Casually ask your friends sometime:

“Will you have enough for retirement?”

It doesn’t matter how old they are. In the UK, most people can’t answer this fairly fundamental question about their post-work life.

Many people have a workplace pension. They’re contributing 5%, maybe 10%.

But if you ask, “Will that be enough?” — most people don’t know.

For something that will determine 20–30 years of your life, that’s a remarkable level of uncertainty.

The Comfortable Illusion

Having a pension isn’t the same as having a plan.

Let’s be honest. Whether we contribute 5% or 10% is a finger in the air guess. Most people pick their pension provider because it’s convenient.

Yet small differences compound massively over decades. Choosing the right structure can have an impact comparable to doubling your salary over time.

A Better Way to Think About It

Instead of relying on rules of thumb, imagine being able to simulate your actual future.

That’s the idea behind A Few Quid.

You input your details (and maybe your partner’s) and the simulator projects what your retirement could realistically look like. It’s an extremely advanced and personalised simulation that’s unlike anything you’ve used before.

The Real Cost of Not Knowing

The difference between a decent financial decision and an optimal one is rarely obvious in the short term.

But over the course of your life, the impact is huge. In the above simulation, a medium risk pension earns £13M less than a high risk pension. This is a far higher impact than

Run Your “What Ifs”

We’ve all pondered about big life changes.

With a few clicks, you can explore questions like:

• What if we have another child?

• Should we buy a second home?

• What happens if I max out my ISA every year?

• What if I retire five years earlier?

This helps you make the right decision, which can save you millions.

Right now, clarity costs five minutes of your time.

And that’s a small price to pay for knowing whether “I think I’ll be fine” is actually true.

So try A Few Quid.

In this article series, we’re building an app together. The current idea is simple:
find apps that are profitable on WooCommerce but don’t exist on Shopify.

In the previous article, we spent a bunch of money on a lead generation site and advertising campaign. That wasn’t too successful. In this article, we’re actually going to speed-build our app, deliver real value to users, and generate leads.

Getting the Data

To build the app, we need two datasets:

• WooCommerce app data

• Shopify app data

This data isn’t available via API, so the best solution is to scrape the app pages. Fortunately, this is already a solved problem. Apify can scrape most sites, letting us gather what we need quickly.

I signed up for Apify, paid $40 for a monthly subscription, and immediately cancelled it since I only needed it for a day.

The two scrapers I used:

• Shopify apps — https://apify.com/jungle_synthesizer/shopify-app-store-scraper-2

• WooCommerce apps — https://apify.com/jupri/woocommerce

With almost no configuration, I was able to start both scrapers. Within about an hour, all the data for the two app stores was ready.

The scraped data included fields like:

• Description

• Name

• Url

• Rating

• Number of reviews

• Free or paid

This was enough for me to compare the apps in WooCommerce to those in Shopify.

Building the Comparison Pipeline

I fired up Cursor, the AI code editor, and asked it to build me a data comparison pipeline.

Here’s what I instructed it to do:

1. Load shopify_data.json and woocommerce_data.json and understand their structure.

2. Create a script to clean the WooCommerce data:

   • remove free apps

   • remove unused fields like images

   • include only apps with reviews

3. Create another script to clean both datasets. To make apps comparable, pass their descriptions to ChatGPT and ask it to summarise their features so they can be matched.

4. Once both datasets are cleaned, create a comparison script that:

   • outputs WooCommerce apps that don’t exist on Shopify

   • groups apps that do exist on Shopify, so I can verify the matches

   • sorts results by number of WooCommerce reviews

5. Create a Makefile to manage everything.

6. Use Python, set up a simple project structure, and add one test per transformation.

Cursor built a decent first version. I refined it, added logs, and integrated https://openrouter.ai/ for the embedding step.

Using Embeddings to Compare Apps

The project works by converting app descriptions into “embeddings”—a representation of the semantic meaning of the text. Embeddings are cheap to compute, and OpenRouter makes them easy to generate. More info here: https://openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/embeddings.

Once the embeddings were ready, I asked Cursor to create a script that compares Shopify and WooCommerce embeddings. It separates out the WooCommerce apps that don’t exist on Shopify.

