What does a one-person software product actually make — and how many months before it made anything?

[xyzs996]

Short answer: the published revenue figures for one-person software products cluster far lower than the launch posts suggest, and the ones that worked took longer than the ones that got written about. What follows is every figure this repo has collected on that, each kept with the sentence it was published in and the date it was read.

The figures that exist, and where each came from

• $400/month — "A six-hour Chrome extension pays $400 a month." (2026-08-21)
• 10% at $3 — "Roughly 10% of them pay $3 a month for the premium tier." (2026-08-21)
• $6.3K/month — "The $6.3K/month revenue shows that even with modest pricing, the tool captures meaningful demand in the Poshmark automation niche." (2026-08-15)
• 18 months — "Resellbot took 18 months to reach profitability." (2026-08-15)
• $9.90–$49 — "The sweet spot for a tool-shaped micro-SaaS in North America sits somewhere between $9.90 and $49 a month." (2026-08-21)
• $44,000 — "Then it sold a subscription around quitting, and reached $44,000 in monthly revenue without ever being a general health app." (2026-08-21)
• $125K MRR — "It embedded a boring feature, the survey, into the one moment when an e-commerce buyer is honest, and got to $125K MRR." (2026-08-21)
• $10,000 — "Sam Shore handed roughly two-thirds of Typeshare's equity to two people with established audiences." (2026-08-17)

The two figures that argue with each other. $400 a month from six hours of work and 18 months to profitability are both true and describe the same business shape. The first is what a launch post reports; the second is what the same product costs to keep alive. Almost every number that circulates is the first kind.

What none of these are. Every one is a self-report by the person selling the product, restated in a write-up. None is audited, and survivors are the only ones who publish — the products that made $0 for 18 months and then stopped do not write the post.

The one that changes the pricing question. "You do not set $19 and wait for buyers. You find buyers, and $19 turns out to be what they will pay." That is the only row here that is about method rather than outcome.

All 335 figures as JSON/CSV: https://xyzs996.github.io/llm-api-pricing/figures.html

Write-ups with the full context:

• https://xyzs996.github.io/llm-api-pricing/articles/debunking-the-myth-of-overnight-success-in-micro-saas.html
• https://xyzs996.github.io/llm-api-pricing/articles/a-30-line-script-200-users-and-a-niche-nobody-wanted.html
• https://xyzs996.github.io/llm-api-pricing/articles/how-to-build-a-micro-saas-without-spending-a-dime-on-ads.html
• https://xyzs996.github.io/llm-api-pricing/articles/the-5-ai-features-that-separated-27-profitable-solopreneurs.html

The one thing worth replying with: if you ship a one-person product, what does it make in a month right now — and how many months passed before it made anything at all? A one-line reply with a figure and a number of months is worth more than any row above, and it goes into the table with your wording kept.