The Websites Nobody Talks About

Everyone knows Amazon makes billions. YouTube prints money. Shopify powers half the internet's stores. But the most interesting story in 2026 isn't happening at the giants. It's happening at websites most people have never heard of.

Across niche marketplaces, solo-developer projects, newsletter platforms, and AI-powered tools, a new generation of websites is quietly pulling in millions per year. Some are run by small teams of under 20 people. A few are built and maintained by a single developer.

What makes these sites worth studying? They prove you don't need to compete with Big Tech to build a profitable online business. You need a specific audience, a real problem to solve, and the discipline to stay focused. Here are 12 websites doing exactly that.

Niche Marketplaces Beating the Giants

The biggest opportunity in e-commerce isn't building "the next Amazon." It's building a marketplace for something Amazon does badly. Several niche platforms have figured this out and are thriving because of it.

StockX - The Stock Market for Sneakers

StockX treats sneakers, streetwear, and collectibles like stocks. Every item has a live bid/ask price, a price history chart, and transparent market data. This approach attracted a $3.8 billion valuation and processes millions of transactions per year.

What makes StockX different from eBay? Authentication. Every item ships to StockX first, gets verified by experts, and then gets sent to the buyer. This solved the massive counterfeit problem in the sneaker resale market. Sellers on StockX report earning anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month to six figures annually for power sellers who track release calendars and buy strategically.

Faire - Wholesale, Reinvented

Faire connects independent retailers with brands, replacing the outdated trade show model. With a valuation north of $12 billion, Faire is the largest online wholesale marketplace most consumers have never heard of. It operates across North America and Europe, serving over 700,000 retailers.

The genius of Faire is its risk-free model for retailers. Shops can order products with net-60 payment terms and free returns. Brands get exposure to thousands of stores they'd never reach on their own. Faire takes a commission on every transaction, creating a business model that scales effortlessly.

Vinted - Second-Hand Fashion at Scale

Vinted is a second-hand clothing marketplace valued at over $4.5 billion. Unlike Poshmark or Depop, Vinted charges zero selling fees. The buyer pays a small service fee instead. This simple twist attracted over 80 million members across Europe and made it the dominant resale platform outside North America.

For sellers, Vinted's zero-fee model means every sale is pure profit minus shipping. Some sellers treat it as a side hustle clearing out their closets. Others run it as a full business, sourcing clothing from thrift stores and reselling at a markup.

Lesser-Known Marketplaces by Valuation

👟

$3.8B

StockX

🏪

$12.4B

Faire

👗

$4.5B

Vinted

🎸

$275M

Reverb (acquired)

Other niche marketplaces worth watching include Reverb (musical instruments, acquired by Etsy for $275M), Catawiki (curated auctions for special objects like art, watches, and vintage cars), and Whatnot (live-stream shopping that raised over $260M in funding).

If you're thinking about entering a niche marketplace, research the competitive landscape first. Our AI market analysis tool can help you identify gaps that existing platforms aren't serving well.

Solo Developers Earning More Than Startups

Some of the most profitable websites per employee are run by one or two people. No venture capital, no board meetings, no 50-person engineering team. Just a developer solving a specific problem and charging for it.

Carrd - One Developer, Millions in Revenue

Carrd.co lets anyone build simple one-page websites. It was built and is still maintained by a single developer. The free tier handles basic sites. The Pro plan costs $19/year. With over 4 million users and growing, those $19 subscriptions add up fast. Revenue estimates place Carrd well into the millions annually.

What's remarkable about Carrd is its restraint. It doesn't try to be Squarespace or Wix. It does one thing - single-page sites - and does it extremely well. The simplicity is the product.

Nomad List and Remote OK

Built by indie developer Pieter Levels, Nomad List helps remote workers find the best cities to live and work from. Remote OK is a remote job board. Together, they generate over $2 million per year in revenue. Levels builds and runs both sites solo, famously sharing his revenue numbers publicly.

The lesson from Levels isn't that everyone should build a nomad tool. It's that one person with deep knowledge of a specific community can build a business that most VC-funded startups would envy. His audience is narrow (remote workers), his tools are focused, and his costs are minimal.

