Table of contents

  1. How I'm Making My First $1 with AI-Assisted Coding: The $1.00 Challenge
  2. Stack-Junkie.com
  3. Discovering ChatGPT
  4. Obsession & Self-Doubt
  5. Why a Blog
  6. My Projects
  7. FAQ
  8. Next Steps
  9. Resources
  10. Stay in Touch
How I'm Making My First $1 with AI-Assisted Coding: The $1.00 Challenge How I'm Making My First $1 with AI-Assisted Coding: The $1.00 Challenge

How I'm Making My First $1 with AI-Assisted Coding: The $1.00 Challenge

7/12/2025 / 8 minutes to read / Tags: AI-assisted coding, developer journey, coding challenge, make money coding, beginner developer

Stack-Junkie.com

Hello World!
My name is Christopher Kvamme, or Stack-Junkie. I’m a wannabe developer based in Vancouver, Washington. Over the last couple years of my life, I have been trying to create applications that I’ve had ideas for. But I was unable to. Until now—I’m launching the $1.00 Challenge to finally make my first dollar from coding!

I had only taken a couple of classes in college, which gave me the skills I needed to have the ability to edit and debug existing scripts or software in the workplace… to an extent. I swapped majors from Computer Engineering to Electronics. I got to a class called Data Structure and Algorithms and I was overwhelmed. My fellow classmates seemed to have it down. The code just looked like Russian to me.

The switch made sense—my career path was heading in a hardware direction. That didn’t stop me from later learning additional programming languages by taking courses at Codecademy, which helped give me a basic foundation of knowledge. But since I never had to apply it in a real-world setting, I never got the repetition I needed to get the hang of it.

Discovering ChatGPT

But then, Chat GPT was released. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head. It bridged the gaps in my knowledge. I could finally begin creating the applications I’d wanted to make for years.

It took me a little longer than I’d like to admit to realize the limitations of LLMs at that time. I was being fed pseudo-code, placeholders, gibberish, etc. I’d probe the chatbot: “OK, provide the code in full, and tell me what to do with it.”

It would pretend to give me working code, one file at a time. So I went copy-and-pasting code where it told me to. After hours of back-and-forth, I’d have a poorly cobbled-together application. I’d spend more hours debugging, bouncing between the AI agent and Visual Studio, only to realize the AI had lost context hours earlier. While troubleshooting and modifying various files, I’d started with one bug and somehow ended up with a systemic mess of interconnected issues. I thought it should be easy:

“Hey, I’m getting [ERROR], please provide the full code for the file so I can easily copy and paste it in.”

Each attempt at fixing the problems further destroyed whatever part of the project was working. I learned the hard way that they have limited context windows.

That was just the beginning. I was not yet deterred! I got pretty creative at maintaining context between sessions, and each project I attempted taught me something new. Over the next couple years I probably created 20+ projects, but most of them were scrapped. I fell victim to scope creep constantly—starting with a simple to-do app and ending up trying to build the next Notion. The few that “worked” were buggy messes that crashed when users actually tried to use them. I got discouraged and lost interest in making my project ideas a reality.

Not all was lost, though—I’d gained a solid understanding of the limitations of various AI tools. I obsessed over them, consumed all the media about them every day, and stayed up-to-date on the latest trends and advancements—seemingly the only person in my life who was as deep into the AI space as I was.

Obsession & Self-Doubt

Despite never losing interest in the technology itself, self-doubt kicked in. I would overthink it:

“‘So and so’ already made that app, why am I even trying?”
“I’m not even a real developer—I’m relying on LLMs to do my work for me.”
“I worked all day, so why am I coming home and working for hours on end for nothing?”

And other negative self-talk. That changed a couple weeks ago when I got the urge to spend my workday just nerding out on AI-assisted programming tools—the new technology was getting really good. Then I came across a series of YouTube videos that shifted my perspective and brought me here today.

One of those videos was by Your Average Tech Bro.

The video is titled “How I Code Apps SOLO That Actually Make Money (Idea + Build

  • Marketing Guide).” He explained his process for coding apps that helped simplify it in my head. He simplified how to choose the tech stack—which was a huge point of contention for me, since I would overthink it and get stuck in analysis paralysis.