That was the goal—and we achieved it.

In the end, we had a list of about 120 WooCommerce apps that don’t exist on Shopify.

Turning the Data Into a Website

Now I needed a way to share this with users and generate leads.

Initially, I considered monetising the list. But 120 felt too small, and I’m prioritising audience building. If I expand into other marketplaces (like Notion), then charging might make sense. For now, the list makes a good lead magnet.

To build the website, my preferred workflow is:

1. Go to Loveable or Vercel V0

2. Generate a website from a prompt

3. Connect it to GitHub

4. Download locally and open in Cursor

5. Start local development

6. Deploy to Vercel (free)

7. Configure DNS on madesolo.com

This is the same approach I used for https://tokencrush.ai/.

After playing around, I found a design I really liked.

I started with a landing page, then created the directory of WooCommerce apps. Most of them are blurred to give a preview. Cursor made this straightforward.

I used Clerk for user accounts and sign-in. It’s a very smooth authentication tool that I wish I’d discovered earlier. It also collects emails for me and is free up to 5,000 users—much better value than the lead-gen tools I tried.

You can likely see it live at: https://appitrage.madesolo.com/

Costs and Time

All of this was very budget-conscious:

• ~$50 to scrape and compare the data

• $20/month for Cursor (which I already pay)

• $1/month for the domain (which was already paid)

• Everything else: free

Total time: about 12 hours
The project is fully finished.

What This Achieves

This gives us a clean lead magnet—free, useful content in exchange for signups. Anyone who signs up is clearly interested in this area. We can use that group to promote future work. It also helps spread awareness of this blog. And the people who use the app likely fit the profile for madesolo.com.

Next, we’ll share the app with our current leads and watch for traction. If it performs well, we can expand into other marketplaces.

I hope you enjoyed this article in the series. It was a productive one, and I’m delighted at how achievable it is to go from idea to live app in a single day.

In the previous article, I created a landing page and launched ads to validate the idea. Let’s see how we did!

The Landing Page & Ads

I followed Alex Hormozi’s classic template for the landing page:

• Headline

• Subheadline

• Image

• Three bullet points

His idea is, keep it simple, and we can easily experiment with the text.

I ran ads across Google Ads and Reddit Ads, targeting keywords and subreddits where Shopify app developers hang out. Both campaigns ran for about a week (with a few days lost to verification delays).

Google Ads Results

• 628 impressions

• 44 clicks

• 7% CTR

• $51.20 spent

• $1.16 cost per click

The click-through rate of 7% is strong for a cold landing page. The cost per click was dropping quickly over the week, so running this for longer might have revealed a more stable and potentially lower cost.

However, $1.16 per click is still high for a simple validation landing page—especially when only a small percentage of those visitors will opt in.

Looking at search terms gives us some early signals:

We also saw a familiar pattern from past campaigns: India and Pakistan made up around 60% of clicks. This is worth considering for future ad campaigns and product-market fit.

Reddit Ads Results

• 6,974 impressions

• 33 clicks

• 0.47% CTR

• $91.46 spent

• $2.77 cost per click

Although Reddit delivered far more impressions, the click-through rate was extremely low. On the plus side, because subreddits are tightly defined, we can be confident the ad reached the exact audience we care about.

This makes Reddit feel more like a brand awareness channel—lots of targeted eyeballs, few clicks. Still, at $2.77 per click, we likely need to rework the creative. I actually think that the ad would have been viewed by almost everyone who visited the subreddits!

Total Results: Lead Generation

Across both campaigns, we generated:

• 11 hot leads

That’s a conversion rate of:

11 / (33 + 44) = 14%

A 14% landing-page conversion rate is something that I’m reasonably happy with, given the page is so simple.

Unfortunately, we didn’t configure tracking to know which channel each lead came from—an easy fix for next time.

What We Spent

• Google Ads: $51.20

• Reddit Ads: $91.46

• Lead capture tool: $37

• Total: $179.66

This means each lead cost roughly $16—too high to be sustainable. For a paid user funnel to justify that cost, conversion from lead → paying user would need to be very high.

