Solopreneur case studies
A solopreneur is someone who runs a business without hiring employees. Small Start records one-person and side-project businesses only: monthly revenue, profit, acquisition channels and hours invested, each with a source.
One-person businesses share a design: no fixed costs, automated support, and distribution that runs on search or a marketplace. Each case breaks that design down with numbers.
- Case studies
- 256
- Sale price
- 862.5億円
Solopreneur and side-business cases
1–24 of 256
An 18-Year-Old French Pâtisserie Changed Hands for ¥8M With 1–2 Weeks Left Before Closing — And the 29-Year-Old Buyer Never Negotiated the Price
A handmade French pâtisserie in Hyogo, in business 18 years, was sold through TRANBI for about ¥8 million while it was one to two weeks from shutting down. The buyer, a 29-year-old sole proprietor, never once asked for a discount.
Doing Content Right: After Four Side Projects That Made $0, a $99 Ebook Did $130K in Eight Months
Steph Smith shipped four side projects between 2018 and 2020 that made no money, then wrote the ebook "Doing Content Right" in 50 days and sold over $130K of it in eight months. Her total project revenue for 2021 was $150K.
Traffic Think Tank: a six-year side-hustle SEO community sold for $1.8M, with 40% paid later
Traffic Think Tank, a paid SEO community, was run for about six years by three founders who kept their day jobs, and sold to the listed company Semrush for $1.8M in February 2023. Per the buyer's 10-Q, $360K each was held back for 12 and 18 months, so 60% changed hands at closing.
NEOKICK Maebashi: A Gym Earning ¥2.5M a Year Sold for ¥3M — After the Only Trainer Quit Mid-Negotiation
A kickboxing gym with ~40 members and ~¥2.5M annual operating profit sold for ¥3M. The only trainer quit mid-negotiation; the buyer still closed.
ryrob: $27,375 of a $47,772 Month Came From One Partner — What Survived a 68% Traffic Collapse
In July 2020 one hosting affiliate paid $27,375 of $47,772.75 in revenue. Eight months on, sessions were down 68% — yet total revenue fell only 26%.
Adam Enfroy: $101,814 in a Month When Traffic Was Falling — and the Day the Reports Stopped
Affiliate income was $78,965 of $101,814 in March 2021, on $16,677 of expenses — an 83.6% margin. How a record month happened on falling pageviews.
Sewashita: 13 Apps, 4.5 Years, 326 Android Installs
HAL has run 13 indie mobile apps for four and a half years. Monthly revenue is 1,800 to 2,000 yen from AdMob plus an average of $39 from subscriptions and one-time purchases. Cumulative downloads reached 21.7K, yet all 13 Android versions together account for 326 installs and daily active users sit at 250 to 270.
Making Sense of Cents: A Record $179,139 in the Month With the Fewest Pageviews
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner's blog booked $179,139.02 in February 2018, $102,277.02 of it affiliate revenue. By her own account, it was also one of her lowest traffic months ever.
Eleven Rental Spaces Sold One by One for ¥60.5M Total — What Earned "Two to Three Times the Going Rate" Was the Know-How, Not the Property
Rental space operator Mitsu sold 11 locations for a cumulative ¥60.5 million through an M&A marketplace. Most were around 20 square meters, yet "every one sold for two to three times the going rate," with the most recent 30-square-meter unit going for ¥12 million. Eighty percent of bookings came through his own website.
Emily Odio-Sutton: $560,000 in two years on Etsy, selling gifts not apparel
Emily Odio-Sutton's print-on-demand shops on Etsy sold $236,000 between January 1 and October 17, 2024, averaging over $26,200 a month. Cumulative sales pass $560,000 across more than 20,600 orders, on roughly ten hours a week. The Amazon FBA attempt that came before it lasted three months.
DialHawk: A Call-Tracking SaaS Running on $5,110 a Month in Costs — $18,116 MRR Sold for $725,000 at 2.6x Revenue
DialHawk, a call-tracking SaaS for lead-generation businesses, sold on Flippa for $725,000. Annual revenue was $283,539 (a 2.6x revenue multiple), MRR was $18,116, monthly expenses just $5,110, and monthly churn 2%.
TF's apps: ¥103,437 in Year Eight — A Shiga Salaryman Who Kept Publishing His Ad Revenue Every Month, and Hit ¥20,000/Month in Year Nine
A nine-year record of side-project app development by a company employee in Shiga, Japan. Annual revenue was ¥52,859 in 2023 and ¥103,437 in 2024. By 2026 the monthly figures — ¥12,300 in January, ¥20,400 in June — have settled above ¥10,000.
Photosolve.io: A Homework AI App That Reached 2.5M Users at $0.50 CAC — Sold for $575,000 in Under Two Years
Photosolve.io, an app that solves homework from a photo, sold on Flippa for $575,000. Launched April 2023, it did $348,849 in trailing-twelve-month revenue at ~86% margins with 5,000 paying subscribers, 90% organic traffic and a $0.50 CAC.
