Depends on your definition of profitable. Some of us are doing just fine competing in a market of 200 alternative services, you just have to find your own way of differentiating your service.
Do you mind sharing the differentiating / finding a niche approach that has worked for you?
I feel like finding niches for regular consumers is much easier than finding a niche where one can attract business customers.
Be a user of a product, realise you can do better, implement core functionality common to all solutions in the space, figure out where the incumbents aren't paying attention, out-execute them in that space.
Is that just a complementary income? You are working as an FTE so I dont know what to make of it.