Also, since most users of the subreddits saw the ad, we can’t exactly throw money at the problem. The groups are already as targeted as it gets.

What We Learned

Despite the high costs, several positives emerged:

• Reddit seems effective for brand awareness due to high and targeted impressions.

• Google keyword data gives us direction for future SEO-driven, free traffic.

• We now have a reusable landing page ready for future experiments.

• And of course, we now have 11 (very expensive) leads we can pull into our beta list—along with leads gathered from direct outreach on Reddit.

What’s Next

In the next article, we’ll start building the actual app based on what we’ve learned and validated so far.

Stay tuned!

This would be gold for Shopify developers looking for a validated, profitable app idea. Once it works for Shopify, we could easily expand the same approach to other platforms with app stores, like Notion.

Struggling with organic reach

We’ve been trying to reach developers on Reddit and Discord—but the anti-spam measures on those platforms make it tough to get traction. It’s hard to scale when your outreach gets throttled or flagged.

I wanted another approach. Let’s validate our idea with a lead generation page. The goal: measure whether developers actually care enough to sign up.

Building a quick landing page

To keep things simple, I used Leadpages.com (no affiliate or sponsorship).

I followed Alex Hormozi’s classic template for the landing page:

• Headline

• Subheadline

• Image

• Three bullet points:

  • They should get the product

  • Why they should get it

  • Why they’d regret not getting it

Here’s what that looked like for our idea:

Site name: Your Next Big Shopify App
Subheading: See the apps on WooCommerce, missing from Shopify
Image: Something generic
Bullet subheadings:

• See all the profitable apps missing from Shopify

• Make your next validated app

• Build a killer app while you still can

The great thing about this framework is its simplicity. With so little copy, you can easily experiment and learn what resonates. Each test takes just minutes to tweak.

Why Leadpages?

There’s loads of landing page generators out there. You could even build your own, with Vercel, an AI, and a bit of time.

But I went with Leadpages to save time. At $50/month, it was worth it for the built-in analytics, form tracking, and quick setup.

I picked the simplest template available—just enough to communicate the idea without overcomplicating things.

And I promise, I’m not affiliated. I just looked on google, and they were the cheapest.

Driving traffic with paid ads

With the landing page ready and a custom domain set up, it was time to get traffic. I tested a few paid channels likely to reach the right audience:

• Google Ads

• Reddit Ads (targeting Shopify app developer communities)

• LinkedIn

I started with Google Ads—it takes a little learning, but you can set up a campaign in under an hour.

Then, I launched Reddit Ads, targeting Shopify dev communities specifically.

Next steps

That’s it!

Both campaigns are configured to run for a week with a $20/day budget each. That’s enough to generate a small but meaningful signal of interest—whether this concept actually resonates with Shopify developers.

If we see traction, we’ll have early validation that the “Your Next Big Shopify App” directory is worth building further.

Our goal is simple — to find a small group of interested people who could become beta users if we eventually build this app.

Our first attempt — a public Reddit post — didn’t yield much traction. So today, we’re taking a more targeted approach: individually messaging people who look like our ideal audience.

Defining the Ideal User

Our ideal customer is a serial plugin creator or an app development agency.

To narrow things down, we’re starting with Shopify app developers. These are people who already know how to build and monetize apps in that ecosystem.

So the question is — where do they hang out?

Here are some likely communities:

• r/shopifyappdev

• r/shopifyDev

• Shopify Community – App Section

• A Discord server I found mentioned on Reddit

• A Slack group (also shared on Reddit — I might be able to get an invite)

• A WhatsApp group that’s forming through Reddit

These seem like solid starting points.

Setting a Measurable Goal

Our goal for the day:

1. Identify a list of potential beta users from these communities.

2. Send them personalized messages.

3. Wait and see if anyone shows interest.

When doing outreach like this, 30 responses is the minimum sample size you need to draw any kind of meaningful conclusion.

If I reach out to 30 people and get zero replies, that tells me my message likely needs reworking.
If I reach out to just a handful and get no response, it’s hard to tell whether the problem is the message — or just bad luck.

