I've built 12 AI-powered side projects in the last year. 8 made zero dollars. 3 made under $100. One makes consistent revenue.
That's a 92% failure rate. And honestly? That's pretty good for this space.
Here's what I learned from all those failures—and what finally worked.
The 5 Mistakes That Kill AI Side Projects
❌ Mistake #1: Building an AI Wrapper Nobody Needs
"It's like ChatGPT but for [niche]!" Cool. Why would anyone pay for that when ChatGPT exists? Unless you're adding massive specific value, you're just a worse interface over someone else's API.
✅ The Fix: Solve a Specific, Painful Problem
Don't build "AI for X." Build "the tool that saves X professionals 10 hours/week on [specific task]." The AI is the implementation detail, not the product.
❌ Mistake #2: Spending Months Before Launching
The graveyard of side projects is filled with beautiful, feature-complete products that never found a single paying customer. You're not learning anything until real humans interact with your thing.
✅ The Fix: Ship in Days, Not Months
Your v1 should embarrass you slightly. If it doesn't, you waited too long. Get something live in a weekend, then improve based on feedback from actual users.
❌ Mistake #3: No Distribution Strategy
"If I build it, they will come" has never been true, and it's especially not true in 2025 when everyone is launching AI products. The best product with no distribution loses to a mediocre product with great distribution.
✅ The Fix: Distribution First, Product Second
Before building, answer: "How will my first 100 users find this?" If you can't answer that specifically, you don't have a business—you have a hobby project.
❌ Mistake #4: Racing to the Bottom on Price
Free tier. $5/month. "Cheaper than competitors!" You're not Costco. You can't win on price as an indie builder. You have no scale advantages and your API costs are the same as everyone else's.
✅ The Fix: Charge More, Serve Fewer
Find 10 people who will pay $100/month instead of 100 people who will pay $10/month. Higher prices attract better customers, filter out tire-kickers, and give you room to actually deliver value.
❌ Mistake #5: Building for Other Developers
Developers are the worst customers. They think they can build it themselves (and they're often right). They're price-sensitive. They'll hack around your paywalls. Non-technical people will actually pay for solutions.
✅ The Fix: Target People with Money Problems, Not Tech Problems
Lawyers, real estate agents, agencies, consultants, e-commerce operators. People who bill $200+/hour and will happily pay $50/month for a tool that saves them an hour.
The Playbook That Actually Works
After all those failures, here's the framework I now use for every project:
1. Start with a Painful Problem
Not "it would be nice if..." but "I am actively frustrated by..." Find these in Reddit complaints, Twitter rants, and conversations with people who aren't developers.
2. Validate Before Building
Can you get 5 people to say they'd pay for this solution? Can you find similar products making money? If competitors exist, that's good—it proves the market exists.
3. Build the Smallest Possible Thing
One feature. One use case. One type of customer. You can expand later. You can't un-waste the months you spent building features nobody uses.
4. Launch to Real Humans Immediately
Not Product Hunt (that's vanity). Find 10 people who have the problem and get them using it. Their feedback is worth more than 1,000 upvotes.
5. Iterate or Kill Fast
Give it 2 weeks of real effort. If you can't find anyone who cares by then, kill it and move on. The opportunity cost of nursing a dead project is massive.
💡 The real secret: Most successful side projects aren't the first idea. They're the 5th or 10th. Speed of iteration beats quality of first attempt every time.
What My Successful Project Did Right
The one project that works? It's boring. It solves one specific problem for one specific type of customer. It charges $29/month and delivers enough value that they don't think twice about the price.
It took me a weekend to build v1. Three months of iteration to make it good. And it only works because I found customers before I wrote code.
That's it. No secret sauce. No viral growth hacks. Just relentless focus on solving a real problem for people who will pay.
Start Today
If you're thinking about building an AI side project:
- Write down the specific problem you're solving
- Find 5 people who have this problem and would pay for a solution
- Build the ugliest possible version this weekend
- Get those 5 people to try it
- Listen to what they say and iterate
Skip any of these steps and you're just gambling. Do all of them and you've dramatically increased your odds.
Now go build something.
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