BuiltWith - Profiling the Entire Web

BuiltWith tracks the technology stack of every website on the internet. Want to know how many sites use Shopify vs WooCommerce? BuiltWith has the data. Their enterprise plans cost thousands per month, and their customer base includes marketing agencies, sales teams, and investors doing due diligence. A small team generates estimated revenue of $14+ million per year.

Solo developer websites earning millions in revenue

Other profitable solo or small-team sites include 12ft.io (paywall bypasser), SimpleLogin (email aliases, acquired by Proton), and Plausible Analytics (privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative). These projects prove that small can be extremely profitable when you own your niche.

The Newsletter Gold Rush

Newsletters went from "dead format" to billion-dollar industry in just a few years. The platforms powering this shift are earning serious money, and so are the writers using them.

Beehiiv - The Fastest-Growing Newsletter Platform

Beehiiv launched in 2022 and already powers some of the largest newsletters in the world, including Morning Brew's spin-off properties. Unlike Mailchimp, Beehiiv was purpose-built for newsletters with features like built-in referral programs, ad networks, and audience analytics.

Beehiiv's free tier is generous, but their paid plans ($39-99/month) are where the revenue comes from. With tens of thousands of paying publishers, the platform is growing fast. For newsletter creators, the built-in monetization tools mean you can start earning without needing a huge audience.

Substack - Writers Earning Six Figures

Substack takes 10% of every paid subscription. That sounds small until you consider that top Substack writers earn over $1 million per year from their newsletters alone. The platform reportedly processes over $300 million in annual subscription revenue, taking a $30 million+ cut.

What makes Substack interesting isn't the top earners. It's the middle tier. Thousands of writers earn $1,000-10,000 per month writing about niche topics like local politics, cooking, fitness, and industry analysis. These aren't celebrity writers. They're experts who found their audience.

ConvertKit (Kit) - The Creator Economy Backend

ConvertKit (recently rebranded to Kit) powers email for creators, bloggers, and small businesses. They crossed $40 million in annual recurring revenue while staying bootstrapped - no outside investors. Their pricing scales with subscriber count, creating natural revenue growth as their customers succeed.

Newsletter Platform Revenue Models

📧

Beehiiv
SaaS subscriptions + built-in ad network

✍️

Substack
10% cut of all paid subscriptions

🎨

Kit (ConvertKit)
$40M+ ARR, bootstrapped, scales with subscriber count

🛍️

Gumroad
Transaction fees on digital product sales

If you're building a newsletter or content business, tracking your revenue growth from the start is important. Our budget tracking tool can help you monitor income from multiple platforms and understand your true profit margins.

AI Tools Nobody Expected to Make Money

While ChatGPT and Google Gemini get all the headlines, several lesser-known AI companies are generating massive revenue by solving narrow problems extremely well.

Midjourney - No VC, No App, Pure Profit

Midjourney runs entirely through Discord. No mobile app. No website dashboard. Just a Discord bot that generates images from text prompts. Despite this unconventional setup, Midjourney reportedly generates over $200 million in annual revenue with a team of under 50 people. They've taken zero venture capital funding, meaning the founders own 100% of the business.

How does a Discord bot make $200M? Subscriptions at $10-60/month. With millions of paying subscribers, the math works. The lesson: you don't need a polished product to make serious money. You need a product that delivers clear value.

ElevenLabs - The Voice Behind Everything

ElevenLabs provides AI voice generation that sounds nearly indistinguishable from human speech. Their technology powers audiobook narration, video voiceovers, podcast production, and accessibility features. They've grown to over $100 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) since launching in 2022.

The demand for AI voice is exploding. Content creators use it for YouTube narration. Publishers use it to convert books to audio. Developers integrate it into apps via API. Each use case generates subscription or per-minute revenue for ElevenLabs. For more AI tools that are changing how creators work, check out our guide to life-changing AI tools.

