Why My Ugliest Workflow Makes The Most Money ($4,100/month)

Duy Bui

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18d • General Discussion 💬

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?

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