The Outreach Strategy

On Reddit, I picked the top 10 posts from the past month in each subreddit and messaged the posters directly.

Each message was personalized — I checked their profile, commented on something specific, and then sent a short, value-driven note.

To guide the tone, I leaned on marketing advice from Alex Hormozi:

• Lead with value, not curiosity.

• Remove anything that smells like you’re taking.

• Make the outcome vivid.

Here’s the message template I used:

Hey [Name] — congrats on [something from their profile]!

I’m building the first directory of proven Shopify app opportunities — apps already doing well on other platforms (Woo, BigCommerce, etc.) but not yet on Shopify.

It sounds like you could profit from this. Are you interested in free beta access?

Avoiding the Spam Filters

After a few messages in quick succession, Reddit’s anti-spam filters kicked in.

I discovered a tool called dmdad.com that can help automate outreach, but for now, I’m sending messages more slowly to stay under the radar.

Exploring Other Channels

Discord:

The community there is intense. There’s a clear anti-self-promotion culture — which is fine, since I’m not selling anything yet. I filled out a 10-part questionnaire to gain access. Once approved, I’ll ease into the conversation and see if our project idea resonates.

Slack and WhatsApp:
The WhatsApp group is currently out of reach — I’ll have to wait until Reddit unblocks me from DMs. The Slack invite seems quite closely guarded for now.

Takeaways from Today

This article isn’t as long as normal, as I’m on the way to the airport.

We did learn a few useful things:

• Reddit’s DM spam protection is very aggressive.

• Discord, Slack, and WhatsApp are where the serious developers hang out.

• There’s no great tool for large-scale, personalized DM outreach yet — Dmdad is the closest option, but limited.

Next time, I’ll share how the responses go (if any!) and what we learn from our first real outreach campaign.

In the last article, we fleshed out an app idea: a directory of plugins that have proven successful in one marketplace (like Shopify) but don’t yet exist in another.

Today, we’re shifting gears. It’s time to pitch the idea to potential users—to find a small, interested group who might beta test and eventually buy the app.

A Quick Reminder: Who We’re Building For

Ideal customer: the serial plugin creator or app development agency.

These are the folks who consistently build apps across ecosystems—Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, and so on—and who would love an edge in spotting what to build next.

Step 1: Testing Interest Publicly on Reddit

We’re starting simple: posting on Reddit to see if anyone bites. This helps us gauge both interest and competition. If someone replies with, “Oh, that already exists,” that’s valuable too.

Once we’ve gathered some responses, the next step will be to reach out directly to individuals in the right audience.

Because we’re not cloning an existing idea, validation is critical. If this app already existed and had traction, we could be confident there’s a market. But since it doesn’t (as far as we know), we need to test demand manually.

Timing Matters on Reddit

When posting on reddit, timing matters a lot.

Tuesday through Thursday tends to perform best—many people don’t browse niche subreddits on weekends. Time zones also make a big difference.

Since this is a side project alongside a full-time job, I don’t want to stress about optimal timing. Instead, I use postpone.app to schedule posts automatically. It even suggests the best posting times based on subreddit activity.

That means I can queue everything up over the weekend and check back the next one to see results.

(For alternatives, mediafa.st offers similar functionality—no sponsorships here, just tools I like.)

Step 2: Crafting the Message

At this stage, we’re not trying to sell anything or sound profound—just putting out feelers.

We identified subreddits that attract our target users—Shopify app developers and aspiring plugin makers. Based on Postpone’s recommendations, I chose:

• r/shopifyappdev

• r/vibecodecamp

• r/startup_ideas

• r/microsaas

Here’s the post I shared:

Hello.
I’m surprised there isn’t a directory of all apps across different marketplaces (e.g. Shopify, WooCommerce) that highlights which apps are missing from each platform.

For example, imagine filtering to see the highest-revenue WooCommerce apps that don’t have a Shopify equivalent.

Does anyone know of a tool that does this? I’m considering building a prototype.

The Results

The post got around 1,000 views, a few upvotes, and no comments.

