What Is a Solo Company and Why This Is the Best Era for One
A complete record from zero to one
You've probably thought about this too: registering a company, renting an office, hiring people, paying salaries—all in, you can't get started for less than a hundred thousand RMB. But what if you just want to run your own small business? Is there a way that doesn't require renting an office, doesn't require hiring anyone, doesn't even require registering a company, and lets a single person run the whole operation? The answer is yes, and it's what I've been doing for the past six months—a solo company.
The concept of a solo company is actually very simple: one person runs the entire business. No employees, no partners—just you plus AI tools. You're the CEO and the executor, the product manager and the customer service person. Sounds exhausting, right? But the key is that AI tools have lowered the execution barrier to nearly zero. In the past, building a website alone would cost you 5,000 RMB outsourcing it. Now you can build a content site with Next.js, host it for free on Vercel—zero cost. In the past, writing an article meant hiring a freelance writer at 200 RMB per piece. Now, you can batch-generate content with AI at virtually zero cost.
Why This Topic Matters
Let me give you a real example from my own experience. I built a content site using AgentClaw tools, and the total cost was just 45 RMB—the price of the domain. From zero to 55 articles online, it took only 4 hours. You read that right: 4 hours. Using traditional methods, 55 articles from a freelance writer at 200 RMB each would cost 11,000 RMB and take a week or two to complete. Now, one person in one afternoon—done. That's the biggest dividend the AI era gives to solo companies.
So what kinds of directions are suitable for a solo company? Based on my practice, there are four main types. First, content sites with AdSense ad revenue—earn SEO-driven organic search traffic, and when users read your articles, you earn ad money. Second, tool sites with CPS affiliate commissions—for example, earning a share of sales from product recommendations. Third, standalone SaaS products—using AI-assisted development to lower the technical barrier. Fourth, knowledge monetization—selling courses or consulting services. All four have one thing in common: they don't require a lot of human resources, have extremely low marginal costs, and one person can absolutely run the whole show.
Zero-cost website building was actually quite a hassle before 2024. You had to buy a server, configure the environment, install WordPress, set up DNS—a process that took at least two days. But now things are completely different. The stack I use is Next.js plus Vercel. Next.js is a React framework that's particularly SEO-friendly, supporting SSR (server-side rendering), so Google's crawler can perfectly index your content. Vercel provides free hosting. Once you connect your GitHub repository, every code push triggers an automatic deployment—no FTP needed. The entire website building process takes less than 30 minutes.
Step 1: Find Your Niche
You don't need to spend money on SEO traffic either. The core competitive advantage of a solo company is dominating long-tail keywords. The niche topics big companies won't bother writing about are precisely the gold mines—low search volume but high conversion rate. For example, a keyword like "what occasions are sport coats suitable for" might only get a few hundred searches per month. But if your content ranks first, those few hundred people click through, and with a 5% conversion rate, that's dozens of potential customers. One article of a few thousand words, serving you for years—that's the compound effect.
Payment collection is another concern for many aspiring solo company founders. The good news is that collecting money is much easier now than it used to be. If you're targeting the domestic market in China, you can directly use WeChat Pay Merchant Platform or Alipay Merchant Services. Individuals can apply, with rates as low as 0.38%. If you're targeting overseas markets, Stripe supports individual payouts, and PayPal works too. Many platforms also offer aggregated payment solutions, so you don't need to integrate everything yourself. Also, if you're doing CPS affiliate marketing, Taobao Union and JD.com Union commissions are paid directly into your account—no need to build your own payment system.
Let me elaborate on the CPS model as it's well-suited for a solo company. CPS stands for Cost Per Sale—you earn a commission on each sale. Many products on Taobao Union have commission rates between 5% and 30%; JD.com Union is similar. You run a content site, recommend a product, the user clicks the link in your article and buys it, and you get a commission. The key is to recommend products you've genuinely used and stand behind, not just whatever has the highest commission rate. For the sport coat niche I'm in, commissions range from 5% to 15%. A sport coat sells for 300 to 400 RMB, so your commission is 20 to 60 RMB per sale. If 100 people purchase through your links in a day, your daily income is 2,000 to 6,000 RMB.
Step 2: Build Your System
AdSense ad revenue is another important stream. Although the cost-per-click (CPC) isn't high—Chinese content typically earns just a few jiao (cents) to a little over 1 RMB per click—the advantage is that it's passive income. Once your content is written, as long as people search for it, click through, and click an ad, you earn. With 200 articles and 5,000 daily page views at a 1% click-through rate, your daily ad revenue would be roughly 50 to 100 RMB. Not a lot, but it's stable, and the more articles you accumulate, the more your income grows.
