💡How This Guy Makes $3M/Year With a Laptop & 0 Employees

This is the story of how Pieter Levels generates $3M+ as a solopreneur while traveling the world.

Meet Pieter Levels

In his early years growing up in Holland, Pieter toyed around with MS-DOS Batch, thanks to a random Windows For Kids book—seems like a clear setup for a future in software, right? Not quite.

Flash forward to his teenage years: Pieter flirted with graphic design before diving headfirst into music, posting music videos on a YouTube channel that started to generate several thousands of dollars a month. Not too shabby, but he soon hit copyright roadblocks.

Pieter Levels wasn't cut out for the corporate grind. After earning a Master's in Business Administration and Entrepreneurship in 2012, he quickly discovered that the suit-and-tie life was not his calling.

Inspired by indie hackers like Patrick McKenzie, Pieter eyed a lifestyle that combined his passions for travel and tech. His eureka moment? Become a digital nomad.

Levels 1.0: The Making of a Nomad

Pieter’s first experience of travel came earlier with a three-month stint at Korea University Business School. First time out of Europe, he got a taste of what's out there beyond his comfort zone—igniting a fire that would fuel his leap into the world of tech entrepreneurship.

In 2013, Pieter took a leap—literally. On his birthday, he boarded a plane to Asia with nothing but a laptop and a backpack, embracing a life of freedom and remote work.

He started blogging about his journeys, initially for his mum and his blog started to gain traction on Hacker News.

His travels weren't just about sightseeing; they were fuel for his entrepreneurial spirit, helping him connect with fellow nomads and tech enthusiasts. Pieter lived the hostel life, built tools he needed himself, and started immersing himself in the nomadic tech community.

Levels 2.0: 12 Startups in 12 Months

Back in the Netherlands, 2014, Pieter hit a wall. Battling anxiety and depression, he remembered a slice of wisdom from his dad: stay busy to beat the blues.

Taking a leaf from Jennifer Dewalt's epic '180 websites in 180 days' challenge, Pieter spun his own version—12 startups in 12 months. This wasn’t just about distraction; it was his training grounds.

With his coding toolkit ready—PHP, JS, jQuery—it was game time: brainstorm, build, launch, repeat. Pieter fast developed a knack for whipping up viral sensations.

Take “Go F*cking Do It,” a bold project where you bet on yourself to hit a goal or your card gets charged. It caught fire on Hacker News, scored some love from TNW, and raked in $30K+ in pledges fast. Despite 85% of folks smashing their goals, the cash didn't stack up as hoped, barely scratching a $2K monthly run rate.

But every sprint taught Pieter something new. While most of his 12 tries didn’t explode, Nomad List did — big time.

It all started with a tweet asking for top spots for digital nomads. From a simple Google Sheet collecting data to a fully-fledged site, Nomad List was a hit right out of the gate, earning $600 on day one. This wasn’t just another project; it became the go-to resource for remote workers, blowing up on Product Hunt, Hacker News, and even mainstream media.

Pieter’s venture into Remote OK marked another win, turning it into a top destination for remote job seekers worldwide.

Across 2016 and 2017, Pieter was pulling in over $300K annually from his array of projects. But as the digital nomad lifestyle gained traction, he doubled down—refining pricing, adding upsells, and capitalizing on this fast spreading trend.

By 2018, his tweaks pushed revenue past $600K, further buoyed by his Indie Maker handbook, MAKE.

He finally hit a massive milestone of $83k/month in May 2019 ($1M/year) primarily from Nomad List and Remote OK.

Pieter still continued to test new ventures like Hoodmaps and went heavy into learning 3D and VR development; they didn’t pay dividends but kept him sharp and ready for the next big wave.

Heading into 2020 however, things were starting to plateau.

Until…

Levels 3.0: Surfing the Remote Work Wave

The global pandemic proved to be an unexpected boost for Pieter.

