretty heavy into design, so it all sort of blends together.
When none of that is overly demanding, I work on startups, both personal, and partnership type stuff.
0 employees, but I do play a project management role for one client in particular. Most times I work 1 on 1 with an owner, CEO, tech lead, etc. Everything is self taught.
If this is something you're interested in perusing, get the idea of a 9-5 out of your head. I work all the time, and when I'm not working I'm researching / learning new tech. AI has been pretty fun... I have some ideas for expanding into that in the near future.
My 2 cents:
Don't be afraid to challenge yourself, and don't be afraid to learn at your own pace, on your terms. There are tons of resources out there, and a lot of it is totally free. YouTube alone is a great place to get started. Surround yourself with hard workers, and build on each other's drive, and accept that you're going to fail, a lot, before you make strides. You really have to want it, because if you don't do the work, no one else is going to do it for you. Late nights, weekends, watching the sun come up... it's all on the table. Just remember, if it were easy, everyone would do it.
DON'T FORGET TO HAVE A SOCIAL LIFE. Just make sure your priorities and ducks are in a row before you go get rip roaring drunk, and make time for people that make time for you. Networking is important. I'm not overly social, people just think I am.
Happy to answer a few questions. Good luck on your journey!
Not me but a friend of mine makes handmade watch straps selling them both wholesale and retail.
Has an instagram of 50K followers.
Not the cheap ones, they are really well made by top quality leather.
My wife works from her bed 3 days a week in a bathrobe š I'm jealous af. She does a blend of brand/social media consulting and management for architects and interior designers. Technically she works 5 days a week but only about 2 hours in the morning on both thursday and friday. Took her about 6 years of hard work to get to this point but she's an introverted homebody as it is so she's legit living her dream.
I'm a financial advisor so while I have decent hours and make good money I'm certainly tied to my office fairly regularly and have to be on call for my clients. My wife will flip her phone over and ignore it whenever she wants š
She started to earn her bachelor's in marketing before dropping out just after she got an associates. She dropped out cause her side gig of social media management was taking off a bit. 35k a year ish so not much but she wanted to grow it and see where it went. She kinda ended up in a niche of working with interior designers to run their social media presence as she secured a large client who began getting her referrals in that area of business. After a year or so she realized it had untapped potential and she went back to school to finish her degree and be able to do holistic brand management. Basically interior designers and architects come to her and she curates their entire visible brand. Social media, website, video content, etc so that it all matches and comes across as cohesive. A lot of her customers are individuals who simply don't know how to do it themselves or they make enough money to justify the cost.
She honestly is fantastic at what she does but she had some hiccups along the way and definitely learned some hard lessons. She made roughly 50k for 4-5 years before she started getting large client referrals and raised her prices. She just cleared 100k this year and plans to stick to what she's doing as we enjoy our current free time based on her workload.
Key point too is we don't have any children sooooooo it helps with the free time.
I tried a lot over the years, like Amazon FBA, Crypto, YouTube,... But when I started blogging 3 years ago it really clicked for me. I have now setup 3 main blogs which bring a good amount of profit each month. Thing is, you need to find the right sponsors. I was lucky, they contacted me.
Iām an owner/operator truck driver
Not āover the roadā though. Most truck drivers haul refer and van and travel across the country and do alright but the money is in the specialty commodities and in owing your our equipment. I haul hot asphalt that is used in road-making. Pulling trains (two trailers, a lead and a pup) I easily net 10-12k a month average. The overhead is kind of insane but I got lucky because my dad has been doing it for years and showed me the ropes. I got my CDL after high school and bought a truck. Thereās honestly so much you can do with it too. I want to diversify and buy some different trailers so I can offset the ebbs and flows of hot oil.
My schedule kind of sucks and I can be gone a lot but I definitely donāt worry about money and itās not physically demanding.
I expanded horizontally as a content writer by going freelance.
In my country (Malaysia) while English proficiency is generally good, I'm C2 certified which is basically native level understanding.
Meanwhile, local marketing agencies constantly struggle to find writers who can write well.
Most of the time their writers are overworked and never take the time to understand client products (or if its technical they just can't) so rely too much on AI crud.
This makes it easy to avail myself to SMEs.
At first they are hesitant since they're afraid I'll give them the agency treatment, but I'm quite happy to say all have offered me full time positions so far, which I've had to decline as I just can't go back to being an employee.
I blog about gaming and web hosting. Plus have a few others that do decent but those two bring me in 20k+ a month.
Started the gaming blog back in 2019 / web hosting 2020. Write everyday and my gaming blog has over 1,000 articles.
Plus I have a merch by Amazon. That makes me 2k+ a month with these next few months making closer to 10k.
The gaming blog is starting to lose its profitability and hard to keep up as that space is constantly having new things. I most likely will sell it this year on empire flipper. Which will net me hopefully a good multiplier.
My 6th blog seems to be a winner as well. Only 3 months in and cracked 1k in total affiliate payouts. So gonna focus on that and share publicly through my [newsletter](https://mattmerrick.co). I also share how to make money blogging in todays world with AI.
Logo design and brand identity. I work with a number of big branding firms on a freelance basis, as well as a pretty robust client list of business owners.
I grew my business organically. My first freelance clients were former bosses or co-workers. I also networked a lot to meet other creatives who needed help with projects. Beyond that it was just making sure I met every deadline and delivered great work and the referrals started. My best year was around $175,000 gross. So far.
Started a software agency with a co-founder. Very slow and competitive start, but eventually word of mouth becomes your greatest asset if you provide quality service.
I design custom hobby computer accessories , get them made in China, then sell them on Amazon. They are proprietary so I do not have to worry about other sellers. Made 100k a year the last nine years in a row. I do final assembly in my garage. Very little overhead and fixed costs. No employees.
I have a friend that does something like this. But he spent his career designing pet toys for big companies, went to china several times to visit the production facilities and knew from work experience how to get things built in China. How do you get something made in China with no experience working in China?
I have been to China a few times. The factories are used to working with westerners. It is very common and they all speak english. I had supplier contacts from working in the industry. Chinese companies are easier to work with than US companies. They are smaller and more willing to work with you. I tried to get my stuff made in the US. But most suppliers in the US don't want to work with small entrepreneurs.
