About this Video

• Video Title: I make $40K/month with this one website
• Channel: Starter Story
• Speakers: Angus Chang, Pat Walls
• Duration: 00:10:52

Introduction

This video features Angus Chang, a solopreneur from Hong Kong, who discusses his successful website, Bank Statement Converter, which generates $40,000 monthly revenue. The video details his ideation process, building an MVP, marketing strategies (including why paid ads weren't effective), and his transition from a 9-to-5 job to solopreneurship.

Key Takeaways

• Angus's Ideation Framework: Angus found his business idea by identifying a personal problem—the difficulty of accessing and organizing his bank data from PDF statements. He built a minimal viable product (MVP) quickly to validate the idea.
• Building and Launching the MVP: The MVP was developed using Kotlin for the backend and Next.js for the frontend, deployed on AWS EC2 and Netlify. He prioritized rapid development and iteration based on user feedback.
• Marketing Strategy & Organic Growth: Initial attempts at paid Google Ads proved unprofitable. Angus shifted to focusing on product improvement based on user feedback, leading to organic growth and significant revenue increase after stopping paid advertising.
• Solopreneurship Transition: Angus details the challenges and rewards of transitioning from traditional employment to running a solo business, highlighting the importance of financial stability and the shift in focus from coding aesthetics to revenue-generating features.
• Advice for Aspiring Solopreneurs: Angus advises saving sufficient funds to sustain the business during the initial stages, ignoring social media marketing until the product is established, and focusing on product development and user feedback to ensure organic growth.

Initially, Angus used Google search ads, but found them unprofitable, spending approximately $1000 to generate only $300 in sales. He also tried blogging, building in public, and cold emailing, but these efforts yielded minimal results, with only one sale from three months of cold emailing. After six months of unsuccessful paid advertising, he stopped running Google search ads. Surprisingly, his website started receiving organic users (two to three signups a day), and hefocused on product improvements based on customer feedback.