I Showed My Friends My New Website. They Asked One Question: “How Much Will It Make?”

wpnews.pro

Four days after launching my new website, I proudly sent the link to a few friends.

I wasn’t expecting them to invest.

I wasn’t even expecting them to use it.

I just thought they might look at it and say: “This is interesting. Maybe we could build something together.”

Instead, they asked:

“Why are you doing this?”

I said: “It’s a side project. Maybe it can make some money someday.”

“How much?”

I didn’t know.

“Maybe $100 to $500 a month.”

“When?”

“Maybe two years.”

And then came the reaction.

They thought I was being stupid.

Maybe They Weren’t Wrong #

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to: if someone told me they were spending two years building a website without knowing whether it would make money, I’d probably ask the same questions.

My friends weren’t being cruel. They were applying the only framework they knew: cost vs. return.

What they saw:

Domain registration fee
Hosting subscription
AI tokens
Weeks of my time
$0 in revenue

Their formula: Cost > Revenue = Bad idea. What I saw was different:

Domain + Hosting + AI + Time → Website → Content → SEO → Data → Experience → Maybe revenue.

But I also have to be honest with myself: the “maybe” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

What I Actually Built #

The website is ChineseFortuneTools.com — an English-language platform built around Chinese zodiac, Feng Shui, BaZi (Eight Characters), auspicious dates, and traditional Chinese cultural wisdom.

It has interactive tools. It has content. It has games. It’s built for people outside China who are curious about these traditions but can’t read Chinese.

Is it a business yet?

No.

It’s an experiment.

I Don’t Know If It Will Work #

I want to be clear about something, because I think too many people in this space pretend they know things they don’t:

I don’t know whether Google will send me traffic.
I don’t know whether people will actually use the tools.
I don’t know whether AdSense will make $10 or $500 a month.
I don’t know whether I’ll still be working on it two years from now.

And that’s exactly why I’m building it.

OrdinaryManTrying has never been “I already succeeded, now let me teach you how.” It’s always been: “I don’t know if this works. So I’m going to try and find out.”

The Stock Analogy That Changed How I Think About This #

I’ve done value investing for years. And there’s something I would never do when evaluating a company:

Buy a stock on Monday, and on Thursday demand to know why it hasn’t gone up yet.

That’s not how it works. When I evaluate a company, I look at:

Business model
Competitive moat
Return on invested capital
Industry space
Management quality
Long-term compounding potential I give it time to play out.

So why was I supposed to judge a website on day four?

My friends were asking me to validate ChineseFortuneTools the same way you’d validate a parking meter: put money in, check if anything comes out, decide in 30 seconds.

But a website is not a parking meter. And it’s also not exactly a stock either. A stock can be passively held. A website requires execution — constant updates, content, SEO, iteration based on data. You can’t just buy it and forget it.

What a website is, though, is a long-duration asset. And I’m willing to give this experiment a long enough time window to find out whether it works — while continuing to adjust based on what the data says.

My Friends Want Proof. I Want a Chance to Find Out. #

Here’s the honest framing:

They want to see revenue before investing any time.

I want to invest a limited amount of time and money to see whether revenue can eventually appear.

Neither approach is irrational. We simply have different thresholds for uncertainty.

And honestly? Their caution probably saved us from a worse problem. If they’d immediately said “Let’s all go in together!” — with a business model that hasn’t been validated, traffic that doesn’t exist yet, and tools whose popularity is unknown — we’d almost certainly be having a much worse argument in six months.

Right now, the only person who can break this experiment is me. That’s a much simpler accountability structure.

My Two-Year Experiment: The Rules I Set for Myself #

I’m not going to ask “how much money did I make today?” for at least the first six months.

Instead, I’m going to watch five things:

These are the inputs that tell me whether the engine is turning. Revenue is an output — it comes later, if the inputs are working.

I’m also setting a failure condition, because I think that’s important.

I’m not going to call this a success simply because I enjoy working on it. If, after a reasonable period, there is no organic growth, no user interest, and no evidence that the model is improving — I’ll have to honestly admit the experiment failed. And move on.

That’s not pessimism. That’s how you stay honest with yourself when you’re building something alone.

What Happens If It Fails? What Happens If It Doesn’t? #

Worst case: two years from now, the site makes $0/month.

I lose the cost of the domain, hosting, and AI tokens. Not nothing — but also not catastrophic. And along the way, I’ll have built real skills: English SEO, web development, content strategy, Google Search Console, AdSense, user behavior analysis, and a knowledge base about Chinese culture that I can use elsewhere.

Best case: the site reaches $100/month. Then $300. Then maybe $500.

At $100/month, the model is proven. Strangers are visiting. The tools are being used. Google is paying attention. Everything that comes after that — affiliate deals, premium features, digital guides, even a newsletter — becomes possible.

The asymmetry here is favorable. The downside is capped and educational. The upside is open-ended.

My Friends May Be Right #

Maybe this website will never make $500 a month.

Maybe Google won’t care.

Maybe nobody will use it.

Maybe I’ll abandon it six months from now and feel embarrassed about writing this post.

But there’s one thing I know for certain:

Four days is not enough time to find out.

So I’m going to keep building.

Not because I know it will work.

Because I don’t know yet. And that’s what I’m here to find out.

Try the Tools

ChineseFortuneTools.com— Chinese zodiac, Feng Shui, BaZi, auspicious dates, and cultural tools in English

source & further reading

ordinarymantrying.com — original article I Bought Cheap Hosting Before I Had a Business Plan 6 AI Chatbots Competed to Guess Your Star Sign — Without Asking Your Birthday (AI Generated) I Challenged 4 AIs With the Same Math Puzzle — Then Built the Result