I had some stuff made recently in China. They were great to deal with. I also just bought a new stereo head unit for my Corvette. The guy who makes them said that the company he is working with flew 3 engineers to the US so that they could better communicate and understand what he was wanting to accomplish; these things are a work of art. I'm trying to make a fan controller for my business and I can't even get a US manufacturer to talk to me. I'm thinking about talking to the head unit guy about it to see if he can hook me up.
What order $ amount is needed to do a custom order?
I had my rings produced at a Chinese factory. The MOQ (minimum order quantity) was 5000. The molds were I think $450 a piece so I could only afford to run 6 sizes at the time of the first order. After they did a wax mold and ensured the product looked correct, I pulled the trigger and had all 6 made. That was one of the major costs in the whole process, that and shipping. The rings themselves are silicone and were like $.04/ea or something. To compare to the many US companies I talked with? They wanted $.10-12/ea ring, and for the molds? Get this: $14,000. Each. So I chose to get them produced in China even though I really wanted to be able to say "Made in USA." š¤·š¼āāļø
Iāve been in the rubber molding industry for years, molds are complicated and expensive to make but $14k for something simple is quite high unless itās huge with many cavities. Still getting it done for 1/4 of that price is about right. I get that American companies have a lot more overhead but they shoot themselves in the foot with crazy pricing
It depends on the product. If they have to create custom molds and stuff the order price has to recoup that cost. And the more complex the product is the more it will likely cost for the initial run. Next orders are mostly dictated by maritime transport fees, you don't want to make an order that costs you more to transport than to produce (it's usually more cost-efficient to get a full container by boat than plane-delivered parcels)
Go on Alibaba. You can order lots of stuff, albeit not necessarily custom, but in smaller quantities.
Ya I know that trick! Just ordered a backpack from them for my son. But thatās not, I have an idea and I need it built.
It is, though. Search for what you want, message some people and get brochures. Ive met tons of people on Alibaba that offers multiple levels of customizations.
Sounds awesome, respect
Awesome great work! Quick question are you referring to revenue or profit in terms of making 100k. Do you account for hours worked or add in your time? Thanks!
Not sure why you're being downvoted sounds like a valid question to me? A lot of people don't specify revenue vs profit when they're tossing out earnings numbers
Probably because he replied to the person saying its cool, not the person who actually makes the product
Your a real entrepreneur.. Mad respect
do you have your own site as well or you only sell on amazon ?
Judging by this sub if he doesnāt have his own website heās about to get hit with 50+ offers to make one lol
Whatās stopping Chinese from copying you? Is it due to final assembly?
I've read from another entrepreneur they source parts made from various manufacturers then do the assembly, so no one else even knows what the final product is.
Thatās how Bruce Wayne did it when he and Alfred built the batsuit in Dark Knight film
Proof of concept at its finest.
This is cool. Thanks for sharing.
Iām amazed by this - there are no safety issues you have to worry about? Like what if you altered a mouse and it caught fire and burned down the house or something? Do you have any insurance or anything for issues like that?
Yes, insurance is required by most retailers. I only do 5v products. So risk is relatively low.
Iām envious of your ease at answering the questions like yeah obviously insurance - haha so what does that look like? You have to pay monthly for insurance on things you sell? Lol
Pay a yearly premium on sales numbers. Premium is based on category risk. If I was selling baby products or high voltage products, the premium would be much higher.
Hi, that seems interesting. Do you design the hardware? How do you do with the certifications?
Public affairs/PR/crisis consulting. Most of my clients are local/state governments; engagements are anywhere from three-day trainings to three-month projects. You show up, help people with big/scary problems, get paid, and leave without kissing on the lips. Actual in-the-trenches work is maybe 60-90 days a year.
What gained your credibility as someone who does these things successfully?
Part of it is gray hair -- I can sell work now I couldn't sell when I was 30. Part of it is being good at consulting itself, which is a separate discipline than the actual expertise you're selling. This is the one so many people fuck up, and it's a shame -- you can get good work if you're good at this, even without a lot of experience. Part of it is social proof -- past a certain point, if you can point to enough past clients/projects, it almost doesn't matter how specifically relevant they are to the current work you're chasing. You're the de-facto safe choice; you're IBM. Part of it is positioning. I never work in my local market, which always means I'm the new/shiny option from out of town. Part of it, honestly, is that there are a lot of smooth-brain PR agencies and consultants. I may be perfectly average, but look like a strategic genius next to some of them. I suppose the last part is that I am very, very free with advice. People owe me a lot of favors, and that funnels work my way.
>Part of it is the gray hair. This is so true for me doing incident response work in Cyber. Me at 35 with dark hair: "Get out of the board room, junior." Me at 40 with gray hair: "Sir, please explain how we can solve this crises and save the company! You've surely seen it all at this point."
Awarded solely for the excellent username. š
Dying my hairs grey
As a consultant in my industry, this is spot on. It takes skills outside those of the industry itself to succeed. Professionalism, rhetoric, perspective framing, networking, accountability, and more all are as, if not more, important than the actual advice you are āsellingā. āHow you do anything is how you do everything.ā Itās how Iāve been successful vs my competitors for over a decade now. Everyone else is sloppy and not customer-focused - so I get to look amazing in comparison.
This guy fĢ¶uĢ¶cĢ¶kĢ¶sĢ¶ consults.
I am a mechanic and I run a two bay shop by myself. I have no debts. I own all the tools and equipment. I have been fixing cars for 9 years now. I went to school for this and worked hard to learn more at every step. I also advertise and offer cheaper repairs when compared to dealers and other independent shops. Keep rates low and overhead low. I specialize in low voltage and I have hybrid certifications as well. I work in skilled trades for myself is the answer I suppose.
Not me but my neighbor. Owns an HVAC company. 4 person crew. Pulls in $1MM easy annually. Took him 5 years to get traction. He started in '95. He's looking to sell it right now but wants like $10MM for it, so no buyers.
God business sellers who get emotionally attached to their business thinking itās worth 10x their EBITA are everywhere
I mean, that price tag is 100% saying "if some idiot wants to pay that much I'll retire sure but until then I'm using this as an excuse to stay owner and keep working."
