I've been running Instapainting.com as a 1-person business since 2014. I started out with a single page with a Stripe checkout button on it. I've been living off of the income since inception, even though the first few years were poverty levels of income ;). Many have tried, but I'd say most just gave up when they realized they could make more money just getting a job.
A lot of the initial style transfer users were users from Russia, who had little interest (possibly understanding?) of our main service which is matching with artists. Though this probably had more to do with the fact that they didn't speak English.
