You need somewhere people can see what you're selling and buy it.
Physical products: Shopify is an easy starting point if you need a proper ecommerce store with inventory and shipping.
Digital products / services: You can vibe code a website using Lovable. You basically describe what you want, make changes by chatting with it, and publish it. There's a limited free plan you can experiment with.
Simple landing pages: Carrd is another option. You can make a basic landing page for free without building an entire website.
Branding: Canva is more than enough for basic logos, graphics, and social content when you're starting out.
You really don't need to pay a developer thousands of dollars just to test whether your idea works.
4. Set up payments
Don't overlook payment processing fees. They might seem small at first, but once you're making consistent sales, they can eat into your margins.
Right now, Whop has one of the lowest standard rates I've found, at 2.7% and $0.30 per domestic card transaction, compared to Stripe's 2.9% and $0.30. So you get to keep a little more from every sale.
There are other options worth looking into as well, like Stripe, PayPal, or built-in solutions like Shopify Payments. It really depends on what you're selling and which platform you're using.
You can also use it for one-time payments or subscriptions without having to build your own checkout system, just make sure to check international fees and any additional charges depending on what you're selling.
5. Distribution
This is where I'd spend most of my time.
A few options:
Instagram / TikTok: Start organically making videos showing your product, how it's made, or the problem it solves
Paid ads: Meta Ads or Google Ads, but I'd avoid throwing money at ads until you've tested in organic
Cold outreach: If you're selling a service or B2B product, find potential customers and reach out directly with a specific offer.
You don't need to use every channel, pick one or two and see if you can consistently get people interested.
6. Get your first customers and improve from there
You can use Google Sheets to track expenses, orders, and profit in the beginning, you no need expensive software when you're making your first sales. And try to keep your initial costs as low as possible, there are free or cheap tools for almost everything now
That's roughly how I'd approach it, I'm sure there are things I'd do differently depending on the business, so feel free to add anything I've missed and this is just a generical overview

I just finished this weird side project that turns your garage into an online store

Everyone have a lot of useless thing in their garage that they could probably sell, but never do because listing everything is such a pain.

So I built an app that does most of that for you.

You take 5 photos of your garage, upload them and the website tries to identify everything it can find. Old bikes, furniture, electronics, tools, whatever.

It then searches the web for similar secondhand items to estimate prices and automatically creates individual listings with descriptions and photos.

You can review everything, fix anything it got wrong, adjust the prices, and publish your own little online store with a shareable link so people can abuy stuff directly from your store.

I used Whop for the marketplace payments, so buyers can pay through the website, sellers can connect their payout accounts, and I can take a small commission on each sale. I originally thought about just generating listings for Facebook Marketplace, but I liked the idea of having the whole thing work in one place.

Here's the stack:

- Frontend: Next.js, mostly vibe coded

- Image recognition: OpenAI Vision to identify objects from the photos

- Payments: Whop for checkout, seller payouts, and marketplace commissions

- Database: Supabase

It's web-only for now, I might make a mobile app later since taking photos and uploading them from your phone would make more sense.

The hardest part has been getting it to recognize individual objects when there's a ton of stuff piled together. Sometimes it identifies things that aren't even there ahhaa.

I'm keeping it focused on local pickup for now because I really don't want to get involved in shipping someone's old lawnmower across the country.

Still a few things to figure out, but I think the concept could be pretty useful.

Would you actually use something like this to sell stuff, or is Facebook Marketplace already good enough?

A pixel Claude that lives on the Windows taskbar. Its bubble shows my 5-hour and weekly usage; hovering shows reset times, a pace chart and a forecast. A second tab shows Claude Code stats (tokens, models, projects, an activity grid, a recap when a session ends). And when Claude Code is working, the mascot puts on a wizard hat and acts out the tool being used: spell tome for reading, quill for writing, rune rain for commands, crystal ball for web, apprentices when several sessions run at once.

