Vibe Coding Your Way to a New Website (And Maybe a New Business)

How a Single Person Can Now Beat $20,000 Agencies (In 5 Minutes, For Free)

Word of the Day: WordPress Bloat

WordPress Bloat – the accumulation of unnecessary code, plugins, themes, and features that slow down WordPress websites, create security vulnerabilities, and make them nearly impossible for non-technical people to manage effectively.

Think of it like this: WordPress bloat is the digital equivalent of using a fully-loaded industrial espresso machine when all you wanted was a cup of drip coffee. Sure, it can make coffee, but you also got a milk steamer you’ll never use, 47 temperature settings you don’t understand, and a 200-page manual written in Italian. And now the machine takes 10 minutes to warm up, breaks down twice a month, and requires a technician on retainer.

That’s WordPress in 2025.

The WordPress Problem Nobody Talks About

WordPress powers 43% of all websites on the internet. That’s an impressive number, until you realize that many of these sites are abandoned, hacked, or barely functional.

Here’s what “WordPress-powered” actually means for most business owners:

Security Nightmare: WordPress sites are hacked over 90,000 times per minute. Why? Because the typical WordPress site runs 20-30 plugins (each one a potential security hole), and 42.9% of WordPress vulnerabilities have critical severity ratings. One outdated plugin and you’re toast.

Painfully Slow Loading Times: Only 36% of WordPress sites on mobile (40% on desktop) pass Google’s Core Web Vitals. That means nearly two-thirds of WordPress sites fail Google’s basic speed requirements. A single WordPress theme can contain over 21,000 lines of CSS code, most of which you’ll never use.

Constant Software Updates: Plugins need updates. Themes need updates. WordPress core needs updates. Miss one update and your site could break or get hacked. Make the updaet and something could break (and usually does). It’s like owning a car that requires 20 different mechanics to keep running.

Impossible to Use: Try explaining to a non-technical business owner how to update their homepage. You’ll spend 45 minutes walking them through the WordPress admin panel, page builders, widgets, and custom fields. They’ll give up and call you anyway.

Code Bloat That Kills Performance: A basic WordPress homepage can contain 50,000+ lines of code when you factor in the theme, plugins, and frameworks. Compare that to a clean, custom-built site that might have just 500-1,500 lines of code doing the exact same thing.

The result? Your WordPress site loads slowly, gets dinged by Google, frustrates visitors, and costs you money in lost conversions.

Enter Lovable: The New Way to Build Websites

There’s a new option that changes everything: Lovable.dev

Lovable lets you create a complete, professional website design by simply describing what you want in plain English. No coding required. No WordPress admin panel. No plugins. Just you, telling an AI what you want, and watching it build a modern React website in real-time.

Here’s what makes Lovable revolutionary:

Free to Start: With a free Lovable account, you get 5 credits per day (30 per month). Each “credit” is one interaction with the AI, meaning you can create up to 5 complete website designs per day without spending a dime.

Design in Minutes, Not Months: Traditional website design takes weeks or months and costs hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. With Lovable, you can create a professional website design in 5 minutes. For free. Try five different versions and pick your favorite. All before lunch.

Compare the Old vs. New:

• Traditional: $5,000-$20,000 website, 4-8 weeks timeline, requires agency meetings, revisions, approvals

• Lovable: $0-$25/month, 5 minutes to first design, iterate as much as you want, no meetings required

The gap between “what used to cost $10,000 and take 6 weeks” and “what now costs $0 and takes 5 minutes” is absolutely massive.

The Lovable → Vercel Advantage

Once you’ve designed your site in Lovable, you deploy it to Vercel—a modern hosting platform that’s lightning fast. (Ask Claude or ChatGPT how to do this step-by-step.)

Here’s what you get with a Lovable → Vercel website:

No Security Concerns: No WordPress, no plugins, no constant security updates. Your site is pure code, deployed to a secure platform.

Lightning-Fast Loading: WordPress homepage: 50,000+ lines of bloated code. Lovable/Vercel website: 1,500 lines of clean, optimized code. The difference in speed is dramatic. Google loves fast sites. So do your visitors.