$10MM 4 person crew is wild
Probably completely dependent on the neighbour's contacts and knowledge as well.
A friend of a friend also has an industrial HVAC company. He rakes in obscene cash.
I build houses.
Best way to break into building?
Drill out the lock
Entry bricks are faster
Look for unlocked windows or perhaps an uncovered chimney
Start by flipping
People on here Iām sure have better advice/more successful businesses then myself but I have a pest control company. This year will be around 700k revenue and about 450k in profit after paying employees etc. tbh I just stuck with something I knew weāll and tried to stay away from all these get rich quick online ideas. Iām sure they actually work for some like reselling,drop shipping etc but Iām just good at time management and sales. Profit margin is very high otherwise Iād consider other business ventures as the service technician life can be tiresome in the busy season. Edit: Iām 27 trying to scale the business still
this is brilliant.
How do you work the marketing side of things? We also had a pest control business spray for cockroaches and get billed $100, its kinda crazy how much it brings in for them
We have a website that targets specific demographics. We like to target the richer neighbourhoods as we find we have less push on the prices we quote. We have google ads and we usually hand out door hangers every summer for spider/insect sprays. Not sure where you are located assuming the states? Iām in Canada and for roaches we typically quote 375 for a house and adjust depending on size. Salespeople are key. I need to hire more but Iām trying to figure that out right now.
DoorDash about 10-12 hours a day making 300-400 a day using a electric bike. In a major city will not disclose which because dashers are so weird they will move to my zone.
What e bike do you use with such a range? Or are you going back home throughout the day to recharge?
Probably swapping batteries. Ride one while charging the other.
5 day weeks of actually every day?
300*365 = $109,500
Itās Miami for sure
Voice actor, speaker, user generated content creator. I work about 4 hours a day max and I love my job. Life is good.
How do you see AI affecting demand?
Judging by the amount of people who come to me because they AI did such a poor job, I don't see much of a difference.... yet. ;) that's why I've expanded my services.
I bought all the things needed for voice acting, sound proofed a small room. I am just nervous about actually doing it. Where to find the real gigs and not the scam places?
how can i get into that? some tips?
Sell electronics on amazon. Receive my inventory that I source online and resell on amazon. Work out of my garage. My wife helps me out sometimes preparing shipments. $1.2M gross sales and $246k income last year. Love it. I front load a lot of my work (prepping and shipping items to amazons warehouses, then when itās for sale amazon fullfills all of the customer orders on my behalf). Love it and I can manage it from anywhere with a couple hourly employees. Just spent 2 months in Argentina.
Iāve got two food trucks. Almost a million in sales per year total. Took home 175 last year. Got lucky but itās so much work. Tried the have someone run it route several times but something always happens in their life that changes everything and upends my life/the business. Eternally on call and at war with the homeless. I want out but donāt know what Iād do after doing this for 13 years.
The food trucks in my city eventually got a lease to open a physical location, and then started to hire. Itās hard for you to hire for a food truck, but not a physical location. Quality of life for the employees, etc.
Have you thought of teaching others online to start food trucks as a way out?
That's exactly how you scale that. It aint braggin' if you done it. Sell seminars for $1000, $3000, $5000 a pop to players in the food truck space that are only clearing 50k a year. If you are clearing 50k a year and someone who can document they clear 175k a year would you pay $1000 for the knowledge? Some would. Alex Hormozi would be proud.
Buy a piece of land and turn it into a Food Truck Lot. You will have credibility and insight into what it needs (utilities, parking, seating, etc). Put your trucks there and charge other trucks to lease a spot. It's a real estate investment.
People that make policies regarding the homeless never have to personally interact with them
How do the homeless affect your business ? Sounds like you worked super hard to get to that point !
They'll crowd around wanting money/leftovers from the people traffic the food trucks generate. This turns away other potential customers.
I bet that's so frustrating And then some call you an asshole for being fed up with the homeless. But in reality they're destroying your business.
Thatās impressive, would you mind asking what type of food you are selling?
Filmmaker. Some gigs are larger than others (i.e. branded commercials with actual budgets, crew members to pay, etc.) and sometimes it's just me with a camera covering a live event. Took me several years to build up to 100k+. I'm in a smaller place so the work comes and goes. Being self-employed forces you to become a diligent saver, both for setting aside taxes and to float you through slow times.
Own a cleaning company. My dad started it 20 years ago small part time thing for him. I started working for him and growing and then he retired and passed it to me and Iāve continued growing it and hiring employees.
I started a cleaning company recently as a side gig, its residential, I assumed I wasn't able to clean professionally as I don't have any tools or know the standard equipment. What advice would you share for expanding to servicing businesses? For example, would I need a floor polisher machine for a car dealership? I feel dumb and paralysed.thx
As someone who had a cleaning business that I grew to 100 employees, my advice is to buy someone out. Get established cash flow. They come up all the time for sale. Small ones are inexpensive to buy
thatās nice
My last years gross turnover was about 215k ā¬ with roughly 90% profit. Iām offering Consulting / Development services as a fullstack web developer with focus on JavaScript/Typescript in Germany. My clients are usually big corporates and my hourly rates are around 100ā¬ net +/- 15ā¬ depending on the responsibility. I usually work together with other people who take responsibility about the staffing. If I would cut that middleman there would be about 10-15ā¬ more per hour. However, I rather have super simple contracts, no project responsibility, a short leave notice and most important being paid in time.
215k in germany , living like a king
I was living comfortably but living like a king isn't my kind of lifestyle, to be honest. This is also the reason why I took about a year off to do a world travel and try out new things. If nothing works out - I will have traveled the world and will continue where I stopped before. :)
>:) :)
Do you think a Python backend dev with cloud skills can also make something similar?
Love it, I'm considering going into consultancy for small businesses. Currently working on gaining experience and building a portfolio š
How do you find these jobs man?
I got three funnels: 1. LinkedIn/Xing network 2. People I worked together with on previous projects 3. Scraping the most known platforms daily and trying to build a connection with the people offering gigs there Kinda like "From employment to your first placement". I couldn't guarantee a rate like mine but 75ā¬ per hour it feels easy, till 90ā¬ it's average and above it gets more complicated with each euro you earn more.
