Raymond Hou runs a company of one under the Lifehacker TW brand. Since leaving employment to start his business in 2020, he has publicly analyzed its revenue in six categories. The classification follows a framework by American creator Jay Clouse (Raymond happens to use every category except “tips”). Since 2023, it has become an annual revenue-analysis series documenting changes in his operating strategy. 1 Raymond emphasizes that the most valuable parts of these posts are not the numbers themselves, but the reflections at the beginning and end.
The Six Categories
Raymond’s revenue comes from six categories, which can be grouped into three according to operational control and their capacity to accumulate value.
The first group is core revenue that he controls and can build on: digital products (topic courses, boot camps, and Notion templates on his own lifehacker.tw website) and royalties (revenue shares from courses licensed to external platforms such as Hahow).
The second group requires ongoing human effort: memberships (the paid Lifehacker Premium community) and services (corporate training, in-person teaching, and one-on-one consulting).
The third group depends on other parties and is deliberately kept small: sponsorships (newsletter placements and video partnerships) and affiliate marketing (commissions from recommending digital tools he uses himself).
Structural Change: From Royalties to Direct Sales
Raymond’s revenue mix shifted noticeably between 2023 and 2024. In the early years (2021–2022), most revenue came from royalties on Notion courses hosted by an external platform. He expected those royalties to decline year by year, so he shifted his focus to digital products on his own website. In 2024, he launched several topic courses on his own platform—covering AI work methods, automation, retrospectives, and digital reading—making digital products his largest revenue source and relegating royalties to second place. Raymond describes selling his own products as “not subject to a major platform’s cut, but not easy at all”: he must handle marketing, customer service, and sales pages himself. 2
He deliberately limits the two partnership-based categories. Raymond considers sponsorships and professional services “in some sense, still working for other people”; he has little concern about keeping their share low because he does not control them. Affiliate marketing has long been the smallest of the six categories. He attributes this to a self-imposed ceiling: he recommends only products he genuinely uses and does not promote things indiscriminately for money.
Boot Camps: Product or Service?
Raymond distinguishes boot camps from purely digital products. In his view, a boot camp cannot be copied indefinitely like a product; it is a high-intensity service that demands substantial labor and should therefore be counted separately from digital products in revenue analysis. This reflects his commitment to doing more than “teaching tools”: he wants to empower individuals to internalize the underlying logic of problem analysis and system design, then build their own workflows instead of copying templates. He says, “High-quality service requires people’s involvement.” He consequently pays teaching partners above-market rates, keeping the operating costs of this line high over time.
Strategic Principles
This structure serves the central philosophy of a company of one: pursue better, not bigger, and know where to set limits. Raymond does not choose high-conversion topics such as “teach people to make money, manage their finances, or build a personal brand.” He believes revenue could probably double if he pursued those paths, but they are not what he wants. He positions membership pricing as a “filtering threshold,” not a profit center, and keeps it low to identify people who share his direction. Annual gatherings are designed around the experience rather than profit.
The revenue structure is also tied to the The Flywheel Effect (flywheel effect): YouTube videos from 智能工作宅 (Smart Work Home) may look like simple lifestyle documentation, but they attract efficiency-minded viewers to his courses and also bring in vendors and partnership opportunities. Raymond’s test is whether “doing one thing can help other things,” so he does not split himself into unrelated parts and exhaust himself. This follows his three-stage path for a company of one: during the labor-intensive stage, use services to validate demand; in the stable stage, repurpose existing content; in the systems stage, introduce Automation (automation) to free up energy.
The Reflection Behind the Numbers
While publishing revenue, Raymond repeatedly notes that the amount actually retained is limited: after costs, taxes, partner shares, and outsourcing, net profit was once less than half, and his cost structure was unhealthy in the early years. One reason he publishes these numbers is, “If someone is going to write about it someday, I’d rather write it myself first—more fully and truthfully.” He repeatedly cautions that personal experience is for reference only; copying another person’s approach will probably end in trouble.
Sources
Footnotes
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Raymond Hou, “How Can an Independent Creator With Fewer Than 10,000 Followers Generate NT$9.6 Million in Annual Revenue?” WordPress, 2024-03-11. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “How Can a Company of One Generate NT$10 Million in Revenue? Product Mix, Cost Management, and Life Choices,” WordPress, 2025-07-10. View original ↩