Easy to Index: Google and AI crawlers don’t have to wade through mountains of WordPress bloat. Your site is pure, semantic HTML that loads instantly and gets indexed properly.

No Software Updates: No plugins breaking. No theme conflicts. No “Sorry, we need to update 47 things before your site works again.” Your site just… works.

Built Specifically for YOU: WordPress and platforms like Squarespace and Wix are designed to serve thousands of different types of businesses, so they include tons of functionality you’ll never use. That creates unnecessary code, security risks, slow loading times, and complexity.

Lovable builds exactly what you need. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The Golden Nugget: A Massive Business Opportunity

The website development industry is worth $75-$80 billion globally (and $47.4 billion in the United States alone).

Every business needs a website. There are 203,000 website development agencies in the United States right now.

Here’s the opportunity:

Most of these 203,000 agencies are not going to pivot fast enough to this new system.

Why? Because they have overhead. They have offices, sales teams, staff, rent, and operational expenses. They need to charge $20,000+ for a new website to keep the lights on.

I should know—I run one of these agencies!

But here’s what’s changing: A single person can now deploy a better product (Lovable-Vercel) for a few hundred dollars and a few hours of time.

See the opportunity?

You don’t need an office. You don’t need a sales team. You don’t need to charge $20,000 to make money.

You can learn Lovable in a weekend, start building sites for local businesses at $2,000-$5,000 each, deliver them in days instead of weeks, and provide a faster, more secure product than the $20,000 agencies. Need help in the process? Just ask AI to walk you through if you get stuck.

The agencies will keep doing what they’re doing (because they have to). You can undercut them on price, beat them on speed, and deliver a superior product.

This is a classic disruption pattern. The new technology is better and cheaper. The incumbents can’t adapt fast enough. The window is wide open.

The Even Bigger Opportunity: The Missing CMS

As WordPress websites disappear and transition to modern systems like Lovable-Vercel, one big piece of the puzzle will be missing:

The CMS (Content Management System)—basically, the simple way for clients to make updates to their website without touching code.

WordPress’s CMS was clunky, confusing, and frustrating for non-technical people. But at least it existed. Squarespace and Wix were a lot better but still had a learning curve.

Lovable-Vercel sites don’t have a CMS.

This is the opportunity.

Someone needs to build the new CMS that every business will need to make simple updates to their Lovable-Vercel website. And it will be prompt-based (i.e. “Create a new post on my website covering this topic and using this image”)

I’m not going to spell out exactly how to build it (reply to this email if you want the full notes), but here’s the value proposition:

Your Product: “AI-Powered CMS for Agencies”

This is where you win.

Most agencies:

• ❌ Don’t want a full CMS like WordPress

• ❌ Don’t want clients touching code

• ❌ Don’t want to teach clients how to use complicated platforms like Sanity or Contentful

• ✅ DO want recurring revenue

Your product becomes:

• ✅ “Edit your website by typing what you want changed”

• ✅ “No logins to Vercel”

• ✅ “No support tickets to the agency”

• ✅ “Undo anytime”

And agencies keep the relationship.

This is a SaaS product that every agency will want. You’re not replacing the agency, you’re empowering them to serve clients better while generating recurring revenue.

The market is 203,000 agencies in the US alone. If you capture even 1% of them at $50-100/month per client site, you’ve built a multi-million dollar business.

Bottom Line

WordPress dominated for 20 years because it was the best option available. But “best available” and “actually good” are two different things.

The new stack (Lovable → Vercel) is faster, more secure, easier to maintain, and costs a fraction of traditional development.

This creates two massive opportunities:

1. Build websites for businesses using Lovable-Vercel and undercut traditional agencies on price and speed

2. Build the AI-powered CMS that every agency will need when they transition away from WordPress

The $75 billion website industry is about to shift. The agencies with overhead can’t move fast enough.

This is your window.

Next Issue

I’ll continue diving into Vibe Coding more and show you what’s possible… ready to build a new website (easy), develop an app (not easy but possible), build a SaaS (maybe).

Until then, maybe go play with Lovable for free and see what you can create in 5 minutes.