Monetizing AI: Real-World Examples of Vibe Coding Success

Today we're going to be answering the question: can you actually make money with Vibe Coding? Right now, everybody's talking about these AI coding tools: Cursor, Lovable, Replet, VO, the list goes on. If you go on social media, you're going to see a bunch of people talking about how they built something with Cursor, how they're doing Vibe coding, how it's changing their lives, and how they became millionaires overnight.

After extensive research, this article will walk through a few apps built with AI and vibe coding tools that are making real money. The last one is pretty crazy; it's making over $60,000 a month and it just got launched this month.

From Zero to $10,000 a Month with AI

Let's check out this first one: Curiosity Quench, an app that helps kill your scrolling habits. This was built by someone who couldn't code one year ago and now they make $10,000 a month.

The creator, Jack Ficks, is all about the vibe coding life. He built two different apps with AI, which is a cool approach rather than focusing on just one thing.

The first one is Curiosity Quench. The landing page states, "replace endless scrolling with purposeful action." It looks like a well-designed service that helps you get off social media and improve your life. It even includes a humorous testimonial: "my mom loves this app five stars."

This app generates $1,500 a month and has 30,000 users. The revenue might seem a bit low, but it makes sense. The type of customer for this app might pay a few bucks a month and then cancel after a few months. It's serving individual users, not businesses. This is clearly something that could be built with AI coding tools. It has 188 ratings on the app store and is doing pretty well.

What's also cool is his other app, PostBridge, which is doing $13,000 a month and is probably a better business model. Its tagline is "schedule your content everywhere in seconds." It's a social media scheduling tool, which is definitely something that could be built with vibe coding tools. This service targets businesses, as all businesses need to post on social media and would likely want to automate the process. This app has 2,500 users and serves as real proof that building profitable apps with AI coding tools is possible.

Diving deeper into the creator's background, a couple of posts show off how he built this with AI. One from a little over a year ago reads:

"A little over one year ago I was an idea guy with no ability to do things. I couldn't code, I couldn't build my ideas. Now I'm about to hit 10,000 MRR between my two big ideas that I built in this year. How did it happen? First I asked chat GBT how to build my idea and after three months of struggle and learning to prompt it and code a bit, I had my MVP ready."

That's the key. Even before advanced tools like Cursor, it was just ChatGPT. You can ask ChatGPT to do anything. If you just ask, "I have an idea for an app, how do I build it?" and follow the steps, you can get there. You have to actually follow the steps, do the deep work, and you'll eventually get there. It's not going to happen overnight.

You can then double-click on one of the suggestions, like using a no-code tool like Bubble.

Prompt:

"Okay I want to build it in bubble what are the next steps?"

This will generate a step-by-step guide. This is exactly what he did. When you run into an issue, just ask AI how to fix it. That's how all these tools work. As he says, "go ask Chat GBT how to start literally yes right now and you can do it." This is proof that you can make $10,000 a month with AI coding tools. You just need to start playing around with them, and when you run into bugs, ask the AI for help.

The Unspoken Key: Marketing

It's one thing to build your app with these AI tools, but nobody will visit it without marketing. A post from the creator highlights this perfectly:

"one hours a day spent marketing my app making plus posting six videos"

All he did was spend one hour every day creating content and doing distribution. It sounds simple, but the key is consistency. Will you go every day and actually create stuff, iterating based on what works and what doesn't? That's how you get 30,000 downloads and change your life. We can talk about AI tools all day, but this is marketing. He has numerous TikToks where he turned his marketing into a machine. This is the kind of work required to succeed.

One of his popular posts, with 50,000 views, talks about his product. He's getting views, and this is what it takes. He's also building another app with AI right now, live-streaming and live-tweeting the process. He's even got "vibe coding" in the title, getting attention and building an audience, which is half the battle.

Here are the main takeaways from this example: * Solve Your Own Problems: In multiple posts, he talks about how he solved his own problems using AI coding. Start with a small problem you have in your life. * Build and Ship Fast: He uses Cursor to build stuff fast, less concerned with perfection and more concerned with shipping and getting attention. * Market Everywhere: He markets the product on various platforms like X and TikTok. This is the secret sauce. He shares everything shamelessly and doesn't care about low view counts. * Build an Audience: Even if a project doesn't work, he's building an audience, creating a built-in distribution loop for future projects.