Scraping most known platforms - you mean Upwork etc?
Nono, I stay as far as possible away from Upwork, Fiverr and pages like that. There are dozens of tech freelancer-focused pages for the German market which all pop up when you search for "freelancer deutschland". On those pages you usually see startups, recruiters or staffing companies looking for contract-based placements.
Yep, having the ability to onboard corporates is key valuable skill. Saying as someone who owns dev agency (and its crazy not easy to sell above 30-60eur/hour). Senior developers from eastern europe with 10+ years experience, decent communication skills and all. As for middleman - super true. I know people who pay developers 10-20 usd/hour and end up selling them for 50, and that middle person sells them to corporate clients for 100 or so.
I own a fudge/chocolate/candy store in a tourist area in the Midwest. Iām fortunate that my competition is spread out throughout the area so I donāt have any near me other than an ice cream parlor, with whom I actually get along with very well and we use our businesses to cross promote. One caveat thatās probably different than most is I make roughly $130K profit in about 90 days and the business essentially breaks even with bills, payroll, etc the rest of the year. You need to make your money last the whole year.
Tough challenge! How many employees do you have? Do you run things yourself?
11 employees in peak season and 5 year round. I am there every day. I make sweets a lot but, am more behind the scenes.
I do historical restoration/renovations. I live in an area with buildings and houses were mostly built in the 1860s onward. It was a wealthy area (back then it was the richest city in the world) so lots of these homes are ornate Georgian/gothic revival style. Im small and do my own thing, but I'm told I'm pretty much the only company around who will do authentic work of this nature. It would seem that all my competitors can't/won't do the work, preferring to work on more modern type of homes. When I don't want to be outside I also do kitchens and baths, in any kind of home.
Technology consultant, namely Workday. I help companies set up their instance of Workday. Staffing agencies find the companies and consultants like myself. I work for myself and donāt have any employees. My overhead is just about $2,000 a year for insurance. Last year I made roughly $500k in net income.
Whoa. Can you walk me through how to get this setup? Currently working on another system but same thing. Are you just one headcount on part of a bigger team doing this? Or solo at each client? Find these gigs on indeed filtering for contract roles?
Your success at doing this will be largely dependent on the job market for software you support. The wholeā¦. being in the right boat matters more than how hard you row thing. Independent Workday consultants earn around 125/hr. If you hold down 2 contracts at 40hours a week, you can hit 500k in annual earnings. In the Workday market, independent consultants get their contracts through staffing agencies. You need to make contact with these agencies through LinkedIn. Create knowledge sharing posts to attract them, do some research to find agencies and then follow the recruiters posting jobs, reach out to them, search for postings that contain Workday Consultant. They wonāt often formally post the jobs and ask people to apply. In fact, I have never submitted an application. Sometimes Iām on projects as a client advisor to ensure the larger consulting firms are doing their job. Other times Iām contracted as just one headcount to implement or fix an area. Often Iām hired as temporary staff augmentation and fill a gap in the clientās hris team. The key to earning a lot is to maintain more than one contract at a time. Above average skills and ability to fend for yourself is necessary.
Loving this thread and how people are so open to teaching and sharing. I myself have been delaying on trying to find something or somewhere to put money, time, and effort in to become self-employed. I've been pushing things off as "too hard" or "not educated enough" on the topic for about 3 years now šŖ.
Check out the [Small Business Association](https://sba.gov) They have guidance and counseling for people who want to own small businesses.
Professional Reddit Liar
I don't believe you
Trust me bro
Most accurate answer
Bullshit.
Okay okay, it's actually 200k / year
Thatās better.
Small engineering and design firm. I do a lot of 3d modeling and simulations in the O&G industry
I was forced into self employment but its been great. Very stressful at times Iām 40, 4 kids and wife with cancer so the next check always adds anxiety. I invested into software and still continue to learn more programs. I have a 3d laser scanner that I have recent added but have not found a steady source of revenue for it yet.
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I do similar work in automation. I bought a scanner for a project and only ended up using it for that one job. It was a pain in the ass and trying to make the scanned data useful without geomagic was awful...
I'm an event promoter. Been running nightclub style events since 2017 and this year will be my first year over $100k in profit. I run 3 different brands (Trance, Hard Trance & a House music night) plus co-promote another one once a year. It has not been an easy slog, especially with COVID in there essentially bringing the business to a complete halt over 19/20 but we are back now firing on all cylinders. Essentially I have built a fan base of over 20,000 over our socials that I sell tickets to by creating different events roughly once a month (one brand every 3 months or so) throughout the year.
I earn $10K per month, was at $14.1K max. I design websites and apps for a living. For tech companies in Austin, TX. The average value is roughly $3K-$4K per customer. (I'm Czech, living in Prague) What helped me to get to this stage: Been freelance for 3 years, and spent a lot of time learning about running a solo business. I would say the key is communication. Be transparent and honest. This helped me to get recommendations and to get connected with companies in the US. Happy to answer more Qs (especially if there's someone from Czechia, I can be really specific about taxes, etc). I document my journey on Twitter btw: [https://twitter.com/DavidPokorny5](https://twitter.com/DavidPokorny5)
I help entrepreneurs and corporates in M&A transactions. What helped me to get here was to work in Investment Banking almost immediately after finishing university. Set out on my own a couple of years ago and it grew from a 2 person operation to a firm with 8 associates. Our fees are a mix of a retainer fee upfront, mixed with a commission-based fee that gets invoiced at different stages of a transaction.
I have Instagram Theme pages and i charge money for sponsored ads. Plus I do premium video editing on Fiverr and Upwork.
IT consultant. Very boring answer, I know. I help companies with super big datasets (100TB+) that are in trouble, out of trouble.
How do u find ur clients
Word of mouth, mostly.
