Not-so-secretly I’ve been building an automated business at ProfitSwarm.ai.

It’s going well. It’s going awfully. It’s challenging.

The good news is that I’ve been learning so much about AI limitations and AI Automations that I’ve started actually getting somewhere.

At first automating entrepreneurial tasks seemed painfully slow. Most of them didn’t work, fell over, or generally KO’d themselves.

But now I’m getting it.

Really getting it.

Anyhow, if you’re not already following my 100% AI Automation challenge, do so now.

And if you’re interested in automating with AI (you really should be in 2025), you can now pick up my first set of worksheets and video guide here (AI Automation Worksheet).

It’s a humble start, but it’s something.

We’re really going to have to amp up our AI / Automation skills as entrepreneurs. I’m going to review a lot more AI workflow tools.

The stuff that’s coming is nuts!

The post AI Automating: The Worksheet first appeared on Woody Hayday.

The AI Business Automation Blueprint

A lot of those on my AI newsletter asked me for a ‘starters guide to AI Automation’ for entrepreneurs. This is that guide:

Because it’s so crucial in 2025+ for entrepreneurs to learn at least the basics of AI and automation, I’ve made this free. You can download it by clicking the image above.

Why does AI Automation Matter so much for Entrepreneurs in 2025?

Right now we’re at a turning point in entrepreneurship and business. AI is making it’s way through each and every industry, turning lots of things upside down.

I believe those of us entrepreneurs and founders who embrace this new superpower are likely going to come out winning as AI slowly rewrites our world.

So for an entrepreneur it’s now imperative to learn:

• Rudiments of AI, LLMs, and ML
• Understanding of where and where not to apply AI
• Automation of business workflows

… and that’s what this free guide covers.

If you aren’t already, you should be using one of these:

Make.com | Gumloop | n8n | Lindy AI | Relevance AI

The post Entrepreneurs Guide to AI Automation first appeared on Woody Hayday.

This is a question I have asked myself many times over the past few years. Selling your company has many pro’s and con’s, but what it can do is give you space to redefine yourself and your work.

In todays world it can feel like we’re not all able to profit from work we enjoy.

But all we can do is to try to arrange our lives such that most of what we do for money provides us with some kind of personal value beyond currency.

Some of us are lucky, and by way of privilege, serendipity, and hard work, have found ways to believe in this.

To believe you can design your life.

My hope is that in time, (perhaps through AI disruption), we as a people collectively learn to design our lives.

The cynic in me doesn’t believe everyone can do it. But I do believe some can.

I’ve made this Ikigai quiz to help.

What is your Ikigai?

The post Entrepreneurs Ikigai first appeared on Woody Hayday.

Target

Authentic software producing revenue. Autonomy, health and wealth.

• £13,000 MRR in 24h (bougie I know, but migraines suck) per week via Ikigai by December, through:
  • Daily metrics to fuel me
  • Living in the future
  • Distribution locked in
  • 25% dev, 75% marketing
  • Designed business systems
• Migraines managed
• Lift 3-5x week

Systems

This year rather than focusing on goals, I’m going to focus on systems.

• Distribution: Profit Swarm .ai, this blog, and content waterfall (X, LI)
• Challenges/Quests:
  • 30 day free tools challenge
  • Several others
• Weekly checklists:
  • Metric tracking
  • Ideation
  • Writing
  • Content cascading
  • Builders Journal
  • Social interaction sessions
  • Deep work 25% (dev)
  • Deep work 75% (marketing/martech)
  • Blocked in free-time (maker/recoup/nature/drawing)
• Monthly Garbage collection:
  • Check yourself, what can I let go of?
  • Cull unused subs, domains, project fragments
  • Read legit, less feeds: Paul Graham, et all
  • Blocked experimentation and breaks. Hackernews. Jacking around with AI. Make one cool thing. Think futures

Quotes / Notes

Here are some of the fragments of writing I’ve dwelt on while planning how to make the most out of 2025.

• “Live in the future, then build what’s missing.” Paul Graham
• “It’s just a ride” Bill Hicks
• Prime for grace. Unrushed. A designed life
• I do not accept that externals run us, or that life is strife. We can choose
• Give less fucks
• Care for yourself
• Say no plenty, each no buys you a yes
• Don’t get distracted by X trends etc., but do live in the future & be nimble/grace-ready
• Distribution is the new MOAT
• Systems > Goals
• “If you’re working too hard, you’re doing it wrong,” – Cuban
• I am wrong, that’s where I start. Then I get more right.

