A few days ago, I was browsing V2EX, a developer community, when I discovered an independent developer’s project called TextToPoster. It was a simple idea: enter some text, choose a visual direction, and let AI turn it into a poster. The website looked polished. It had an attractive interface, design examples, free trials, user accounts, AI image generation, and subscription plans.
Then I found out the developer had built another website, Designhint, a collection of design prompts combined with an AI image-generation workspace. My immediate reaction was admiration, followed by a slightly uncomfortable comparison.
I had also built a small online product, CutDone.
Mine was less visually impressive. It didn't generate beautiful images on demand. It helped people create printable goal lists, complete tasks, and physically tear or cut off finished items. The products were different, but their businesses had something important in common. Both were small, AI-assisted online tools built by independent developers. Both offered free functionality and paid upgrades. Both needed search traffic, users, and eventually customers.
So I started analyzing both models. Which business had better economics? Which was more likely to attract users? And which would survive as AI became more powerful?
1. Two Different Products, Two Different Business Models
At first glance, TextToPoster has the stronger commercial proposition. Someone who regularly creates marketing images might use it dozens of times a month. A business can justify paying $9.90 monthly if the service saves enough time.
CutDone has a different problem. A person might make a goal list once, print it, and not return for weeks. Even if they love the product, why would they pay $4.99?
That question bothered me more than I expected. A product can be useful without creating a compelling reason to purchase it. And a product that costs almost nothing to operate can still earn almost nothing.
2. The Cost Difference Was Surprising
One of CutDone’s biggest advantages is its low monetary cost. Its domain costs me approximately ¥75 per year. I use Cloudflare for hosting, and some DeepSeek text-generation requests cost approximately ¥0.01 each. The operating model is lightweight, meaning I can afford to keep experimenting.
TextToPoster has different economics. It relies on external AI image services. While public API pricing for standard 1K images might look low (such as around $0.0085 per image), high-resolution outputs and heavy usage add up. When you run unit economic simulations—factoring in free tiers and conversion rates—you realize that a 1% conversion rate might be profitable under one usage pattern and unprofitable under another.
3. The SEO Numbers Were a Reality Check
TextToPoster initially looked like a more successful website than mine. But attractive design and commercial success are two different things. A Semrush organic keyword report for the domain showed minimal estimated organic search traffic at the time of my research.
CutDone has a different SEO strategy, relying on hundreds of ready-made printable lists and specialized landing pages. While it's exciting to see a keyword reach search engine top-ten results temporarily, rankings don't equal paying customers. The real comparison is which website attracts visitors with an actual problem and helps them solve it.
4. What Happens When ChatGPT Can Do It Too?
I found a retail sale poster example on TextToPoster and took the core idea into ChatGPT. I asked for a similar poster, and the result was remarkably close in visual concept.
It raised a question I couldn’t ignore: If ChatGPT can produce a similar result, what happens to specialized AI poster generators in two or three years?
The answer isn't that these tools only exist for people who don't know how to use AI. People pay for convenience all the time. A busy marketer doesn't want to experiment with prompts, manage generations, or manually prepare deliverables. A dedicated tool packages those steps into a faster workflow.
Then I realized CutDone faces exactly the same threat. A user could ask a general-purpose LLM to create a printable goal tracker. My product is not protected simply because it has a special printable layout. It needs to deliver the easiest possible experience of taking a goal from someone's mind and placing it into their physical environment.
5. My Biggest Weakness Might Be Product Presentation
One thing TextToPoster does very well is make its value obvious. You see beautiful poster examples and immediately understand what the website produces.
CutDone is more difficult to explain. A printable strip of paper does not seem particularly exciting on a screen. The interesting part happens afterward: you print the list, put it on your wall, complete a task, and physically remove it.
This made me realize I had been trying to solve a marketing problem with more programming. What I actually needed was simpler: real photographs of my own product being used in ordinary settings.
The Bigger Lesson: AI Has Made Products Cheap, Not Customers Easy
When I first began experimenting with AI-built websites, my attention was almost entirely on what I could create. Could I build a working product? Could I deploy it? Could I add payments?
For CutDone, I have answered many of those questions. Now I face a harder set: Can I attract the right users? Can I help them reach a useful outcome? Can I persuade a small percentage to pay without ruining the free experience?
The cost of building software is approaching zero for many small projects. The cost of finding people who truly value it is not. From now on, I want to spend less time asking what else AI can help me build, and more time finding out what people actually want to use.
Note: This article was originally published on Ordinary Man Trying.
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