How much solopreneurs make and how they make their money [research report]

adrianatica.com

4 points·adriana_tica··3 comments

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?

Very cool, I wish I could see more of the data without giving up my name + email. A lot of the time i'm hesitant with that because you input it then are continually asked more data

I get that. You can find a few more insights here (no email required): https://www.adrianatica.com/the-state-of-solopreneurship-rep...

If you have a specific thing you're curious about, let me know and I'll tell you here (if the report collected data on it).

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