$300,000 a month from dog portraits?
You upload a photo of your dog, and get a Renaissance portrait. When I heard that story, I opened ChatGPT and got a picture just as good. So where's the business?
The picture was never the business. The founder built everything around it: the site, the payments, the printing, and the delivery. So a photo turns into a portrait on your wall.
Maybe you have an idea. Maybe you already run a business. Maybe you're a professional who wants to be invited to speak at TED. It all starts with one thing: a website of your own.
Build yours with me today.
I built a new personal website in 35 minutes, from the first prompt to going live, on camera, while recording a podcast episode.
I love my new website, and I built it in less than an hour. Now that's a reason to learn AI!
Why do I even need a website if I post regularly on social media?
Running social platforms pays off. More people see you, contact you, and learn what you do. But it's a daily commitment, and that may not fit everyone.
A personal website isn't only about staying outside the algorithms. It also helps you:
Make it a detailed portfolio. A resume states your experience and skills in a brief format. A portfolio page shows the details and the results, whether that's code, design, campaigns or research.
Plan your career move. Whether you're changing niche or moving up a level, show what you'd bring to a new team, in the way you want to present it.
Get invited to speak. Lay out your topics so conference organizers can see your expertise, and find your bio or past talks in the same place.
Have one link instead of five (that's why I built it!). Your site is the one address that holds all your credentials: add links to your platforms, your work, your talks. Easy to share with a potential partner or a brand.
A personal webpage is so much more than any social account. And you can build it yourself, in your style, in 35 minutes. The bonus: ChatGPT can also see it, because the platform has that built in.
Copy my steps. By the end of this newsletter you'll have a complete personal website, optimized for search.
How we built it
I built my website on Lovable, an AI platform that builds websites and apps from a conversation. Its co-founder and CEO, Anton Osika, was a guest on our podcast, and he helped me build the site while we were recording.
Welcoming Anton to our studio. One of the most practical episodes we've ever recorded.
The first version showed up about four minutes after our first prompt. Here's every step we took.
1. Give it a starting point
I described my podcast in a casual voice note. I didn't aim for a perfect prompt, just the what, why and for whom. The voice note ran 43 seconds.
I explained that it's for different audiences. For founders, AI means building faster. For moms, it means running the household with agents. For creators, it means managing things that are not part of creation.
Talk the way you'd explain it to a friend, because polished copy isn't needed here.
No typing. I hit record and talked.
2. Answer follow-up design questions
Lovable asked me about fonts, design preferences and colors. My colors are white, red and black. I couldn't remember my font's name, and it didn't matter.
We also pasted the link to my old site, just as a reference point.
It read my old site first, then pinned down my taste with three visual questions.
A few layout versions came back. I zoomed in, picked one and kept going.
3. Add essential extras
While building the site, I mentioned one more problem I wanted to solve. People write to me with all kinds of requests: to advertise their products, to be a podcast guest, or just to say thank you. There are so many emails that my team can easily miss the important ones. So I thought it would be good to add a request form, since this site is becoming my main starting point online.
So I asked for a page where people can pitch me. It suggested a form with fields to fill in.
The first draft. Lovable checked who should see the inbox and how replies go out, then built it.
The form worked, but the design could be better. Instead of describing what I wanted, I pointed Lovable to my newsletter site as a reference for the style and fonts I love.
My Future Proof signup page. This is the look I wanted the form to borrow.
Then we set up the emails in the same chat. The sender gets a confirmation, my team gets an alert, and replies go out from my own domain. The best part: AI reads every submission, scores how important it is and drafts a reply before my team even opens it.
Then we asked it to test the whole thing on its own. It filled in the form, sent a pitch, answered from the inbox, and reported zero errors. Amazing!
One request, and Lovable tested the whole flow: a fake pitch in, a reply out. And look at the design: after I shared my reference site, it got so much better.
In that test, AI agreed to the fake sponsor's collaboration on its own. I want to see every reply before it goes out, so that's the one setting I'd check first. And I'm curious how many real pitches the form catches in its first month. Let's see.
4. Finishing touches
Run the SEO and AI search check. There's a tab for it. We asked Lovable to scan how Google and AI assistants read the site, and it came back with: Scan done: The basics are healthy. It also suggested adding machine-readable data about every episode, so ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google can quote them accurately.
No GEO knowledge needed. One plain sentence started the whole check.
Scan for security. This was Anton's tip: run a security scan before anyone else sees the site. Our whole prompt was: Do a deep security scan.
Connect your domain. Just follow the instructions, then hit Publish.
That's it, the site is live: marinamogilko.co
The last click before the site goes live. Security check: no issues found.
When I tried building with AI a couple years ago, I ran into errors everywhere, and all the testing was manual. This time, Lovable tested its own work.
Anton told me ideas matter more now than ever, because building keeps getting easier. So if there's a site you've been putting off, you don't need a perfect brief or a budget. Open Lovable and start talking.
The rest of our conversation is in the episode:
at what point a project gets too big for this, and you do need a developer
how he decides which idea to keep pushing and which one to drop
the dog-portrait business doing $300,000 a month, and what made it work
Marina 💜
P.S. Know someone who's been planning a website for months? Forward them this email and tell them mine took 35 minutes.
