There are a lot of fake gurus in the one-person business space.
They’re people that either haven’t done it, or that have created a one-person business that makes, like, $100 a year.
Don’t learn from these people.
I’m a practitioner in this space. I run one of the biggest communities around this topic. And I’m part of several other communities full of successful one-person businesses.
There are patterns.
Once you see them it opens your eyes. Based on who I’m seeing succeed online with a one-person business, these are the business models you should consider trying.
A better option for web developers
Amateurs get hot and bothered over websites.
Honestly, I rarely visit websites any more. Most things happen inside of apps nowadays. A better option than being a web developer or playing around with website design for money is to build landing pages.
Landing pages are better in the age of goldfish attention.
Internet users quickly lose focus. A landing page is a single web page with only one button that talks about one thing. Anyone who wants to sell something online needs them.
The master technique one needs to make great landing pages and charge good money for this one-person service isn’t fancy design skills. No.
It’s a focus on conversion.
If you can help entrepreneurs take the traffic they’re getting to a landing page and convert it into either customers or email subscribers, it’s a license to print money.
The cool thing with this business model is it has a level 1 and 2.
- Level 1 is you charge by the hour to build a landing page.
- Level 2 is you charge big money for an outcome. You bill based on how many more people you can convert. Or you bill for set up and advisory (think $50K lump sum, no joke).
This is a business model I don’t see enough people talking about. You don’t need to know code or be a techie from Silicon Valley.
Anyone can learn how to build landing pages.
The ghost helping people not be ghosts
The majority of people are ghosts.
What do I mean? If you google their name nothing comes up. This is bad because the only way they can get opportunities then is by either word of mouth or through applying for job ads with a resume.
A ghostwriter solves the issue. They write content for anybody who wants it and leave their name off. They learn your voice and how you talk then pretend to be you.
They can either create content that supplements a person’s existing content, or they can write everything exclusively for them.
This is a big business.
Prince Harry used this service. Tennis player Andre Agassi did. And many Hollywood celebrities do too.
The challenge is this is a hidden marketplace. Ghostwriters can’t reveal themselves — or who they write for — otherwise they go out of business.
Still, ghostwriting is booming. Anyone who can write qualifies — and that’s most of your reading this. There’s no special skill needed. You’re simply saving a person time by writing for them.
There’s a level two to this game as well.
Once you get good at ghostwriting on social media, your headlines and hooks start to attract a larger audience. You may even become a master at writing viral content.
When this happens you can change the offer from “I’ll write your stuff mate” to “I’ll write your stuff and guarantee X number of followers, subscribers, etc, in the next 90 days. If I miss the target I’ll work for free until I hit it.”
This level two allows you to charge 10x as much. People don’t want written words to look nice online. They want an audience. If you progress from a level 1 to a level 2 ghostwriter, it’s yet another license to print money.
There are around 20 people in my network doing between $10K-$50K a month with this business model. That’s a lot of cash.
The type of course no one is talking about
The standard online course is a snoozer.
The opportunity right now is email courses. It’s where a person has an email list and sends a sequence of emails to a new subscriber to solve a problem for them for free.
If they complete the email course they become loyal. Once that happens you now have their attention and they’re open to being sold a product or service without a lot of friction.
Many internet marketers and creators know the power of an email course. It’s a smart way to indoctrinate people with your personal philosophy and build an email list cult.
The challenge is creating email courses can take a bit of work. Busy creators are looking for people to outsource this task too.
Great creators realize that you don’t just need one email course either. There’s an opportunity to have many different email courses and to change the pathway in the course (in real-time) based on a person’s action.
For example, if they say they want to be a business owner, then the path through the course is different to someone who wants to be a writer.
Dynamic email courses convert people better.
A few smart people online are helping creators build email courses. They’re getting paid enormous cash for it because of the potential for 6 and 7 figures that can be earned from a good one.
Sell email course creation as a service.
The one-person business model that never gets old
1–1 coaching is nice.
The challenge is you’re selling your time. It’s not that scalable. Group coaching is different. You can have 20 people all paying you for the same hour of your time.
I don’t know why more creators and wannabes don’t realize this. And people suck at learning and growing on their own.
With group coaching, you can keep them accountable and give them personalized solutions to their problems. It’s such a powerful business model that can make between $5000-$50,000 per group coaching cohort.
A new kind of community
Old business models are built on one-way transactions.
The chance of a repeat purchase is low. It’s a lonely experience for the buyer who doesn’t get to meet the other buyers. So the default result is that transaction businesses just compete on price.
What a lifeless existence. Business is supposed to be fun.
One-person businesses are changing that. Creators are curating niche communities around a given topic.
The smart creators are going a step further…
They’re curating a community around a goal instead.
When everyone is doing the same habit or task together it creates a level of engagement that can’t be matched.
This is why business models connected to a challenge are so profitable.
Don’t teach or talk. Help people “do” and they’ll thank you for it. Next-level communities are gamified too. They have badges, unlocks, drip-feed content, live coffee calls, group study time on a Zoom call with music, etc.
The business model of a community is a monthly subscription. But an annual subscription is a smarter way to do it — it forces loyalty. To achieve this, just make the annual price 10x better than the monthly price.
Humans can’t resist a good deal.
Once the community is established there are literally 1000s of business models that can be built off the back of it. Many businesses in the future will start off as communities.
Build one. Curate one. Lead one.
A high-ticket mastermind
A mastermind is different to a course, community, or group coaching.
It’s not about you as the creator. It’s about being the curator of really interesting people, then bringing interesting people to them.
Participants are eager to learn and the focus is speed, not depth. The customers in this category typically have a fair bit of money. A low-priced mastermind, bizarrely, is a red flag to them.
It needs to be at least $10K per person … probably $20K.
This one isn’t easy to pull off but the high price can make it the most fun. Why? With that sort of financial investment, you’re going to be surrounded by high-energy doers who’ve likely had success already.
The key will be to find these people.
You’ll need to screen for them with an application form and do a Zoom call with them. They can come from your email list or they can be bought or traded from another person’s email list.
Creativity will be needed (as with all great business models).
Takeaway
Take one of these ideas and go execute on it.
Make it an experiment. Talk to people who’ve done it or are actively doing it. The internet continues to change the world of work. There will be more one-person businesses in the future. Why not you?
Freedom. Better pay. More fun. Cooler outcomes. Kickass communities.
