I spend a lot of time looking at data about how much money people make from software projects. And the single most important thing I’ve learned is: ignore the average.

The Problem with Averages

When someone says “solo SaaS founders earn X per month,” your brain wants that to be useful information. It wants to map it onto your situation and predict your outcome.

But here’s the thing: income distributions are wildly skewed. A few outliers earning $50K+ per month pull the average up dramatically, making it seem like the typical outcome is much better than it actually is.

The reality looks more like this:

  • ~70% earn under $1K/month
  • ~18% earn $1K-$5K/month
  • ~10% earn $5K-$50K/month
  • ~2% earn $50K+/month

The average of this distribution might be $5K. The median is probably closer to $800. Those are very different numbers that lead to very different decisions.

Why This Matters

If you’re deciding whether to build a SaaS product based on the average revenue, you’re likely to overestimate your expected outcome. You’ll invest more time and money than the realistic return justifies. You’ll feel like a failure when you’re actually performing at the median.

The median tells you what the typical outcome looks like. The mean tells you what happens when you weight everyone equally, including the outliers who distort the picture.

Where Else This Applies

This isn’t just about SaaS revenue. The mean-vs-median trap shows up everywhere:

Freelance rates. A few consultants charging $500/hour pull the average way up. Most freelancers earn much less.

Startup outcomes. The average startup return includes a few unicorns that make the whole portfolio look profitable. The median startup returns zero.

Content creation. Average YouTube earnings include MrBeast. Median YouTube earnings are probably enough for a nice dinner. Once.

Open source. Average GitHub stars per project include React and Vue. Median stars per project is zero.

The Useful Question

Instead of “what’s the average outcome?” ask “what’s the median outcome, and what distinguishes the people above it?”

The answer to the second question is usually some combination of:

  • They shipped something
  • They picked a specific enough niche
  • They stuck with it past the initial enthusiasm
  • They found a repeatable way to reach users

None of these are guaranteed to move you above the median. But they’re necessary conditions, and they’re actionable in a way that “the average is $5K/month” is not.

The Honest Assessment

Most projects don’t make meaningful money. That’s not pessimism — it’s the base rate. Knowing the base rate doesn’t prevent you from building. It prevents you from building with unrealistic expectations.

The goal isn’t to be average. It’s to understand what average actually looks like so you can make informed bets about whether — and how — you might beat it.

Median, not mean. It’s a small shift in perspective that changes everything about how you evaluate opportunity.