Vibe coding is everywhere right now.
I am living for the thrill of it myself, watching my own ideas turn into actual software through nothing but conversation. My YouTube algorithm has noticed too. It is completely flooded with vibe coding content. But the videos I actually seek out are not the tutorials on how to do it. What I really love are the interviews with people who turned vibe coding into real money.
A lot of people assume vibe coding just means talking nicely to an AI. But AI does not hand you a finished product on a silver platter. You have to personally pull 100% of its capability out of it, which makes this a harder skill to master than it looks.
While watching these interviews, something jumped out at me. There is a remarkably consistent pattern among the people who actually made money. And when I look at the Threads posts or social media rants from people who tried and failed, I see the exact opposite version of that same pattern. The contrast was sharp enough that I wanted to break it down today: what separates the people who made money from vibe coding from the people who did not.
The Power of Your Own Playground
Here is the common thread among the people who actually made good money. Almost none of them jumped into a brand new field. They simply found a problem inside their existing domain and solved it using vibe coding.
This sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but most people do not actually follow it. When people try vibe coding for the first time, they usually dive headfirst into something they have zero connection to. But the people who actually made money did not pioneer some unfamiliar territory. They found a problem inside their own playground, the field they already knew inside and out, and solved it.
 |
| Your decade of experience is your greatest competitive advantage |
One person in the interviews I watched had been a teacher for over 10 years. Instead of turning that decade of classroom experience into his weapon, he jumped into a generic IT problem he had zero connection to, the same crowded idea everyone else was chasing. Another person had spent a decade in the IT events space, and built his service right inside that same world, using the network and problems he already understood inside out.
Watching both stories back to back, I felt it with total certainty. Your domain matters more than people give it credit for. In the AI era, domain expertise might well be the single most valuable asset you have.
The Ecosystem Sensibility
Domain does not just mean raw knowledge either. It means understanding the entire ecosystem of that field.
Knowing exactly which players exist inside a domain, how they relate to each other, and how things shift the moment a new player enters, these are things you absorb instinctively over time. Walk into a field you have never worked in, and you can logically guess at what knowledge you might need, but you have none of that instinctual feel for how things actually move. You know it in theory. You have no idea if it survives contact with reality.
That said, if you are dead set on breaking into a new field, the only way through is relentless trial and error. You absolutely learn something from every attempt. But making attempts inside a domain you already know is faster, and the odds of failure drop significantly.
What I took away from all of this is simple. I already have that depth in networking, I just never once thought to point it at a vibe coding project. To make money, you need one specific domain where you have real depth. If you do not have that yet, you need to study the new field aggressively, experiment constantly, and accept a lot of failure along the way.
Problem Definition Over Technical Brilliance
The second thing that struck me watching these interviews is that the people making serious money are not nearly as technically gifted as you would expect.
Both people I listened to had no technical background at all. One of them built his entire service by chatting with ChatGPT and literally copying and pasting whatever code it gave him straight into the browser. This was before Claude Code and Cursor even existed, but even accounting for that, it told me something important. Deep technical skill is not the requirement people assume it is. Technology takes a back seat. Defining the problem clearly is what actually matters.
Look at the sequence successful vibe coders follow, and it is almost identical every time. First, they sharply define the problem. Then they go looking for the technology to solve it. The people who fail to make money do this in the exact opposite order. They learn a technology first, and only afterward start wondering where they might apply it.
So if you are currently not making money with vibe coding, stop and ask yourself honestly whether you are working in the right order. Across every successful interview I watched, that sequence showed up without a single exception.
The 80/20 Rule of Vibe Coding
I used to think a 50/50 split between technology and problem definition was the ideal balance. Lately I have landed somewhere closer to 80% problem definition and 20% technology. And the correct order is always to define the problem first, then go find whatever technology actually fits it.
I am not recommending this just because successful people happen to do it this way. I recommend it because once you define the problem properly and get your service actually running, finding the technology you need becomes dramatically easier.
 |
| Don't get trapped in the endless cycle of learning new tools |
Flip the order and try learning the technology first, and the sheer volume of things to learn becomes overwhelming fast. Look at the IT space specifically. The amount of technology you could learn is essentially infinite, and new things show up daily. Even something like AI splits into endless branches depending on whether you are working with time series data, computer vision, or physical robotics. You end up with no clear idea of what you should actually be focusing on.
But work the other way around, define the problem and get your service to a functioning state, and the specific technologies you need start revealing themselves naturally. That is when it really hit me. If you want to make money, forget about the technology for a second. The crucial move is defining the problem first and getting your service to a point where it minimally works.
Start Before You Are Ready
Watching this pattern made me look hard at my own situation. I have spent over a decade staring at networks, and I have never once turned that into a vibe coding project because I kept assuming I needed to chase some trendy new field first, the same mistake I just spent this whole piece describing. The real project sitting in front of me the whole time was probably never some flashy new app idea. It was something small and annoying inside the world I already understand better than almost anything else.
The truth is, the people making real money from vibe coding are not some elite group who mastered every technical skill in existence. The real masters are the people with a domain they are deeply rooted in, paired with the instinct to spot the specific problems sitting right there inside it.
There is one more thing all of these people have in common. Whatever it is, they just go and execute. I think this might be the most important part of all. They are not waiting until they have a perfect foundation of knowledge. They start first, and learn whatever technology they need exactly when they need it.
It is a phrase I kept running into over and over while watching these same interviews. Start before you are ready. I think making money with vibe coding runs on that same idea. Just start before you feel ready, build something, and pick up the technical skills along the way as you actually need them.
Today I wanted to share what I noticed watching interviews with people who made real money through vibe coding. I think luck plays some role for everyone who succeeds, but there is always a clear, repeatable reason behind it too. I am going to go dig through my own decade in networking and find that one annoying problem I have been ignoring. I hope you go find yours too.
For deeper reads on tech, business, and the shifting economy, follow The Techtonic for weekly breakdowns.
Latest Insight: [Why Your Vibe Coding App Has No Users]
Comment