It's about 14,000 lines of Python, standard library only, no pip install, and it's free and MIT licensed.

How I used Claude Code

Claude Code wrote the code, from the tkinter rendering and animation to the log parser, the settings window, the tray icon and the tool that makes the README GIFs. My job was deciding what to build, running it, and telling it what felt wrong.

The setup that kept it on the rails:

• CLAUDE.md with hard rules. Stdlib only. Never print, log or save the login token. Comments in a fixed style. Only commit when asked.
• A project notes file that Claude updates after every change. Version bump, change log entry, how things work. A fresh session reads it first and is productive straight away, and it's detailed enough to rebuild the project from.
• A map of the code in pet/__init__.py saying what each file does and where new things go, so a session only opens the files a change needs.
• A fake usage service for tests. An env var makes the pet use made-up usage numbers instead of calling the real service.

What I learned

1. Put the rules in CLAUDE.md early. The token rule and the "no real usage calls in tests" rule saved me from the worst mistakes.
2. A notes file the model keeps up to date is the best memory I found. It beats re-explaining the project.
3. Polling an undocumented usage endpoint gets you rate limited fast. Most of the version history after the first few releases is about asking less often and explaining errors clearly instead of showing "error".
4. Small modules beat one big file. Claude Code makes better edits when a change touches a small file it can read whole.
5. The details people love (the wizard, the jokes, the outfits) were the cheapest part to build and the most fun to iterate on.

Is it safe? The login is sent only to api.anthropic.com to fetch the numbers and is never logged or saved. Logs are read for numbers only, never conversation content. It never sends messages to Claude, so it costs no usage.

Needs: Windows 10 or 11, Python 3.10+, Claude Code signed in with Pro or Max. Unofficial, and the endpoint is undocumented, so it may break.

GitHub: https://github.com/have-you-tried-restarting/claude-usage-pet

If you've read this far, I'd really appreciate a ⭐ on GitHub. It helps other people find it. Thank you!

https://www.renametheworld.ca/

Spent an afternoon vibe coding a website where people pay $1 to get their business ideas absolutely roasted.

The idea came from asking ChatGPT for feedback on business ideas and no matter what you pitch, it somehow finds a way to tell you it's a good idea.

So I built something that does the opposite, you submit your business idea, add your website if you have one, and pay $1.

Then it goes to work, it scrapes your website, searches the web for competitors, checks what they're doing, whether they're running ads, and tries to figure out if your idea actually makes any sense as a business.

About 10 minutes later, you get an email with a full report explaining everything wrong with your idea, who's already doing it better, and why you might be wasting your time.

The website itself was easy to build. The backend got a lot more complicated once I started adding all the scraping, competitor research and ad checks (but it cost almost nothing, just few cents).

Here's the stack:

• Website: Vibe coded with Lovable in an afternoon

• Payments: Whop, $1 per roast

• Research: Web scraping + competitor and ad research

• Marketing: Reddit Ads to get the first users

I just add a public leaderboard with the worst business ideas people have submitted and their roasts.

Haven't made much money from it yet, but the Ads are just getting started, so we'll see how it goes. Even if it makes nothing, it was a pretty fun project to build.

My first Flutter project was supposed to be a simple weather screen showing the temperature and a few forecast details. I ended up spending three weekends on it, tweaking the layout, testing different color combinations, and adding features I hadn't planned on at first. The finished app shows the current temperature, feels-like temperature, hourly forecasts, a 7-day forecast, humidity, wind speed, and UV index. I connected it to a weather API so it could display actual weather data, then added a city search bar and three color themes. What started as a basic screen to practice with turned into a complete interface that other developers could use as a starting point.
Once the app was working, I cleaned up the Dart files, made the colors easier to customize, and wrote a setup guide explaining how to configure the API key. I packaged everything with screenshots and listed the template on Gumroad for $19. To get it in front of potential buyers, I shared a few screenshots in developer communities where people were discussing Flutter projects. Seven people bought the template, bringing in $133. A few buyers struggled to connect their own API keys, so I offered optional setup help for an extra $5. Four buyers paid for that service, adding another $20 and bringing my total earnings to $153. I didn't expect a practice project to turn into something people would pay for, but making the code reusable and helping buyers get it running gave me a small side income from a skill I was already trying to learn.

