Who is Pieter Levels, an entrepreneur who earns $176K a month by developing various products
Hello! I’m Yuma Ueno(https://twitter.com/stat_biz).
I’m challenging to launch 12 startups in 12 months(Recently launched: https://5k-dollar-club.com/).
I’ve researched the amazing indie hackers / entrepreneurs and summarized what they’ve done.
I would like to introduce the great developer Mr. “Pieter Levels”! He is an amazing guy!
Pieter Levels, an individual developer famous for creating the NomadList service.
He has developed his own products, and he has earned crazy money.
📸 http://PhotoAI.com $65K MRR
🖼 http://InteriorAI.com $38K MRR
🌍 http://NomadList.com $38K/mo
🛰 http://RemoteOK.com $35K/mo
The total of that is 176K $ /month!!
and also he invested a lot.
http://levels.vc $134K/mo is his investment portfolio.
Since he has invested in solid investments such as major AI companies and the S&P 500 rather than startups.
Also, the following handbook he wrote on personal development recommendations is selling like hotcakes.
At this point, 20,000 copies have been sold, which is calculated to be about $600k ($30 x 20,000). By the way, I bought it myself and found it very helpful.
https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1749048475356954957
The great thing about him is that he basically discloses all of his earnings.
However, he did not start out as a great person. He had to work very hard to get where he is today.
Let’s take a look at his story!
He has stopped updating his blog, but it is interesting to see his many trials and errors in his blog.
he made money uploading music on Youtube after graduate.
After he graduated from a business college, he was making $2,000 to $3,000 a month uploading music to Youtube without getting a job.
It is true that if he was making that much money, he might choose not to get a job.
However, he felt bored staying at home all day and working in front of the PC.
And even if he could earn money, he was not doing anything original. Uploading music created by someone else to earn money is legally gray, and I can imagine that it is not good for his mental health.
In such a situation, a friend of him suggested “if you could work with just one PC, why don’t you sell everything in my house and go on a trip with your PC!” He decided to go on a trip based on his friend’s advice.
From there, he traveled (nomad) in various countries, mainly in Asia, but his earnings were declining across the board, and he began to have a hard time making a living.
Eventually, the nomadic lifestyle became too difficult for him, and he decided to return to his parents’ house in the Netherlands to think about his future life.
He was thinking about his life after he returned to his parents’ house in Holland… “My friends around me got jobs at prestigious companies after college, but I’m stuck at home with little or no income…”
Under such circumstances, Peter Revels began to take on a new challenge.
Launch 12 startups in 12 months
He has to do something new anyway..! And so he began his plan to launch 12 startups in 12 months.
You can take a peek at his blog for more details
https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/
Play My Inbox
The first service he launched was a music sharing service called Play My Inbox. Revels, who used to send music to his friends via e-mail, created an application that allows users to create a playlist of music they have sent each other and check it later.
The services that Mr. Revels creates are basically focused on his own issues and original experiences. He says, “Focus on your own issues first when developing services!
This project didn’t make any money in the end, but he says it was quite exciting.
gifbook
The next service is called gifbook, a service that prints animated GIFs into a book. The service was not completed on the Internet, but involved real operations such as book printing and delivery, so the profit was quite small. So he decided to close it.
Go Fucking Do It
The next service was Go Fucking Do It, a service with a challenging name. You enter your goal and deadline, link your credit card, and if it doesn’t work, you have to pay.
To his surprise, the service has brought in about $500 a month, and he has managed to live on it.
He thought about using a more appropriate name for the service at first, but he decided to use “Go Fucking Do It,” which includes the dirty word “fucking,” which caught the attention of many people and resulted in a buzz.
Based on this experience, he says that it is more effective in marketing to dare to use a phrase that other people don’t use than to use a common name.
Nomad List
The fourth service is his masterpiece “Nomad List”
This is Revels’ masterpiece, and even today he is often referred to as the founder of Nomad List.
At the time, he was searching for the best places to live as a nomad based on his own experiences, but he had a hard time finding information online.
he wanted to make a comprehensive decision on a place with a low cost of living, good weather, and a good internet environment, but there is no site that so conveniently organizes and compares information for nomads.
So, he created this Nomad List by myself.
He focused on his own original experiences and challenges.
He didn’t start out by creating a product, but rather he started out by compiling the information into a spreadsheet and sharing it on Twitter.
After a while, he looked at Twitter and saw that hehad created a big buzz.
He had mistakenly set the permissions to allow anyone to edit it, and this created a huge buzz as many strangers added new cities and information and shared it.
Confirming that there was definitely a need for this, Revels quickly developed and released the product.
As of today, the service is making about $38K per month.
The lessons learned here are
- Focus on your problem and create a product.
- Don’t just develop a product out of the blue, create it in small steps and share it.
- Share the product in a way that allows users to receive feedback and participate on their own.
Share the product in a way that allows users to receive feedback and participate on their own.
RemoteOK, a job site for remote workers, has grown into a service that, like Nomad List, generates about 38k $ per month.
Released several AI startups
And he has released many services in the 2023 AI trend.
I mentioned at the beginning of this article, but what a great income, bigger than NomadList.
📸 http://PhotoAI.com $65K MRR
🖼 http://InteriorAI.com $38K MRR
In total, they generate about $100k$ i.e. about $15M per month from AI services.
Both are so-called image-generating AI services that generate nice pictures of yourself and nice interiors for your home.
The first time heposted the results of image generation on Twitter, the service became a hit, and he decided to develop it as a service.
Although the service does not seem to be that difficult to develop, it is surprising that it has generated such a large amount of revenue.
However, although the sales figures alone are impressive, it is not that easy.
He also shares his thoughts on AI services in the following YouTube video.
In this video, he talks about how difficult it is to start a personal development AI startup in this day and age.
Because it is easy for anyone to develop AI, the barrier to entry is low and ideas are easily taken over.
In addition, new information in the AI field is constantly coming out and AI is evolving day by day, so it is necessary to keep an eye on the latest information.
His policy is to grow his service with his own funds without VC investment, but in this situation, it is hard to compete with Silicon Valley and other Bay Area companies that have raised large funds from VC firms.
If he wants to be unique to raise the barrier to entry, he needs to fine-tune his model. He himself has done some fine tuning, but if he wants to be more unique, he says he needs to learn more about Python and AI.
He also says that these areas are too difficult for him to handle.
In this day and age, coding itself has become relatively easy with the advent of AI services such as ChatGPT, which has opened the door to personal development for more people.
If you have planning and marketing skills, it is possible to develop and release services using AI even if you don’t have much development skills.
Let’s keep learning new technologies and releasing new services!
Please clap and comment, follow if you like it!
See you next time!
