In just 8 days, I launched 3 websites, and I've finally come to understand the truth about starting an AI venture: it’s not about tech skills, it’s about something else entirely.
At 3 AM, staring at a backend with zero visits, I quietly deleted the code for my third website. Honestly, that moment of hitting 'delete' felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders.
Over the past week, I frantically created three AI tool websites: one for images, one for avatar color changes, and one for gaming tools. What did I achieve? The first one barely functions, the second one was a complete write-off, and the third one went live only to fizzle out immediately. Those 8 days shattered my illusions about AI entrepreneurship.
Let me share the first pitfall I stumbled into: chasing trends. When I saw that AI avatar color changers were trending abroad, I jumped right in. But guess what? I couldn't find the right templates and got stuck on technical issues for two days. By the time I finally launched, the trend was already dead. In hindsight, I realized that a competitor who started a day later used a ready-made template and went live in just 3 hours. Speed is everything. In the AI tools space, even a one-day delay can set you back an entire era.
The second mistake was even more critical: I thought technical skills were the main hurdle, but I was wrong. I spent two days diving into the React framework and tweaking CSS, feeling like I was “building a foundation.” Later, I discovered that there are plenty of ready-made templates available; I could have just copied and pasted and adjusted a few parameters.
Those who tell you to “build a strong technical foundation” might not have ever created a money-making site themselves.
Ironically, my first big traffic surge came from the least impressive of my sites—a tool for the game "Silk Song," designed to help players manage their game progress. I didn’t write a single line of new code; I just found an open-source project, adjusted the UI, and added a few features. The next day, traffic hit over a thousand visits.
Notice anything? With the first two sites, I was desperately trying to “create,” while with the third, I merely “modified.” Yet, it's the modified one that survived. This is the harsh truth about AI tools: innovation isn’t what matters; problem-solving is what counts.
Courses that preach about being “creative” and “unique” are misleading. Users don’t care about how sophisticated your tech is; they care about whether you can solve their specific problem in 5 seconds.
Here’s a harder truth: I later did the math. I spent 6 days on the first two sites with zero income. The third site took just 2 days and now has steady traffic. The time cost difference? A full 3x.
Efficiency isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing less of what doesn’t work.
Now, if someone asks me how a novice can quickly create an AI tool site, I’d share three simple tips:
- Don’t write your own code; find templates on Vercel and V0, and just copy and paste.
- Write your requirements in Markdown; it’s ten times more effective than a PRD document.
- Learn to use the Selector in developer tools; it can save you 80% of your frontend debugging time.
Honestly, it’s that straightforward.
But the biggest lesson for me wasn’t even about the tech. It’s realizing that creating a tool site and coding are two different mindsets. Coding is about engineering; creating a tool site is about product thinking. The former seeks perfection, while the latter is focused on usability.
We often strive to make things “pretty,” but users just want them to “work.”
I’m done chasing the false hustle of three sites in eight days. Now, I aim to build one site a month, but each one must address a real, specific problem that people are eager to solve. I’ll spend the saved time testing needs, which is a hundred times more useful than just burying my head in code.
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