One-Man Business Generating $1.5M a Year

About

Seats.aero is a website designed to simplify award flight searches, helping travelers find the best availability for redeeming their miles and points.

Originally created as a personal project, the platform has grown into a leading tool for frequent flyers worldwide, now serving over a million pageviews per month.

The Team

Seats.aero was founded by Ian Carroll in mid-2022 as a personal project. It quickly gained traction and became his full-time job. The site is run solely by Ian, without any full-time employees.

• reference: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-carroll-a56b8758/

Business Model & Revenue

Seats.aero operates on a subscription-based mode. You can use the service for free to search for flights and set up alerts up to two months in advance. For extended features, there's a Pro subscription available for $9.99 per month, offering one year of flight visibility and SMS alerts.

As of late 2024, the platform has achieved $1.5M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) while remaining completely bootstrapped.

Traffic

Seats.aero’s traffic comes from three major channels:

• Direct Traffic:
  88.6% of traffic is direct, indicating a loyal user base.

• Google Organic Search:
  6.45% of traffic comes from SEO. However, an analysis of the keywords shows that most searches are for the brand name, highlighting a strong brand presence.

• Reddit:
  As a B2C product, Seats.aero is popular on the social media platform Reddit.

Tech Stack

• Database: Amazon Aurora
• Frontend: jQuery + Bootstrap CSS