Solopreneurs is a ‘cozy’ online space designed to help you share your solo business venture with the world, while giving you a quiet, moderated space to learn from other like-minded members.
We don’t judge, and we don’t abide elitism. Whether you are a builder, creator, enthusiast, or fan, if you can get along with others and add value to the space, you are welcome here.
Because we intentionally limit our membership, we are able to work with members directly and personally to help you make the most of the resources we provide.
For Visitors and Fans
Solopreneurs isn’t just a platform for hosting business projects. It is an interactive hub for you to watch and engage with these inspired and creative individuals as they build their small businesses.
If you are hungry for tips and tricks for your own ventures, looking for advice and reviews, or just seeking inspiration, that’s what this space is for. There are plenty of benefits for visitors, and many reasons to subscribe and join the community:
📺 “Over-the-Shoulder” Viewing
Go beyond traditional streaming. Come watch our creators and developers work live. You can follow along through live-edited documents to see exactly how they tackle a project, gaining insight into their process and stealing ideas to apply to your own business.
🔧 Access Free Tools
Anyone can copy our custom code, pages, interactive page elements, and browser sources for your own streaming. You can download shared web apps, interactive page embeds, and WordPress plugins shared by the site’s founder and its members.
We are happy to make available anything you might find useful or that helps with productivity or saves you time. Some members, like the site’s founder, will try to build you custom solutions for your needs when they are requested. You can see the example of the site-wide Pomodoro timer:
Our Pomodoro timer is different from others. It is synced to the actual time, so everyone on the site works and breaks at the same time. It has optional voice alerts for new sessions. It remembers your chosen options as you navigate the site and even works when you are on a different tab.
You can download the latest version of this plugin for free here, or just have our site open in a tab to use it without installing it to a website.
A full list of more free solutions will be listed on a resource page for you to browse and download. We will post some more examples here, too.
👨💻 Interactive Co-Working
Visitors can already use our co-working timer to stay focused. When you register with the site in the future, the system will become fully interactive: build your own task lists to publish to the group page, check in when you sit down to work and see who else is currently working, and send out site-wide notifications when you start a session or complete your tasks.
📰 Updates & Schedules
By subscribing to the site, you’ll ensure you never miss a beat. You will receive regular updates on newly released open-source software, fresh media and art shared by our members, and schedules for upcoming live work sessions.
👥 Community Engagement
Following the site or registering as a fan will unlock the ability to interact directly with our solopreneurs. You will also be able to communicate and share ideas with other registered subscribers who share your interests.
🎁 Member Perks & Discounts
Supporting our aspiring solopreneurs comes with its own rewards. Registered fans and those who subscribe to members’ newsletters may receive exclusive discounts on products, services, and digital downloads offered directly by our community members.
Creator Spaces
The Solopreneurs site operates on a WordPress Multisite installation, giving you two distinct spaces to build your online presence and host your projects:
The Main Site:You will have a front-end presence to showcase your work to a broader audience, with no meaningful limits on content. While community functions here are restricted to registered members who share our values, you control public access to your work.
Your Sub-Site: You will be granted a personalized space (e.g., solopreneurs.space/yoursite) with a reasonable allotment of disk space to build your own fanbase or private community.
Customization & Domains:You can point your own domain to your space, or use a subdomain. We are also happy to install your preferred selection of plugins and site themes for your sub-site.
Ad-Free Autonomy:We will never advertise, allow sponsored content, or charge mandatory subscription fees on the main site. However, you have complete freedom to monetize, advertise, or run subscriptions on your personal sub-site.
Co-Working and Collaboration
We employ a low-pressure, video-optional co-working system designed to keep you motivated alongside your peers.
Synchronized Work:Subscribers and members can check in, sync to the site’s co-working timer, and see what others are working on. You can even send a virtual “high-five” to colleagues working on interesting projects.
Live Engagement: Members can schedule and announce live streams or working sessions. Fans and followers can watch you work live via video, follow along through live document editing, or engage with you in whatever way suits your creative process.
