How I built a personal site for $1.18

A note before the piece: sixteen years in finance, from banking and internet finance to Web3 and blockchain, from engineer to project manager, and then to the person responsible for the business. In September 2026 I decided to leave and start a business of my own. This is my first piece. It is a practical record of building a site at low cost, and the formal announcement that I am starting out on my own.

1. Why build a personal site in this era?

When platform algorithms control where attention goes, why still bother with an independent personal site? It comes from three thoughts.

1. Build a personal brand for the digital age. This is the most honest public window onto what I can do and what I am doing now. Potential partners, clients, and friends can understand me quickly here, and the information gap in communication and collaboration gets much smaller.
2. Record, as a system, the path from zero to one. A product or a business usually passes through fragmented ideas, deeper insight, market research, turning it into a product, and then operations and distribution. Sorting these thoughts and publishing them regularly settles what is in my own head, and shares it with people on the same wavelength.
3. Take up the super-individual model of the AI era. I want to test one thing. AI infrastructure is already mature. How far can one person who understands technology, project management, and the business push the productive limit of a super-individual, with AI?

2. Six steps: how I used AI to build the site

With AI, including Cursor, I turned the whole build into six steps.

• Step 1: Plan the product frame. First, decide what the site is for. I divided it into four parts.
  • Capability model: the areas I am good at, and possible ways to work together.
  • Insights and products: the business insights I am thinking through, and the products I am iterating.
  • Writing in depth: industry observations, fragmented ideas, business insights, and reading notes.
  • What is underway: the books I am reading now, and the projects I am actually carrying out.
• Step 2: Write the PRD. On top of that frame, specify the page layout and the UI and UX requirements, and have the AI write them up as a proper product requirements document.
• Step 3: Produce the technical plan and the steps. Have the AI, from the PRD, produce the architecture choice, the technical plan, and steps that can actually be carried out.
• Step 4: Let AI carry the engineering. From that technical plan, the AI helps write the core code and build the front end.
• Step 5: Test locally and iterate quickly. Run it on a local machine. When a detail feels wrong, send it back to the AI and have it changed.
• Step 6: Buy the domain, deploy, and check it live. Buy the domain on Namecheap, have the AI help with configuration and deployment, go live on Vercel, and check it online.

3. The bill: the site cost $1.18

Many people assume a good-looking personal site needs an expensive server and heavy upkeep. With current tools and free cloud hosting, the cost can go to the floor.

• Development tool: Cursor. An annual subscription. The marginal cost of this build is $0.
• Domain: Namecheap. The first-year promotional price was $1.18.
• Server and hosting: Vercel Hobby, $0 per month. It includes 100 GB of transfer and 1 million CDN requests, enough for a personal site.

The total was $1.18 (about 8.5 yuan).

4. At the end

From bank engineer, to the person responsible for a Web3 business, to someone starting a company: the role has changed. The original intention has not. Use technology and business insight to solve real problems and serve users.

The personal site is only the first step. From here I will keep sharing product progress, industry observations, practice with AI, and thinking about business.

If you are interested in Web3, fintech, using AI to start a business, or the super-individual experiment, you are welcome to:

1. Follow my WeChat official account, and get the later pieces as they come out.
2. Visit the site: www.yorick.world.
3. Write to me at 0xyorick@gmail.com. I want to meet people on the same wavelength.