Hey Reader,

As I’m building the 2026 Solo Business Barometer, I wanted to take a hard look at what trends are shaping the solo economy right now. My goal is to compare the results from my survey with the observational data below.

So, if you haven’t filled out the 2026 Solo Business Barometer, please take a few minutes to do it now. It would help me a lot, plus you’ll get to see what really shapes growth for solo business owners.

I got the idea to do this research (both the survey and the observational data below) because everywhere I look, solopreneurs and creators keep telling me the same thing: “growth is getting harder”. Not just in terms of revenue but also list-building, reach, and traction. And they’re right.

So what the heck is happening?

TL;DR: what’s changed is the terrain. Platforms are holding more attention for themselves, buyers are more skeptical, and noise levels are off the charts.

Some of the old playbooks still work, but they’re heavier lifts now. Meanwhile, new leverage points are quietly opening for those willing to experiment.

We’ll explore a few tactics that are under pressure now vs the new emerging trends in a second, after a message from today’s partner, whose free training fits this issue like a glove. Why? Because it teaches you how to do blogging like it’s 2026, not 2021.

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Want your name up here? Reserve your slot!​
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Everything below is based on conversations with clients, peers, and third-party research reports. If you’ve noticed something different, I’d love to chat about it, so reply to this email and let me know what you’re seeing!

Under pressure (tactics losing leverage)

The tactics below aren’t dead or completely useless. They do, however, take more work, time, or both to work than they used to.

SEO-first “ultimate guides” as your main funnel

For years, the formula was simple: write the “ultimate guide,” optimize for keywords, and let Google send free traffic. That well is drying up.

Google’s AI Overviews now siphon user intent before it reaches you. Pew Research found that when an AI summary appears, only 8% of users click external links compared to 15% when no summary shows.

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​Image source​

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Publishers confirm this shift: Digital Content Next tracked referral losses of up to 25%.

The bigger story: “ultimate guides” have become predictable, commoditized, and easy for AI to condense into a paragraph. What once felt like authority-building now feels like background noise.

Add the fact that a lot of people are going straight to AI instead of Google to look for things, and you’ll understand why search can’t be the moat it once was.

What to do:

• Treat SEO as bonus traffic, not your lifeline.
• Publish original data, surveys, or teardown studies that AI can’t flatten. This is one of the reasons why I’m building the 2026 Solo Business Barometer (✨ one more nudge for you to fill it out!).
• Build interactive features (calculators, diagnostics, scorecards) inside your content.
• Lead with owned channels (newsletter, LinkedIn) before waiting on search rankings.
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Broad, self-paced courses with vague promises

The $997 “all-in-one” course era is running out of oxygen. Completion rates for self-paced online courses keep dropping. Here’s an overview generated by Perplexity:

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Buyers are no longer satisfied with information. They want transformation — something they can finish, use, and point to. A wall of video modules doesn’t cut it when motivation wanes.

What to do:

• Design short sprints (4–6 weeks) with a tangible deliverable.
• Add accountability layers: live office hours, audits, peer reviews.
• Add something that they can use after watching the course. The Profitable Content Engine masterclass, for instance, comes with Convertly Lab, a custom GPT that people use months after taking the course.

There are exceptions, of course. My friend Carol Amendola D’Anca has a course on buying the right, healthy, non-scammy olive oil. I took it myself and it’s honestly all I needed — that and the cheatsheet included in the course.

In some B2C cases, you don’t need any more than that to get the outcome you want.

Passive community spaces

Everyone wanted a Slack or Discord community at one point. Most of them now sit silent, another tab to mute.

A “community for community’s sake” doesn’t build loyalty — it creates churn. Attention is finite, and members need structure, facilitation, and outcomes to stay engaged.

What to do:

• Make sure that community members have a shared goal.
• Ask yourself this: will your community create loyalty by design i.e. is there something to keep people engaged months/years after the initial enthusiasm is gone?
• Time-box communities into 6–8 week cohorts with a defined goal.
• Create structured challenges (e.g., “Build your Q2 plan in 6 weeks”).
• Facilitate actively: prompts, group check-ins, curated threads.
• Add closure: end dates and graduation moments that give a sense of accomplishment.
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High-volume, generic webinars

Webinars exploded in volume and diluted in impact. People have sat through too many “60-minute slides + sales pitch” sessions. Engagement drops, multitasking soars, and conversion plummets.

This is why you’re seeing fewer and fewer attendees to your webinars (extra data).

The problem isn’t the channel; it’s the format. Done well, live sessions still outperform. But you need to prove value in real time, not pitch for 55 minutes.

What to do:

• Shift webinars into workshops with pre-work, live builds, and clear outputs.
• Use polls, Q&A, and breakout rooms to maintain attention.
• Deliver a tangible takeaway: templates, scripts, or audits.
• Repurpose recordings into segmented replays with personalized follow-ups.
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Paid newsletters built only on commentary

“Pay me to opinate weekly” is becoming a hard business model to sustain.

