Someone spent one night putting together a little tool, listed it on a secondhand marketplace for 99 yuan each, and sold 200 copies.
Stories like this are easy to read as “side hustles are lucrative.” What I noticed was the pricing. The 99-yuan price point is cleverly chosen: low enough that buyers don’t bother comparing prices, but high enough that it doesn’t seem so cheap they’ll distrust it. They’re not buying software; they’re buying “one less hassle.”
The truly hard part isn’t building a tool—it’s finding the people who are all being frustrated by the same little problem. Nine out of ten tool makers fail because they think, “I made something really cool, but nobody needs it.”
So don’t start by learning to code. Start by lurking in group chats and jotting down the little thing everyone keeps complaining about. Demand is free, and coding is getting close to free too.
Stories like this are easy to read as “side hustles are lucrative.” What I noticed was the pricing. The 99-yuan price point is cleverly chosen: low enough that buyers don’t bother comparing prices, but high enough that it doesn’t seem so cheap they’ll distrust it. They’re not buying software; they’re buying “one less hassle.”
The truly hard part isn’t building a tool—it’s finding the people who are all being frustrated by the same little problem. Nine out of ten tool makers fail because they think, “I made something really cool, but nobody needs it.”
So don’t start by learning to code. Start by lurking in group chats and jotting down the little thing everyone keeps complaining about. Demand is free, and coding is getting close to free too.
