Sansi, you've built quite a few small things with AI and deployed your own sites.
You're pretty good with AI. So why haven't I seen you start a one-person company, or just quit and start something?
Because I've realized that building things and making money from them are two completely different things.
If I quit my job right now to run an OPC (one-person company), I'd probably starve in no time.
Surely not? AI makes building products so fast now. Just build it and put it online to sell, right?
The problem is exactly that "put it online".
You put it online — who's going to see it?
Post on WeChat official accounts, Xiaohongshu, that kind of thing?
Right. But even if you post, it doesn't mean many people will actually see it.
For example, I have about 150 followers, and one article gets around 45 reads.
Say 1% of those 45 people are willing to buy something from me — that's only 0.45 orders a day.
So about a dozen orders a month?
Right.
Even at 99 yuan an order, that's only a bit over 1,300 a month.
Huh? That little?
And this is already optimistic.
In reality, the conversion rate might not even reach 1%. And even if someone is willing to pay, they might not pay 99.
So I've come to feel more and more that with AI, building the product has become the easiest step. But AI hasn't solved one problem:
once you build it, who knows?
So a lot of people now turn to self-media not out of passion, but to get traffic.
Right.
Because in the end, your revenue is just a few factors:
Revenue ≈ Reach × Conversion rate × Average order value × Repeat purchase rate.
The faster you build, if the reach in front is close to zero, multiplying everything after it is useless.
AI can make you work like a dev team.
But it can't make you suddenly have 10,000 customers who trust you and are willing to buy your product.