The 9 best business models for solo-founders

By choosing a business model that suits the Tiny Empire method (no funding + no staff), you have an exponentially higher chance of success, both in terms of making a 6-figure income and in being able to work the hours that you want.

Remember you’re on your own. You can’t do everything. Your combining all roles of the business into a single role, so the more complex you make it, the harder it will be to grow.

Unfortunately most people don’t consider this when they start their business and then can only grow so far. The common mistakes here are:

1. Choosing a business model that’s too complex
2. Choosing a business that has too many “roles”
3. Not thinking about the logistics of running the business alone
4. Copying business models from larger companies

But don’t worry. In the rest of this post, I’ll outline the business models that definitely work.

The Models

There are variations of all these models, but these 9 business models can all work for building your own Tiny Empire:

1. SaaS

SaaS (software-as-a-service) is where you charge users for access to software on a subscription model, like Microsoft 365. Using no-code tools like Bubble, Softr or Glide, it’s now possible for non-technical people to build software for specific business purposes. Look for specific problems that businesses are facing and build a solution for that specific problem. Look for problems you can charge at least $50 per month for.

Pros: Recurring revenue. Can charge higher prices.
Cons: Slower to build. Need to deal with cancellations.

2. Education

Teaching something online, either as a one-off payment or as a subscription model, can be a very effective way to monetize your skillset. With the right audience you can create a reliable revenue stream. This can take many formats, including text-based, video, or live online classes. Ideally you would target professionals or businesses as you can charge higher prices and the cost can be charged to the employer as a business expense, making it an easier sell.

Pros: Quick to monetize. Charge high prices.
Cons: Sometimes no recurring revenue. Revenue may be tied to your time.

3. Professional communities

Start a professional community using a platform like Slack, Circle.so or Discord and charge for access. By targeting professionals, you can charge higher prices and again allow your members to expense it to their employer. This makes getting sign-ups much easier and also allows you to niche down to a narrow subject area.

Pros: Quicker to monetize than free communities.
Cons: Requires a lot of ongoing work to provide value to members.

4. Free communities - sponsorship model

Alternatively, you can start a free community, like my community No Code Founders. With this approach, you would make most of your revenue through sponsorships from businesses. You can charge for things like event sponsorship, newsletter sponsorship, social promotions etc. Although similar to a Professional community in it’s structure, the business model is entirely different as you are trying to attract as many members as possible so that you can steadily increase your sponsorship rates.

Pros: Once scaled, has reliable sponsorship revenue.
Cons: Takes a long time to monetize.

5. Marketplaces

The most common way to monetize a marketplace is by having 2 types of accounts. Consumer and Business. The consumer accounts would normally be free and then Business accounts would have a subscription associated with them or would charge a referral fee any time they refer a customer.

Pros: Once scaled, has reliable advertising revenue.
Cons: Takes a long time to monetize.

6. Media - free

Similar to a free community, most media businesses use an advertising model where you want to attract as many users as possible. This could take the form of a blog, YouTube channel, podcast etc. Again, you’re going for maximum users, but still want to keep it niche so that you can attract readers who visit you more than once, and so that you can target advertisers in that specific niche.

Pros: Once scaled, has reliable sponsorship revenue.
Cons: Takes a long time to monetize.

7. Media - paid

You can also have a paid media service like a paid newsletter where you give limited content for free and then upsell readers to a paid membership where they get full access. This focuses less on the scale of users and more on attracting the exact right user-base. This is more similar to a SaaS business in many ways and you can think of this as “content-as-a-service”.

Pros: Faster to monetize than free media.
Cons: Slower to monetize than other methods. Need to deal with cancellations.

8. E-commerce - digital products

Selling products for a one-off fee is the oldest business model there is. Doing this online is no different and there are endless ways to do this with a vast array of tools. I suggest focusing on digital products rather than physical products however as digital products require no distribution, storage, postage etc. On top of that, you don’t need to buy digital products, so you can create it once and sell it unlimited times and thus don’t need to worry about cashflow in the same way that physical product businesses do.

Pros: Quick to monetize. Simple distribution.
Cons: Often no recurring revenue. Depending on the market, can be difficult to sell.

9. Service

This is any business where you are being paid for your time. And before you say “isn’t this just being a freelancer?” Technically yes, although there are many ways to structure the pricing which differs from traditional freelance work. Not only that, you can use this in conjunction with the other business models mentioned above or use this as an additional service that you offer alongside other revenue streams.

Pros: Quick to monetize. Charge high prices.
Cons: Often no recurring revenue.

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I also have a couple of courses on building small businesses which you can check out here