🤑 $115,000/month selling google sheets templates & $128K/year from weekend side hustle

$789K selling retro phones & $500K in year one from a $6K coffee trailer

👋 Hi and welcome to today’s edition of Venture Radar — where we uncover real internet businesses making real money, and break down how they do it.

In today’s write-up, we’re sharing curated articles, posts, videos and business we found interesting on building boring and underrated businesses.

• Steal these ideas: From perfect course finder to sync tool Compliance industry opportunity.

• From reddit: $115K/month selling google sheets & ways to earn from Reddit.

• Businesses & Side Hustles: $789K selling retro phones & $128K/year from weekend side hustle.

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🥷 STEAL THIS BUSINESS IDEA

Perfect course finder

Maybe a hot take but I believe someone can learn more relevant information for navigating the world today from online courses than a traditional college education.

Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of low quality courses out there.

And there’s no easy way to find the right one for you when you want to learn something specific.

But LLMs can solve this.

A service that talks to you about what you want to learn, understands your request in detail, and then scours the internet to find the most up to date and well regarded course on it.

It would increase course completion rates and, more importantly, help people learn more of what they’re curious about.

Source: Ideabrowser

Financial sync tool

Making it easier to code (thanks to LLMs) means we should expect societal trends made more popular by people building software products to continue to proliferate.

That includes digital nomading.

I’ve personally been a nomad for the last fews year and, let me tell you, the last thing you want to be worried about while you’re on the road and managing travel logistics is your bookkeeping.

This ICP has high average complexity for payments and revenue streams, so it makes sense to offer them a more tailored product.

Compliance automation platform

Legal requirements are a lot easier to add to most industries than to remove.

As a result, every year there are more rules. More compliance checks that need to be done. More tedious work.

There are companies that help with ensuring you’re compliant, but what about knowing when you need to become compliant in the first place?

There’s an opportunity for a platform that alerts you to any new compliance requirements, or any deficiencies in the way your company is operating, automatically with LLMs.

Founders won’t catch the edge cases themselves, most likely, but they will pay for something that does (as long as it doesn’t take up a lot of their time).

Source: ideabrowser

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🏇 REDDIT - SIDE HUSTLES & BUSINESS

$115K/month selling basic budgeting templates

From a Reddit post highlighting how a brand turned a crowded, commoditized product into a high-revenue business.

Smart Women Society sells simple budgeting templates — Google Sheets and Notion files. Nothing unique. Thousands of creators sell the exact same thing. Yet they’re reportedly doing $115K/month with 50,000+ customers.

The difference isn’t the product. It’s the positioning.

They didn’t target “people who want to budget.” They picked one specific audience: women who want financial independence. Everything — content, ads, product messaging — speaks directly to that identity.

• Same product as everyone else (budget templates)

• Clear, narrow audience (women seeking financial independence)

• 64+ ads and 24 product variations — all for the same customer persona

Instead of creating new products, they keep reframing the same offer through different angles: saving money, escaping debt, building independence, taking control.

That’s what scales — not innovation, but clarity.

The insight here is simple: in crowded markets, the niche becomes your moat. The more specific your audience, the easier it is to dominate.

There’s still room everywhere — men’s budgeting, Gen Z debt, freelancers managing cash flow, newlyweds handling finances. The product isn’t the opportunity. The positioning is.

$700/month creating “fake people” for brands on Fiverr

From a Reddit post where a marketer turned AI-generated models into a repeatable side hustle:

• Started after a client refused a $4,200 photoshoot quote

• Realized AI images were good — but lacked face consistency across images

What they built:

• Found tools to create and reuse the same AI character across multiple photos

• Built a workflow to generate consistent faces in different outfits, poses, and scenes

How they sell it:

• Fiverr pricing:

  • $30 → 5 images

  • $50 → 10 images

  • $100 → 25 images

• Clients include:

  • Yoga studios

  • Candle brands

  • Pet food companies

  • Language apps

Why it works:

• Small brands need content but can’t afford real photoshoots

• AI fills the gap with cheap, fast, and scalable visuals

Revenue + costs:

• February earnings: $710 from 15 orders

• Costs:

  • ~$30/month for AI tools

  • Fiverr takes 20% cut

The real leverage:

• Repeat clients → already saved character + brand style

• Reorders take ~30 minutes of work → increasingly semi-passive

Takeaway:

There’s a growing market for “synthetic content services” — if you can package AI into a simple offer, brands will pay.