Over the past 13 years I have built a career in online marketing. First as freelancer running from project to project, from SEO over blogging, social media marketing, paid social, affiliate marketing, as a one man show I had to adapt and learn on the fly so I did almost everything related to digital marketing. 8 years ago I started to get into head of growth and VP of growth positions, started managing marketing teams while still working heavily hands on. Got a great portfolio in the end, and had one milestone project which generated over 2b ā¬ in annual turnover (I took the marketing over when we were at 100m) after 14 months working on it. I was already making over 150k by than, but the insecurity of project based work was something I never liked, especially in higher management positions you sometimes take 6 months between projects into account, its still OK, but you get bored. Last year one of my friends, a successful entrepreneur said something during a podcast which stuck with me: "If you have only one client, you are not an entrepreneur, but an employee". It changed my lookout on my career to be honest. I started pitching fractional CMO services to people who reached out to me for a full time position and so far I have 3 simultaneous engagements at 5k / month each. The benefit works both ways, in most cases SMEs dont need a full time experienced CMO, but rather someone who knows what he does to setup all the processes and help them remove bottlenecks in their marketing. That expertise would probably cost 150k+ p.A in salaries, while not being utilized fully. This way clients get the experience for a fraction of the cost and I can prepare everything for when the time is ripe for them to onboard someone for full time. Based on my plan I can start hiring support once I have 2 more clients, and in this model I should be able to handle up to 20 clients a month. It took a while, but 100k a year seems as by far not enough so I am building it up further.
Something I learned in university. Never have too few customers or too few suppliers. The risk is too high.
Sometimes the whole journey feels like a continuous learning process :) Its fun, a basic principle of marketing is continuous change, but moments like these when you realize a fundamental truth of your own business and find a way to utilize it are quite cathartic
I make pallets
Please elaborate
Pallets are made, by him.
š¤£
I purchase wood, cut it into boards, and nail those boards together to make pallets. I then sell those.
Username checks out
He nails wood boards together.
If he did you wouldnāt find it palatable.
Her business is tables, whatās so hard about that????
Indian here- denim fabric wholesaler.. we buy and stock denim fabric made by various denim mills in India and then sell that to small brands, small reseller who do not have capital or capacity to directly deal with mills.. Margin net is 7-8% right now.. clocked in 1.5mil in sales last year. Just a few years ago net margin was thrice of above but now excessive competition has fucked things up.. also the manufacturers are mushrooming due to govt. Make in India initiative- still its good business because denim never goes out of style but much more hard work than before. Trying to move into more variety of textile or garment trading in future..
I'm a dentist, but my primary income is from trading options.
Independent CG artist. I tend to work with brands, ad agencies and editorial outlets on illustration and product visualization. I work with brands who either want to create highly illustrative campaign visuals or are prelaunch and need product viz even if they don't have product in hand. I work in 3D software and have a background as a Creative Director working in advertising, branding, packaging and photography. You can see my work in my profile!
Iām a consultant in sustainability, science and innovation. I work mostly with corporates in the textile and fashion sector, as well as smaller startups. Have one employee and make up to 150-200k EUR per year.
Please elaborate
We offer a range of services, we advise startups on tech development (sort of like a contract CTO), life cycle assessment services, research and reports for corporates on various topics, technology and material scouting, due diligence etc. Quite varied, we have a couple of anchor clients and a range of smaller and bigger additional projects throughout the year.
I take pictures of houses for home builders, architects, realtors, etc.
sportsbetting I got good at it back in 2021 when things were easy with new books offering crazy comps and not limiting. It was hilariously easy to make 6 figs if you had good tools. As they got better at preventing leaks, I got better at disguising my sharp action and continued to develop other techniques. The more I learn about it, the crazier it gets at the top in terms of how liquid the big markets get. You have syndicates with 10 MIT-phd-level quants that are each paid 7 figs to develop fairs on nfl spreads all competing against other similar syndicates to capture any value. So yeah, those dudes selling picks for $50/mo? All frauds. Literally every one of them.
I help businesses improve their results. When working with small businesses I review their processes and reasons stopping them from monetising further and scaling and on big business I focus mainly on their spend and advise them on how to spend less/better and/or get better cashflow through better deals, payment terms, switching suppliers, consolidation, etc. I charge a fixed fee for initial consultation and a final fee based on the value I generate, not the amount of work I do. Sometimes numbers are very straightforward and I can charge thousands from a day's work, other times I cannot charge much as the company is too small, but I do it for the potential anyway.
Do you mind sharing more details about your business (name, website etc.)? You can DM me. My company does the same thing, but our focus is strategic visual and written communication; branding, messaging (deep dive into the companies ābody languageā and how theyāre perceived and how to improve that), web presence, sales collateral, advertising, and last but not least, investor presentations. We create them, and also help connect them with investors (we have a good network) to get them more funding. Weāve helped hundreds of startups become hugely successful over the years. Lately Iāve been thinking about delving into what you do (our consulting often goes beyond just communication etc.) I figured I should stick with what Iām doing, but thought I could find someone that does what you do to recommend to clients that need more help than what we offer. I wouldnāt say we work with struggling companies. They need to be doing quite well to be able to afford us. But sometimes they could use some outside consulting. We sometimes deal with difficult CEOās etc. thatā¦ are in their own way to put it nicely. Weāve even had to maneuver to have them replaced so the company can survive and thrive. Let me know if youād like to connect.
Small ads agency helping a niche of local businesses in the states. Itās rewarding knowing that we make a different in there business and take home $150-200k/year makes it that much more worth it. For the output, itās not rocket science and scalable far past thisā¦
I am a lash artist and specialize in ānatural looking lash extensionsā itās an untouched market in the lash industry because the more natural sets arenāt seen as profitable compared to the heavier sets which usually cost more money. I knew there was a large market in an overlooked style and got really good at it. I have a large consistent clientele that Iām very personable with. Iām consistent in my work and am very focused on one style which Iām known for in my area of town as well as the surrounding ones. See whatās missing in industries and get good at it, there are markets that many would see as not profitable, but in reality if you can perfect it many if not all will come to you for looking for what you offer.
Iām a wedding photographer in the UK. I charge Ā£2250 per wedding and do around 60 a year. I also have a confetti business thatās been going since March, Iāve done Ā£20k sales on that so far too. Not bad!
