adriana_tica

A few months ago, I realized that most research reports on freelancers/solopreneurs/creator-founders, conflate "regular" businesses with huge influencers, so we end up benchmarking against Mr. Beast.

So I built an unbiased report about real B2B solopreneurs/creators.

After surveying 153 of them, here's what I found:

-- Only 28% of solopreneurs make over $100K/year. Surprisingly, 16% make less than $10K/year.

-- Services still pay the bills. When people ranked revenue, 1:1 and DFY rose to the top.

-- LinkedIn + email is the most common “increase” combo for 2026.

-- Six-figure businesses show up after year 3 for most; $250k+ clusters later.

-- Having a newsletter means higher revenue.

-- Most solopreneurs spend 2-8 hours a week on social media, mainly LinkedIn.

-- AI is a time dividend (research, outlining, editing); most solopreneurs don't have AI-driven businesses.

How does this line up with your situation? Any findings that are surprising to you?

Have you noticed that 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴? It happens everywhere: in Google searches and on social media platforms.

With AI search gaining rapid ground, we're going to click even less.

In yesterday's edition of 𝘐𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘗𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, I examined the implications of a zero-click world for marketers: what happens to the "old" metrics we used to rely on and where will most of the marketing efforts and budgets go in the near future?

The TL;DR of it: 𝘄𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗶𝗹 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 — 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.