Unsexy Business Sold for $50 Million
This newsletter is all about making money online, but let's take a quick detour into the offline world ↩️
A recent post on Reddit…
Trash collection.
Friends of mine, a husband and wife team, started this in their 20s.
By age 45, it had grown huge and they sold the company to the largest waste management processor in their country and walked away with $50 million in cash.
Carpet/sofa cleaning. Met someone who is fully booked every single day.
These stories are a good reminder that there are lots of business opportunities in the offline world.
And there may even be more opportunities offline since so many people prefer to stay behind their screens nowadays 😵💫
One of the largest deficits in the coming years are industry tradesmen like plumbing, electrical, hvac, etc. Most millennials were told they had to go to college. Gen Z’ers followed suit. Now nearly any tradesman worth a shit can name their price in most areas.
An article from 2020 tells a similar story 👇
The number of unfilled HVAC technician jobs is about 80,000 or 39% of technicians currently employed. On top of that, we’re suffering a net technician loss of about 8% or 20,000 per year.
(HVAC technician = someone who installs and repairs air conditioning systems.)
One more comment from that Reddit thread…
Most people my age don't want to get their hands dirty anymore. I think it has to do with the social image we now see on social media.
If someone focuses on building a business that requires physical labor or work that requires human interaction together with automated digital processes managed by AI, I believe it could be extremely successful.
Reminds me of that guy who wrote software to optimize his sister's cookie delivery business and sold $200,000 in one month 🤯
So yeah, don't get too caught up looking to make money online.
There are plenty of good business opportunities offline, usually with less competition 👍
$20,000/Month Reading Reddit Posts Aloud
Am I The Jerk?
- YouTube Channel & Podcast
- $20,000 estimated monthly revenue
How To Get Rich With GPTs
OpenAI recently announced the launch of the GPT Store 🥳
That's basically an app store for ChatGPT, where anyone can create their own apps that enhance ChatGPT's functionality.
Simple example: there's a GPT called YouChat that lets you chat with any YouTube video 💬
(Note that ChatGPT Plus is required to build your own GPTs and use those created by others. That costs $20/month.)
Here's an 81-minute video from Liam Ottley breaking down the significance of the GPT Store and showing how you'll soon be able to make money from it 👇
- How to Get Rich With GPTs | Complete Beginner's Guide (OpenAI Custom GPTs)…
Liam says in the video...
Looking back to 2008, when Apple unleashed their App Store, only those with app development skills got a slice of the millions the App Store generated.
The difference for us today is that the skills required to create for the GPT store and start making money can be learned in an hour or two, rather than 3 years of software engineering at college.
GPTs can't actually be monetized yet, but OpenAI plans to launch a “builder revenue program in Q1. So hopefully within the next few weeks 🤞
Liam again…
Since there's going to be tens of thousands of people rushing to this new opportunity, the challenge is not knowing how to create GPTs, but how to create actually valuable GPTs that will stand out from the competition.
Liam lists 5 skills you'll need to accomplish this…
- Market Research and Use Case Identification
- Data Sourcing, Preparation, and Curation.
- Prompt Engineering
- Developing tools that enable your GPT to perform functions.
- Marketing
In the same video, he goes on to create a "stock investing assistant, based on the wisdom of Charlie Munger," showing every step along the way 👀
He also shows how you can take your GPTs out of the GPT Store and use them as chatbots or apps inside of Slack, WhatsApp, etc.
To give you a better sense of what's possible here, here's another GPT that blew my mind 👇
Grimoire is "a GPT coding wizard" created by Nick Dobos, a former Twitter engineer.
Examples of use:
Someone tweeted…
I've been using the GPT Grimoire… which is incredible… I've been relearning Ruby on Rails with it as a teacher and it's been phenomenal.
While creating and monetizing your own GPTs sounds awesome, I reckon the fastest way to make money here is to become a GPT creator for hire 😎
In other words: help businesses create their own GPTs to increase productivity.
Or even just show them how to use existing GPTs, set all that up for them.
Check out OpenGPT.com for inspiration, lots of crazy GPTs listed there 🤯
$6K/Month Business Within a Week of Launching
Ash M
- Co-founder of Repurpose Pie
- $6000 monthly revenue
Productized Service Ideas for 2024
Joe Davis is the co-founder of FATJOE, self-described as…
one of the world’s largest providers of outsourced Link Building, Digital PR, SEO Services, Content Creation and Design and Video services.
Joe has apparently “sold over $70m agency services” 😎
In a recent video, he shares his insights on 10 productized services you could offer…
For example…
🔗 Link building for businesses
📝 Content creation services
🌐 Digital PR that offers value beyond just link building.