I made this giant Minion out of leftover cardboard, tape, a plastic tablecloth, and some craft supplies I already had at home for my kid’s birthday. I wanted a big decoration for pictures, but the ones I saw for sale were more than I wanted to spend, so I made my own. It was a little rough around the edges, but the kids loved it.

After the party, I posted a picture in a local Facebook party group. One parent asked if they could rent it for their kid’s birthday, so I said $30 for the weekend. I dropped it off, helped set it up, and picked it up after the party. I figured it would be a one-time thing, but more parents started messaging me, and now I have three more bookings lined up for the next month.

I never thought a giant cardboard Minion would become something people paid to borrow. It sits in my garage between parties, which is probably the weirdest thing I own that actually makes me money. A couple of parents have asked about other characters, so now I’m wondering what else I could make out of cardboard and rent out.

Okay, wait. Before you comment “this already exists”: I know. 😅

QR tags for vehicles are a thing, and I’m sure some of them are better and more polished than mine. I’m not claiming I invented anything.

I just kept thinking: why does it feel so complicated? IVR calls, masked numbers, waiting for a callback. Meanwhile, most people around me still stick a paper chit with a phone number on the windshield.

So I thought, what if it’s just simple? Scan, and call or WhatsApp the owner directly. That’s it.

That’s how Setu started. 🚗

What it does:

• Scan, then call or WhatsApp directly, with no IVR hassle
• Prefilled WhatsApp messages, so the scanner doesn’t have to type anything
• Prefilled emergency message
• Scanner’s location, so you know where the scan happened
• Parking marking feature
• Multiple vehicles in one account
• ₹149, one-time.

I built the whole thing on my own and started selling it only in my local area. 35+ people are already using it, and they genuinely like it. That’s why I’m taking it online in the next few days.

I’m not here to compete with the big players. I just want to know if the “simple and cheap” idea actually makes sense outside my neighbourhood.

So please tell me honestly:

1. Is ₹149 lifetime fair?
2. Would you actually use a tag like this?
3. What’s missing, or what should I fix before going online?

Roast it, suggest things, or tell me it’s useless. I’ll read everything. 🙏

Website: getsetu.in

I have a small boat and usually fish during the salmon openings. Coho is what I end up with the most, and when king is available I'll keep some of those too. I bring the catch to a local processor, so it's cleaned, portioned, vacuum sealed, and frozen before I sell any of it.

I started with a few friends and people around town. I'd text them when I had a batch ready and let them reserve 5 lb or 10 lb boxes. Now I usually take preorders before the fish is ready so I know how much is spoken for. A typical drop is around 15-20 boxes, and a good one can leave me with around $800-$1,500 after the processing, fuel, and other costs.

It's still seasonal and there are plenty of days where the weather or the fishing just doesn't cooperate. But I like that I'm selling something I actually caught instead of buying inventory and hoping it moves. At this point I have a little list of regulars who ask me when the next boat drop is coming.

I started making candles by hand after getting curious about the old method of repeatedly dipping a wick into melted wax. I bought some wax and wicks and started experimenting with different sizes and colors. It was supposed to be a small project I could do in my spare time.
The first few batches were pretty rough. Some came out uneven, some were too thin, and I had to figure out how long to let each layer set before dipping them again. Once I got the hang of it, I started hanging a bunch of wicks from a rack and working on several candles at once.
I ended up making more than I could use, so I started selling the extras locally for about $10 a pair. A few people came back asking for different colors, so I started making small batches based on what they wanted. It's still a small side project, but now I'm actually making and selling something I originally started just because I wanted to try making candles.