September 6, 2026
I have been asking myself a surprisingly simple question lately:
Should I pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus? And the current Claude? It just doesn’t cut it anymore.
For most people, the answer probably depends on how much they use ChatGPT.
For me, it is a little different.
I am trying to build websites.
Not one website.
Several.
And I am starting to wonder whether paying for better AI tools is actually an expense — or whether it can become part of the cost of running a tiny internet business.
This is where my experiment currently stands.
I Am Trying to Build Websites With AI
I am not a startup founder with a team of developers.
I am just one ordinary person with an IT background, some ideas, and a willingness to experiment.
Over the past few months, I have started building several small websites for international audiences.
Some are about Chinese culture.
Some are tools.
Some are experiments.
Some may eventually make money.
And some may completely fail.
Right now, I have projects including:
- ChineseFortuneTools.com — Chinese zodiac, fortune, Feng Shui and cultural tools
- ChineseNameCraft.com — helping foreigners create and understand Chinese names
- ChinaRules101.com — helping foreigners understand Chinese social rules and culture
- HotPot101.com — an experiment around Chinese hot pot and food
- OrdinaryManTrying.com — this blog, where I document what happens
The interesting part is that AI has changed the economics of building these websites.
I’m able to build all these websites because Hostinger’s hosting is just insanely cheap — a cup of coffee a month, and you get the chance to bring your own idea to life. If you wanna give it a go, click here to grab 20% off → https://www.hostinger.com?REFERRALCODE=I14LOVE09WMZ
A few years ago, I might have needed a developer, designer, copywriter and SEO person.
Today, I can use AI to help me write code, generate content ideas, debug problems, research keywords and build prototypes.
That doesn’t mean AI makes everything easy.
It doesn’t.
But it makes experimentation dramatically cheaper.
So Why Am I Considering ChatGPT Plus?
The free version of ChatGPT is already useful.
But I have started using AI much more like a development partner than a chatbot.
I use it to:
- inspect code
- design website features
- debug PHP and JavaScript
- plan SEO structures
- analyze search opportunities
- improve landing pages
- design monetization funnels
- work with GitHub
- build and modify tools
- think through business ideas
And increasingly, I am using Codex to work directly on software projects.
That changes the calculation.
If I spend $20 a month on ChatGPT Plus but it helps me build something that earns even $30, the subscription has effectively paid for itself.
If it helps me build something that eventually earns $300 a month, the $20 becomes almost irrelevant.
But there is an important catch.
The AI itself doesn’t make money.
The website does.
The customer does.
The product does.
The search traffic does.
AI only makes it cheaper and faster for me to experiment.
My Wife Thinks I Am Dreaming
This is probably the most important part of the story.
My wife has asked me a very reasonable question:
“How much money have these websites actually made?”
And the uncomfortable answer is:
Not enough yet.
She thinks I am dreaming.
I can’t really blame her.
From the outside, it probably looks like this:
I buy a domain.
I build a website.
I buy another domain.
I build another website.
I spend time with AI.
And then I tell her that maybe one day these websites will make money.
That doesn’t sound particularly convincing.
So I decided not to argue with her.
Instead, I want to test the idea.
The Business Model Is Actually Very Simple
My theory is not that every website needs millions of visitors.
I don’t think that is necessary.
I am experimenting with small websites that solve very specific problems.
For example, suppose I spend $20 on an AI subscription and a small amount on hosting.
If one website eventually sells a $29 product to one customer, the economics already look very different.
One customer:
$29 revenue
minus AI and hosting costs
equals a small but real profit.
That is much more interesting to me than getting thousands of visitors who never do anything.
The goal isn’t simply traffic.
The goal is:
Traffic → useful tool → trust → transaction.
Why Cheap Hosting Matters
This is another reason I became interested in building websites.
Hosting is surprisingly cheap.
That changes the risk of experimentation.
I don’t need to build a venture-backed startup.
I don’t need to rent an office.
I don’t need employees.
I don’t need a huge infrastructure bill.
I can put a small website online for relatively little money and see what happens.
And this leads to a simple idea:
If the cost of keeping a website alive is low enough, one successful idea can potentially pay for many experiments.
That is the bet I am making.