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🗃️ REAL BUSINESSES

She’s earned $789K selling retro phones

Cat Goetze built Physical Phones after wanting to use her smartphone less. Instead of paying ~$80/month for a landline, she created Bluetooth-connected retro handsets that sync with your phone — and turned it into a nearly $800K/year business.

• Products: retro handsets, wall phones, rotary dials ($90–$110 each)

• Connect to smartphones — work with regular calls, WhatsApp, FaceTime

• Viral moment: 8M+ views, leading to $120K in 3 days

• 2025 revenue: $789K, with ~$439K profit

• No funding — fully bootstrapped

Her edge wasn’t just the product — it was distribution.
She built an audience first through her CatGPT brand, then launched into it.

The bigger trend:
People are actively trying to reduce screen time and digital overload.

Opportunities in this space:

• Minimalist tech products

• Tools that separate communication from distraction

• “Offline-first” experiences with modern convenience

Build for the anti-tech wave — it’s only getting bigger.

$128K/year from a balloon side hustle (weekends only)

Karin Capellan started making balloon arches and renting party equipment when COVID paused her flight attendant job. What began as a small side hustle has grown into $128K/year in revenue — all while she still works full-time.

• Started with DIY setups in her yard for photos

• Got first customers via Facebook Marketplace

• First jobs were low/zero profit — focused on learning + building trust

• Now has 120+ five-star Google reviews driving word-of-mouth

• No paid ads — growth came from referrals and social media

Pricing shows why this works:

• Balloon arch: $300–$450

• Material cost: $30–$50 → strong margins

• Add-ons: chairs, centerpieces, decorations increase order value

The setup is simple:
Storage space + basic tools + a vehicle.

The playbook is even simpler:
Do one event → take great photos → post everywhere → let referrals compound.

Local, visual, high-margin — and still wide open in most cities.

$14.5K/month from a hybrid AI agency (80% automated)

Adithyan Ilangovan quit his job when ChatGPT launched. His first idea failed — but his second one worked. He started doing podcast post-production manually, learned the workflow deeply, then automated most of it using AI.

• Offers podcast editing, show notes, audio cleanup, and social clips

• Charges $2,500–$3,000/month for ~4 episodes per client

• Built AI systems for the repetitive 80% of the work

• Keeps humans for the final 20% (taste, quality, judgment)

• Now earns ~$14,500/month, mostly through referrals (no ads)

The key insight:
Pure AI tools get commoditized fast. But AI + human polish = premium service.

This model is highly transferable:

• Video editing

• Copywriting

• Bookkeeping

• Social media management

Start by doing the service manually → identify repetitive tasks → automate them → keep the high-value layer human.

That’s where the real margin is.

$50K in 9 weeks from parking lot line striping (zero experience)

Hunter Schenewark heard about parking lot striping on a podcast, bought a used machine, and just started — no experience, no network, no plan. Within 9 weeks, he’d done $50K in revenue, showing how powerful simple service businesses can be.

• Started with a used machine (~$2.3K) and a beat-up minivan

• First job was free — ran a Facebook post asking locals to nominate a business

• Sent ~300 cold emails; churches became his best niche (big lots, weekday availability)

• Close rate: 40–50% by being honest (“I’m new, but I’ll do a great job”)

• Month 1: $2.8K revenue → Month 2: $46.8K revenue

• One job alone paid $26K

• Profit that month: ~$20K

The real insight:
Line striping gets you in the door — sealcoating becomes the bigger money-maker.

You can start even smaller:
Paint + roller → land first few jobs → reinvest into equipment.

Low barrier, high demand, and very few operators — especially in local markets.

$500K in year one from a $6K coffee trailer

Avery Amstutz turned a $6,000 Airstream trailer into Byway Coffee Company — a mobile coffee business that did $500,000+ in its first year. Instead of a fixed café, the entire brand revolves around movement.

• Started with a used Airstream, converted into a coffee trailer

• Parks in different locations daily — parks, schools, neighborhoods

• First months: $11K–$18K → later scaled to $30K–$50K/month

• Year one: $500K+ revenue, ~$100K–$130K profit

• Keeps costs low by buying supplies (like cups) in bulk

The key insight: mobility isn’t a limitation — it’s the brand.

Customers follow the trailer like a moving destination. No rent, flexible locations, constant novelty.

This model can work beyond coffee:

• Smoothies / juice bars

• Açaí bowls

• Street food concepts

• Dessert trucks

Low fixed costs + high visibility + location flexibility = powerful local business.

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