I Built 50 Automation Scripts in One Day. Here's Why Most Were Useless.
Source: Dev.to
Last week, I went on a scripting spree. In roughly 18 hours, I wrote 50 automation scripts for my side‑project pipeline—health checks, traffic dashboards, blog publishers, analytics scrapers, tag managers, even a script that recommends which script to run next. Sounds impressive, right? It wasn’t. Here’s what actually happened.
The Trap: Automating Before Validating
I had 27 browser games on itch.io, 10 products on Gumroad, 18 micro‑SaaS tools on GitHub Pages, and 8 articles on Dev.to.
Total revenue: $0.
Instead of figuring out why nobody was buying, I automated the process of producing more stuff nobody wanted.
What I Actually Needed vs. What I Built
| What I Built | What I Needed |
|---|---|
health-check.sh (checks 15 sites) | To check if anyone visits those sites |
devto-autopublish.sh (auto‑publish) | To write articles people actually want to read |
itchio-bulk-tags.py (tag 27 games) | To make 3 games actually good |
inject-analytics.sh (analytics everywhere) | To have traffic worth analyzing |
recommend-action.sh (tells me what to do) | To actually do the thing |
The 3 Scripts That Were Actually Worth It
1. gh-traffic.sh — Reality Check
Shows actual GitHub Pages traffic. Brutal honesty: most repos had zero views. Knowing this early saved me from optimizing dead projects.
2. health-check.sh + auto-heal.sh — Keep Things Alive
Checks all 15 sites and auto‑fixes GitHub Pages build failures. Set‑and‑forget. This is what automation should be.
3. pw_utils.py — Browser Automation That Does Real Work
Playwright‑based automation for actual publishing tasks (blog posts, tag management). This replaced ~20 minutes of manual clicking per task.
The Lesson
Don’t automate what you should eliminate.
If you’re spending time on a task that produces no value, making it faster doesn’t help. You need to:
- Validate first – Is anyone using/reading/buying this?
- Improve the thing – Make the product/content better.
- Automate last – Only automate what’s proven to work.
What I’m Doing Differently Now
- Focusing on 3 channels instead of 8.
- Writing for specific audiences instead of “developers” generally.
- Measuring before building.
- Asking “will this make money?” before “can I automate this?”.
The scripts aren’t wasted—they’re infrastructure for when I have something worth automating. But I should have built the foundation first.
Building in public. Currently at $0/month, targeting $50. Follow along for honest updates.