Not exactly viral—but informative.

Out of those 1,000 readers, no one mentioned a competitor, which suggests the idea is relatively new. On the other hand, it didn’t seem to strike a nerve as an urgent problem for that audience.

Still, that’s progress. It’s one more data point on our path to validation.

Next Step: Reaching Out Directly

In the next article, we’ll move from public testing to direct outreach.
That means identifying and messaging individuals in the community to start real conversations.

The goal: to understand whether this problem resonates and what shape the solution should take.

In the last post, we analyzed successful startups to find pain points. Today, let’s change tack and dive into a massive, often-overlooked opportunity: platform plugins.

These are the apps and extensions that add functionality to platforms like Shopify, Notion, WordPress, and more. People are scrambling to build them, knowing they tap into a ready-made audience of paying users.

There’s tens of thousands of these plugins. The question is: how do we find a gap? And what if the real business idea isn’t the plugin itself, but the tool that finds the gaps?

The Plugin Ecosystem is Massive

To understand the scale, just look at the major players and their app stores.

• Organisers: Notion, Obsidian

• Ecommerce: Shopify, BigCommerce , WooCommerce Wix

• Project Management: monday.com, Asana, ClickUp, Smartsheet

• Sheets/Databases: Airtable, Google Sheets

• CMS: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal

• CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce

• Customer Support (CX): Zendesk, Intercom

• Integration (iPaaS): Zapier, n8n, Tray.io

The “Gap Finder” Wishlist

If we had the perfect tool to navigate this gold rush, what would it do?

1. Competitor Analysis: Identify plugins that exist on one platform (like Shopify) but not on a competitor (like WooCommerce).

2. Revenue Sorting: Show us which plugins are making real money.

3. Trend Spotting: Identify upcoming categories to get ahead of the curve.

4. Pain Point Analysis: Scrape and analyze negative reviews to find what users really want.

5. (The Dream): Use AI to sketch out a new plugin that solves those specific pain points.

So, does this tool exist?

I looked around. SaasJet has a MarketPlace Reporter that tracks trends, which is one aspect. GapScout analyzes product feedback but doesn’t do competitor analysis or directory comparison.

That’s... basically it.

It seems there’s a massive gap... in the market for finding gaps. This could be due to a big hurdle, like the difficulty of scraping so many different stores, but that challenge is unlikely to be universal.

The Business Idea: A “Plugin Gap” Scanner

The simplest way to validate this idea is to build a tool that compares just two popular marketplaces. If we can define a simple version, we can pitch it to plugin developers and see if they’d pay.

Here’s the back-of-the-napkin plan:

• Ideal Customer: The serial plugin creator or app development agency.

• How to Find Them: Twitter (Indie Hackers, #buildinpublic), messaging them via their existing marketplace listings.

• Problem: It’s manual, time-consuming, and guess-work-heavy to decide what plugin to build next.

• Solution: A simple, categorised directory that shows which popular plugins are missing on which platforms.

• Market Size: Tens of thousands of app development firms and solo creators.

• Trends: AI makes it easier than ever to build a plugin. Competition is fierce, making a tool that provides a strategic edge more valuable.

• Pricing: TBD. Start with a free beta to get feedback. A monthly subscription might not work—once a dev finds an idea, they might churn. A “credit” system (e.g., “pay per report”) could be a better model.

The Minimum Viable Plan

So, what’s the minimum implementation?

My main constraint for this side hustle is “ease of implementation.” I checked, and unfortunately, most plugin directories (Shopify, Notion, etc.) don’t have a public API for their marketplaces. This means we’d need to rely on web scraping, which can be error-prone.

However, some do. WordPress has a good API, and Zendesk has one.

But to make this valuable, we need to target the hottest markets. Let’s start with two huge competitors and try to catalog their marketplaces, even if it requires creative scraping:

1. Shopify: Insanely popular. A must-have.

2. WooCommerce: Built on WordPress (which does have a plugin API we might be able to leverage).

These two are big targets for developers, and the revenue from a single successful plugin can be massive.

In the next post, we’ll do the first step of any good business idea: go find real customers and see if this is a problem they’d actually pay to solve.

