I started making simple digital templates for a ridiculously specific niche: people who want to organize their side-hustle income.
It took almost no money to start, and I was surprised when the first few sales actually came in.
The weird part? The more specific the template, the more interest it got.
Has anyone else made money from a side project that sounded completely pointless at first? 😅
[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]
One thing I’m learning about UGC: a good portfolio isn’t enough. It should quickly show brands what you can create and why they should hire you.
I’d focus on:
- 3–5 strong examples
- Different video styles
- Clear pricing/packages
- A simple way to contact you
- Personalized outreach instead of copy-pasting the same message to everyone
Even better, pitch a specific video idea for the brand.
What’s helped you land your first UGC clients?
I’ve been experimenting with MCP (Model Context Protocol), and one thing that finally clicked for me is that the useful part isn’t just “giving Claude access to more tools.”
It’s letting Claude work across several tools as part of the same workflow.
For example, a workflow I’ve been testing looks roughly like this:
Claude → MCP server → external service → result back to Claude
Instead of manually:
Finding the information
Copying it
Putting it into Claude
Asking Claude to process it
Copying the result somewhere else
Claude can handle the tool interaction through MCP.
A very simplified MCP tool might look like:
@mcp.tool() def search_documents(query: str): """Search internal documents for relevant information.""" results = database.search(query) return results
Then Claude can decide when that tool is useful based on the conversation.
The interesting part
I initially thought MCP was mainly about connecting Claude to individual apps.
But I think the bigger opportunity is composing tools into workflows.
For example:
User request ↓ Claude ↓ MCP: Search ↓ MCP: Analyze ↓ MCP: Create/update ↓ Claude summarizes the result
That starts looking less like a chatbot and more like an AI operator.
One thing I’m still trying to figure out is where the practical limit is.
At what point does adding more MCP servers actually make Claude less useful because there are too many tools and overlapping capabilities?
For people who are using MCP regularly: what's the most useful real-world workflow you've built?
I’m especially interested in workflows that save significant manual work rather than just being cool demos.
I've been playing around with MCP recently, and I think I finally understand why people are excited about it.
At first I thought it was basically just a nicer way for Claude to access external tools. But after using it a bit, the interesting part is really being able to connect Claude to the stuff you already use.
Instead of:
Claude → gives me instructions → I do the work
you can get closer to:
Claude → uses the right tool → gets the result → continues working
For example, imagine telling Claude:
«“Find the information I need, check it against my files, and put the useful results somewhere I can review later.”»
With the right MCP servers, Claude can actually interact with those systems instead of just telling you how to do it.
I've been thinking about MCP less as “another AI feature” and more as a kind of bridge between Claude and all the random tools we normally have to switch between.
The part I'm still figuring out is where the practical limit is.
What are you guys actually using MCP for?
I'm especially interested in real workflows, not just “I connected Claude to X.”
If you've got an MCP setup that genuinely saves you time every day, I'd love to hear about it. Even better if it's something slightly unusual. 😄
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Post:
If you’re building or running local MCP servers with Claude Desktop and constantly running into silent hangs or timeout errors, check your log output streams.
MCP uses standard input/output (stdin/stdout) for communication between Claude Desktop and the server. If your custom server script or any third-party library emits standard print() statements or console logging to stdout, it corrupts the JSON-RPC message payload that Claude expects.
Here is a quick fix to ensure your logs don't break the connection:
Python
import sys # Instead of print("Server running...") print("Server running...", file=sys.stderr)
macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp*.log
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\logs\mcp*.log
Once I switched all my internal debugging output over to stderr, almost all of my random connection dropouts stopped completely.
Are you guys mostly building custom MCP tools in Python or Node, and what's been your biggest pain point with local setup so far?
Hey everyone, just wanted to share a quick win from my pitching strategy.
I used to send long pitch emails with full stat breakdowns, and almost all of them got ignored. A few weeks ago, I trimmed my first email down to just 3 short sentences:
- Compliment a specific recent ad they ran.
- Point out one missing gap (like needing a stronger 3-second hook for TikTok).
- Pitch a quick 5-second video concept right in the text.
Keeping it short and giving a free idea upfront boosted my reply rate from around 5% to over 20%.
What's one small tweak to your outreach that made the biggest difference for you?