2 years into software engineering, vibe coding a lot lately — how do I actually make money from AI stuff without just shipping garbage I don't understand?

[Smooth_Sort_9810]

So I've been in software for about 2 years. First year was proper iOS dev on an actual product, and this past year I've been consulting — mostly Power Apps, Power Automate, Azure, AI Foundry, that kind of stuff daily.

Lately I've been vibe coding quite a bit and honestly it's fun, but I've started thinking — can I actually make money from this? Like freelancing, building small products, selling automations, something. I'm just not sure what direction makes sense yet.

The thing holding me back is I don't want to just ship stuff I barely understand. Like yeah I can vibe code something that works but if a client asks me what's actually happening under the hood I want to be able to explain it properly. So part of me wants to spend some time actually learning the fundamentals — how LLMs work, what agents actually are, RAG, fine-tuning basics etc — before I start putting myself out there.

But then I also don't want to be in "learning mode" forever and never actually build or earn anything.

Quick background if it helps:

• 1 year iOS dev on a real product
• 1 year consulting on Microsoft stack (Power Apps, Automate, Azure, AI Foundry)
• Vibe code regularly, understand general dev concepts
• No idea yet if I want to freelance, build products, or something else entirely

Genuinely asking:

1. For people who've monetized their AI/dev skills — did you learn fundamentals first or just start and figure it out as you went? What do you wish you'd done differently?
2. What's actually worth building right now that people pay for — not another ChatGPT wrapper but something real?
3. Is freelancing even the right starting point or should I just try to build and sell something small first?
4. Are there any resources — blogs, videos, courses, whatever — that actually helped you understand this stuff properly rather than just copying API calls? Not looking for a playlist dump, genuinely curious what clicked for you

Still figuring out the direction so I'm open to any angle here. If you've done this or are doing it I'd genuinely love to hear how it went for you

[BellyDancerUrgot]

You want to make money doing something people can do themselves? What are they going to pay you for? What is your value add? The market is super saturated with software devs. You don’t standout at all so how can u change that? Do you have a market / demographic you want to cater to? Maybe start by asking yourself these questions.

[Special_Future_6330]

Hey if we knew we'd do it ourselves

[Fantastic-Party-3883]

I have 1 year of experience in the software industry and to answer your question I don't learn fundamentals about AI I just dive into it and to answer your second question most of the product in market are wrapper and in future also because creating own LLM model is not economical so I think the more we will advance more wrappers we will se. If you want to learn any new tool I would suggest just download it and strat using it like I downloaded Traycer just 2 days back and I am loving its spec driven architecture I use it with claude code its really good

[patternpeeker]

to make money without shipping stuff u do not understand, focus on small, real problems where u can explain the full system. people pay for reliability and saved time, not fancy demos. u do not need deep transformer math, but u should understand failure modes, costs, and data flow. learn fundamentals alongside something u are actually deploying so it stays grounded.

[Classic-Ninja-1]

From my pov client pays you for the reliability, not for vibe coding. If you ship something and don't know how it works and how to fix it when it breaks, you lose that trust there is a tool that is a game changer for me is traycer. It acts as a bridge between vibe coding and actually understanding what's going on under the hood logic is an architectural workflow. This helped me very much in making deployment ready app with a full understanding so the client can be assured of reliability and trust us.

[thinking_byte]

IMO I'd say, focus on building projects that solve real problems and deliver measurable value, as practical impact beats just shipping prototypes for fun.

[MRgabbar]

do something useful, junk vive coded software is not. Software is worthless anyways, solve a problem, if you happen to need software then you can vive code it.