The sudden surge in remote work amplified his platforms, especially Nomad List and Remote OK. His traffic soared and so did revenue, very quickly speeding towards $2M in 2021.

Pieter continued to ship new features to refine his existing sites as well as launch new businesses, establishing Rebase along the way. An immigration-as-a-service that lets you get work permits in countries like Portugal that want to attract high-tech remote workers.

Pieter was also fast learning to be a shrewd investor, 30% of his profits in 2021 coming from ETFs and Crypto. More on that later.

During this time, Pieter’s hunger to learn and stay at the cutting edge of the next wave led him down an interesting new rabbit hole….

Levels 4.0: Preparing for the AI Wave

Pieter had his fingers on the pulse since 2020, tinkering with GPT-3, but when Stable Diffusion dropped at the end of 2022, it was game on. He didn't just dip his toes in; he dove deep into the tech so he could tame the AI beast while everyone else was just getting their bearings.

Here’s where it gets juicy: Two weeks into discovering Stable Diffusion, Pieter launches “This House Does Not Exist.” Think of “This Person Does Not Exist,” but for architecture. It’s not about cash yet—it's about staking his claim in this new frontier, and bam, it catches fire and gets a nod from Archdaily.

Now, let’s talk cash: Avatar AI.

Pieter’s formula? Keep it stupid simple:

1. Throw up a barebones landing page. HTML style. No frills.

2. Hook it to Stripe. Money first, refine later.

3. User uploads a pic via Typeform. Keep the user journey basic but smooth.

4. Manual hustle. Pieter’s grinding through the night, tweaking each order by hand to nail perfection.

Tweet goes out, 100 orders smash in. Validation? Check. Pieter doesn’t waste time—automation kicks in within a week. His mantra: Launch it rough, refine fast, automate once you know it sells.

Avatar AI skyrockets to $500K fast. But here’s a curveball—server costs go through the roof. His backend service sees his revenue soaring, hikes theirs, and suddenly Pieter’s profits are in the chokehold. Classic move when you build in public, but Pieter pivots, finds a new supplier, and keeps the engine running.

He didn’t stop at avatars:

• ApplicantAI: A replacement for traditional recruiters.

• TherapistAI: Automating life coaching.

• PhotoAI: An evolution of AvatarAI, replacing photographers.

• InteriorAI: Digitizing interior design.

Each project isn’t just a business—it’s a solution to a specific problem Pieter or his friends needed solving.

Then he turned up the heat and worked with TikTokers to turbocharge PhotoAI’s revenue, turning social media hype into hard cash. From $12K to $45K monthly? That’s the power of riding the viral wave.

While the tech world debates AI’s ethics and chases VC bucks, Pieter’s out there making it happen. Building, launching, iterating—fast, lean, and fiercely independent.

Levels 5.0: The Investor

After years in the trenches, Pieter honed his own investment strategy: funneling profits from his startups right into ETFs.

Here's the deal: Pieter learned the hard way that he could stack more cash by parking his money in ETFs rather than playing Wall Street's game and trying to outsmart the market with individual stocks. He whipped up a calculator using Vanguard's S&P 500 data to show how anyone could hit a cool $100M in 30 years by reinvesting $40K monthly into ETFs.

Check out his top investments that now make up 44% of his portfolio:

1. VUAA S&P500 (still accumulating)

2. NVIDIA.

3. Airbnb (ABNB)

4. Microsoft (MSFT)

5. Royal Mint Gold (RMAU)

Pieter also holds Bitcoin and Ethereum, though he keeps the specifics under wraps for security reasons.

And while Pieter's a staunch ETF advocate with a side of crypto love, he couldn't resist dropping over $300K on Microsoft and Nvidia in January 2023. Guess what? Those bets paid off big, turbocharging his net worth over the last year.

According to his X bio, Pieter is generating over $167K/month from the projects he is sharing publicly. Add in his stock gains from the last 12 months he is making north of $3M a year. Impressive with zero full-time employees and owning 100% of his businesses.

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