🤖 AI services like setting up public and internal chatbots.
📈 Lead generation services which are in demand and easy to demonstrate value.
🎨 Design services like DesignJoy but maybe with a different focus point.
You could get started with this kind of thing by going local first.
Try this approach…
Get that working on a small scale, as a side-hustle, then build it bigger.
Another idea here 👇
While I was researching this story, I saw that FATJOE has a reseller program.
You could sign up for that and sell under your own brand. They fulfill services such as link building, SEO, digital PR, etc.
Ideal if you like selling but not fulfillment 👍
(To be clear: I have no affiliation with the FATJOE reseller program, not even sure if they do good work. Just something that might be worth checking out. There are surely many alternatives out there too.)
$20K/Month After 8 Months: “We Just Make Noise”
Afonso Matos
- Co-founder of Journalist AI
- $20,000 monthly recurring revenue
With This App: If You Can Draw, You Can Code
Get ready to have your mind blown 🤯
tldraw is an open source, free whiteboard tool.
They recently launched a unique AI feature called MakeReal (OpenAI API required) that lets you draw an app or website ✍️
Then, with the click of a button, it outputs the code that brings your app to life.
Here’s the official launch tweet from tldraw, where they quickly create a website.
Since release, people have been using it to make things like…
Incredible, right? 😱
MakeReal and tools like it are making it easy for non-coders to code.
Doesn't look like you can create complex apps with this yet, but you could probably build tiny utility tools and monetise via display ads 🤑
We've covered a few projects like that in previous editions of this newsletter…
- Free Password Generator Making $70,000 Per Year
- Tiny tool, 1 million visitors, $100K/year
- 10-Page Website: 4 Million Visitors and $5000 Per Month
If you'd like to try this yourself, check out Tim Bennetto's process. He's used it to build a suite of tiny tools that bring his website 300K visits each month 📈
$3745 Profit From an AI-Generated Blog Post
Niche Site Lady
- Online Entrepreneur
- $3745 profit in 30 days
Business Idea: YouTubers Would Pay For This
💬 Pat Walls shares a business idea…
Some sort of vetted YouTube/TikTok/Instagram scriptwriter marketplace / job board.
Pain point: Finding good writers for video content is nearly impossible.
Pat started a YouTube channel in April and has grown to 120K+ subscribers since 📈
A big part of that growth is storytelling.
A recent video from his channel will give you a feel for it…
- I Became A Venture Capitalist With Only $1,000…
Back to Pat's business idea…
1/100 people who call themselves writers can actually write video content that performs.
It's so hard to find this talent that creators will just say 'fuck it' and do it themselves, even though it's the biggest bottleneck for any creator trying to scale.
The hard part of this business would be vetting the scriptwriters to be amazing and keep it very high quality.
I would use this and pay for it.
There are surely a whole bunch of YouTubers like Pat who feel the same way.
But before you start building, keep in mind that marketplaces are tough 🙈
I consider them a Level 5 online business.
In other words, among the most complex / difficult / expensive to build.
So if you want to run with Pat's idea, a much-less-difficult approach would be to find 2-3 great video scriptwriters, and start an agency with them.
Your job as head of the agency would be to find brands to work with, and make sure the scriptwriters have everything they need to deliver great results for those brands.
If all goes well, you could eventually hire more scriptwriters and transition into a marketplace business.
💡 Another idea here: how about creating an AI app that generates new video scripts based on the scripts of existing videos?
Simon Høiberg did that for a video several months back (skip to the 3:19 mark)…
But I believe there's still no app that makes this process easier 🤔
6-Figure Paid Newsletter Blueprint (He’s Done It Twice)
Nicolas Cole
- Co-founder of Write With AI
- $200,000 annual revenue
Complaint on Twitter → $1000/Month AI Business
Elvis Sun
- Founder of PressPulse AI
- $1000+ estimated monthly revenue
$18K/Month AI App With No Marketing Experience
Alex Rainey
- Co-Founder of My AskAI
- $18,000 monthly revenue
Sold Their 3-Month-Old Side Project For $30,000
Vatsal Sanghvi
- Co-founder of VisualizeAI
- $30,000 sale price
This AI-Generated Supermodel Earns Up To €10K/Month
Aitana Lopez
- AI-Generated Influencer
- €3,000 average monthly revenue
300K Monthly Visits From Free Tools (Build With AI)
Pallyy
- Social Media Scheduling Tool
- 300,000 monthly visits to free tools