First fix plan

I’m going light here, in the vain of my 2024 year of experiments I want to keep nimble and double down on my systemising. I want to make simple solutions to overlooked problems and iterate rapidly.

My main experiments will be in pursuit of distribution (e.g. through ProfitSwarm), and all the while I’ll work on keeping my product building in virtuous loops. Some of this will be through martech (e.g. my free tools challenge.)

• Q1:
  • Niche report.io – Established marketing
  • Mobile app (TBC) – on AppStore, marketing
  • Profit Swarm .ai – Launch my new challenge to build a 100% ai business
• Q2:
  • +1~ MVP
• Q3+:
  • Unify systems, Evernote/Notion/Telegram/Gdocs/phone writing apps
  • Adapt plan as needed

I’ll double back and update how this goes

P.S. If you want to follow progress here, or you’re ready to up your software entrepreneurship game, Join me on ProfitSwarm.ai.

The post 2025 Plan & Experiments first appeared on Woody Hayday.

I launched stuff, I pivoted, I embraced new tech; but I also saw where the landscape of software entrepreneurship has changed, and made next to no revenue all year.

This is not what I’d hoped for, nor what I expected.

Coming back fresh from a year building a cabin should leave you limber, right? Ready to slay? Nope. I still had my skillset, but I had let my tools get a little rusty. The landscape had changed and external life influences destabilised me nearly all year.

But despite that, I think things went well.

AI now feels like a force multiplier.

The two start-ups and an email course I have ready to launch feel more viable.

I start 2025 less wrong. LFG.

Here’s a run-down of my year, as much for me as for you If you want to see my plan for 2025 it’s here.

Things that went well

Overall I consistently committed to labour, spending about 80% of my time developing and 20% marketing. While this might have worked in 2020, I don’t think we can do this distribution in 2025, not at least without master marketing skills I do not have.

• Work
  • Got back into my product-making groove, despite external challenges
    • Fully adopted Cursor/other AI tools into my workflow
    • Setup a repeatable github system for each project
    • Reconnected with kanban via Github
    • Days to MVP massively reduced (~3m at start of year to ~5d at end)
    • Rebooted lots of my old business systems, including tracking sheets, idea matrix, and overall business checklists
    • Retooled my brain to set myself up to catch grace. Used sales safari, rather than forcing startup ideas
    • Sharpened my ability to cull floundering projects
    • New camera setup (Sony Alpha 7)
    • 240hz monitor reduced migraines
    • Refreshed desk setup for focus & efficacy
  • Projects:
    • [Shipped] Rebuilt WoodyHayday.com
    • [Shipped] Rebooted Project Pages
    • [Shelved] BuildProfit.io built in the right vane, but shelved for now
    • [Shipped] BurnoutNutrition.com to get the concept out of my head
    • [Shipped] Built a micro bet – CoupleFlow for Telegram
    • [95%] Mobile app MVP in 5 days (2025 Q1 release)
    • [Ready] Built NicheReports (2025 Q1 release)
    • [In-hand] Drafted 25% of my new 1 year startup course (which pivoted into a new AI entrepreneurship challenge) – Profit Swarm .ai
• IRL:
  • Finished Cabin build:
    • Interior
    • 3.5m Ash Desk
    • Cladding
    • Welsh reclaimed slate roof
    • Stove installed, Custom heatshield (acid etched Henry Thoreau passage)
    • Compost loo started
    • Quad Port
    • Lots more, (thanks to Evan)
  • Makes:
    • Food Forest 3 planted
    • House finished (bathroom)
    • Trailer Mods
    • Garden steps x 2
    • Seagull defence
    • Saddle stool prototype
    • Garden beautification
    • Gym in garage started
  • 240hz monitor for migraines
  • Gave up smoking
  • Gave up gaming
  • Brought my truck back from severe chassis rot
  • Travel:
    • Hertfordshire x 3
    • Budapest
    • Tenerife
    • Cardiff
    • Visited my Dad plenty
    • Sadly missed a trip to Prague
    • Japan & Seoul with Bro
    • Christmas in Portugal
    • Fam in Fishguard
    • Friend meetups x 7

Things that didn’t fly

Failure is information, and I got a chunk of it out of 2024. But I’m happy; I still have runway and am now much more in my groove.

