Why My Ugliest Workflow Makes The Most Money ($4,100/month)
Time to share my dirtiest secret. My highest earning workflow looks like spaghetti had a baby with a circuit board. THE BEAUTIFUL DISASTERS Clean 6-node invoice parser: $800/month Elegant research aggregator: $1,200/month Perfect contract analyzer: $1,500/month THE UGLY MONEY MAKER 27 nodes of pure chaos: $4,100/month Client: Old construction company. 40 years of different systems. Paper forms from the 80s. Faxed quotes. Excel sheets. Modern PDFs. Even photos of handwritten estimates. THE MONSTROSITY (n8n) 5 different input methods 7 types of document detection 12 parsing strategies 3 fallback routes Manual review queue Confidence scoring everywhere Weird date format conversions Legacy system API (SOAP from 2003) Modern database sync Email notifications with color coding Retry logic for the fax server (yes, fax) IT'S HIDEOUS. IT'S ALSO PERFECT. Handles everything they throw at it. Old foreman sends photo of coffee-stained bid? Processes it. Architect sends CAD export? Handles it. Fax machine from 1993? No problem. They don't care it's ugly. They care it WORKS. Saved them from hiring 3 full-time data entry people. THE LESSON Pretty workflows impress developers. Working workflows impress clients. Guess which one pays. My other ugly winners: Medical form monster (19 nodes): $2,400/month Legal document frankenstein (23 nodes): $3,200/month Insurance claim beast (31 nodes): $2,800/month Total from ugly workflows: $12,500/month. Total from pretty ones: $3,500/month. What's your ugliest automation that somehow prints money?