So I built something between 2020 and 2024, and while it was never actually profitable, it was getting pretty close... but then I hit a weird lag where my user usage exploded but profitability wasn't catching up AND various tools I was using in the low or free tiers suddenly required much bigger payments. Essentially my costs X5 but revenue didn't and I had to shut it down.
It was a good experience and I learnt a lot - but in hindsight I wish I had figured out a way from the start where revenue and profits always ran ahead of usage costs.
So yeah, you should totally build something, but think about revenue from the very start. Facebook/Amazon/Tesla, etc, weren't profitable for years/decades but their investors had such deep pockets - you and I don't have that luxury (I assume).
hm good point what did you build?
A social media site that paid out the majority of the advertising revenue to the content creators.
I was using free tiers for a few of the components (like the social media post editor) which was good... until they adjusted their tiers.
Ah right so you used the one thing that could have kept the site afloat to incentivize more users.
Interesting edge case that.
I was gonna say any site that gets adoption can just tap ad revenue and that will always keep it going. Not true in this case.
Yeah, initially I made the ads customizable so I could go to companies and sell ad space, but that was a ton of effort to reach out and get rejected (mainly because the site wasn't getting enough monthly users) so then I went to Google AdSense but no one really clicks on ads and the country the ad-clicker comes from really makes a difference (ie, $0.01 if they're from India, Nigeria, Venezuela, etc but $0.54 if they're from US, Canada, UK, etc).
I think the reason you see websites selling supplements, courses, etc is because you truly need millions of views to make any actual decent money from ad revenue, which is harder than ever now that Social Media and Search Engine AIs are doing everything they can to keep users from leaving their sites.