• Revenue – I made under $1k all year. I put this down to:
  • Me being out of the entrepreneurial groove
  • The software space moving on since I last started fresh (SEO, Launches, AI-built stuff, and just generally the now more frothy nature of the space)
  • Sales Safari + Re-matrixing ideas – out of practice, I chose suboptimal bets for ⅔ of the year. Startup brain is coming back slowly
  • External life effects destabilising me a lot
• Launches – the landscape has changed since I last seriously launched products ~6y ago. Launches, and indeed distribution, has evolved. I’m catching up with this curve in 2025
• SEO – this has changed to. Oh the good old days of grey hat ranking, (I owned spot 1-3 for ‘modified cars’ for years before). Managed some success towards end of year, but generally I needed a refresh of my skills again here
• Developing a week-in-out schedule – I tried splitting my week several ways, but in the end, as per history, I was just trying to fit too much in. I’ve let go of that assumption, and will be building a better, leaner weekly ‘system’ this year
• #buildinpublic – I tried to get involved in this movement on X, but I found that while there were some cool people around it, it has also become a bit of a copycat low-strike-rate minefield
• I refreshed my SLR with the intention to build on YouTube (maker videos and business stuff). I did use my camera a bit, but not at all how I’d envisaged. I hope to make more use of it this year, but it’s not realistic to balance small bets & maker stuff with my current state of health & household
• Scattered notes – I still have notes and writing scattered across Evernote, Notion, Telegram, Google Docs, various phone writing apps. This is an endless struggle between ADHD/ASD natures, but I do still believe I will find a system to match my nature, eventually
• I admit I got a little distracted by memecoins
• Migraines: I’ve made gratingly little progress overall, though I have found a balance where work is totally achievable; provided I regulate the plethora of other things I’d set myself to do IRL
  • Hospitalised for 4 days at one point
  • Tried a lot of therapies/pharma solutions this year, approached the bottom of the list of possible ‘cures’: Myofascia, Rimegepant, Pizotofen, Botox, etc. etc.
  • Have found a healthy balance with work by the end of the year though, work’s good now
• Alexander Technique drop off – I have started to notice the effect of dropping my routine AT lessons; bad backs that I have not had in 10y or so
• In the polytunnel: My old lemon tree is still plagued by Scaley bug, the peach tree by red mites, and the fig tree has rust. Otherwise the growing season is set to be very good in 2025

All in all I’ve had a great year despite all of the challenges. I’m very grateful to have had the runway and capital to recover my tools, travel with my peeps, and make some cool things.

I look forward to further refining my product building/launching loops in 2025; to less external knocks, more focus, revenue and stability.

I hope you have a great 2025!

P.S. If you want to keep up to date with my business adventures, and tool up your software entrepreneurship in 2025, Join ProfitSwarm.ai (launching soon).

Doubling back from my 2024 small bets post, I said I’d answer a few questions, so I’m going to do that here:

Is it possible to get iterative benefits while exploring disparate small bet models?

Yes, I definitely saw iterative benefits despite my small bets being a bit scattershot. I’d say there’d be more iterative benefits if the bets had been aimed more closely at one audience, primarily in the fact I ended up building a few different email lists/target audiences, which I couldn’t cross-sell to.

Technology wise, though, there are definitely stack benefits to building different models; e.g. I now have a good base to build mobile apps, telegram integrations, AI wrappers etc. that can be applied this year to a single audience.

Might it have been better to go all-in on a single idea?

I don’t think so. Mostly because my startup-idea validating brain was out of practice. I think all my ideas had merit, and to some extent it was my rusty processes which meant they produced only meagre returns.

I think being nimble and exploring a range of ideas was good for me to get my mind back in the game, to learn the new landscape, and to fully iron out the kinks from my workflows.

What code libraries/scripts did I build which will be useful going forwards?

Lots! Telegram, AI, Turnstile, and Stripe integrations. A nice new ‘domain for sale’ lander. I learned Flutter and Dart and built a decent MVP mobile app.

