This thread is pure magic. I love the grit and creativity of these stories. There's been some talk of survivorship bias. I can relate to both sides of that. About 15 years ago I ran an online shop selling auto accessories. I did that for about 5 years and made a decent living with about 10 hours of work per week (more during the holiday season). The business folded as shipping expenses and competition rose around 2008. (In my downfall story, I like to ignore the fact that I worked 10 hours per week rather than expand the business). My successful business started due to a combination of ability and luck. I 'lucked' into a situation where I had a B2B sales position (commission only) and I was able to sell products to my own website. In that case, I took a bad job and had the ability to develop it into an online business. Since then I have launched a number of largely unsuccessful online businesses. I've done paper mache for hire, crawl space 'clamps', an online game, a video aggregation service, several blogs, an android todo list app, and a few machinery based things that never rose to the level of 'fail' (those ended in the "didn't really try" phase). Currently, I have a new project that I am trying to focus into a market at https://gasket.appspot.com. The reason I bring up survivorship bias here is to point out that the bias doesn't really matter. In aggregate the solo businesses which succeed are creative applications of an uncommon skill. Based on this thread those skills are currently ML and data aggregation. In 2002 those skills were web development and online ad purchasing. Businesses fail because either the idea is meh (ie paper mache for hire) or the creator doesn't bake in the feedback mechanisms they need to keep going (ie, requiring payment for an online game). Other people's failure does not shed any useful light on what you should try yourself (unless you want to start an online business creating customer paper mache; don't do that, it's a dumb idea [unless it works]).