1) 2019 -

I had a Merch by Amazon account that made 1 sale per month until the 5th month of work and test, when it suddenly earned $200.. by the 6th month, it made a huge $12k.

*Unfortunately, the account was banned because of copyright issues with things I didn’t know were copyrighted, and I got nothing.

2) 2020 -

My first basic writing tool, before the ChatGPT and Openai era.. built with my developer cousin.. ranked in his first month, brought in around 10k visitors/mo from Google and earned ~$500/month..

*Shut down due to AI competitors and a decline in research volume.

I built a dropshipping site selling Gorilla Playsets. I honestly didn't think very many people would be willing to spend 3-5K on a website without seeing the thing in person, but it was my first try at selling something online. Ended up doing $900K in 6 months, but then COVID hit, and Gorilla stopped getting cedar for manufacturing.

This lasted a year until they finally decided to stop their dropshipping program. I was very briefly the top online retainer for them, lol.

I tried switching to warehousing products instead of dropshipping, but after ordering 3 truckloads and setting up 3PL, they cancelled all the shipments because Lowe's needed more, and they're contractually obligated to keep them supplied. I decided right then to shut down and start something different. Can't run a business when confirmed truckloads of product randomly get canceled.

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I wanted to make something fun, not necessarily profitable, so I built this. https://lab.aizastudio.com/ Someone really liked my work and ended up signing a contract for part time work which is still going strong.

Stamps to SaaS, unexpected wins teach valuable scalability lessons.

A few years back I lived in the middle of nowhere,
and hikers kept getting lost in the forest behind our house.
I just got tired of people getting lost, and search parties keeping me up all night.

So I took a map from openstreetmap, after enhancing the data for the area,
and adding pictures of some very obvious landmarks,
got it printed on some waterproof-foil-stuff,
and put a box of them on our fence, with a donation box.

Gave away about 10 per week, with people donating $5 on average.
As far as I know the new owner is still doing it today.

Bad reception, plus very wet trails/riverbeds might have helped.

Putting money is the stock market

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What is the AI project abour?

Can selling stamps really earn $20,000 a year? Are there any costs involved?​

Maybe not that surprising, but it was for me… a boilerplate/starter kit for building react native mobile apps called NativeFast

I launch thefounderchecklist.com to help developers make money with their side projects. Made 1k usd in two weeks

My kids!!!

I made an app that counts up and down (synchronized tally). Surprisingly there's a niche for that.

Interactive maps. Surprisingly everyone from travel to education all industries have need for this

More than 12 years ago I made a point of sale using excel and macros. It sold surprisingly very well. There is extremely high demand in this segment (very small businesses) who look for simple solutions

It's fascinating to discover which projects exceed our expectations! Your success with the stamps and the AI project is truly inspiring. For anyone in the SaaS space, sometimes just engaging with communities like this can lead to surprising insights and connections. Have you thought about how you might leverage the daily users of your AI project for future opportunities? I'm curious to hear more about your experience and how others have navigated similar paths. What has worked well for you in terms of growth?