I suspect lots of these libs/scripts will be useful in 2025.

Did I hit my targets?

Nope. Not by a long shot, though I am fairly confident I know the reasons why, and am pivoting in the right direction. I don’t want to let my bias sugar coat the fact that I made next to no revenue, but I do think it’s rational I’ll get there in 2025.

Did I move towards a greater authenticity?

Yes, I think so. I’ve been doing this (software entrepreneurship) for most of my adult life, mostly successfully; it feels authentic and right. I started 2024 in a less authentic place than I ended it.

Having been working on the rock face all year I reconnected with that natural builder in me, saw that I can build well, fast. Most importantly for me I accepted that my aspirations were, as usual, unrealistic (to moon shot a small bet, finish building a cabin, plant a new food forest, sustain a nurturing family household, make stuff IRL, etc. all with chronic migraines).

By dialling back my aspirations, doubling down on this entrepreneurship focus, I hope and expect to make more progress in 2025.

Am I excited to carry on this experiment in 2025?

Yes! It’s my authentic self to be making new stuff to help others solve problems. I really look forward to launching, iterating, pivoting, and generally delivering good outcomes that produce win-win results.

Long live makership!

The post 2024 Year in Review first appeared on Woody Hayday.

CoupleFlow is a Telegram Bot which (privately and securely) sits in the Telegram chat between you and your partner. It anonymously observes your DMs and collects together AI based insights on how you’re communicating, giving you subtle prompts to help you grow together.

Each week @CoupleFlowBot will give you a review (check-in) with analysis on your past weeks communications, highlighting successes, and offering up ways to improve (based on the latest science on creating and sustaining happy, healthy relationships).

Why did I build Couple Flow?

As part of my year of experiments I’ve been exploring lots of new technology. AI has obviously been at the forefront of my experiments, but I also love Telegram and have wanted to explore the Telegram Bot API for a while.

As well as to improve my own relationship comms, I also noticed that my peers online had started to copy paste their own couple chats into ChatGPT. The results were mixed, but I could see that if some of the harsher insights could be negated, there was a big opportunity here to genuinely help people improve the way they talk to their significant other.

So this project was a mixture of scratching my own itch, genuinely wanting to help people have less friction in their lives, and a great excuse to learn a new API.

How did development go?

Tooled up with Cursor AI and my own libraries, development of CoupleFlow went really well. I continue to be amazed at how quickly I can go from idea to fully fledged, secure and stable apps.

The Telegram Bot API ‘just works’, and previous projects from this year have given me a solid basis to write really effective prompts.

Mix all that with a genuine curiosity for Transactional Analysis and the patterns we all bring to our important partnerships, and I thoroughly enjoyed making this legit couple insight tool.

Where can I try CoupleFlow?

You can get started with Couple Flow here, all you need is Telegram and 5 minutes to set up the chat.

I’ll be fully launching CoupleFlow next week, so head over to coupleflow.app and get connected for the special free event for December: Adult Advent Calendar.

The post MVP: AI Relationship Bot first appeared on Woody Hayday.

The reality is that the journey to starting a new business has enough complexity in it inherently. I’ve seen many potential entrepreneurs suffer the overwhelm and let it either beat them back into their 9-5, or waste months ‘researching’ (often procrastinating, struggling), rather than working on their MVP or launch/marketing.

As I’ve worked through the different products I’ve made this year, it’s been getting clearer and clearer to me that my Ikigai has something to do with helping fledgling entrepreneurs take the leap, (well). 

Over my life I’ve mentored several would-be entrepreneurs with good results. 

Niche Report is my take on that very first step. Knowing a niche.

There’s so much talk about niches online.

There’s only a few things that really matter. 

1. Market research is essential. Not only does it inform you about your target audience, but it also lets the entrepreneur/startup feel like they’re ‘in the niche/market’. (Which helps counter the internal dialog “I don’t even know much about {x}, who am I to do this?”.)
2. Launch something people know they want, or be ready to educate. All of which starts by getting to grips with your audience.
3. Know where your audience hangs out online. So you know where to market (watering holes).
4. Know the competitive landscape.

… all of which are now knowable up-to-the-minute thanks to the sheer volume of chatter (signals) online. 