If you’re following along on this solopreneur journey, subscribe below so you don’t miss the next post.

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This week, we’re jumping straight into four more successful products to see what opportunities we can uncover.

Habitkit: $15k MRR

This is a B2C habit tracker. The best part about analyzing an app like this is the wealth of public feedback in the App Store and Play Store reviews. The bad part, for our purposes, is that the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, sitting at 4.8 and 4.9 stars.

Digging into the few negative reviews, the complaints center on the pay model (common for any paid app), UX clutter when tracking many habits at once, and a poor tablet experience.

Verdict: While the author is clearly doing well, these specific complaints (tablet UX, power-user clutter) don’t feel like a large or urgent enough niche to build a dedicated competitor around.

Hyperping: $15k MRR

Hyperping provides app downtime detection and hosted status pages. The value proposition is clear to any developer: get alerted before your customers tell you the app is broken. The target market is broad, from small companies needing simple outage detection to larger ones using status pages for client communication.

An app like this will always have gaps in its detection methods or escalation integrations. For example, most tools check if a page loads (a 200 status code), but not if it loads correctly (e.g., visual regression testing, checking for broken JavaScript). This could be a powerful niche.

Verdict: The main challenge is the intense competition (Better Stack, OneUptime) and the number of “freemium” tools. The churn of past competitors is also a warning sign. I’d only pursue this by finding one specific company whose monitoring needs are clearly unmet and building for them first.

Screenshotone: $10k MRR

This is a developer-focused API that takes a screenshot from any URL. Its key feature is the custom logic built to automatically handle cookie banners, “click here” popups, and other overlays. It’s marketed to developers who want to automate visual checks after a build, complete with SDKs for multiple languages.

Rivals like CaptureKit look more polished and boast faster speeds and more integrations (like Zapier). The fact that Screenshotone is thriving despite this suggests the market is large and the “smart” overlay-blocking feature is a real differentiator.

Verdict: This is interesting. My next step would be to interview frontend developers to understand what else they wish a tool like this could do. There’s also a fascinating meta-idea: could you use this API as the engine for a Hyperping competitor that detects visual website issues, not just downtime?

Reelfarm: $10k MRR

ReelFarm automates the creation of AI-generated videos on various topics. The target market appears to be content marketers and entrepreneurs who need to create a high volume of “short-form” content (Reels, TikToks) to drive traffic to their main project.

As with any hot AI niche, there are many alternatives (SoPilot, GenViral, SendShort). The opportunity isn’t to be just another generator, but to focus on a specific, unsolved pain point.

Two ideas stand out:

1. Brand Consistency: Most tools generate generic-looking content. A tool that could ingest a brand’s existing content (blog posts, long-form videos) and generate new videos in that style would be powerful. Leveraging modern, realistic voice generation is a key part of this.

2. Data-Driven Creation: Don’t just make videos; make what works. A system that A/B tests different video styles, hooks, or CTAs and automatically optimizes for a specific metric (e.g., engagement, clicks) would be a killer feature.

Verdict: This space is moving fast, but the ideas feel promising. My go-to strategy here would be 100% validation before writing a line of code: create a landing page for one of these specific angles and see if anyone signs up.

That’s all for this batch. The key takeaway is that even in crowded markets, specific, unsolved pain points always exist.

Subscribe for the next round of analysis.

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As a reminder, here is our list:

• Minea: $75k MRR

• Arvow: $70k MRR

• Dropmagic.ai: $35k MRR

• N8n contractor: $25k MRR

• Habitkit: $15k MRR

• Hyperping: $15k MRR

• Screenshotone: $10k MRR

• Reelfarm: $10k MRR

• Pdfshift: $10k MRR

• DataFast (Marc Lou): $8k MRR

• web.vidon.ai: $6k MRR

• Klap AI: $4k MRR

• vibe3d ai: $3k MRR

• Writestack: $2k MRR

• Taap: $2k MRR (Note: Has a spike at $10k, but the base MRR provided is $2k)

• Replymer: $1k MRR

Finding Pain Points

We can find app discussions on platforms like Reddit, G2, app stores, Trustpilot, Hacker News, and general social media. We are specifically looking for users complaining about missing features or instances where the tool failed to meet their needs.