Commentary alone no longer clears the bar. Substack showed people will pay for writing, but subscription fatigue is catching up.

It doesn’t help that Substack has started biting into writers’ earnings more and more. Jay Clouse was one of the creators in the late spring Substack boom but, since then, he has revisited his strategy and shut down his paid newsletter.

The explanation in his words here.

What to do:

• Pair analysis with tangible tools: templates, databases, or exclusive research.
• Offer subscriber-only Q&As or office hours.
• Build a private peer group that adds relational value.

A BIG caveat

Notice how I didn’t say the tactics above are dying? It’s because they’re not.

They still work IF done properly. Case in point: Jana O.’s blogging training. She has the receipts to prove that, when done smartly, blogging is still an incredible lead generation tactic.

Moreover, almost all of them (paid newsletters and courses especially) work really well if you have the reputation to sell them. And if you enjoy enough trust from your audience.

Now let’s look at the things that are picking up steam these days.

Advantage zones (emerging leverage for solos)

Packaged AI advisory workflows

AI hype has cooled, but adoption hasn’t. For solos, the edge isn’t in building new models — it’s in packaging workflows.

Clients don’t want “prompts.” They want outcomes: faster onboarding, automated reporting, cleaner proposals. The solo founder who can orchestrate AI into repeatable, governed systems wins.

What to do:

• Pick one repeatable client process.
• Build a 5-step agentic workflow: diagnose → plan → draft → review → implement.
• Sell it as a productized sprint (e.g. “AI-powered onboarding in 30 days”).

Note: much like blockchain back in the day, people tend to overuse AI and cram it in every headline, even when you don’t need it. Don’t do that; add/sell AI flows ONLY when they make sense.

Short sprints with deliverables

Buyers crave speed and outcomes. Self-service (rep-free sales) is still the norm BUT they also result in the most post-purchase regret.

When self-service results in regret and long programs feel risky, the usual; middle ground is a short sprint. For instance, I’m now part of a 30-day social media challenge in the Growth In Reverse Pro community. It’s fun, it’s quick, and it has a clear outcome.

What to do:

• Design 4–6 week sprints anchored to specific outputs (dashboards, audits, playbooks).
• Run small groups for accountability.
• Price between a self-paced course and a retainer.
• Add a post-sprint review/feedback loop to upsell (if possible).

However, not everything is a fit for a short sprint. This is a good primer on figuring out how to package the outcome and choose the right format.

Hybrid education + implementation

When self-paced courses are under pressure, you need to do a bit more to attract buyers. This is why all of my masterclasses have a 1:1 option too — you can buy the standalone course if you’re a DIY-er OR you can get my help with implementation too.

This hybrid model raises both completion and pricing power. You’re not just teaching — you’re helping them ship.

What to do:

• Add weekly office hours, peer reviews, or Loom feedback to your course.
• Add 1:1 options, audits, or something else that helps with accountability.
• Frame it as “do-it-with-you,” not “watch and hope.”
• Charge accordingly: you’re selling certainty, not just modules.

Distinct long-form content off Google

Search is shakier, but long-form still compounds in owned channels. LinkedIn newsletter engagement grew 47% YoY, and niche email newsletters continue to see strong growth for distinctive, POV-driven writing.

In a noisy feed, long-form content is where depth, authority, and trust accumulate.

This is a hill I’m willing to die on: long-form content is STILL the best way to retain attention and turn it into purchases.

What to do:

• Choose your poison: long-form writing or video?
• Repurpose into LinkedIn posts, blog posts, podcast talking points, and YouTube shorts/TikToks.
• Make sure you have at least one platform that you own.

Try this: pick one tactic from the “Under Pressure” list to redesign, and one from the “Advantage Zone” list to pilot in the next 30 days. Measure results, then double down. Above all, keep investing in the one moat no platform can take from you: trust.

The real moat is your reputation

With trust and a solid reputation, you can still monetize the “under pressure” plays. Without it, even the advantage zones won’t save you.

​Trust compounds. Algorithms can demote you, but they can’t erase a reputation for clarity and rigor.

Search can flatten clicks, but it can’t stop people from opening your newsletter every week. A workshop lands not because of the slides but because of the facilitator’s credibility.

That’s the real growth lever in 2025: not hacks, not arbitrage, but reputation that compounds.

Need my help leveraging any of these trends?

If reading this made you realize you’re stuck pulling on levers that don’t move like they used to, that’s exactly what I fix inside The Growth Intensive.

It’s a focused strategy sprint where we audit what’s under pressure in your business, identify the advantage zones that actually fit your model, and rebuild your growth plan around trust and compounding reputation — not hacks.

You’ll be working 1:1 with me alone – no VAs, no trainees, just the two of us.

If you’re tired of grinding harder for less, this is where you get your leverage back. Here’s what clients have to say about our time together in The Growth Intensive.

Save your seat or book a discovery call with me to see if The Growth Intensive is the right program for you!

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That's it from me today! See you next week in your inbox. Here to make you think, Adriana ​

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