How to Earn Your First Dollar with a Direct-to-Consumer Website

This article is a practical case study for programmers, other internet professionals, or those in different fields on how to break away from platforms (companies) and earn money for yourself.

If you are currently unemployed, or if you are feeling anxious and worried about future unemployment, you should read this article carefully. If you don't feel like reading, you can also click the headphones icon to listen, as I often use a product I built myself to help me fetch a large amount of content I'm interested in from around the globe to listen to at night.

During my final days at Baidu, I made up my mind to find new directions and do something while I still had plenty of energy.

After three years of exploration, I identified that "independent development for the global market" was one of the directions I wanted to pursue. I have been accumulating experience in this area for nearly two years. Although I was mostly working part-time, it did not hinder my progress. Through continuous learning and iterative practice, I have achieved a 0-1 start, and the next priority is to achieve a 1-10 breakthrough.

The 0-1 breakthrough is mainly reflected in the completion of a product and the generation of actual revenue.

Below, I will introduce how I completed the 0-1 closed loop, which is mainly divided into three steps: demand discovery, product development, and operation & growth.

Demand Discovery

The demand itself came from a friend who is a content creator. Because he mentioned having needs related to content production, I searched for relevant keywords on Google Trends, semrush, similiarweb, ahrefs, and affordablekeywords (pick one of the four). I discovered that the market demand was high and the keyword difficulty (KD) was low, meaning some keywords could rank on the first page of Google in the short term.

Volume refers to search volume. The higher the value, the more robust the user demand. You can obtain this value on Google Trends. KD stands for Keyword Difficulty. It is scored out of 100; the higher the score, the higher the difficulty, and the harder it is to achieve a high ranking on Google. Its biggest dependency is the number of backlinks; if a word requires a larger number of backlinks, the difficulty will be higher. The four platforms—semrush, similiarweb, ahrefs, and affordablekeywords—can all retrieve KD values for keywords. They are all subscription-based. The first three are relatively expensive when paid monthly, whereas affordablekeywords offers annual billing and allows you to pay for what you use, making it slightly more cost-effective. It has become my go-to platform for keyword queries.

Access URL: affordablekeywords.com

Based on the analysis above, this function was sufficient to be turned into a niche product, so I began the product development process.

Product Development

Requirement Analysis

By searching for relevant keywords, I was able to basically confirm what users want, what kind of interaction should handle it, what the overall business process is, and what the core functions are.

We still used the traditional method for requirement release. There were relatively many functions, but after two rounds of review, all the features for V1.0 were basically finalized.

Development Process

After finalizing the features, I conducted technical research and detailed design. Apart from one technical challenge that required a specific implementation approach, there were basically no barriers to other technical points; they just required time investment.

The backend functionality for this project was quite heavy, so I chose Java (backend) + Python (algorithmic strategy), and used Next.js for the frontend.

After the detailed design was completed, I performed a review and then handed it over to Claude Code to write the code. I primarily focused on reviewing the results and conducting relevant testing and verification.

Since the product was a cold start, I dynamically scaled cloud resources based on user volume changes. Therefore, many cloud resources were used within their free tier to save on overall costs.

Launching and operating an independent site as a product is a full-cycle process requiring fixed steps: domain registration, code management, service deployment, data storage, monitoring operations, and user data analysis. Here are the platforms commonly used by independent developers that support free trial-and-error in the early stages:

Code Repository Management:

Github Private Repositories. Since being acquired by Microsoft, its engineering and open capabilities have become much stronger, such as seamless integration with external Serverless platforms and an increase in the upper limit of private repositories owned by individuals.

Security and Operations Platform:

CloudFlare provides secure access, automated deployment, domain registration and maintenance, object storage, and more. With it, you can save a lot of effort on operations-related work and eliminate the use of many third-party platforms. Vercel can also perform automated deployments; if you like it, you can choose that instead.

Knowledge Base and IM:

I chose Lark (Feishu). It basically evolved from Baidu's Ruliu (formerly Baidu Hi). However, because it was opened up to external users, it has become more comprehensive and user-friendly, far surpassing Ruliu in areas like engineering capabilities, knowledge management, and office productivity. You can use it to connect to monitoring, including payment notifications and service stability. The knowledge base can store documents, systemizing the work you do and facilitating continuous iteration and evolution. It is much better to use than WeChat Work or DingTalk.

Structured Storage:

Since I already had object storage with CF, is there free structured storage? The answer is yes: Supabase. It is excellent, offering not only free storage but also scheduled tasks, JS script management, and parsing capabilities. It is a BaaS platform. Some of my background tasks are submitted to it via queues, then it performs the calculations and writes them to its own storage upon completion.