He said out loud that not only is it okay to make something others have already built—but we should make something others have already built. He covered a lot of ground in the short video, including things I never even considered: SEO, marketing, and the business side of things. That opened up my mind to the idea of trying my old project ideas with the new tools that are available today.

That wasn’t what made me begin this journey again, but it enabled me to be receptive towards it. I eventually came across Starter Story Build’s YouTube channel, where he has a playlist called the “$100k Challenge.” He challenged himself to make $100k purely vibe coding. It’s a fun series so far.

He surely hasn’t reached his goal yet, but watching those gave me a fun idea—a similar challenge, but with a different goal. Which is what brought me here a couple weeks later: the “$1.00 Challenge!” I have challenged myself to make my first dollar from my project ideas. I thought it would be cool to document my journey and actually be part of this community—rather than just lurking in the shadows reading Reddit and X discussions. I’m betting that actually engaging with the community will help keep me engaged and interested, not to mention the current tools available are miles better than the old ones.

Why a Blog

I decided I wanted to document this on my own website blog, where I can share my journey and progress—but also showcase my projects and ideas. I waited until I had some projects to show for it, so with the launch of the website will come this blog post introduction.

My Projects

  1. Stack-Junkie.com – I initially tried to have the AI build a site for me from scratch. But I’m done hurting myself for no reason. So I scrapped that and used an Astro template. And the results are pretty neat! It’s still a WIP.

  2. ClaudeCraft – This is a multi-agent developing workflow that I spent too much time on. I pulled together best practices for context and memory management, Claude Code best practices, and used all that to create this. It contains processes, rules, templates, and the like. I wanted to make it so I could just tell an agent to do its thing and it had enough directions to know what to do for any given scenario. Once completed, I tried to integrate that workflow into an existing project—and despite there being instructions galore, Claude ignored ’em. Upon urther digging I found that, despite robust workflow instructions, without certain enforcement checks in place AI agents would default to their original instructions. I did some digging and found that the workflow I created was running up against existing features of Claude Code. I won’t need multi-agent workflows defined like that. I found ways to optimize that workflow—some by automating a bunch of it, methods to enforce the instructions, and it’s way simpler than I was making it. Most of that can be achieved within the CLAUDE.md file and in the .claude/ folder. But that is an update for later!

  3. Monthly Budget – The sort of app I’ve always attempted repeatedly were simple budgeting apps. I always budgeted using Microsoft Excel, so going to most available apps was a pain. I wanted one that felt as easy as using Excel. And I think I have the foundation established. I imported another blog template and used a lightweight Excel-like interface to create the app. I have lots of features planned for the future.

I’m very excited to finally be able to make meaningful progress towards creating my projects. I’m also excited to share it with the community to receive feedback and suggestions. Most of all, I’m excited to finally earn my first dollar from all this work. Ready to see if I can make my first $1? Follow along on Twitter and let me know your own $1 challenge ideas below!

FAQ

Q: What is the $1.00 Challenge? A: The $1.00 Challenge is my personal goal to earn my first dollar from coding projects using AI-assisted development tools like ChatGPT and Claude.

Q: How long will the challenge take? A: I’m not setting a specific timeline. The focus is on learning and building sustainable projects rather than rushing to make money.

Q: What tools are you using for AI-assisted coding? A: I’m primarily using ChatGPT, Claude Code, and various modern development frameworks like Astro and Next.js.

Q: Can beginners follow along? A: Absolutely! I’m documenting everything from a beginner’s perspective, including mistakes and learning moments.

Next Steps

Follow my journey as I work toward earning my first dollar from coding. I’ll be sharing:

  • Project updates and progress
  • AI-assisted development tips and tricks
  • Lessons learned from failures and successes
  • Tools and resources that actually work

Ready to start your own coding journey? Subscribe to my blog updates and let’s learn together!

Thanks,
Stack-Junkie

Resources

How I Code Apps SOLO That Actually Make Money (Idea + Build + Marketing Guide)

Starter Story Build’s “$100k Challenge” playlist

Stay in Touch

Follow me on Twitter Star my projects on GitHub

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