Colorazen – My first $50 MRR project (adult coloring pages, now with AI)

I’ve built a lot of projects that went nowhere. Most died before launch. Some launched but nobody cared. This one makes $50/month MRR. Tiny, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen real money come in from a side project.

It’s called Colorazen. It’s just coloring pages for adults. Sounds boring. But I needed it. I was coloring with my daughter during a stressful time and the sites I found were all clunky and outdated. So I made my own.

I built it with the tools I already knew (PHP/Symfony). Nothing fancy. Launched fast, shipped imperfect, fixed things as I went. People found it through SEO, Pinterest, Facebook groups. That was enough to get to $50/month.

This week I added AI-generated coloring pages. Now every user can get fresh designs, unlimited. It’s early but people like it.

Next steps: • Let users publish their own coloring pages. • Auto-categorize those pages, even create new categories based on demand. • Keep growing with SEO and slowly build a small community around it.

It’s not a “big startup.” It’s a tiny side project. But for me it’s proof that something can actually work.

If you’ve been through this stage: how did you onboard new users so they stick around? Any advice is welcome.

there's Google ads on it, but you probably have an adblocker ahah !

Lucky you ! Do you live in a country where there are no Google Ads, or are you behind a VPN ? I don’t see why you wouldn’t have ads if you don’t have an adblocker, it’s really strange

Thanks for pointing that out! Beginner mode should indeed have closed areas... I’ll work on improving that so it feels easier :)