“Join a Community of People Who Are Doing The Thing You Want To Do.” – Genevieve, curator

1. How and when did you make your first dollar online?

I made my first dollar online as a solopreneur a few weeks ago from a free product I created called the Business Idea Bank. It’s a hand-curated database of creators, their products, & the income they generate.

It all began when I decided to make a list of Indie Hackers to inspire myself to think outside the box when it came to ideas of things I could build and sell – I had been struggling with limiting beliefs around what I thought was possible.

I started to hang out on Twitter, as well as in a Discord community I had joined in July (Daniel Vassallo’s Small Bets) and I constantly saw people talking about the things they were building and monetizing.

I was very fascinated by all of it but struggled to keep track and so I decided that I needed to collect all this information in one place so that I could always have a quick, big-picture view of what was possible.

2. How long did it take between the idea and this first dollar?

It took exactly 3 weeks from the day I had the idea, to the day I made my first dollar.

Although the product is available for free on Gumroad (I set the product price as “Pay what you want”), the 7th person to download it decided to pay $5 😁

At the time of writing this post, I made a total of $15 from a total of 14 customers (3 of whom paid $5 each).

3. What best actionable advice would you give someone who wants to start TODAY?

My best advice would be to join a community of people who are doing the thing(s) you want to do.

In my case, I took the Small Bets cohort course because I wanted to learn what it would take for me to work for myself full-time and have the freedom I’ve always wanted.

It turned out to be a super supportive community of other highly motivated creators I constantly learn from.

4. What resources would you recommend to a beginner?

Any no-code tool that can help you create your product very quickly – I use Airtable.

I also love Gumroad because of how quick and easy it was for me to set up a product page.

5. Who would you recommend to follow?

• Daniel Vassallo
• Justin Welsh
• Tony Dinh

About Genevieve