How I Built 171 Free Websites With No Team and No VC Money

I'm one person. I filed an LLC in Illinois. I built 171+ free websites. No investors. No employees. No ads. No office. Just a laptop, a GitHub account, and an unwillingness to pay for things that should be free. Here's the full story.

The Beginning

It started with SpunkArt.com — a digital art portfolio. Nothing fancy. Just a place to put my work online. But while building it, I noticed something that genuinely bothered me: the web tool industry was extracting absurd amounts of money from people for basic functionality.

Want a simple link-in-bio page? That'll be $24/month. Need a basic portfolio? $15/month. A landing page? $29/month. For what? Some HTML and CSS that costs pennies to host? That felt wrong.

So I made a decision: everything I build would be free. Not "free with a catch." Not "free trial then we charge you." Actually, genuinely free. If I could build it for $0, I'd offer it for $0.

The Stack

People always ask about the tech stack, expecting some complex cloud architecture with Kubernetes clusters and microservices. Here's the actual stack:

• Hosting: GitHub Pages. Free. Supports custom domains. Global CDN. HTTPS included.
• Databases: Firebase Realtime Database. Free tier handles tens of thousands of users.
• Frontend: Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No React. No Next.js. No build tools.
• Domain registrations: The only actual cost. About $8-12 per domain per year.

Total monthly hosting cost across 171+ websites: $0.

That's not a typo. GitHub Pages is free for public repositories. Firebase's free tier is generous enough for every project I've built. The only recurring cost is domain renewals, which I keep minimal by using creative TLDs and subdomains.

People overcomplicate web development. You don't need a $200/month Vercel plan. You don't need AWS. You don't need Docker. For 90% of websites, vanilla HTML served from a CDN is faster, cheaper, and more reliable than any framework-heavy deployment.

The First 10 Sites

After SpunkArt.com, I started building tools that solved real problems I personally had:

• spunk.bet — A free crypto casino using SPUNK runes. No deposit required. Provably fair. Because gambling sites shouldn't require you to risk real money to have fun.
• pfp.best — A PFP rating tool. Upload your profile picture, get honest feedback. Because everyone was asking "is my PFP good?" in Discord servers.
• scam.wiki — A scam detection and reporting platform. Because crypto scams were everywhere and nobody had a simple, searchable database of known scams.

Each site followed the same pattern: find a real problem, build the simplest possible solution, ship it, move on to the next one. No market research. No competitive analysis. No pitch decks. Just: does this thing need to exist? Yes? Build it.

The Automation

Around site number 20, I realized I was repeating myself. A lot. Same HTML boilerplate. Same CSS reset. Same analytics setup. Same deployment process. So I built a Python generator.

The generator takes a template and a configuration file and outputs a complete, deployable website. One command. One second. One website. That's how the prediction market network was born.

I built a template for prediction market sites, created 19 different configurations (predict.horse, predict.pics, predict.mom, predict.gay, predict.boats, and more), and ran the generator. In under a minute, I had 19 fully functional prediction market websites, each with its own domain, branding, and content. All sharing the same Firebase backend. All cross-linking to each other.

Automation isn't about being lazy. It's about recognizing that humans shouldn't do repetitive tasks that computers can do in milliseconds. Every minute I spend on boilerplate is a minute I'm not spending on building something new.

The Network Effect

Here's where it gets interesting. 171+ sites don't just exist in isolation. They form a network. Every site links to the others. Every site has a visitor counter. Every site drives traffic to sister sites through cross-promotion.

The marketing budget for all 171+ sites combined? $0. Zero dollars. No Google Ads. No Facebook campaigns. No influencer sponsorships. No SEO agencies. Just organic traffic and cross-pollination between sites.

When someone visits spunk.bet, they might discover pfp.best. When someone lands on a prediction market site, they see links to all the other prediction sites. The network feeds itself. Every new site makes every existing site slightly more valuable because there are more destinations to discover.

This is the unfair advantage of building many sites: you create your own distribution network. You don't need to beg for traffic from platforms that don't care about you. You own the network.

Forming SPUNK LLC

In 2026, I made it official. Filed an LLC in Illinois. SPUNK LLC. Everything under one umbrella. Every site, every tool, every product — one company, one vision.

The LLC wasn't about impressing anyone. It was about structure. When you're running 171+ websites, you need a legal entity. You need clear ownership. You need a brand that ties everything together. SPUNK LLC is that brand.

Filing an LLC in Illinois was straightforward and inexpensive. No lawyers needed. No accountants. Just paperwork and a filing fee. Another thing that people overcomplicate.

Building i13.fun

The latest project — and arguably the most ambitious one — is i13.fun. It started with a simple observation: Linktree charges $24/month for features that cost essentially nothing to provide. Custom themes? CSS. Analytics? A database counter. Custom domains? A DNS record.

So I built a free alternative. i13.fun gives you everything Linktree's free tier offers, plus features that Linktree locks behind their $9/month plan — all for $0.

For users who want premium features like custom domains, SEO controls, and priority support, there's a Pro plan at $5/month. That's less than half of Linktree's cheapest paid plan. And the free tier is genuinely generous — unlimited links, analytics, multiple themes, no branding restrictions.

i13.fun is also built on the same stack as everything else: GitHub Pages, Firebase, vanilla code. It's fast because there's no framework overhead. It's reliable because static HTML doesn't crash. And it's cheap to run because, well, free hosting is free.

What's Next

The immediate goal is scaling i13.fun to 10,000 users. Not through ads or growth hacking or dark patterns. Through building something genuinely better and cheaper than the alternatives, and letting word of mouth do the work.

Beyond that, more tools. More free alternatives to overpriced web services. The mission hasn't changed since day one: if it can be free, it should be free. If it can be $5, it shouldn't be $24.

I'm also expanding the network. Every new site adds to the ecosystem. Every new tool creates a new entry point. The flywheel keeps spinning.

Lessons Learned

After building 171+ websites as a solo founder, here's what I know for certain:

Ship fast. A shipped product beats a perfect prototype every time. Most of my sites went from idea to live in a single day. Some in a few hours. Speed is a feature. Perfection is a trap.

Keep it simple. Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will outlive every framework. My sites from three years ago still work perfectly. Sites built on last year's hottest framework? Half of them have broken dependencies. Simplicity is durability.

Don't raise money if you don't need it. VC money comes with strings. Expectations. Board seats. Growth targets that force you to make decisions that are good for investors but bad for users. When your hosting costs $0, you don't need anyone's money. That's freedom.

Free is the best marketing. Every site I've built is free to use. That's not charity — it's strategy. Free tools spread faster than paid tools. Free tools get backlinks. Free tools get shared on social media. Free tools build trust. The business model comes later, after you've built something people actually use.

Build in public. Talk about what you're building. Share the numbers. Share the failures. People connect with transparency. Every blog post, every tweet, every behind-the-scenes detail creates a relationship with your audience that no amount of marketing can replicate.

You don't need a team. One focused person can outbuild a team of ten unfocused people. No meetings. No standups. No sprint planning. No Jira tickets. Just building. The overhead of coordination is massively underestimated. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is work alone.

171 sites. $0 hosting. One person. No excuses left for anyone who says they can't build something.