Niall Doherty's Blog, page 19
April 21, 2025
$1.75M Funding Hints at Huge Potential Business Opportunity
RecessOnline Marketplace $1.75 Million fundingFrom the latest Gaps report 
Recess is an online marketplace for parents and carers to find after-school activities for their children to take part in.
The company, which raised a $1.75m pre-seed, is first launching in Austin, Texas and looking to branch out from there…
There’s a ton of search traffic up for grabs – especially when they start expanding to more locations.
Whenever I report on a business that’s starting out with one area of focus, I can’t help but think there are other cities and countries people could start building a similar model for before them.
Of course, you’ll have to have the passion for the idea and see potential in the region you’ll target.
$5K/Month Upwork Arbitrage Opportunity (With AI)
A recent video from Jesse Cunningham…
He doesn’t actually show that he earned $5K but his process is sound 
First…
Go to ChatGPT and ask it: give me a list of keywords to type into Upwork to find jobs that easily can be done with AI code and tools like Replit.
Get ChatGPT to shortlist the jobs, pick one, then copy/paste the job description into ChatGPT and get it to create a prompt for Replit.
Spend a few minutes building a demo in Replit – easier than it sounds – then send that to the client along with a screencast 
That should help you stand out from other proposals.
What you’re trying to do here is to get your foot in the door and build relationships with really good people… We can make a lot of money, but you’ll make more money if you do a good job and… earn people’s trust
$103,000 Last Year From Her Simple Service Business
Camille PrairieFreelancer $103,000 annual revenue
26-year-old Camille Prairie writing on LinkedIn recently…
2024 was my highest earning year as a freelance copywriter, SEO, and first-time business owner ~ projected $103,000.
It took a little over two years since I committed to freelance healthcare writing and marketing as a full-time career.
How she finds clients
At first, I found them on job sites like Upwork.
Then, I found a lot of them through… cold-pitching.
But, as my network continued to grow here on LinkedIn, I started to get most of my clients through referrals.
She’s also shared how she uses AI in her work 
Camille’s a great example of someone running a simple service business, leveraging AI to provide more value to clients, and earning a good living doing it.
All that to say: you don’t need some crazy newfangled idea to earn a 6-figure income working online 
April 17, 2025
He Made $1.5 Million From 1 YouTube Video
Jordan BownYouTuber $1.5 Million revenue from 1 video Jordan Bown reveals on YouTube…
Everyone knows me for my free 18-hour dropshipping course I posted on YouTube. It was completely free and ended up getting 2.5 million views…
What blows my mind is that the average view duration is only 11 minutes and 39 seconds…
overall, the video has made me $77,000 in YouTube ad revenue alone…
The course is filled with a bunch of different affiliate links for companies that you genuinely need to use to run a successful dropshipping store.
I also have my own course platform called Jordan’s Library, and we have 600,000 people signed up. If people still need help after going through the 18-hour course, we offer a $100/month community group.
When you add up everything that came from that one free course video, we’ve probably generated around $1.5 million – which is just insane.
Nice business model: teach what you know for free on YouTube, earn money via ad revenue and affiliate links to useful products 
4 Years to $8000 MRR With His Piggyback App
Dylan LualdiFounder of RCKit $8000 monthly recurring revenue
From another newsletter a few months back…
Dylan crossed $8K MRR with RCKit. It’s a third-party app to keep track of your RevenueCat reports
RevenueCat is a platform that makes it easy for app developers to enable in-app purchases, used by 38,000+ apps 
Best I can tell, Dylan was developing another app when he saw some shortcomings with RevenueCat and built RCKit to fix them.
Classic piggyback strategy 
What apps / tools / services do you use that could be improved by a third-party product or service?
Other examples of successful piggyback businesses
Freelance Writers: Earn up to $1750 for 1000 Words
With all the hype about AI writing tools, you’d think high-paying freelance writing gigs would be a thing of the past.
But sites like The Cut are still paying well for original content
What we’re looking for: Smart, generous, funny writing that engages with the Cut’s readers and finds a natural home on our website under one of our four verticals: POWER, SELF, STYLE, and CULTURE. We’re always open to essay, column, and feature pitches.
Essays and columns…
$500 minimum for 1,000–1,500 words
Features…
$600 minimum for about 1,500–2,000 words
How to pitch via the above link.
Another site that pays well for freelance writing is Mother Jones…
For print, rates start at $1.75 per word. For online, rates start at $0.75 a word.
So 1000 words = minimum $1750 for print, $750 for online 
10 AI SaaS Ideas From a $5M/Year Founder
Romain TorresFounder of Arcads.ai $5 Million annual recurring revenueRomain Torres is the founder of Arcads.ai, and AI tool for creating video ads
He tweets…
Today, arcads.ai reached $5M ARR with a team of 5
we’re on track for $100M with fewer than 10
how?
… internal ai agents (and 10x engineers)
He goes on to list…
10 ai agents we use EVERYDAY to keep the team tiny
Strikes me that any one of these agents could be its own SaaS
For example…
google ads ai agent
> generates new keywords based on results
> creates landing pages for each keywords with Claude
> adjusts automatically the bids on Google ads
$11,000 Per Month Selling Plants On This App
Sandi LiangPalmstreet Seller $11,000 monthly revenue
Paywalled article but I’ll explain…
Featured there is Sandi Liang, who earns $11K per month live-selling plants on Palmstreet.
Imagine if TikTok and QVC had a plant-obsessed baby… that’s Palmstreet 
Sandi Liang always loved plants and found a smart way to sell them online with little backend work. She makes anywhere between $2,500 and $3,000 in just a few hours a day…
Since joining in July 2023, she has sold over 35,000 plants, with an average order of $50.
Another lady on the platform makes $148K/year working 20 hours per week
Worth trying this yourself if you love plants.
Bigger picture, eventually there could be an app like this for every niche.
Whatnot does it for collectibles and was recently valued at $5 billion 
What other niches would this kind of app work for?
April 14, 2025
The Simplest Way To Create a Course
Josh Spector posts on LinkedIn…
Wish there was a simpler way to create a course?
There is.
Skip the modules.
Skip the scripts.
Skip the endless editing.
Get someone who wants to learn from you to interview you on Zoom.
Let them ask whatever they want.
Record the conversation.
Publish it as a course.
Their questions will be the same ones your future course buyers will have.
Your answers will be natural and “real.”
The course will be created in hours instead of weeks.
This wouldn’t give you a polished course, but it would be a great “minimum viable product.”
Price it low and see if there’s much interest 
You can always expand and improve the course later.
Course business success stories
$40K Per Year Side Hustle For Animal Lovers
Outrageous_Flower527Pet Sitter $40,000 earnings in 1 year A recent comment on Reddit…
I made $40k with my pet sitting side hustle in 2024. I work full time as a remote HRBP. So if you have a remote job, pet sitting can be extremely lucrative.
I started pet sitting on Rover back in October of 2022. I slowly built up a clientele, which I would say about 95% of them are off app at this point. When I first started, my rates were low AF, and as I got more reviews and clients, I slowly increased my rates…
Last year I made 30k and this year 40k. I don’t think I can top 40k next year, because I was for sure HUSTLING all year long haha. But if you don’t mind the hustle and can deal with not staying at your own home a lot, there is so much money to be made.
Pet sitting is a luxury service and a lot of people are willing to pay a luxury price to have peace of mind that their fur babies are taken care of.
Have a look on Rover.com, see what the competition is like for pet sitters in your area