There’s a lot of value in doing these early safari’s on a new niche by hand (that is, in the trenches of reddit, X, etc.) But I read time and time again that entrepreneurs struggle to collate, record, or even start to do this essential market research.

Many miss it out altogether. 

Niche Report steps in here, using an array of methods to retrieve and analyse the essential signals of any given niche. It means you can fire off a report request, then 24h later have a massive amount of the above done for you, delivered to your inbox (with references back to all sources, and a useful spreadsheet of all the data used to make the report). It never hurts to dig around yourself in your niches watering holes, but Niche Report takes all that ‘unknown’ complexity out of this first logical step for entrepreneurs.

I’ll be formally launching it next week, (yes on ProductHunt even though it’s waining), and I look forward to helping many more entrepreneurs take the leap (effectively).

The post Market Research for Entrepreneurs first appeared on Woody Hayday.

And here I am again, back in that deeply uncomfortable place. When you have a business to grow, whether it’s new or established, the path is pretty straightforward: start working, keep growing, keep improving.

The same applies if you’re employed.

After selling my company over 5 years ago I was employed to keep running ZBS CRM for 3 years. Last year I took a year out to build a cabin in the woods, recharge.

This year back to it. Back to that uncomfortable place. I’m running lots of experiments – I’m back in the lab.

And yet, eight months into the year, nothing has ‘popped’ yet.

This post serves as a note to myself—and perhaps to you.

This space between ‘vehicles’ of work—between gigs, ideas, or businesses—is profoundly uncomfortable.

The compulsion to create is raging inside me.

My ideas spreadsheet is massive, filled with possibilities. But I’m reluctant to start building just based on that list. I want to solve a real, existing problem in the market—something tangible, something needed.

I go on sales safari’s. I leverage gummy search. I get familiar with v0 and cursor ai. I wonder whether all work is from now on is prompting a console.

I have my intentions. I know the direction I want to head in. I’m doing my best to manifest it.

But still, this existential crisis swarms me.

What to make.

What to make that matters.

What to make that will produce profits.

What to make that isn’t just facilitating human spam.

What to make that feels good to work on, that adds genuine value.

What the f*ck is my ikigai?

… I know only fragments of the answer. I’m showing up every day to work on it. I will endure through the unknown lands between businesses/outlets. I will keep trying stuff and I will sustain belief that this will eventually capture grace. I won’t fall into the trap of feeds and make stuff for the sake of it.

Keep. Going.

What’s your approach to choosing what’s next? Tweet me.

The post Uncomfortable Entrepreneur: What to build first appeared on Woody Hayday.

I’m excited to announce that Project Pages 2.0 is now available at ProjectPages.io, and on WordPress.org!

7 years ago I made the first version of Project Pages. While my main gig is software entrepreneurship I have always ‘made things on the side’. Since I was a kid I’ve been hacking stuff together, from DIY projectors to furniture to buildings.

But whatever online ‘portfolio maker’ tools I tried I never found a good fit. Portfolio WordPress plugins, or sites were always:

• Too focused on ‘career’ or ‘consulting’ wins.
• Arty, but without the scope to tell maker stories.
• Clunky aesthetically.
• Closed sourced.
• Unsystematic – e.g. just using WordPress pages.

So back then I built my own, as I’ve tended to do throughout my years, (e.g. Zero Bullshit CRM was to scratch my own itch).

In todays light that old version is pretty basic & ugly, but it was still better than the other’s.

Then ZBS CRM took off and I got lost in the entrepreneurship & exit whirlwinds. I still made stuff, but I didn’t upload a single project into my ‘portfolio’.

When I got back from my year off building a cabin I decided it was time to fix that. I spent a few months rewriting Project Pages and bringing it up to modern WordPress standard, (blocks & patterns). I went through the 16k photos in my iCloud and weeded out the maker projects for upload.

There are now 51 projects in my Project Pages Portfolio.

I’m really happy with Project Pages 2.0, because it means I can show my eclectic maker habits and business projects on my website, but more than that, through the process it’s allowed me great reflection on how I choose what to make and why.

More on that in a future post.

… it’s also helped me a handful of times already, in that when somebody asks me ‘how did you do that thing’ I can literally send them a link.