Our first step is to use Google with exact match search queries. For example:

“datafast” issues reddit

We could try to automate this with a paid service. However, since we aren’t analysing a huge number of tools, we can perform the initial analysis ourselves. Later, we’ll move on to deep-insight tools, like Ahrefs.

Let’s analyse a few.

DataFast

I mostly see positive responses on Reddit, with little explanation for any negative opinions. (Well done, Marc Lou!)

Marc is big on X, so it makes sense to find feedback there. Unfortunately, many of the posts are from his fans, making it hard to find negative experiences to latch onto. We are looking for disgruntled users who feel ignored, and tackling a product so closely tied to a strong personality like Marc’s might be too much to chew.

DropMagic

The Reddit posts are all positive, but they feel like they might be from the founder.

On X, it’s clear the founder has found a real niche: dropshippers who want to build a store as quickly as possible. One takeaway is to identify a specific target group and market heavily to them.

Another angle is to connect with dropshippers directly to understand their broader concerns. Fortunately, the dropshipping community is very active on Reddit. It seems worthwhile to investigate this group more deeply and see what they’re missing.

Minea

Minea analyses products before you set up dropshipping. It also helps build the store, similar to DropMagic.

The main criticism seems to be saturation: since everyone uses Minea, everyone gets the same insights. This creates huge competition as soon as products appear on the platform. Minea also offers a full coaching program, which is reportedly intense, with mixed results.

Ultimately, users struggle because the products it finds are too competitive. This has led to competitor tools like ShopHunter. While ShopHunter is poorly reviewed (based on ~50 reviews on Trustpilot), the reviews validate the demand. Perhaps there’s an angle for a tool with exclusivity—for example, a cap of 100 accounts. This would ensure the insights remain exclusive and could justify a premium price.

On a related note, users seem happier with NicheScraper, but its app looks dated. Creating a polished, modern competitor is a definite possibility.

Arvow

Arvow is an SEO-optimised content generator. This is a very competitive market, where tools differentiate themselves on CRM integrations, AI capabilities, and pricing.

There’s plenty of negative feedback on Trustpilot. Users mainly complain that basic features don’t work as advertised. The pricing is also considered high, and customers are unhappy with the feature tiering.

An interesting angle here would be to identify popular but underserved integrations. The next steps would be to test Arvow with these specific integrations to see where it fails, and then repeat that process with its main competitors.

That’s all for the analysis of the first batch. Subscribe for the next post, where we’ll continue our competitor deep dive!

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• Proven Demand. Don’t waste time on a completely new concept. Take an existing idea, fix something that frustrates users, and deliver immediate value.

• Low Maintenance. The goal is a side hustle, not another full-time job.

• Low Marketing Spend. You’re willing to invest time and some money, but not enough to compete with VC-backed giants.

• Solves Your Own Problem. Building a product you would personally pay for is a powerful motivator.

With that framework in mind, let’s go hunting for ideas that fit the bill.

Social Media Idea Hunting

A great place to start is social media. Here, we can find founders sharing their Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) milestones to build hype and demonstrate traction. While these figures should be taken with a grain of salt, they are a strong signal of market demand for a product or service.

We’ll look for tags like “MRR” to find founders sharing their progress. This exercise is meant to inspire us and reveal potential markets we can tap into while working limited hours—it’s a side hustle, after all.

Let’s check X, Substack, and LinkedIn. Here’s a collection of what we found:

X

• As an example, successful solopreneur Marc Lou posts about big growth in DataFast, with 8k mrr and growing.

• Dropmagic.ai, 35k MRR

• vibe3d ai, 3k MRR

• Klap AI , 4k MRR

• replymer, with no marketing, 1k MRR

• N8n contractor , 25k MRR

• minea, 75k MRR

Substack

• Writestack, 2k MRR

• Screenshotone, 10k MRR

LinkedIn

• taap, 2k MRR with a spike at 10k

Starter story

A treasure trove of material to inspire you.