Guidelines and Moderation
We embrace diverse styles and formats, giving everyone as much freedom as possible. To protect the community, we enforce a few common-sense rules:
Content Restrictions: We do not host black-hat content, advice on circumventing terms of service, or anything illegal or regulated. Harassing, toxic, or bigoted content will result in an immediate ban.
Publishing & Moderation: Initially, our team will quickly review your main-site posts. Once we get to know your style, you will be granted full autonomy to publish your content directly.
Site Management: The Solopreneurs team retains permanent admin access to your sub-site for security and analytics.
Active Participation: If you are absent or inactive for an extended period, we may shutter your sub-site to give another creator the opportunity to use the platform. Your content on the main site, however, will always remain live.
Our Specs and Best Practices
Our current hardware—a quad-core server with 6GB of RAM and 100GB of storage—can handle a healthy amount of traffic for each community member. To keep the site running smoothly for everyone, we ask that you follow a few best practices:
Image Formatting: Use only the .webp image format to save space and load times.
Media Hosting: Embed videos and large files must be hosted on external services (like YouTube or Google Drive) rather than uploading them directly to our server.
Funding and Growth
Solopreneurs is 100% supported by our members on a strictly voluntary basis. Because our overhead is low, we don’t need to bother visitors or members with paywalls.
Our Costs: We prioritize transparency. We use Namecheap for our domain and VPS hosting. Current costs are about $20 USD a month for hosting and $40 USD a year for the domain.
Our Philosophy: We ask that members contribute if and when they benefit from the site. We reserve the right to restrict or expel high-demand members or “squatters” who utilize heavy resources without giving back.
Sustainable Growth: Our priority is quality of service over quantity of members. Future growth will focus on expanding features for existing members rather than aggressively increasing our user base.
If high traffic requires us to upgrade our server (our next tier is $35 USD a month), we will appeal to the members driving that traffic to contribute proportionately.
What’s In It For The Admin?
Transparency is important to us. Building and maintaining this platform is a mutually beneficial endeavor, and here is exactly what I get out of running the site:
Showcasing Work: Just like our members, I use this space to share my process, build trust with prospective customers, and promote my own services in my designated corner of the site.
Developing Custom Solutions: Creating the features we need requires custom software. I will build, review, and test custom plugins and web apps directly on the site. You gain free new functionality, and I gain live testing and exposure for my work.
Open-Source Access: Everything I create for the site will be free and open-source. You can easily integrate any of these new features into your own sub-site at no cost.
Mutual Exposure: Shared traffic benefits everyone. Visitors drawn to your sub-site may explore the main site, where they’ll discover other members’ content, live work sessions, and site updates.
A Living Portfolio: Successfully managing a complex, dynamic, and sustainable community demonstrates my ability to meet customer needs. Positive reviews and testimonials from this site serve as a valuable marketing tool when I am pitching my services for future gigs.
Can Members Trust The Site?
We want you to feel completely secure before you invest your time into building your presence here. Before you start, we will review the site’s policies together and sign a clear agreement outlining our services and the conditions of your use.
Content Ownership: The effort you put into the main site is yours. You will retain access and control over your published content, and it will remain on the site even if you decide to leave. We only step in to moderate if content violates our core rules against prohibited or offensive material.
Sub-Site Grace Periods: While we do recycle inactive sub-sites to free up space, we provide a generous, predetermined grace period before taking any action. You will also have the option to contribute a small amount toward hosting costs to keep an inactive sub-site open.
Data Privacy & Monetization: We encourage you to use reputable third-party integrations (like Patreon) for paid memberships and digital sales. This ensures your subscribers’ payment information is processed securely and remains entirely hidden from our admin team.
Zero-Poaching Guarantee: I guarantee that there will be no poaching of your members, nor any intentional exposure or sharing of your audience data. Trust is paramount, but you will also be provided with my legal name and jurisdiction, giving you formal legal recourse should our agreement ever be breached.
Direct & Private Support: Because our community is small, you will receive my direct email address and business phone number. Each member is entitled to one hour of dedicated phone support per month (subject to availability), supplemented by responsive email support.
To protect your own privacy, you are completely welcome to use VoIP apps or email masks when contacting me.