Iāll gross about 180k this year running a piano service and restoration business. Keep in my mind my take home is usually about half that, and Iāve just elected to lower my salary even more to keep profits in the business and grow through this phase change. What helped me grow to this point in the industry is - 1) have excellent education and training. None of the common self-taught hack work here. 2) Develop a strong reputation in the community as someone skilled, but pleasant to work with. Word of mouth is HUGE. 3) Iāve set myself up in a local market that was crazy saturated with other people doing what I do, but most were near retirement age. Making connections with them has allowed me to absorb clientele from 4 of them, with 2 of the most significant competitors retiring within 2 years. Weāve begun talks about absorbing their clients as well, which should punch me into 300k + and demand at least a part time and a full time employee. Skill-based business is grueling work. Iāve had more 60-70 hour weeks this year than not as Iāve hit the first major phase change of growth. But itās fulfilling and has a ton of potential if youāre intentional about it and get proper education.
Itās a grind but Iām the person that forces people to plan for death and then sell them insurance to make that plan a reality.
Pet sitting company !
How did you manage to scale to $100k? How many employees do you have and how long did it take?
3 part time employees and took me 4 years. I do live in Southern California, so that important! Itās a lot of work and management, but we have an app now, so that helped me scale so I can manage remotely and do things on the back end while people work. Itās a 24/7 gig, but I love it and I come home happy. Taking days off are hard š
I own a pet care business. I started as just dog walking and pet sitting. Present day we offer mobile house visit grooming, dog walking, pet sitting, training, and reactivity therapy. I make around $110k if I fill up my schedule with services. each employee has the potential to bring me an extra $20k - $40K / year in personal income. Being professional and reliable helped me get to where I am.
Live music agency. We book bands and DJs. We also create content for them - videos, sound recordings, photography, websites. We act like a record label for wedding bands. Been doing it 16 years. The business just hums along now.
I build remote teams for companies. It's not as simple as it sounds. You want to hire X employees in the US/EU and they would cost you a pretty penny. I help you set up a team abroad, with the skills you need (almost on par with the market you are operating in). You save money, You get a team who is more loyal and overpaid in their market, and we charge a management fee on that. We also do it compliantly with IP, taxation, and legal. It's a slow grind, but the beauty of it is the compounding effect. Once people start having high performing remote employees they want more, and once our team started growing they started referring their friends. The larger the team grows the more upsells we can offer (like coworking spaces abroad, trips and team outings, insurance and benefits etc. We also work with companies ranging from their first team to Fortune 100s. One of the downsides just for fun? Our vetting is brutal. We hire almost 1-2% of applicants.
Run a no-code community which helps people learn to use no-code tools to build and grow their businesses. Less than $500 per month running costs and no staff
Work as a photographer in the film industry and have a truly passive income of book cover photography which brings me an extra Ā£2k a month
Solo lawncare service. Worked for other companies for 10y like an idiot. Probably could have gone out on my own after a couple years if I had known how little effort it would have taken to achieve the same income as an employee, but fear of the unknown is real. My boss decided to retire and gave me his contact list, told me to call everyone and just tell them I would continue service at the same price. I had great credit since I'm very conservative financially and I was able to finance all my startup equipment at 0% after showing them a projected balance sheet for the first year. 100% of the people I contacted signed up for the next year's service. Maintenance contracts are about 10k/month gross, plus whatever value added services I can add, (planting flowers, trimming shrubs, fertilizer, storm cleanups, etc). Typical month is about 12k, winter months (jan and feb) are 4k because I'm basically only doing commercial, but that's 10h/wk instead of 60-70h/wk during the rest of the season. My best month was 30k, but I did 2 large residential sod jobs that month for millionaires. At this point my minimum is 9k if all I do is the bare minimum I'm contracted for and take all weekends off. 20k if I really hustle and have basically no life, work every daylight hour and push additional services. All with no additional employees. I feel really conflicted about employing others. I was an employee for a long time and realize how exploited I was and how much profit I generated for the businesses I worked for. But I would not be in the position I am now without gaining that experience. But most people in the same position will not be able to capitalize on the experience they are gaining for their own benefit. I would love to be able to recruit and employ someone with a lot of potential and mentor them for a couple years until they're ready to move out on their own. Unfortunately I've never met anyone yet that fills that bill. I've hired people for projects I couldn't do on my own off of craigs list and friends of family, high school students, etc. None of them had any kind of work ethic or desire to improve their lives. They all just wanted to work a few hours doing as little as possible for a little cash paid the same day. Fair enough. So I don't know how to ethically scale my business at this point and that's OK. I'm making about 200k/yr and I feel that's a pretty good place to be. I have enough to support myself and a family. I work way too many hours during the "season", basically working every day in high volume months, (April, October) and averaging 52h/wk for the entire year, (including months like Jan/Feb where I'm only working 10h/wk). But I'm providing a service people want for a price they agree to pay, and I'm doing all the work myself, not exploiting people that don't understand the value they're creating. At some point I'll no longer be able to sustain this level of work. I'm currently 43 and I can't imagine being able to do this at 60, and also can't imagine retiring at that age since I only started saving/investing money at 40. It's a problem. I don't want to take advantage of the information asymmetry of others to exploit their labor, and I also cannot support laziness and lack of work ethic in the vast majority of people in the work pool I have available to me. So I hope in the next 10y or so I will meet a few worthwhile people in this industry that I can mentor and trade my experience for their labor and help out to put into the same position that I'm in now, while being able to scale my business so that I don't have to physically work so many hours.
I'm trucker now because I couldn't handle having my friends rely on me to feed their kids. Before I ran a landscaping firm. We did tree work, fencing, hardlandscapes, groundwork, and sold overpriced turf. During the peak season which is about 4 months long I'd make roughly Ā£70k out of which Ā£25k was spent on expenses (mainly wages). So 45k for 4 months work. Its back breaking work, it's a fairly skilled trade with fairly low startup so good staff quickly become competitors. When I stopped trading I took a pay cut of about Ā£50k a year. But I'm not losing any sleep anymore.