• arvow, 70k MRR

• habitkit, 15k MRR

• reelfarm, 10k MRR

• hyperping, 15k MRR

• web.vidon.ai, 6k MRR

• pdfshift, 10k MRR

• others… there’s absolutely loads.

Notes and Takeaways

Keep two things in mind as you do this research.

First, high MRR doesn’t always equal high profit. Revenue can be inflated by high spending on paid marketing. The goal is to find businesses that are profitable and sustainable, not just large.

Second, you can learn a tremendous amount by reading the posts from these founders. While diving down this rabbit hole, I found convincing success stories from people doing n8n automation contracts and others having major marketing success using YouTube.

Making this a regular exercise—soaking up the content and analyzing these journeys—will provide invaluable insights for the later stages of building your own product.

This blog distills advice from around the internet for a particular kind of entrepreneur: someone working a full-time job who still wants to build a niche side hustle. You’re looking for the highest-leverage use of your time, so you need content that treats your time responsibly.

Today, we’ll look at the first step in creating a business — idea generation. Everyone’s situation is different, and the ideas you can actually execute will depend on your background and skills. This blog assumes readers are somewhat technical, social, and interested in building an online product — but even if you’re not, the same principles apply.

We’ll cover idea validation later, but for now, the main criteria we’re looking for are ideas that are:

• Already proven. Don’t waste time validating something no one has tried. Take an idea that already exists, fix something that frustrates users, and deliver immediate value.

• Easy to maintain. The goal isn’t to create another full-time job.

• Low marketing spend. You’re willing to invest, but not to compete with VC-backed giants.

• Something you’d use yourself. Working on a product you’d actually pay for keeps motivation high.

I first heard this framework from solopreneur Samuel Rondot, and it’s a great lens for thinking about sustainable businesses.

Where to Look for Ideas

For my own project, I’m focused on an online product or service. I’m comfortable writing code — especially with AI tools — and confident in building the technology. If you’re less technical, try seeing how far AI tools can take you, then use freelancers or contractors for the rest.

There are two main directions worth exploring:

1. Base your product on an existing, successful app.

   • Study what they do well and where users still struggle.

   • You can often reach your target audience using a similar marketing approach.

2. Develop an extension or plugin for another platform.

   • Think of ecosystems like Notion, Shopify, or Airtable.

   • Users already search for tools within these marketplaces, so your audience is easier to reach.

Both approaches give you a proven market and a clear path to distribution — which is exactly what you need when your time is limited.

In the next article, we look at basing our app on a successful product.

Subscribe now

Start solo

The internet is flooded with advice on starting a side hustle, and people are starting to realise that it’s harder than the average YouTube creator lets on.

The problem is that most of it isn’t written for you, right now.

Even if you filter out all the advice which is aimed at businesses totally distinct from yours, you’re left with material aimed at college graduates with endless free time.

But what about the rest of us?

This is for the solo founder, that wants to take pragmatic steps to making a business on the side.

This is a space for a specific kind of entrepreneur.

• We are a team of one. This means we are obsessed with leverage. What is the 80/20 of building a business? What’s the absolute minimum we can do to achieve the maximum result?

• We wear all the hats. We don’t just build the product; we handle the support tickets, the legal agreements, and the marketing emails.

• We often have a day job. For many of us, our primary source of income takes up most of our time and mental energy. We can’t afford to burn out, so our actions must be strategic and sustainable.

Starting a solo venture can feel overwhelming. You don’t need a firehose of generic advice. You need the right advice, for the right stage, right now. Whether you’re stuck on idea validation, struggling with lead generation, or trying to improve customer retention, you need actionable steps, not abstract theories.

That’s why this blog exists.

My content is simple: We will build a company together, in public, from scratch.

We’ll go from zero to one, while navigating the challenges of a demanding day job. Each post will focus on a specific stage of the journey, giving you a clear, high-leverage playbook to apply to your own project.

If you’ve ever wanted to start a business but didn’t know where to begin, this is your starting line.

Subscribe now and let’s build it together. The first official post drops next week.