Start Here: One Person, 52 Businesses, $1,000,000, All In Public

Here is the whole premise in one sentence: I am building a new online business every week, in public, until the total crosses $1,000,000, and every single number, the wins, the zeros, and the weird middle parts, gets published on this site as it happens. This page is the front door. If you just found SideRoad, everything you need to decide whether to pull up a chair is right here.

The story so far, in real numbers

Fourteen weeks in, the scoreboard reads: twelve live businesses, from a 7,008-course disc golf directory to a Medicare decoder to a badge system that ships inside AI assistants. $79 earned, and I can tell you the story of every cent: the first $33.81 arrived in July from affiliate commissions on a gift recommender, seven weeks and eleven builds after the project started, and August became the best month yet when a $29 product sale lit up a second revenue source. 29 followers on X, up from 12 a month ago. Zero newsletter subscribers as I write this, which means if you sign up today, you are genuinely, verifiably early, and I will remember it.

Those numbers are small. That is not the embarrassing part of this page, it is the entire pitch, and here is why.

Why the beginning is the best part to watch

Every business story you have ever admired got told backwards, by the winner, after the ending was safe, with the boring and terrifying middle edited down to a montage. Which means the part you actually needed, how someone gets from nothing to something, from $0 to the first dollar to the first real month, is exactly the part nobody shows. SideRoad is that missing part, published forward, in real time. You do not get the montage. You get the machine while it is being assembled: the launch that flops, the affiliate layer that took three tries to not feel like spam, the build that ate a month, and the Friday the first money finally landed. If this works, you will have watched the whole mechanism, not the highlight reel. That knowledge is the real product of this site, and it is free.

What following actually gets you

One email a week, and it always contains the same honest anatomy: the business I shipped, what it earned down to the cent, what worked, what flopped, and the one lesson worth stealing for your own thing. Around it, the whole operation stays open-source in spirit: the revenue dashboard is live, every build has a public teardown, and the journal holds seventy-plus posts of the exact playbooks I run, from SEO to launches to pricing. Watch to learn, watch to steal, or just watch the way people watch a long climb, because a documented attempt at something hard is one of the internet's best shows, and this one publishes its receipts.

The honest deal

I will not promise you this ends at a million. I will promise you will see every number on the way to wherever it ends, that the flops get the same coverage as the wins, and that nothing on this site will ever pretend. That deal has already produced the most useful stretch of content here: the weeks when nothing worked. If that is the kind of story you want in your inbox, the form is below, chapter one is still being written, and your seat is in the front row. Let's find out together how far this road goes.

FAQ

What is SideRoad?

A public experiment: one person building a new online business every week, on the road to $1,000,000 in total revenue, with every number published honestly. Twelve businesses are live so far, the total sits at $79, and every launch, win, and flop gets documented on this site.

Is following the journey free?

Completely. The weekly newsletter, the build pages, the revenue dashboard, and seventy-plus journal posts of playbooks are all free. There is one paid kit, ShipWolf, for people who want the exact system, and it is entirely optional.

What do I get if I subscribe?

One email a week: the business that shipped, what it earned, what worked, what flopped, and the lesson worth stealing. No hype, no income-guru energy, just the real middle of a real attempt, delivered while it happens.

What happens if the project fails?

You watch that too, with real numbers, which is precisely the point. Either this becomes the documented story of building to a million from nothing, or it becomes the most honest record of why it is hard. Both are worth your inbox, and I am betting everything on the first one.