Alec Hollingsworth

First Blog: Solopreneurship, Selling Digital Goods, and hitting $10K in sales in two months.

2026-09-20

Hello random internet people who happen upon this post! 

I created this personal website a month or two ago, and today it is finally time to write my first post. I don’t really expect this to be read; I just want a durable place to jot my thoughts. 

Something that I can look back on.

I think that if I at least pretend there will be some stranger or friend reading this (which there could be!) then I will write better and try a little harder at this. So here we go.

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It is a rainy Sunday night, and I’m feeling cautiously optimistic**.** My first app hit $10,000 in sales in its second month since launch. This isn’t my first business; multiple have failed in the past. This is, however, my first software business.

Learning from failure…

Let me tell you right now… FUCK any business dealing with physical goods. The amount of complication it adds is insane. I’m watching Shark Tank, and these poor people can’t even fulfill their demand because they can’t afford to buy their own supply. Not to mention importing, VAT tax, warehousing, shipping, packaging- the list goes on.

After my last failed business (selling a very cool waterproof hoodie for snowboarding), I decided I would never sell a physical good again. I will never rely on China, a factory, or even another person to fulfill what my business needs.

Software is different. The supply is literally infinite. I have no COGS. I have no margin. I have Stripe fees and my time. Well, recently, I started paying for Meta ads… but we will get to that.

Photism

So, knowing that, I’ve been looking for software to build for a long time. Something simple, something that I would not have to hire a single person to build. The idea for Photism, my audio-reactive visual software for music producers, came to me in July 2026, and I got to work.

I didn’t check if anyone was already doing it; I didn’t invalidate myself too early. I put my fucking head down, embraced my naivety, and got to work.

By August 1st, I launched and began my dive into figuring out how to advertise via organic social and the ever-worshipped algorithms.

It has been 50 days since then, and we have our first major milestone:

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Here is our chart in Stripe.

You can see a few straggler test purchases in July, but the bigger trend you’ll notice is the day I turned on Meta ads. Good God, these things work. Granted, I used videos that already worked organically and plopped them into my ad sets. ROAS is great, and I just keep upping the budget. We’ve been averaging around $900 per day for about 5 days now.

Question is: did I find my money printer? What if I keep adding more budget? When will it stop? I have an infinite amount of product and millions of people in my TAM. I guess time will tell!

Beyond the money, a few interesting things have happened:

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though.

I’m working 12 to 16-hour days.

My day job at Engine requires the full 8 hours per day, and so does Photim, and so do all of my other projects.

All credit to my lovely girlfriend, who has been supporting my feverish work habits these past few months. She has been juggling her full-time job and keeping the house clean as a whistle while cooking and shopping for my every meal.

Quick Reflection:

Just want to add this thought from the other day.
Why the fuck do billionaires keep working? Or even multimillionaires?

My thought is that the exact reason/characteristic for their choice to continue working is the reason they are successful in the first place.

Most people in this world want the result of hard work. They want the ease of life, the material goods, the nice house, the nice car, the sweet espresso machine.

Successful people want the challenge. They want the growth and learning. They want the process.

That is why they keep doing it. They already have all the shit. Now they just want to WIN.

HOWEVER!!! They aren’t like this because they are amazing people or just better than everyone else. It’s because they love stroking their fucking ego. They don’t care about the money in the account; they just love to prove that they can do extraordinary shit. They love to prove that they are different. That they are “special”.

Holy shit, am I just projecting right now? Might be…

For me, I’m just obsessed with the idea of making money online. Always have been, always will be. When I was 12, I tried to sell bass lessons online ( I was terrible at bass), and I will continue to blindly and naively try to make this shit work, just like when I was 12.

$10K in my Stripe account is cool and all, but the idea that I might have a successful business from pushing buttons on my laptop is even better. I care more about proving that I am capable of doing this than I do about making money off it. Does that make sense?

Cool. See you again $100k.