I'm a frontend developer working at a bank in Shenzhen. By day I write React components. By night, I've been building Froging AI — an AI video generator that turns images and text into videos in minutes.
Three months ago I knew nothing about AI video APIs. Last week, I got my first paid order. Here’s how it happened.
I wanted to ship fast and keep costs low. My stack:
Why not Python? I'm a frontend dev. Next.js API routes handle async queueing just fine. I didn't want to learn a new deployment pipeline. Ship fast, iterate faster.
Froging AI has two core features:
Image to Video
Upload a photo, add a prompt, and the AI animates it into a short video clip. Good for product demos, social content, and creative experiments.
Text to Video
Describe a scene in plain English and get a generated video back in minutes. No camera, no editing software.
Under the hood, I'm routing requests to different providers based on model availability and cost. Replicate's open-source models (Wan-2.1, etc.) for cheap experiments. Minimax and 海螺AI for higher-quality outputs. The user doesn’t pick the model — the system optimizes for speed and quality automatically.
On July 13th, I woke up to an email from Creem: "You received a payment."
It was $4.99. One user bought the Starter plan.
That small amount changed everything. Before that, I was optimizing SEO, tweaking landing page colors, and watching Google Analytics like a hawk. After that, I realized: the only metric that matters is whether someone is willing to pay.
The user came from organic search. I had spent weeks writing blog posts, submitting to AI directories, and building backlinks. No ads. Just content and patience.
My original plan was an "all-in-one AI creative suite" — image generation, video generation, editing tools, the works. I stripped it down to video only. If I had waited for the full vision, I'd still be coding instead of charging.
I stopped Google Ads after burning through budget with zero conversions. Switched to long-tail SEO: "image to video AI free", "text to video generator no signup". Slow traffic, but free and compounding.
I spent too much time perfecting the UI before integrating Creem. The moment payments went live, my mindset shifted from "hobby project" to "business." Do it early. Even if nobody pays, the infrastructure being ready changes how you build.
If you're curious, [Froging AI](https://www.froging.ai) is live. You can generate a few videos for free without signing up.
If you're also building a side project, drop a comment. I read every one.
Tags: #ai #webdev #nextjs #saas #sideproject #startup #indiedev