Trend #020 - How Pieter Levels built a $2M empire building things he loves

Hey,

This week, I’m sharing the story of one of THE most successful indie hackers of our time who makes more than $2m a year building a cool stuff he loves. When I announced his name in a preview tweet on Wednesday, Twitter got very, very excited about this issue.🔥

So, grab a drink and find a comfy seat because this is going to be a huge one.

In this deep dive, you will learn:

• Why he is the best-known indie hacker of all time

• Which of his startups are making millions

• How he find ideas to build

• How his ideas gain traction immediately

• How he grew his empire without hiring anyone

• His indie hacking playbook - summarised in 10 steps (SUBSCRIBERS SPECIAL)

This is the story of Pieter Levels (@levelsio).

Who is Pieter Levels?

Most of you would have heard of Pieter Levels. In case you haven’t, he is possibly the best-known indie hacker who pioneered the 12 startups in 12 months challenge and ended up building an empire of startups that’s now making him millions a year, in profit.

What most of you don’t know, is that just 2 years prior to starting the 12 in 12 challenge, he was still living with his parents, suffering from regular anxiety attacks and running a failing music YouTube channel.

So what changed?

He made a public commitment

In 2014, Pieter got tired of feeling depressed and made a bold public statement: he decided to build 12 startups in 12 months, even if they didn’t make him any money.

His first 3 projects flopped despite receiving tons of media attention. Then out of a personal need, he created a Google sheet directory to rank nomad destinations and made a tweet about it, asking people to contribute to the directory.

When he woke up the next morning, nearly 100 people had filled in that sheet.

That Google Sheet became the start of NomadList, a million-dollar travel destination website for digital nomads.

💰Revenue Timeline

Since then, he continued to ship new products CONSISTENTLY. Most people would have stopped when they found “a winner” like NomadList, but Pieter kept shipping. This led him to found at least 3 other successful startups, RemoteOK (2013), PhotoAI (2022) and InteriorAI (2023).

I dug through his public income reports on Twitter, and his blog and even watched a presentation he did back in 2018.

Here are the juicy details:

How his portfolio revenue evolved over time

• 2006-2012: Pursued international business administration while DJ’ing.

• 2012 ($40k Revenue): Launched an electronic music YouTube channel, Panda Mix Show.

• 2013 ($52k Revenue)

• 2014 ($45k Revenue): Initiated the 12 Startups in 12 Months challenge. His fourth and seventh startups, NomadList and RemoteOK, accidentally gained attention on Product Hunt, leading to multiple inbound sponsorship opportunities.

• 2015 ($203k Revenue): Became Product Hunt’s third Maker of the year. Introduced one-time access fees to his website, and memberships grew to 50% his income.

• 2016 (~$300k Revenue): Introduced a $9.99/month subscription for NomadList. Both platforms reached a combined 700k monthly visitors.

• 2017 (~$360k Revenue)

• 2018 (~$600k Revenue): Refined pricing strategies. Introduced an upsell funnel (buy a bundle/add your logo), increasing average order value from $310 to $484. Released his Indie Maker handbook, Makebook.com.

• 2019 (~$1M Revenue) - Finally reached $1M ARR (revenue report)

• 2020 (~$1.4M Revenue): Seven years post-launch, RemoteOK got another boost thanks to Covid. Began experiments with GPT3 (yes, 2 years before the hype!)

• 2021 ($1M-2M Revenue): Announced that 30% of his earnings came from ETF and crypto investments.

• 2022 ($1M-2M Revenue): Dived again into AI, this time in generative photography and launched AvatarAI ($100k in 10 days). Interest in his AI work led to more Makebook sales.

• 2023 ($2.2M Revenue): Started scaling TikTok influencer marketing. His AI apps exploded, now contributing to half his total earnings.

(source: his Twitter and blog)

Pieter Levels Maker’s Playbook

Pieter is very vocal about what it takes to be successful at making a living building cool stuff you love.

In this next section, I will summarise his playbook in 10 steps for you to find and build profitable bootstrapped startups.