A standalone SaaS product is, in my opinion, the best direction for solo companies with a technical background. You don't need to build a complex system—a small micro-tool that solves one specific problem is enough. For example, I built a tool to help indie developers with SEO keyword research. The front end and back end were both written by me alone, using Supabase for the database and Vercel for deployment—monthly cost of just a few RMB. If I can get 100 paying users at 20 RMB each per month, that's 2,000 RMB in monthly income. Small and beautiful beats big and bloated any day.
Knowledge monetization is another great direction for a solo company. You don't need to build a full online course platform—use tools like Xiaobao Tong (小报童) or Zhishi Xingqiu (知识星球). The key is that your content needs to offer practical value. For example, a topic like "Zero-Cost Website Building Complete Tutorial"—if you've actually done it from scratch and can provide screenshots and code for every step, people will be willing to pay. Price it between 29.9 and 99.9 RMB, and sell 100 copies—that's 3,000 to 10,000 RMB.
Step 3: Content Output
So specifically, how did I get the AgentClaw project off the ground? The whole process was very pragmatic. Day one: bought the domain, set up the framework with Next.js, deployed to Vercel. Day one: batch-generated and published 55 articles. At the same time, registered for Google AdSense and Taobao Union, embedded ad codes and affiliate links into the articles. The entire process—from buying the domain to integrating ads—took 4 hours. You read that right: not 4 days, but 4 hours.
Many people ask, with such a large volume of articles, can the quality and SEO results be guaranteed? It's a good question. The key is the process, not just chasing quantity. I established a standardized content production SOP: first, use GSC (Google Search Console) or Ahrefs to find long-tail keywords—not the big, popular ones, but precise keywords with 200 to 500 monthly searches found through competitor analysis. Then generate one article per keyword, each 2,500 to 3,500 words, containing data, case studies, and actionable advice. After writing the articles, generate illustrations with DALL-E, then push everything to the repository with Git. GitHub Actions automatically builds and deploys to Vercel. The entire workflow—one person, one afternoon, 55 articles—done.
The domain cost 45 RMB—it was the only expense. No server costs, no writer fees, no promotion costs. First month online: zero organic traffic. Second month: sporadic keywords started getting indexed. Third month: daily UV reached about 50. Fourth month: broke 200. These numbers are small, but remember—this is with zero promotion budget and zero ad spend, purely from accumulated content. Every article is like an employee quietly working for you, 24 hours a day, non-stop.
Step 4: Traffic Acquisition
Speaking of running a business alone, someone will inevitably ask: isn't it too exhausting? My answer: the first three months are tough, the next three are easy. Because initially, you need to build your content foundation and earn SEO crawler trust. But once your keywords start ranking and traffic begins to grow steadily, your work shrinks to 3 to 5 new articles per week plus maintaining existing content. One person can handle it easily, and it's much more relaxed than a regular job—no clocking in, no meetings, no office politics.
Why do I say this is the best era? Let me give you the numbers: five years ago, building a similar website would cost you at least 200 RMB per month in infrastructure (server + domain), 200 RMB per article for writers—11,000 RMB for 55 articles—plus a dedicated SEO specialist at 3,000 RMB/month minimum. Today? 45 RMB for the domain, about 20 USD per month for ChatGPT (the biggest expense), Vercel for free, SEO done by yourself. The total cost went from over 15,000 RMB to under 200 RMB—a difference of two orders of magnitude. And AI capabilities are still improving rapidly, so the barrier will only get lower.
I want to emphasize one more point: a solo company isn't some niche plaything—it's becoming mainstream. From what I've observed, since 2024, more and more indie developers are choosing not to pursue the venture capital route, instead focusing on small, profitable projects. The reason is simple: the VC route means spending a ton of time and energy on positioning, schmoozing, and reporting—leaving less than 30% of your time for actually writing code. With a solo company, you can spend 90% of your time doing things that actually create value.
Practical Case Study
For non-technical people, the solo company concept still applies. Can't code? No problem—use low-code tools or ready-made platforms. Can't design? Use Canva or AI design tools. Can't write copy? Use ChatGPT combined with your domain expertise. The core of a solo company isn't that you need to be good at everything—it's that you know how to use AI to fill in the gaps. Your competitive edge is your understanding and judgment in a specific field; AI takes care of the execution.
To summarize my perspective: a solo company isn't a fallback option—it's the optimal entrepreneurial path in the AI era. You don't need massive capital, a bunch of employees, or an expensive office. All you need is a domain name (45 RMB), an AI account (20 USD), and your professional expertise in a specific field. I've already run the complete process from zero to one for you: total time, 4 hours; total cost, 45 RMB. If you have a direction you've been wanting to try, now is the best time to start.
If you want to dive deeper into the practical steps, check out the other articles in our series, including the zero-cost website roadmap, the AI batch-writing workflow, and the strategy for getting free SEO traffic. These are all based on my own hands-on experience—mistakes included—and I hope they help you avoid some of the pitfalls I encountered.