A Portfolio of Personal Projects Earning Over $200,000 Per Month

We once thought that the sagas of the digital world were destined to be written by giants. Thousands of engineers, burning billions of dollars in venture capital in sprawling campuses, were believed to be necessary to forge world-changing products. Developers of that era were more like cogs in a precise machine—great, yet constrained.

But now, the winds have shifted.

A new wave is rising, not clamorous, but swifter. We call it “Vibe Coding” – it’s not a technology, but a philosophy. It means a single developer, by precisely capturing a certain “vibe” and leveraging the power of large AI models, can rapidly transform an inspiration, an emotion, a minimal requirement into a product that creates real value and cash flow.

This is the golden age for individuals and micro-teams, a new map to financial freedom.

Let’s forget the old narratives of “burning cash for growth” and look at the miracles happening in the real world.

Let me show you some mind-blowing data:

PhotoAI: Pieter Levels, a legendary indie hacker, wrapped OpenAI’s API into an “online AI photo studio.” With just this pure “wrapper” idea, his monthly revenue skyrocketed to $100,000 in 18 months, with a gross profit of 80%. He wasn’t writing complex algorithms; he was selling the “feeling of having professional photos anytime, anywhere.”

Let’s look at his other achievements:

1. 🛰 RemoteOK.com: “I crave a job I can do while traveling.” -> Monthly income $35,000
2. 🏡 InteriorAI.com: “I want to instantly see N renovation styles for my home.” -> Monthly income $34,000
3. 🌍 NomadList.com: “Which is the coolest next digital nomad destination?” -> Monthly income $22,000

Note that these are all his individual creations. These aren’t just creations; they’re money-making machines!

Notice all his domains are .com, he didn’t follow the trend of registering a .ai domain for 2000 RMB/year.

I also registered one… https://go.subv.ai Currently, it redirects to a Feishu document.

And that’s not all. Pieter Levels, like a modern digital alchemist, turns precise “vibes” into gold, building a personal project portfolio with a monthly income exceeding $200,000.

He isn’t building a vast empire; he’s commanding a fleet of numerous “small and fast” cash flow speedboats. Each speedboat targets an ultra-niche demand, light, agile, and highly profitable.

This is the ultimate demonstration of Vibe Coding’s power.

Standing at the crossroads of a new era, two clear paths unfold before you. Both lead to freedom, but the scenery is vastly different. What is the common secret of these beacon-like projects? They all abandoned the obsession with “heavy assets” and positioned themselves as “refineries” of value rather than “mines.” They don’t train models; they only lease the most powerful ones. They don’t pursue a massive free user base; they only serve a core group willing to pay for efficiency and quality.

As long as the cost of using the model is locked in, and the product is refined into an irresistible premium subscription or paid API, a team of less than 10 people can sustain tens of millions in cash flow.

Practitioners of Vibe Coding are at an exciting fork in the road. Two paths, both leading to freedom, but with vastly different landscapes.

The Path of the Digital Artisan – The Art of Effortless Living

This is precisely Pieter Levels’ path. Its core is finding an “extremely narrow vertical” battlefield. This battlefield must meet two conditions:

1. High-frequency essential need: Your product solves a small problem that users are willing to pay for repeatedly (e.g., generating an avatar, polishing a piece of copy, managing a memory).
2. Controllable costs: AI inference costs must be strictly controlled to below 10% of revenue.

Then, from day one, bravely put a price tag on it. This is not just a business model; it’s a declaration: “My time and creativity are worth paying for.” This will act like a precise filter, weeding out noise and leaving you with the most loyal and valuable users, allowing your income and computing expenses to resonate in sync, moving forward elegantly.

The moment the project goes live, ruthlessly weed out all freeloaders.

Clearly draw your profit model on a whiteboard.

Ask yourself:

1. Which overlooked “vibe” have I captured?
2. Do I choose to be a “digital artisan” earning millions of dollars a year with ease, or an “era architect” leveraging tokens to aim for a “two-person unicorn”?

The answer determines where your code will lead.

The rules of the old world are crumbling, and the map of the new world is being drawn. This is no longer a game of competing resources and headcount, but a contest of insight, taste, and business acumen.

Now, launch your terminal, connect to the large model’s API, and start your Vibe Coding.

Your time has come.