Ankimaker: A High Schooler's Flashcard App Hit 1M Downloads in 8 Years — 300K of Them in One
Ankimaker, a study app a high school student built for his own exams, reached 1 million cumulative downloads about eight years after its June 2016 release. Roughly 300,000 of those came in the single year right after the developer quit his job. Revenue figures stay private, but subscriptions have replaced ads as half of sales.
AllAboutCookies.org: A $9,000 Expired Domain Sold for $5.2M Fourteen Years Later — a Solo-Run, AdSense-Only Site at 92% Margin and ~$400 RPM
AllAboutCookies.org, an expired domain a retired New Zealand ex-taxi driver won for $9,000 in 2008, grew into an AdSense site with 267K monthly pageviews, ~$400 RPM, and a 92% profit margin — then sold for $5.2M via Flippa. A 578x return, with revenue almost 100% ads.
Potato Parcel: Sold for $42,000 Six Months After Launch — a Joke Potato-Message Shop Now at $600K a Year Under Its Shark Tank Buyer
Potato Parcel, the "write a message on a potato and mail it" store Alex Craig started in 2015, was sold for $42,000 just six months in, at over $10,000 in monthly sales. Buyer Riad Bekhit went on to land Kevin O'Leary on Shark Tank, and the business still ran at $600–700K a year as of 2024.
Spencer Haws: Selling an Amazon FBA Brand for $425,000 in 2.5 Years — Priced at 30x the $14,000 Monthly Net Profit, Bundled with a Review Site
Spencer Haws of Niche Pursuits launched a home-goods FBA brand in 2015 and sold it via Empire Flippers for $425,000 — about 30x its trailing-12-month average net profit of $14,000+/month. Bundled with a 120-article review site, the listing reached a verbal agreement in about 40 days.
VMagicMirror: ¥10M on BOOTH While Giving Away Nearly Every Feature for Free
VMagicMirror, a Windows app that puts a VRM avatar on your desktop, passed ¥10 million in cumulative BOOTH sales four years after launch — with nearly every feature included in the free edition. No ads, no social account, no analytics, and the developer kept his day job.
10Beasts: An 8-Article Amazon Affiliate Site Hit $80K/Month in 9 Months — Sold for $570K, Google Penalty 17 Days Later
Student Luqman Khan's Amazon affiliate site 10Beasts reached $80,000 a month in commissions with just 8 articles, nine months after launch. In December 2017 it sold for $570,000 via Empire Flippers — and 17 days after handover, a Google penalty struck. A case where timing the exit made all the difference.
Repsona: Five Years Solo, ¥12.4M Total Revenue — The Open Ledger of a Task-Management SaaS Its Maker Calls a "Startup Failure"
The developer of Japanese task-management SaaS Repsona published five years of numbers: total revenue of ¥12,403,567, 5,873 registered spaces, 14,641 cumulative users. Ads cost ¥500 per signup, but free-to-paid conversion was about 1%. A look inside his self-assessment: "a great success as a hobby, a big failure as a startup."
Bargaineering: From Cents a Day to a $3M Sale in Five Years
Launched in January 2005, US personal finance blog Bargaineering was earning "a few cents to maybe a dollar a day" at the six-month mark. Five years later, in 2010, it sold for $3 million. Founder Jim Wang has kept publishing the details himself — here is what the numbers say about the slow start and the eventual exit.
kan.kikuchi: ¥5,913,887 a Year from Solo-Built Joke VR Games — With the ¥420K Build Cost and 813 Hours All on the Record
A solo developer's VR games grossed ¥5,913,887 in their first year, netting ¥4,490,828 — more than 80% of it from a single title, Chupa Chupa VR. He published the build cost (¥420,544), the hours (813) and the refund rate (14.1%) too.
An Anonymous Solo Developer's ERP Integration SaaS: ~¥3M MRR with Zero Employees, Zero Ad Spend — and No Hand-Written Code for Six Months
A middleware SaaS that converts legacy ERP SOAP/XML interfaces into modern REST APIs reached roughly ¥3M in MRR with zero employees and zero ad spend, its operator disclosed on Zenn. For the past six months every line of code has been written by Claude Code. SEO posts targeting error messages drive acquisition. The operator is anonymous, so the figures cannot be externally verified.
280blocker: The Solo-Built Ad Blocker That Sold for ¥377M — 14x Its Operating Profit — When Its Developer Fell Ill
iOS ad blocker 280blocker was sold to listed company Tobila Systems for ¥377 million in August 2021. Its disclosed financials showed ¥38M revenue and ¥27M operating profit, putting the price at roughly 14x annual profit. The app had topped Japan's App Store paid rankings three years running — and changed hands when its solo developer fell ill.
FAQ
- What is a solopreneur?
- Someone who runs a business without employees. Unlike freelancing, which sells time, a solopreneur typically owns an asset — a product, an audience, a site — that keeps earning without their direct labour.
- How far can one person scale?
- Documented ceilings here include $7M+/year from an open-source paid tier, $74K MRR from a social scheduling tool, and $12.5M lifetime from digital courses — alongside cases that plateaued at a few thousand yen a month.