The way I’ve built Project Pages 2.0 nudges you towards writing your project descriptions as a ‘make story’, which ends up being more entertaining, and informative for others who want to make similar stuff.

So today I launch the reboot of my project-logging plugin for WordPress. I’m still working out how to get it in the hands of other cool makers of all kinds, but you can grab a copy of the free plugin at ProjectPages.io, and optionally upgrade it for any amount to show your support.

Here’s the 2.0 tour:

Here’s my top 3 favourite improvements in 2.0:

• Blocks – I’ve converted all the aspects of Project Pages (e.g. the Hero section, the project cards etc.) into blocks. This means you can rearrange the page layouts yourself in the WordPress template editor. Better yet I made some cool blocks in the PRO version like ‘Related Projects’.
• Timeline View – I use this to create an ‘Entrepreneurship’ Timeline of all the businesses I’ve made.
• Improved aesthetics – 2.0 fits much better within my blog theme, matching the style of the rest of my site cleanly. I love the way the new Hero header sections came out, and I’m glad to have moved the design forwards. If there’s demand, I look forward to taking this even further with more formal design help.

Who is Project Pages for?

This started out as a plugin purely to solve my desire to share the stories around the eclectic things I’ve made. Along the way it’s become clear that other makers also like the idea. For now I’m pushing Project Pages 2.0 out into the ether and tentatively watching who uses it, and asking for feedback.

In my grandest vision for this, I think it could become the Maker OS. I’ve learned a lot in my years of making software and IRL stuff, and I think that indie makers (of all types) are often overlooked by big software as ‘unprofessional’. This is not the case.

As the world gets more complex and work changes again (let’s face it, it probably needed to), we’re more likely to have side-hustles and multiple gigs. Even separate to that, for some of us it just lights us up to make stuff.

Project Pages is going to help people who make things:

• Tell the story of their work
• Reflect on their work and processes
• Reach larger interested audiences (1,000 true fans!)
• Get better at their craft

I want to make this a slick system for:

• Indie Makers
• Artists
• Creators
• Designers
• Illustrators
• Film Makers
• Craftspeople
• Entrepreneurs
• Photographers
• Software Engineers

… or maybe in the end it’ll only be for Indie Makers, or just me. Let’s see who uses it

If you’re a creator and you’re interested, please do try the plugin at ProjectPages.io, or the WordPress.org page. Feedback is helpful on the forum or by email. For now the Pro version is ‘pay what you want’, because I am keen to get feedback from other makers.

Here’s to many more years of making projects!

The post Project Pages 2.0 first appeared on Woody Hayday.

As part of this years experimental entrepreneurship process I thought I’d explore a range of models rather than relying on my ‘known’ entrepreneurial mode (Freemium SaaS/WordPress plugin based business).

Below I’ve collected together the different approaches I’m going to explore as small bets.

These are well documented in the entrepreneurship ether, but I couldn’t find a decent no-bullshit overview. Here’s hoping this list helps you find a small bet model which suits you. (To see which I’m working on right now, check the updates on my 2024 entrepreneur experiments page.)