I don’t expect every website to work.
In fact, I expect most of them not to work.
I am looking for the few that do.
But There Is a Dangerous Trap
There is something I have realized while building all these websites.
AI makes building things so easy that it can become addictive.
You think of an idea.
You ask AI to build it.
A few hours later, you have a website.
Then you discover another keyword.
Another domain becomes available.
Another idea appears.
And suddenly you have ten websites.
But ten websites do not automatically mean ten businesses.
They could mean ten websites with zero customers.
That is why I am changing my strategy.
I don’t want to measure myself by how many websites I build.
I want to measure:
How many strangers are willing to pay for something I created?
That is a much harder test.
And probably a much more useful one.
My First Goal Is Not $10,000
I don’t have a grand plan to become a millionaire from websites.
At least not yet.
My first goal is much smaller.
I want to make the first:
$100 per month.
That’s it.
If I can consistently make $100 a month from these small websites, I will have proven something important.
Then I can try for:
$300/month
Then:
$1,000/month
And only after that would I seriously think about scaling.
The first dollar is more important than the thousandth dollar because it proves that someone outside my family thinks my work is worth paying for.
So, Is ChatGPT Plus Worth $20?
For me, I think it probably is.
But not because ChatGPT is magical.
And not because I believe AI will automatically make me money.
It is worth considering because I am already using AI as part of my development workflow.
If I were only asking ChatGPT occasional questions, I probably wouldn’t need the subscription.
But if I am using AI every day to build, debug, research and improve websites, then $20 starts to look more like a business expense.
The real test is simple:
Can the websites eventually generate more money than the tools required to build them?
I don’t know the answer yet.
That’s exactly why I am documenting the experiment.
What I Am Going to Do Next
For the next stage, I don’t want to build another 20 websites just because I can.
I want to focus on the websites I already have.
My priorities are:
1. ChineseNameCraft
Try to turn the free Chinese-name generator into a real paid product.
ChineseNameCraft.com — helping foreigners create and understand Chinese names
Possible products include:
- $9 name reports
- $29 premium Chinese identity packages
- $99 business naming packages
2. ChinaRules101
Experiment with small paid AI tools for foreigners living, working or dating in China.
ChinaRules101.com — helping foreigners understand Chinese social rules and culture
3. ChineseFortuneTools
Focus on organic search traffic and build a long-term content and tool ecosystem.
ChineseFortuneTools.com — Chinese zodiac, fortune, Feng Shui and cultural tools
4. HotPot101
See whether a focused food website can eventually generate traffic and affiliate revenue.
HotPot101.com — an experiment around Chinese hot pot and food
5. Ordinary Man Trying
Keep documenting everything. Here I also document this website’s growth with weekly updates. Live Diary
The successes.
The failures.
The embarrassing experiments.
The websites nobody visits.
And, hopefully, the first real dollars.
Maybe My Wife Is Right
There is a possibility that she is right.
Maybe these websites won’t make money.
Maybe Google won’t send me enough traffic.
Maybe nobody will pay for my tools.
Maybe I will spend hundreds of hours experimenting and end up with nothing more than a collection of abandoned websites.
That is possible.
I don’t want to hide that.
But there is another possibility.
Maybe one small idea works.
Maybe one tool ranks.
Maybe one website finds an audience.
Maybe one customer pays $9.
Then another pays $29.
And eventually, something that started as a cheap experiment becomes a small business.
I don’t know which future will happen.
But the cost of finding out is relatively small.
And that is why I keep building.
The Experiment Continues
As of September 2026, I am still very much in the experiment.
I am not writing this article to tell you how to get rich with AI.
I don’t know how.
I am writing it because I want to record what it feels like to try.
Maybe in six months I will look back at this article and laugh.
Maybe I will have made $0.
Maybe I will have made $100.
Maybe I will have discovered that one tiny website works surprisingly well.
I honestly don’t know.
But I have learned one thing already:
AI has made the cost of trying much lower.
And when the cost of trying is low enough, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is simply try.
September 6, 2026 — Ordinary Man Trying
This is a personal experiment, not financial or business advice. Results from websites, AI tools, SEO and affiliate marketing are uncertain, and there is no guarantee that any of these projects will become profitable.
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