Building in Public: Side Project Diary

An honest log of building a free tool website from zero — what worked, what didn’t, the numbers, and what I learned. No growth hacks. No fake wins.

What This Is

I’m an ordinary person building a side project in public. The goal: make useful free tools and write honestly about the process. That means sharing traffic numbers when they’re embarrassing, explaining decisions that didn’t work out, and documenting what building something from scratch actually looks like day-to-day.

I’m not a developer by profession. I use AI to build most of what’s here. This diary is partly for accountability, partly because I couldn’t find many honest accounts of what this process looks like for non-technical people.

The Diary — All Entries

• Why I Built 25 Historical Life Simulators (And What I Learned About Decision-Making Along the Way) — I built 25 free interactive life simulators covering Einstein, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Frida Kahlo, and 21 others. This is th…
• I’m a Chinese Blogger Trying to Use Reddit. Here’s What Nobody Tells You. — My blog is 15 days old. Traffic is basically zero. I’ve written 30+ articles, built three tools, submitted pull re…
• I Hit Claude’s Token Limit on a Friday Night. The Alternatives Were Worse. — It happened on a Friday night. I was in the middle of building a new tool for the site — a social icebreaker game…
• Why I Failed at Side Hustles for 8 Years (And Why I’m Starting Again) — I logged into my old Facebook account today. It had been 8 years. The first thing I saw was a ghost town. My “Sale…
• 3 Classic Lateral Thinking Traps. Most Smart People Get at Least One Wrong. — There are three questions I’ve tested on people for a while now. I started doing this informally — asking friends…
• I Paid ¥3,840 for a Tutoring Class. My Son Couldn’t Even Ask a Question. — In January 2025, I paid ¥3,840 for my son’s tutoring class. That’s ¥240 per session, 16 sessions, one subjec…
• I Built 10 Life Simulators. You Make the Decisions — Then See What They Actually Did. — Note: To make this real-world story interactive for my 16-year-old son, I designed the logic and used AI to code and gen…
• Another Failed Attempt: I Tried Every Way to Make Money Online in China. Here’s the Wall I Kept Hitting. — Before I built this blog, I spent years trying everything else. Reselling on China’s second-hand marketplace. Affi…
• I Could Have Made Money Selling Courses. I Chose Not To. — A few years ago, I noticed something. People in Chinese online business communities were selling courses for ¥49 — &#822…
• I Took Out My Roll-Up Piano After 3 Years. I Was Playing in 20 Minutes. — In 2020, shops around me were having clearance sales. Stores were switching businesses, landlords were negotiating rents…
• I Built 47 Free Tools With Zero Coding Background — Here’s What I Actually Learned (AI Generated) — ✍️ AI-generated post — tools, ideas and data are real; writing drafted by AI. Read the human voice behind this site → Li…
• I Built a Resilience Quiz for Kids Using Historical Decisions — Here’s Why (AI Generated) — ✍️ AI-generated post — tools, ideas and data are real; writing drafted by AI. Read the human voice behind this site → My…
• I Built a Tool That Shows Famous Lives on a 900-Square Grid — Here’s What I Didn’t Expect (AI Generated) — ✍️ AI-written post. The tools, the ideas, the building — all mine. The writing was drafted by AI based on my notes. Curi…
• AI Talked Me Out of My “Brilliant” Idea — Then We Built Something Better — I built a tool I was genuinely proud of. 900 squares. Each one a month of a human life. You enter your birth month, watc…
• The Results Are In. Here’s How 6 AI Models Did Against the Actual World Cup. — Three weeks ago I ran an experiment: pit three Chinese AI models against three American ones, have them predict 14 World…
• I Spent a Day Fixing Bugs on a Kids Quiz — Then Added a Tip Button for the First Time — Three bugs, one root cause, a failed rebrand, and the first time something I built has a voluntary price. Building-in-pu…
• My Reddit Account Was Frozen. My Tweets Got 2 Views. Then AI Told Me to Try GitHub. — This is not a post about getting rich. It’s about slowing down enough to think. I spent months writing content no…
• WeChat vs English Blog: My Friend Made ¥122 This Month. I’ve Made $0 After 6 Years of Trying. — Six years. That’s how long I’ve been trying to build something online. Different projects. Different ideas.…
• A Teenager Asked Which Major to Pick. AI Refused to Answer. So I Built a Voting Tool. — I asked AI to pick the best major for my friend’s child. It refused — and the reason it gave changed how I think a…
• I Tried to Promote My AI Experiment — and Got Blocked Everywhere — I ran what I thought was a genuinely interesting experiment. I gave the same World Cup prompt to 6 AI models — 3 Chinese…
• I Installed One Plugin and My Homepage Fell Apart. AI Fixed It — But Now I Have a Different Problem. — I spent 5 days on my WordPress site, installed a social sharing plugin, and my homepage fell apart. AI fixed it in hours…
• I Applied to Amazon Associates With Zero Audience. Here’s Exactly What Happened. — I knew nothing about affiliate marketing four days ago. I didn’t know what an Associates ID was. I’d never g…
• I Built This Blog in 4 Days Using AI — And Now I’m Running a Live Experiment in Public (Follow Along) — This post is pinned and updated continuously. Think of it as a live reality show — except the budget is ¥700 (~$100) and…
• I Built This Blog for About $96. Here’s Exactly What I Did. — This blog cost about $96 to launch — a Namecheap domain and Hostinger shared hosting. Here’s exactly what I bought…
• Week 1 of Running This Blog: What I Expected vs. What Actually Happened — I launched this blog one week ago. Here’s what I expected to happen, what actually happened, and what I got comple…

Current Status

• 25 free interactive tools live
• 90+ blog posts published
• ~$20/year total hosting cost
• Building since 2024