Earning $100 a website: a Freebuff side-income story from India
A developer in India is using Freebuff to ship websites for local shops while studying Rust on the side.
An email came into my inbox a couple of weeks ago that I keep coming back to. It was from a developer in India who has been quietly using Freebuff to build a real side business — making websites for local shops in his city for about $100 a piece (around 7,000 INR). He gave us permission to share it, with his name removed.
I am loving the Freebuff. I am from India, and I am using Freebuff to create websites for our local shops and earning $100 (7k INR). I just got my first client and agreed to design a website for him. I am using Freebuff to develop it in SvelteKit (because I am so used to it). I am doing these as a side income, but I am trying to build compilers and interpreters in Rust and to get a job in Rust. Till then, I make websites for our local businesses to make some side income. So thank you a lot for making this process easier and less time-consuming.
Why this email stuck with me#
I want to be careful here. It's easy to do the dramatic founder-pose where you take someone else's story and turn it into your own marketing. That's not what I mean to do. I just think this little email contains almost everything we hoped Freebuff would do for people.
- It met someone where they already are. SvelteKit. Not React. Not whatever the AI demo of the week is. The framework he’s comfortable in. Freebuff is meant to be that — a great teammate inside whatever stack you already use.
- It collapsed a 3-day job into an afternoon. That’s the unlock: real money for real work, but the work is fast enough to be a side hustle around studying.
- It’s not the whole life plan. He’s studying compilers in Rust. He wants a Rust job. Freebuff isn’t his career; it’s the bridge that funds the career he actually wants. That feels like a healthy way to use a tool.
- The economics work in his currency. $100 USD is meaningful money in a lot of the world. A $20/month subscription often isn’t worth that trade. Free changes who can play.
A small back-of-envelope#
If you can build one site like this in a weekend with Freebuff, four weekends a month is roughly $400. That’s a meaningful number when the average software engineering salary in many parts of India is between $5,000 and $15,000 USD per year. It also stacks neatly with a day job or a degree.
| Feature | Freebuff | A typical paid AI coding tool |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $0 | $20–$60 |
| Break-even per month | Zero clients | 1 client (out of pocket if you miss) |
| Margin per $100 site | ~100% | 40–80% (after tool + provider costs) |
| Pay-per-token planning passes | Optional via BYOK | Bundled into the seat fee whether you use it or not |
| Currency sensitivity | Free is the same in every currency | Subscription scales weird across regions |
Some practical notes for anyone trying this#
- 1Start with a template you already know. If you’re a SvelteKit person, stay there. Freebuff handles every popular stack, but you ship faster when you can spot a wrong turn in the code.
- 2Charge by project, not by hour. Your time-to-finish drops fast as you get better at prompting; you don’t want your billable hours dropping with it.
- 3Use Freebuff Web for the first draft, then push to GitHub and finish in Freebuff CLI. Visual editing for the layout, real CLI work for the integrations.
- 4Keep the BYOK ChatGPT key for the planning step on bigger sites. A few cents of GPT-5.4 reasoning early can save an hour of cleanup later.
S., if you're reading this — good luck with the Rust job. Send us the compiler when you ship it.
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Same tools, same free tier. Start a small business in an afternoon.
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