I Built a $0 AI Business in 30 Days — Here’s the Exact Stack and Revenue

📖 1 min read

Zero Budget. Real Revenue. Full Breakdown.

Last month I challenged myself: build a profitable online business using only free AI tools. No paid subscriptions. No ads budget. No freelancers. Just AI and hustle. Here’s exactly what happened.

The Stack (All Free)

• Content: Claude (free tier) + ChatGPT (free tier) for writing
• Images: Flux via Replicate free credits + Canva free
• Website: WordPress on a $4/month VPS (okay, not totally free)
• SEO: Google Search Console + Ubersuggest free tier
• Email: Beehiiv free plan (up to 2,500 subscribers)
• Social: Buffer free tier for scheduling
• Analytics: Plausible CE (self-hosted, free)

Week-by-Week Results

Week 1: Published 10 SEO-optimized articles. Zero traffic. Expected.

Week 2: Added email opt-in. Got 12 subscribers from a Reddit thread that hit 200 upvotes. Lesson: distribution > content.

Week 3: Traffic started trickling in from Google. 47 organic visits/day. Published a comparison article that ranked page 1 for a long-tail keyword.

Week 4: 156 email subscribers. Added affiliate links. First revenue: $127 from a single tool recommendation.

What I’d Do Differently

Start with email and community FIRST, content second. I wasted Week 1 publishing into the void. If I’d spent that week building a small audience on Reddit/Twitter, everything would have compounded faster.

Month 2 Plan

Scaling to $1,000/month with the same stack. Adding a paid newsletter tier and a simple digital product (AI prompt pack). The AI tools do 80% of the work — I just steer.

Follow along — I’m documenting the entire journey on this blog.