How I Built an AI Image & Video Generator in 2 Weekends (And What I Learned)

A few months ago, I was frustrated with AI image generation tools. They all required expensive monthly subscriptions ($20-50/month), but I only needed a few images per week. That's when I decided to build my own solution. The Problem Most AI tools follow the same model: Pay $20-50/month Get unlimited (or limited) generations Hope you use it enough to justify the cost For casual users like me, this doesn't make sense. I wanted a simple pay-per-use model. The Solution: AI Gen I built AI Gen - a dead-simple AI image and video generator with no subscriptions. Just pay for what you use. Pricing: Images: $0.99 each Videos: $4.99 each No monthly fees Technical Stack Here's what I used: Backend: EvoLink API for AI generation Simple Node.js/Express server Stripe for payments Frontend: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS (no frameworks!) Clean, minimal UI Mobile responsive Deployment: VPS (DigitalOcean droplet) Nginx reverse proxy Let's Encrypt SSL Key Lessons 1. Start Simple I could have spent months adding fe