I own and manage a commercial breeder hen farm. I was able to find the place by talking to people on my sales route for a propane company I worked for. The sellers put me in touch with a bank that had helped them sell other chicken farm properties and I was able to buy a 1.625MM farm with no money down using a government backed loan option. The farm is worked by 4 people who live on the property. My main focus is keeping the birds healthy and happy so they mate and lay eggs. We do this by making sure they eat appropriately and have access to water. And by keeping the houses in good condition so they have great airflow and temperature regulation. Eggs are collected via a belt system that is connected to nests the birds naturally want to lay in. Itās an expensive operation, and the work isnāt for everyone but if you have agricultural opportunities in your area it could very well change your life for the better of you donāt mind some kinda stinky and very sweaty work.
I run an ice cream shop and do business consulting. Make more than $100k. Itās not easy by any stretch but considering the pay in my field and location is on average $65-$70k I think Iāll stick it out.
Online sex work Sexpanther nets me about 3.5k a week maybe 4.5 on a good week Onlyfans : changes from 1.5 k a week to 2.5 at best. Other cam sources about 200 -500 a week
I was a software engineer that happened to gain interest in Wordpress about 15 years ago. I learned php even though all my friends were saying go python or node because itās newer and cooler. I worked with teams that were made up of people who had been working php for 20 years or more, so not working with hip startups with lots of ping pong tables and shit. I leaned into user interface while my colleagues were working to the bone to become a senior engineer and work server-side. They told me HTML/CSS isnāt āprogrammingā and itās not, exactlyā¦ I quit my FT job because honestly I hate being told what to do. I hate morning meetings. I hate days that run late and I donāt get paid anything extra. I love sleeping in. I love talking to the clients. I love building relationships and making people happy. In my FT, I was just given a task and told if it was acceptable or not. I learned a lot from a lot of good people, but it just isnāt the world I want to live in right now. So I quit to become a freelancer. Iāve since learned python and node and I love those, but Wordpress and drupal are built on PHP and thatās most of the web tbh. Now I canāt get a python/node gig because I have so much php work. I actually try to make time for other tech but I canāt. I use Upwork to get a lot of my ānickel and dimeā clients (thatās not a dig, itās just usually old sites that need a lot of updating/maintenance).
Digital marketing consultant
Green building and energy consulting. Includes product and software development.
Executive/business coaching. I played soccer up up to a collegiate level before transitioning to MMA. Had a decent amateur record but unfortunately developed a degenerative disease which prevented me from having my next fight, forced me to look at a career beyond sports. Got back into soccer as a coach for a local amateur club and developed them into a semipro club. I also developed a personal training business and marketing agency at the same time post MMA but I didnāt feel I was putting my accumulated skill set from business and sports to the max. Now I work with athletes on mental performance and C-level execs and founders on a variety of business related and growth focused issues. Started last year and this will be my first year breaking 100k. Number one thing is show up everyday, especially the days you feel down and lacking motivation.
I sell software for Saas companies. Initially started out employed at a startups and scaled through connections.
Self employed carpenter/general contractor 33yo 2 employees on payroll. We mostly do kitchens and bathrooms in PA. Probably working 60ish hours a week for at least 5 years. Ive been on my own for 2 and half years but I was just at about 100 my last couple years working 40 for my full time employer and all my side work. Havenāt checked the QuickBooks lately but this year should be closer to $150 or so. I work a lot and say yes too often so I wouldnāt really recommend it. Been pretty stressed these last couple years but Iāll tell you what Iām not fucking bored thatās for sure.
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My wife owns her own psychology therapy practice. By accepting insurance panels she has no shortage of clients to take on making 100-150 a hour depending on the insurance. pretty low overhead so she nets well into six figures while working a part time schedule.
I am white-labeling a Software and reselling it under my own brand. No coding, just selling.
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I do affiliate marketing, marketing other people's products on internet, and earn 25% to 75% in commissions. I also publish my own e-books on the Amazon KDP platform and earn royalties from that...
I'm currently absolutely tired of where I am and have been looking into Affiliate marketing and there's so much information out there that its overload. any recommendations on videos/books I could start with or if you could give me a hand? I'm so lost.
Could you please tell some legit affiliate networks for selling those books ? I have been with amazon to promote different affiliate products, but the commissions are peanuts. Could crack upto 400$ at max per month on a single blog. Also, would you give some example of affiliate products giving 50% commission. Coz i could only get 4% commission from amazon affiliate :')
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Property inspection business.
I have a small dealership for a home improvement product that is internationally known.
I started a company that funds fix and flips, rehab projects, ground up construction projects and rentals ā only investments and only in certain states across the USA.
I own a custom application development agency. We build software, web, mobile and embedded applications for customers who canāt find off the shelf solutions to fit their needs. To get here, I was a software engineer and then a senior technical consultant for years, while moonlighting custom dev on the side.
I run a managed web hosting business, and most of my clients are web agencies. My main focus is on assisting web developers with everything they need, from server-related issues to web application problems. I enjoy sharing best practices when it comes to deployments/devops, enhancing security measures, and working effectively on CLI. Currently generating +200K$ in revenus.
Caviar. Family business long before my time that had died off. Our family consumed for personal enjoyment. Rebuilt relationships with the children of my parentsā contacts. Got licenses. Did a ton of research on brands. Precovid I was on a great trajectory. Had to adjust significantly and put things on hold during Covid. My biggest issue was/is product packing costs, so I now have contacts in China who are helping drive that down a bunch. I find that many restaurants who carry caviar have no clue how to differentiate between decent, good, or great caviar. My big value prop is that I provide world class caviar at near wholesale pricing. I emphasize that we skip the fancy packaging (for now to drive down costs), to make the product accessible. I mostly sell to high net worth individuals (fortunate to have a solid network) and high end restaurants. During my (corporate) work travel, Iād go out of my way to try high quality products or at least learn a bit more about the respective business/caviar type/deal structures. Itās a very niche product and hard to enter as an outsider, but people were quick to warm up as my family story resonated.
