The AI Side Hustle That Made ,200 in February — With Zero Followers and Zero Ad Spend

📖 1 min read

No Audience. No Budget. No Excuses.

Everyone says you need followers to make money online. Everyone is wrong. Here’s exactly how I used AI to generate ,200 in February 2026 starting from absolute zero.

The Business Model

AI-generated micro-tools. Tiny, single-purpose web apps that solve one specific problem. Built with AI, marketed with AI, monetized with ads and affiliate links.

Week 1: Research (bash Revenue)

Used ChatGPT to find 50 micro-problems people Google every day. Things like “JSON formatter”, “color palette generator”, “invoice template maker”. Then filtered for low competition + high ad value keywords.

Week 2: Build Sprint (80 Revenue)

Built 8 micro-tools using Bolt.new and Cursor. Each one took 2-4 hours. Deployed on Vercel (free). Added Google AdSense + relevant affiliate links. First organic traffic trickled in.

Week 3: Content Explosion (90 Revenue)

Created 30 SEO-optimized blog posts targeting long-tail keywords around each tool. Used Claude to write them, SurferSEO to optimize. Google started indexing. Traffic grew 10x.

Week 4: Optimization (,130 Revenue)

A/B tested headlines. Added email capture. Created a “premium” version of the top 3 tools at /month each. 47 subscribers by month end.

The Final Numbers

• AdSense: 90
• Affiliate commissions: ,380
• Premium subscriptions: 30
• Total: ,200
• Total cost: ~0 (domains + AI subscriptions)
• Hours worked: ~60 across the month

Why This Works in 2026

AI made the “build” part trivially easy. The hard part is picking the RIGHT thing to build. That’s still a human skill — for now.

The Exact Stack

1. ChatGPT — Research and ideation
2. Bolt.new — Rapid app building
3. Cursor + Claude — Custom features
4. SurferSEO — Content optimization
5. Vercel — Free hosting
6. Google AdSense — Monetization