Perplexity - The Search Engine That Answers

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that competes directly with Google Search. Unlike Google, Perplexity gives you direct, cited answers instead of a page of blue links. Their Pro plan costs $20/month, and they've grown to over $100 million in annualized revenue.

Perplexity's growth shows that even markets dominated by trillion-dollar companies have room for focused challengers. They're not trying to replace all of Google. They're replacing the specific use case of research queries, and doing it well enough that millions of people pay for it.

AI-powered websites generating millions in revenue

Digital Products: The Quiet Millionaires

The least talked-about category of high-earning websites is digital products. Templates, courses, and digital downloads generate enormous revenue with near-zero marginal costs.

Kajabi - The Course Platform Making Creators Rich

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for selling online courses, memberships, and coaching programs. It crossed $100 million in ARR while most people still think Udemy is the only option. Kajabi charges $149-399/month, targeting serious course creators who want to own their brand rather than list on a marketplace.

Kajabi creators have collectively earned over $8 billion through the platform. Individual creators regularly earn six and seven figures selling courses on topics from photography to personal finance. The platform handles everything: hosting, payments, email marketing, and community features.

Gumroad - Digital Products for Everyone

Gumroad lets anyone sell digital products with zero upfront cost. Ebooks, templates, design assets, music, software - if it can be downloaded, it can be sold on Gumroad. The platform processes hundreds of millions in creator sales, taking a flat 10% fee.

What's notable about Gumroad is the range. Some sellers earn $50/month selling Notion templates. Others earn $50,000/month selling design systems or software tools. The platform doesn't pick winners. It just provides the infrastructure and gets out of the way.

Creative Market and Envato

Creative Market and Envato (ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, GraphicRiver) are marketplaces for design assets, website themes, and code. Envato alone generates over $200 million in annual revenue. Top sellers on these platforms earn six figures selling WordPress themes, UI kits, and presentation templates.

The beauty of digital product marketplaces is passive income at scale. A well-made WordPress theme can sell for years with minimal updates. A popular icon pack keeps generating revenue long after the initial design work is done. If you want to understand what opportunities exist in your niche, our AI market analysis tool can help identify underserved product categories.

What These Sites Have in Common

Look at the 12 sites above and a clear pattern emerges. None of them tried to be everything to everyone. Instead, they share these traits:

Narrow focus - StockX does sneakers, not all of retail. Perplexity does research queries, not all of search. Carrd does one-page sites, not full websites.
Solve a real pain point - Faire eliminated the risk of wholesale ordering. Vinted removed selling fees. ElevenLabs made professional voiceovers accessible to everyone.
Revenue from day one - Most of these sites charge money early. They don't chase free users for years hoping to monetize later. The product is worth paying for, so people pay.
Low overhead - Solo developers like Pieter Levels and the Carrd creator keep costs minimal. Even the larger companies here run lean teams compared to their revenue.
Network effects or lock-in - Marketplaces get better as more buyers and sellers join. Newsletter platforms retain users because migrating your subscriber list is painful. Course platforms keep creators because their content, students, and revenue history live there.

The opportunity for new entrants hasn't closed. Every niche that Amazon serves poorly, every creative tool that's overpriced, and every marketplace that charges too much in fees represents a potential business. The websites earning millions in 2026 started by noticing these gaps and building focused solutions.

Use tools like our Google Search AI ranking tool to research what people are searching for in your niche. Demand signals in search data often point directly to underserved markets waiting for someone to build the right product.

Start Smaller Than You Think

The biggest takeaway from this list isn't about the revenue numbers. It's about where these sites started. Carrd was a side project. Nomad List was a spreadsheet. Midjourney was a Discord bot. None of them launched as polished, funded startups.

If you're building an online business in 2026, you don't need to raise money or build a perfect product. You need to find a specific group of people with a specific problem, build the simplest solution that works, and charge for it. The websites on this list prove that approach can scale to millions.

Track your progress from the start. Even if revenue is small in the early months, understanding your numbers, your growth rate, and your costs per customer gives you the foundation to make smart decisions as you scale. Our budget tracking tool and APY calculator can help you project where your earnings are headed.