1. Affiliate Marketing – Using SEO, pSEO, and social traffic to promote a WordPress site which lists others products where we can take an affiliate cut of the sale.
   • Distribution: Search engine traffic.
   • Timescale to profit: Long-term
   • Pro’s: Easy & quick setup, you get to express a special interest
   • Con’s: Google may die to AI, Affiliate rates can be low, SEO on new domains can take a long time to take effect
2. Online Education – Digitally delivered course, range of outlets, often driven by social traffic.
   • Distribution: Social traffic, ads, perhaps some SEO
   • Alternative distribution: Established course networks (e.g. udemy)
   • Timescale to profit: Short-mid term
   • Pro’s: Quick to make product, leverage existing knowledge, minimal support, high potential ticket-price / ROI
   • Con’s: Works best when established audience
3. WordPress plugin – Freemium, Listed on WordPress.org, with SEO/social traffic to bolster distribution. This is my comfort zone.
   • Distribution: Established network (WordPress.org), some external traffic
   • Timescale to profit: Mid-term
   • Pro’s: My comfort zone, huge established market, established sales flow
   • Con’s: Slightly longer lead time to product, price conscious market, support load, reliant on WordPress.org/WP
4. AI Tool – Could be a thin layer of logic laid over existing AI services, or larger IP. AI is currently under a lollapalooza effect (Charlie Munger).
   • Distribution: AI directories, social traffic, ads
   • Timescale to profit: Short-term
   • Pro’s: Booming industry, easily accessible powerful tools not yet fully tapped, lollapalooza
   • Con’s: Busy marketplace with lots of powerful examples taking limelight easily, unstable market, hard to build a moat around offerings, vulnerable to provider platform changes
5. AI Tool generated product – A spin on the previous, AI can assist in product generation in many ways. Rather than sell the AI tool, get the AI to make the product/service.
   • Distribution: Service directories, social traffic, SEO, ads
   • Timescale to profit: Short-mid term
   • Pro’s: Fast to market, imagination-first
   • Con’s: Potentially lacks originality/specialist input into product, potentially hard to build a moat around offerings, vulnerable to provider platform changes
6. Consultancy / Microsites as a service – Provide consultancy or small service-products (like in my case, WordPress plugins as a service).
   • Distribution: Your network, service directories, in the long term: SEO
   • Timescale to profit: Short-term
   • Pro’s: Leverage existing network/skillset, learn about your existing audience, hours = £, authenticity
   • Con’s: Depends on network readiness, ties hours to £ (initially)
7. Platform Arbitrage (Ethical Cloning) – Take a product/service which is doing okay (e.g. search Acquired.com for $200k+ ARR) and create an improved version with your own insight.
   • Distribution: SEO, ads, social
   • Timescale to profit: Depends on product
   • Pro’s: Market validation somewhat proven already, requires less imagination, can explore existing marketing for inspiration
   • Con’s: May already be a busy market, may not be a fit for personal authenticity
8. IRL Business – I often wonder how a real life business would feel after running software start-ups for so many years. Applied learning to IRL product/service. Lots of examples of ‘boring businesses’ flying around. e.g. Vending machines/laundrettes.
   • Distribution: Local IRL advertising, ads, SEO, word-of-mouth
   • Timescale to profit: Mid-long term
   • Pro’s: Bricks and mortar could have more longevity than digital, could get you out of the house, local connection building, local SEO is much easier than consumer product SEO
   • Con’s: CapEx, risk profile
9. Joint Ventures – For those who can build it can be useful to partner up with someone who can really market, and vice versa.
   • Distribution: One of the JV partners (audience/marketing prowess)
   • Timescale to profit: Depends on JV, typically short to mid-term
   • Pro’s: Play to each others strengths, established audiences can be satisfied
   • Con’s: Splitting the profits, working with new connections introduces an unknown
10. iOS/Android App – I’ve only ever dabbled with mobile apps, but it’s still a massive revenue market. With the benefit of distribution being built-in.
    • Distribution: App stores, social traffic
    • Timescale to profit: Short to mid-term
    • Pro’s: Huge established paying market, easy to charge
    • Con’s: Busy marketplace, requires some developer skill, reliant on Apple/Goog
11. Newsletter – Writing a regular email newsletter is an established business in of itself, if not simply as a funnel.
    • Distribution: Social traffic, SEO, ads
    • Timescale to profit: Long-term (probably)
    • Pro’s: Deplatformed email list is a huge business asset, connection to readers, builds trust & audience, coherent multiple revenue streams (ads, sponsorships, sell your own products), authenticity
    • Con’s: Requires consistent commitment to writing
12. Podcast – Another way to become an authority in your niche, as newsletter it can be a business in its own right (through sponsorship), if not simply a funnel.
    • Distribution: Podcast providers (Spotify, YouTube, etc.), Social traffic
    • Timescale to profit: Long-term (probably)
    • cale to profit: Long-term (probably)
    • Pro’s: Connection to listeners, builds trust & audience, coherent multiple revenue streams (ads, sponsorships, sell your own products), authenticity

I’m on an entrepreneurial odyssey this year, leveraging small bets to experiment with everything I took for granted in my last businesses. I’m charting new territory and it feels great. If you want to read more you can the posts on my year of experiments, my year of entrepreneurial experiments, or join my newsletter for highly compressed practical tips on making profitable products online in 2024.

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