Business plan · one page, all Estimates
After Six, on one page.
What it is, who pays, what it costs, how the AI runs it and what a month could look like. Every money figure here is an Estimate from the model, not a result.
01
The problem
Lots of people want a second income or a thing of their own, and stall between “I should start something” and the first sale. Almost half of GB adults said they had a side hustle in January 2026; 28% named the cost of living as the main reason (Finder / Censuswide). Most tools sell one piece: a logo, a site, a course. Nobody hands you the matched idea, the kit and the plan in one go, then checks in.
02
Who pays
Employed UK adults with three to ten free hours a week and a skill they undervalue: the nurse who bakes, the accountant who restores bikes. They pay once the free reveal has shown them something worth keeping. Second market: careers services and employers who offer it as a benefit (untested idea).
03
04
How the AI runs it
A rules-based matcher picks the idea in the browser, so free reveals are cheap (we budget £60 a month of AI wording for about 1,500, Estimate). AI writes the words for paying subscribers and the weekly coach replies. A claims guard checks every line for earnings promises (banned for this kind of product by the CAP Code) and regulated work. The owner reads a Monday digest and anything flagged; with support and fixes we estimate 3 to 8 hours a week, depending on size.
| Agent | Job | State today | Human time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matcher | Scores 40 ideas against the ten answers: skills, style, interests, online or local, people, budget and free hours. | Built. Runs in the browser, rules not AI, so it is free and explainable. | Owner reviews the idea library each quarter. |
| Kit writer | Writes names, tagline, the one-page site copy and the first offer for the matched idea. | Prototype uses written templates per idea. Live version calls gpt-5-mini with the prompt in the playbook. | Spot-check 5 kits a week. |
| Planner | Turns the free evenings into a dated 30-day plan and a calendar file. | Built. Dated plan, ticks and .ics download work today. | None. |
| Monday coach | Sends a check-in, reads the reply, moves the week if it was rubbish, and points tax, law and employer questions to GOV.UK or Acas. | Prototype replies are written rules, labelled as such. Live version uses the coach prompt. | Read flagged replies daily (about 10 minutes). |
| Test referee | Runs the 14-day demand test: counts paying yeses, calls the go line at three, suggests the runner-up on a no. | Built as the yes-tally on the reveal. | None. |
| Claims guard | Checks every generated line for earnings promises (CAP 20) and regulated work (food, DBS, insurance) before it is shown. | Planned. The prototype copy was written to these rules by hand. | Review anything it blocks. |
| Owner digest | Monday email to the owner: sign-ups, reveals, trials, cancellations, flagged chats. | Planned. | Read it: 15 minutes. |
05
Start-up cost Estimate
| Domain, first year | £12 |
|---|---|
| ICO data protection fee, tier 1 | £52 |
| First month of hosting | £22 |
| Test adverts, one-off, capped and optional (on top of the £30 cost to win each subscriber) | £250 |
| Contingency | £64 |
| Start-up total | £400 |
Plus the £4,250 purchase price. Fixed running costs are about £119.33 a month, Estimate, itemised in the listing.
06
Monthly income Estimate
| Per subscriber, per month Estimate | Monthly plan | Yearly plan | Blend (70% monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | £19.00 | £12.42 | £17.02 |
| Card fee and Stripe Billing | −£0.62 | −£0.29 | −£0.52 |
| AI for coach and kit (assumed) | −£0.75 | −£0.75 | −£0.75 |
| Hosting their one-page site (assumed) | −£0.25 | −£0.25 | −£0.25 |
| Coach emails (assumed) | −£0.05 | −£0.05 | −£0.05 |
| Kept each month | £17.33 | £11.08 | £15.46 |
Cautious Estimate
£628
a month to the owner at 60 paying subscribers, about 3 hours a week.
Pays back the £4,250 ask in about 6.8 months of this steady month. With the year-1 ramp: not in year 1.
Middle Estimate
£2,123
a month to the owner at 180 paying subscribers, about 5 hours a week.
Pays back the £4,250 ask in about 2.0 months of this steady month. With the year-1 ramp: month 9.
Hopeful Estimate
£4,863
a month to the owner at 400 paying subscribers, about 8 hours a week.
Pays back the £4,250 ask in about 0.9 months of this steady month. With the year-1 ramp: month 7.
Illustrative months about six months after launch. Assumes 10% of subscribers leave each month and each replacement costs £30 to win. No subscribers exist yet.
07
Risks
- Earnings expectations. People buy side-hustle products hoping for money. CAP 20 bans forecasting it. After Six sells a test instead, and every page says so. Keep it that way.
- Churn after the 30 days. A plan has a natural end. The coach and the runner-up switch are there to give a reason to stay; we assume 10% a month leave anyway.
- Regulated ideas. Food, childcare, pet care and driving ideas carry rules. The library links each one to its GOV.UK source; the claims guard must check generated kits too.
- Tax content goes out of date. Rates change each April. The calculator is labelled an Estimate and should be checked against GOV.UK every tax year, ideally by an accountant.
- EU customers. Selling to consumers in the EU brings EU VAT from the first sale (see Sources). Decide before launch: sell to UK customers only, or register for the Non-Union scheme. The plans assume UK customers only.
- AI quality. A dull or wrong kit kills the reveal. Keep the matcher rules-based and use AI only for wording, with the guard in front.
08
First 90 days
- Week 1. Plumbing, live AI and a soft launch: the week-one playbook.
- Weeks 2 to 4. 100 free reveals from your own circle; measure reveal-to-trial.
- Month 2. First paid tests, capped at £250 in adverts, no earnings claims.
- Month 3. Keep, change the price, or pivot to the careers-service market based on what the numbers say.
09
Sources
- Demand
46% of GB adults said they had a side hustle; 28% named the cost of living as the main reason; 18% had used AI for side-hustle advice.
Finder / Censuswide, 2,000 GB adults, 3 to 6 January 2026, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Price anchor
Durable lists its Launch plan at $25 a month for an AI website alone.
Durable pricing page, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Price anchor
Looka lists a Brand Kit at $96 a year and Brand Kit Web at $129 a year.
Looka pricing page, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Payments
Standard UK cards cost 1.5% + 20p per charge.
Stripe UK pricing, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Billing
Stripe Billing adds 0.7% of Billing volume on pay as you go, on top of card fees.
Stripe Billing pricing, accessed 23 October 2026.
- EU VAT
Digital services sold to private consumers in the EU are taxed where the customer lives. A UK business must register for the Non-Union scheme in one EU country or for VAT in each country, with no threshold, so it applies from the first EU sale.
GOV.UK digital services VAT guidance, accessed 23 October 2026.
- AI cost
gpt-5-mini is listed at $0.25 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens.
OpenAI API pricing, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Compliance
Tier 1 data protection fee is £52 a year.
ICO data protection fee, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Advertising rules
Work-from-home and business-opportunity ads must not forecast earnings (rules 20.4 and 20.7).
CAP Code section 20, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Tax
The first £1,000 of trading income a year is covered by the trading allowance; register for Self Assessment by 5 October.
GOV.UK trading allowance, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Employment
You can be employed and run a business; exclusivity clauses are banned in some low-paid contracts.
GOV.UK and Acas, accessed 22 October 2026.
- Resale market
Flippa caps the asking price of new and non-revenue sites at US$9,999. Documented pre-revenue sales on one platform closed between US$500 and US$4,500.
Flippa Help Centre; Flipagora analysis of ExitBid data, accessed 22 October 2026.