The High School Student Making $1,000/Month

Not every idea has to make a million dollars to be a good one. A great example is Rexen Wong, a 17-year-old in high school with 15,000 followers and an app with 300,000 users.

His main app is Text Behind Image, a cool tool that lets you create images with text behind them. You could vibe code a similar tool using Cursor or another AI tool. You might not get 300,000 users, but there are other simple ideas out there. Think about a popular tool like Canva. What's one feature of Canva? You could ask an AI:

Prompt:

"most popular features of Canva"

Result:

Here are the AI power tools: magic resize, magic edit, magic right...

Boom, there may be a business idea right there. What if there was an AI resizer tool?

The really cool thing about Text Behind Image is that it has 300,000 users, gets 5,000 visits per day, requires zero customer support, and makes $1,000 MRR. It's not the biggest business, but that can pay your rent. What's really smart is the SEO. If you search "text behind image" on Google, his app is the first result. Anyone who types that comes to his app, which is guaranteed traffic.

He's also built a few other apps with no-code tools, like Bullet Pen, a simple AI tool that helps write essays, and Video Fast, which helps edit videos easily. This strategy involves taking one small feature of a popular tool and building a dedicated app for it. This developer is 17, lives in Hong Kong, and is making it happen. It shows that anyone can do it.

What's interesting here is the "build in public" approach. His launch announcement for Text Behind Image only got 63 likes, not enough to make significant money. But then he recorded a article of him building the app in 3 hours, and that article got 344,000 views and over a thousand likes. It shows the power of building in public. Showing what your app does is cool, but showing how you built it is even cooler.

While $1,000 a month might not be enough to live on, he's learning to ship his own products. This shows that anyone can do it with vibe coding tools and social media. He's figuring out marketing and building in public, and he'll apply these lessons to his next project, which will likely blow up. This is a sign of someone who's going to be successful and proves you can do it with vibe coding.

The $70,000/Month Vibe-Coded Game

The next example is fly.pater.com by the world-renowned Peter Levels. This vibe-coded game is making $70,000 a month. What's interesting is how it monetizes. This is an insane example and it's interesting to look at because it could change everything about online businesses. This is a paradigm shift.

Let's check it out. At fly.pater.com, you can enter your name and start streaming. It's a game, and right away, you're prompted with a purchase option: "$29.99 to fly the F-16," which leads to a Stripe checkout page. Or, you can fly the Cessna 172 for free. It's a game where you can fly around and shoot things.

This is so cool because this entire game was vibe-coded. It would be insane to create this without being a super expert at creating games. The creator is a great coder and a super creative guy, but probably wouldn't have been able to create this without AI tools, or it would have taken a lot longer. The game doesn't have to be super fancy; it's just fun.

He built this game with 100% vibe coding tools and has been posting about it all along. A post from him reads:

"today I thought I would ask Curser to build a flight simulator"

This came from a personal passion. He created it, posted it, and was off to the races. What's even more interesting is how it's monetized. His analytics show he's getting 8,000 to 29,000 visitors per day.

The monetization is key. You can certainly monetize a game like this, but having an audience is why this game makes money. You can see ads on the site from companies like Synth Flow. These advertisers are paying $5,000 a month. If you go to the "promote your startup" page, it's $5,000 a month to get in front of thousands of people a day from his audience. That's how it's monetized, and that's what's so smart.

Games might be the future. There are people making $200,000 a month with games somewhat similar to this. It doesn't need to be Grand Theft Auto; it can be a simple game. People love to play games, and in this age of AI where you can build anything, maybe it'll just be about having fun.

Your Path to Vibe Coding Success

These are several examples of people actually making money doing vibe coding. Here are the main takeaways:

• Start Using the Tools: You just have to start using these tools. Start learning how to use Bubble and other tools. Just start playing around with them and create hobby projects. You don't need to make money right away; just have fun with it.
• Share What You're Building: Whatever you build, don't let it sit in the darkness. Go post on Reddit, X, Instagram, share it with your friends, share it on your LinkedIn. Just get eyeballs on it and see what people think.
• It's Still Early: Sometimes it can feel like you're late to the party, but it's still really early. 99% of people are not using vibe coding tools. Five years from now, people will not feel like it's hard to create software. It is crazy how early we are right now. This may be like when the internet was starting or when the iPhone just came out. This is the opportunity right now.