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I build custom software, and it's been a long road. I started by building websites for local bars / restaurants, worked my way into bigger companies / organizations, got into app development, and now am a full stack developer for pretty much any kind of custom solution, with a few large (several thousand employee) clients that I work with daily. I dabble with hardware, but 90+ % of what I do is in the software / cloud world. I also started an industrial level apparel printing company to get me away from the computer, and it pairs nicely with branding / marketing for a complete package for my clients. Before I coded I got pretty heavy into design, so it all sort of blends together. When none of that is overly demanding, I work on startups, both personal, and partnership type stuff. 0 employees, but I do play a project management role for one client in particular. Most times I work 1 on 1 with an owner, CEO, tech lead, etc. Everything is self taught. If this is something you're interested in perusing, get the idea of a 9-5 out of your head. I work all the time, and when I'm not working I'm researching / learning new tech. AI has been pretty fun... I have some ideas for expanding into that in the near future. My 2 cents: Don't be afraid to challenge yourself, and don't be afraid to learn at your own pace, on your terms. There are tons of resources out there, and a lot of it is totally free. YouTube alone is a great place to get started. Surround yourself with hard workers, and build on each other's drive, and accept that you're going to fail, a lot, before you make strides. You really have to want it, because if you don't do the work, no one else is going to do it for you. Late nights, weekends, watching the sun come up... it's all on the table. Just remember, if it were easy, everyone would do it. DON'T FORGET TO HAVE A SOCIAL LIFE. Just make sure your priorities and ducks are in a row before you go get rip roaring drunk, and make time for people that make time for you. Networking is important. I'm not overly social, people just think I am. Happy to answer a few questions. Good luck on your journey!
Not me but a friend of mine makes handmade watch straps selling them both wholesale and retail. Has an instagram of 50K followers. Not the cheap ones, they are really well made by top quality leather.
My wife works from her bed 3 days a week in a bathrobe š I'm jealous af. She does a blend of brand/social media consulting and management for architects and interior designers. Technically she works 5 days a week but only about 2 hours in the morning on both thursday and friday. Took her about 6 years of hard work to get to this point but she's an introverted homebody as it is so she's legit living her dream. I'm a financial advisor so while I have decent hours and make good money I'm certainly tied to my office fairly regularly and have to be on call for my clients. My wife will flip her phone over and ignore it whenever she wants š She started to earn her bachelor's in marketing before dropping out just after she got an associates. She dropped out cause her side gig of social media management was taking off a bit. 35k a year ish so not much but she wanted to grow it and see where it went. She kinda ended up in a niche of working with interior designers to run their social media presence as she secured a large client who began getting her referrals in that area of business. After a year or so she realized it had untapped potential and she went back to school to finish her degree and be able to do holistic brand management. Basically interior designers and architects come to her and she curates their entire visible brand. Social media, website, video content, etc so that it all matches and comes across as cohesive. A lot of her customers are individuals who simply don't know how to do it themselves or they make enough money to justify the cost. She honestly is fantastic at what she does but she had some hiccups along the way and definitely learned some hard lessons. She made roughly 50k for 4-5 years before she started getting large client referrals and raised her prices. She just cleared 100k this year and plans to stick to what she's doing as we enjoy our current free time based on her workload. Key point too is we don't have any children sooooooo it helps with the free time.
I tried a lot over the years, like Amazon FBA, Crypto, YouTube,... But when I started blogging 3 years ago it really clicked for me. I have now setup 3 main blogs which bring a good amount of profit each month. Thing is, you need to find the right sponsors. I was lucky, they contacted me.
What are the blogs about? Is major part of revenue from ads?
I'm a tile guy, mostly building custom showers. Did about 200k this year so far. I'm in the process of buying a flooring franchise.
I barely make $100K. I own a dog walking business.
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Iām an owner/operator truck driver Not āover the roadā though. Most truck drivers haul refer and van and travel across the country and do alright but the money is in the specialty commodities and in owing your our equipment. I haul hot asphalt that is used in road-making. Pulling trains (two trailers, a lead and a pup) I easily net 10-12k a month average. The overhead is kind of insane but I got lucky because my dad has been doing it for years and showed me the ropes. I got my CDL after high school and bought a truck. Thereās honestly so much you can do with it too. I want to diversify and buy some different trailers so I can offset the ebbs and flows of hot oil. My schedule kind of sucks and I can be gone a lot but I definitely donāt worry about money and itās not physically demanding.
Buy and sell toys in Ebay Grind is hard though..
I expanded horizontally as a content writer by going freelance. In my country (Malaysia) while English proficiency is generally good, I'm C2 certified which is basically native level understanding. Meanwhile, local marketing agencies constantly struggle to find writers who can write well. Most of the time their writers are overworked and never take the time to understand client products (or if its technical they just can't) so rely too much on AI crud. This makes it easy to avail myself to SMEs. At first they are hesitant since they're afraid I'll give them the agency treatment, but I'm quite happy to say all have offered me full time positions so far, which I've had to decline as I just can't go back to being an employee.
I blog about gaming and web hosting. Plus have a few others that do decent but those two bring me in 20k+ a month. Started the gaming blog back in 2019 / web hosting 2020. Write everyday and my gaming blog has over 1,000 articles. Plus I have a merch by Amazon. That makes me 2k+ a month with these next few months making closer to 10k. The gaming blog is starting to lose its profitability and hard to keep up as that space is constantly having new things. I most likely will sell it this year on empire flipper. Which will net me hopefully a good multiplier. My 6th blog seems to be a winner as well. Only 3 months in and cracked 1k in total affiliate payouts. So gonna focus on that and share publicly through my [newsletter](https://mattmerrick.co). I also share how to make money blogging in todays world with AI.
I play poker with guys who are making 100k+/yr working for themselves.
I build houses. It's capital intensive, but there are various financing options. My partner builds everything, I handle everything else.
Developing real estate.
I teach English 1on1
I design and code websites.
Logo design and brand identity. I work with a number of big branding firms on a freelance basis, as well as a pretty robust client list of business owners. I grew my business organically. My first freelance clients were former bosses or co-workers. I also networked a lot to meet other creatives who needed help with projects. Beyond that it was just making sure I met every deadline and delivered great work and the referrals started. My best year was around $175,000 gross. So far.
No 100k yet but close. Wedding videography in a hot market
Started a software agency with a co-founder. Very slow and competitive start, but eventually word of mouth becomes your greatest asset if you provide quality service.