This article really felt like a misdiagnosis to me.

Sure, a lot of these people were just buying hype from these "get rich from drop shipping!" influencers, just like a million other suckers who got dollar signs in their eyes with real estate schemes, pyramid sale schemes, yada yada, a tale as old as time. I don't think this "passive income" trap is really anything new, and I don't think it was some unique thing that "ate a generation of entrepreneurs", as if that trap didn't exist then instead we'd see all these successful people.

Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Just look at all the posts on HN asking about how much people make on their side gigs. You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy, spammy business models. It's just simply much harder as a small/smaller business to make money and compete with the big boys. Wealth inequality doesn't just apply to people, but also companies. For example, in the past many entrepreneurial types may have started retail stores, while now it's incredibly difficult to compete with the likes of Amazon et al. I read an article recently that the number of public companies has halved compared to a few decades ago. The Wilshire 5000 stock index, for example, actually only includes about 3400-3700 companies now.

>You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy, spammy business models.

I suspect this is largely sampling bias.

I host meetups for indie founders, and several attendees earn their living through solo businesses. When I go to conferences like Microconf, I meet lots more.

The problem with measuring financial success by who posts about it on HN is:

* The more someone is making at their solo business, the less they want to blab about it and attract competitors.

* The people earning at the low end are more desperate for people to see what they're doing so they can pick up new customers, so they're more likely to talk about their work.

* The more successful founders are busier and spend less time posting on HN.

We started a trophy and award business because my spouse was already making shirts and stuff so we had most of the equipment. The overhead is really low thanks to quick shipping from a large employee owned national supplier (seriously, JDS industries is fucking awesome).

It's enough to pay for itself easily and pay for a vacation or two a year, for about 4 hours of work a week. If we really put effort in, it could replace our day jobs.

Where most people go wrong is their expectation. We expected this to fund a vacation and maybe car payments. That it's doing that is exactly right and we don't want to take it any further. If people had that view, instead of feeling like they have to make a billion dollars, I think side gigs would be a different beast entirely.

> Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money.

Hard disagree.

As the article notes, I think if you concentrate on a real business, not a scam-y 'get rich quick scheme' business then, especially with the internet, its never been easier to run a solo business at scale.

For myself, I wrote an app as a side hobby, which then took off, so I started working on it part-time, then moved to full-time when the revenue justified.

It's now growing to where it exceeds what I would have made working for someone else.

Note this took 7+ years of constant work, improvements and care.

It's the type of dedication that makes you competitive with even larger organisations.

And the time required to be a 'success' ensures that you won't have any competitors who just want to make a quick buck or get to "passive income" within a year or two.

Didn't feel like a misdiagnosis to me. My spouse around 2017 was one of those that got sucked into a course to earn income with an Amazon store. As I read the article basically every point resonated with my experience.

The dog walking business example was also appropriate in my mind. My spouse fortunately broke even, minus time, on her attempt with drop shipping garbage nobody really needs. Now she makes decent money with her oil paintings. Not "passive income" but real money and profit. Not enough to retire (that's what I am for!) but actual money nonetheless.

The article's example is a person can't even be bothered to understand what the product he's selling is for, and doesn't appear to fully grasp they're losing money. Even in much better circumstances, success would presumably remain elusive.

Some people just lack the capacity for this sort of thing, and unfortunately fraudsters target them by trying to convince them otherwise.

Yeah, it feels like the author is blaming his personal bugbear but entrepreneurship and independent businesses are facing systemic issues of massive concentration of market power and zero antritrust enforcement.

I don't think there was ever a time where a solo-entrepenur could make real money without putting in lots of effort and taking lots of risks.

We remember the success stories, we don't remember the bankruptcies.

> Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money.

Part of that was accurately diagnosed by the article in the bit about the dog walking business vs dog walking platform.

My partner bootstrapped a successful full-time cleaning business that she ran for a few years and the limiting factor was basically her ability to hire and retain good employees. A physical cleaning business has no path to scale like a tech company though.

Is it possible this has things backwards?

When I was in high school 25 years ago, unless you got lucky with an IPO, tech didn't pay all that well. (I worked in software while I was in high school, so I know some of this first hand).

It was office space. It didn't matter how smart you were, if you didn't go into management, or join Apple/Microsoft at just the right time, you weren't going to live a rich lifestyle.

Not only that, you'd probably be reporting to some MBA type biz guy who has no idea how software works, you'd not be well respected, and your perks were drip coffee and occasional donuts on friday.

Of course brilliant, hard working, talented engineers said "fuck that" and go build something awesome themselves. Things have changed drastically. Now, brilliant hard working people can literally make millions at dozens of companies .

You will report to another engineer who has slightly optimized for soft skills, you get lavish perks (except amazon, but at least you get paid well there), and real equity.

There's a whole spectrum of options for ambitious software folk that didn't texist ~25 years ago.