Earning $10K with 161 Lines of JavaScript
Recently, Ali and I were browsing Flippa, a marketplace where people auction their apps, websites, or blogs. For those unfamiliar, it's a platform where you can buy and sell digital assets.
While checking out the listings, I stumbled upon a seemingly pointless website called timenite. When you visit the site, it displays a countdown timer showing the time left until the next Fortnite season. That’s literally all it does. There’s also AdSense ads displayed above and below the timer.
At first glance, it seemed like just a trivial toy of a site. But then I noticed on Flippa that the site was reportedly earning $200 per month, and this revenue figure was verified by Flippa. Suddenly, this "toy" turned into something much more interesting in my eyes.
Here’s why: the site had been live for four years, likely built in just a single weekend, required zero maintenance, and had been generating $200 per month for three of those years. Let’s do the math:
12 months x $200 x 3 years = $7,200
On top of that, it was listed for sale on Flippa for $3,500.
Out of curiosity, I looked into the site’s structure and found that it was just a simple HTML page and a 161-line JavaScript file. That was it. While writing this post, the site was already sold, so if you visit its Flippa listing, you’ll get a 404 error.
Whoever built this site earned $7,200 from AdSense and then another $3,500 from the sale—totaling $10,700.
Honestly, I’m jealous. 🙂
Naturally, I started digging to find out who created this. Such ideas often come from kids in those "fortunate" countries. But this time, it was different. The project is public on GitHub, where I found out it was built by Priyam Raj. I even found his personal website.
Turns out, he’s a young guy living in Bangalore, India. Judging by this photo from 2009, he seems to have come from a very modest background. But despite that, he had access to computers and the internet.
In his own words, Priyam describes himself like this:
Whether it be a film, a book, or just a simple tool, I want to keep creating useful stuff until my time on this planet.
Isn’t that a cool story?
Why am I sharing this? To challenge my own opinion. In a previous post, I argued that the rising time and knowledge costs of software development are the reasons we don’t see as many entrepreneurial developers these days. But I was wrong. You can still make something worthwhile with a good idea and a simple implementation.
Even if you’re from a developing country.
09/2023