Pieter Levels: Nomad List, Remote OK and Photo AI, a one-person portfolio with public revenue past $3M a year

Pieter Levels is the best-documented solo software business on the internet because he publishes his revenue in real time: each of his products shows its monthly revenue and user counts on its own page, and he posts the totals on X. In 2024 the portfolio ran at more than $3 million a year in revenue with no employees, from a laptop, which makes it the case study to read if the property you have is software or data rather than content.

The property

Three main products, each monetized differently:

• Nomad List (2014) is a directory of cities ranked for remote workers by cost, internet, safety and weather. Browsing is limited for free; a lifetime membership unlocks the full data and a members-only community, so it is a directory monetized as a membership.
• Remote OK (2015) is a remote job board. Employers pay per posting, with upsells for highlighting and social promotion, the standard job board model, and it has been among the most-visited remote job sites for years.
• Photo AI and Interior AI (2022-2023) are subscription AI tools that generate photos and interior designs; classic SaaS subscriptions that quickly became the largest revenue line.

The revenue mix

The public counters have shown Photo AI running at well over $100k a month at its peak, Remote OK and Nomad List in the tens of thousands a month each, plus smaller products and data licensing. Everything bills by card through Stripe; there is no ad revenue, no affiliate revenue and no sponsor sales, which is unusual on this site and instructive: when the property is a tool, the tool is the product.

Why it worked

Levels ships fast, launches everything publicly (each product went through Product Hunt and his own audience), and prices simply: lifetime deals early, subscriptions later. The audience he built by working in public, hundreds of thousands of followers, is the distribution channel for every new product, so each launch starts with buyers. The products also feed each other: Nomad List members are Remote OK's candidates, and the job board's employers are a natural market for Nomad List's data.

The other lesson is ruthless focus on revenue per hour of his time. Products that did not earn were shut down and listed as such; he has written that most of his launches failed and the portfolio is the survivors.

What to take from it

A directory, a job board and a SaaS are three different methods applied to one audience by one person, and the numbers are public if you want to check them. For a tool or data property, the SaaS and directory pages cover the platforms; the planner will not model this kind of outcome because it is not typical, but the mechanics are exactly the ones listed there.