Become a Successful Solopreneur in Just Seven Gruelling Years

If you don’t like getting cash to show up to a comfortable place that provides you with friends, healthcare, an ergonomic chair and unlimited snacks, then the professional workforce may not be for you, and you should consider becoming a solopreneur.

Congratulations, researching how to become a solopreneur is now one more reason to not pay attention to the meeting you’re in!

But what next? Or better, what not next, because ideally, you’d like to be doing nothing. The closest thing to doing nothing is to be a solopreneur.

So how do you do this? A quick Google search shows there are lots of guides on how to achieve sustainable income as a solopreneur by doing almost no work. I have taken the liberty of summarizing them for all of you.

Step 1: Listen to every podcast, read every book and take every course on wealth creation — ever.

This is mandatory pre-work for solopreneurship. If you think you’re finished, you’re not – there’s definitely more out there that you could absorb.

Some examples of worthy podcasts are How I Built This, Smart Passive Income, anything by Tony Robbins, etc.

Do not do anything they suggest you do right now, especially if they say “Don’t listen to more podcasts; get out there and try something!” This is a trap! You need to keep listening and reading.

Step 2: Make a niche business.

Now that you’ve attempted to learn everything (which you have not… go back!), you need to pick a niche. With a little investment, you’ll build up enough traffic to get a solid $1,000 a month in only around six years!

But what niche? Let’s look at some examples of niches that are undoubtedly profitable for solopreneurs:

• Things you don’t understand, like cryptocurrencies, AI, Snapchat, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, drones, algorithmic trading, building niche businesses, writing coherent lists, and crocheting
• Anything liked by people older than you and that is just getting onto the internet, e.g. crocheting, comparisons of types of preserved foods, aquarobics, lame music and the Old Days
• Stuff people seem to like on Facebook, like babies, dogs, vacations and crochet
• Something you think is cool, like crocheting
• Something you would be surprised others find cool, also like crocheting
• Crocheting

Look, just do crocheting.

Step 3: Aggressively market your niche business in every vertical.

It’s important to not spread yourself too thin, but you also don’t want to narrow your choices unwisely too early. What if you pick the wrong one?

The following verticals are super hot and ripe for monetization right now as a solopreneur: blogs, podcasts, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat, Vines (these may no longer exist, but there are still YouTubes of Vines around), X/Twitter, Reddit, direct mail, direct email, sliding into peoples DMs, telephone cold calling, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, SMS, LinkedIn, online forums, print magazines, and streetside hawking.

You have no experience on which to base any rational decisions, so the best thing to do is to try all of them at the same time for tiny amounts of time and see what randomly sticks.

Step 4: Monetize your audience.

This is the phase containing 99% of the work. It will be a gruelling, six-year slog, costing you far more time than a regular job and not even guaranteed to make your previous salary (or any money at all), so it deserves its own step.

Essentially, you have to gradually build your traffic and following and then make money through advertising and affiliate partnerships, 80% of which will be with a web hosting company like Siteground you’ll tell everyone to use because it’s amazing, like I just did.

They have a fantastic product and wonderful customer support, but most importantly, f*** me if they don’t have a GREAT affiliate program. Congratulations: You, like me, are now their biggest fan!

Step 5. Make a guide to making niche businesses and monetizing the audiences

Oh, you thought you were home with your $1,000 monthly income after six years of investing in Steps 1 and 2, right? Not even close.

Now that you’ve achieved that minor success, spend six months meticulously making a guide on Udemy and start teaching other people how to do what you haven’t actually done.

Give the guide away for free to start with. After 1,000 4-5 star reviews you can increase the price to $10, at which point purchases will drop to exactly zero.

Step 6. Write a quick takedown of fraudsters and scam artists.

Irrespective of how well your niche website worked or how well your guide is(n’t) selling, publish a critique of all the shysters making courses who have never made a profitable business themselves.

Your aim (in fact, your only hope) is that it goes viral, to help you sell at least one course.

Step 7: Write an eBook on the entire process.

The last six months of your program. After many years of investing everything and learning a lot, get every blog post you made and put it into a PDF, selling it with the premise “Learn from my mistakes and get to profitability faster”.

You can sell this to your friends and family, netting you a profit of around $100 for this entire process.

Congratulations, you’re a solopreneur!