Through this platform, I once helped an acquaintance build a set of functions for calculating probability in Mahjong and card games, quickly completing the delivery of the product and service. With it, you don't need to maintain MySQL yourself. While MySQL is also an excellent and free open-source structured storage option, for independent developers, Supabase is easier to use and gives you peace of mind. In the early stages, you don't even need to consider applying for cloud resources to deploy your database; it provides free storage resources and handles everything for you with one click.

Account Management:

Integrate Google login to complete registration and login; you just need to manage business permissions yourself. Google login is very easy to use. Once integrated, it reduces the registration cost for users, and I strongly recommend integrating it.

Payment System:

Stripe. You can apply as an individual and accept payments from global users, though it relies on you having a Hong Kong bank account or another overseas bank account.

User Analysis:

For user tracking, you can integrate the Google ecosystem: Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Once integrated, you can see user behavior and Google traffic conditions, which is convenient for iterating your product based on user data.

To summarize: domain registration, service deployment (frontend and backend), and object storage use CF; structured storage uses Supabase; payment uses Stripe; account management uses Google services; and user analysis also uses Google services. Except for domain registration, all other capabilities are basically free when user volume is low. A domain costs about 70 RMB per year, which means the capital cost for trial-and-error for one site is just 70 RMB.

Operation & Growth

Operations rely mainly on two channels: social media and SEO.

Social media is divided into private domains and public domains. The first 100 users often come from private domains, such as WeChat Moments or other direct messages.

For the global public domain, the focus is mainly on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and Pinterest. Accumulate and operate slowly on these platforms. Among them, try not to promote links directly on Reddit, as you will be banned. Usually, if you post a promotional post, you will be banned after a day's delay. It is best to put your product link in your Reddit bio and comment professionally and actively; that might yield the best promotional results.

Compared to social media, SEO is the most cost-effective promotional method. Its results may come slowly, but once they do, you will have a continuous stream of traffic. The core dependency of SEO is backlinks; therefore, continuous link building is the focus of the entire product promotion strategy. It is no exaggeration to describe it in one sentence: operating an independent site for global expansion is all about building backlinks. However, building backlinks is boring, so you must build multiple products simultaneously. When one product is in the operations phase, another new product can be in the requirement mining or R&D phase. This is like studying multiple subjects in school—alternating between them can lead to higher efficiency.

After three months of continuous operation, you will start receiving constant positive feedback, and you will find yourself tirelessly repeating this process.

The first payment for my first site arrived within a month of launch. I went live on April 17, '26, and received a paid order on May 11. My assessment is that it likely came from a promotional post I published on Zhihu. Later, users from Germany and the US began to pay. When you have continuous positive feedback, your enthusiasm for operations will grow higher and higher.

In fact, the approach to an independent site can be summarized in one sentence: requirement mining, product R&D, and operational growth (backlinks and social media), then constantly iterating on this process and using this workflow to address new product requirements. This sentence is impossible to understand for someone who hasn't practiced it for at least half a year. You can memorize it first, then go practice, and then keep pondering this sentence until you truly understand it. Once you do, you will basically no longer be anxious about the problem of unemployment. This is a bit like what Mr. Duan Yongping said: do the right thing. But just these five words require you to constantly correct your course, constantly learn through trial and error, and constantly get back on the right track.

If you have read this far and still don't know how to get started, here are some paid products to help you complete your entry into the world of independent developer global expansion:

The product has two membership levels:

1. Price 499 RMB, 3-month coaching validity

If you believe you have good intuition and strong execution, then choose this. After the coaching period, you will be fully capable of launching a site independently, acquiring customers, and earning your first dollar.

2. Price 999 RMB, 1-year coaching validity

If you think your intuition is a bit weaker, then choose this. It provides enough time to settle in, just like Guo Jing in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes," practicing the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms move by move, eventually reaching the top of Mount Hua.

What specific skills will you gain:

1. Guaranteed site launch: You will be able to launch sites independently and automatically thereafter;

2. Running through the entire payment process: The first income is not fully guaranteed, as income requires time and luck, but I will help you get the entire payment process up and running;

3. You will also gain:

1. Clever tricks for using AI, such as "dual-wielding" and how to keep Claude from getting banned;

2. Essential procedures for site launch: integrating Google Analytics, integrating ads, and integrating many third-party capabilities;

3. Mining requirements: How to mine new keywords, how to mine new requirements, and how to verify the user purchase intent for long-tail keywords;

4. Operational growth: How to get your website ranked on the first page of Google, how to operate social media, how to add backlinks, how to do SEO, and how to view Google user data, etc.

There are many other R&D technologies and operational skills, such as how to access Google, how to obtain a US App ID, and how to operate a WeChat official account, etc.