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This income claim has not been independently verified. This article shows what the person shared so readers can see the workflow.

Evidence grade D
Light evidence (grade D: anecdotal)First-person post with specific fees and income claims that couldn't be checked; the detailed part is paywalled.

An IT Engineer's Weekend Side Business Building n8n and Claude API Automations for Clients

A Japanese IT engineer sells business automations built with self-hosted n8n and the Claude API on weekends and evenings. Nine months in, he says side income peaked at 340,000 yen a month and averages 200,000 to 250,000 yen.

Who this is about: Working IT engineer with a weekend automation consulting side business, Japan (noatie)

n8nClaudeDocker on a VPSSlackSpreadsheetsSolo foundersAgencies
Get the prompt

Added Oct 16, 2026Source: note

Income claim
Unverified claimPer the author's note.com post (translated from Japanese): side income peaked at 340,000 yen a month and still averages 200,000 to 250,000 yen a month, nine months in.
Money comes from
Fees from business clients for building automations, for example 35,000 yen for a 3-hour email-sorting workflow and 120,000 yen for a property-report automation.

What it takes

Cost
Free to self-hostHe puts running costs at about 3,000 yen a month: a VPS at 1,000 to 1,500 yen plus Claude API use (Haiku for reports).
Setup time
A few weeksOur estimate from the source, for one business.
Skill needed
Developer skillsYou build or run your own code, even if AI writes it.

Explain it simply

A full-time IT engineer builds small automations for businesses in his spare time, such as sorting emailed quote requests into a spreadsheet with a summary in Slack. He runs the automation tool on a cheap rented server and pays a little for the AI. His main lesson was about pricing: he once did a job for free that he later sold to someone else for 120,000 yen.

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How it works

  1. Self-host n8n with Docker on a VPS, so there's no limit on workflow runs.
  2. Call the Claude API from an n8n HTTP Request node for the AI steps; he uses Claude Haiku for report generation.
  3. Build for a specific client problem, such as sorting emailed quote requests, posting a summary to Slack and copying the details into a spreadsheet (3 hours of work, billed 35,000 yen).
  4. Price before building: an 8-hours-a-week property-report job he cut to 30 minutes was done free for an acquaintance; he later charged 120,000 yen for similar work.
  5. Expect first projects at 50,000 to 150,000 yen, then aim for 200,000 to 300,000 yen projects; he says later work mostly comes by referral.

How it went

After earning nothing for the first few months, he says the turning point was learning what to sell and for how much, not more technical skill. He reports a peak of 340,000 yen in a month and an average of 200,000 to 250,000 yen a month alongside his full-time job.

  • Promotional: the free part of the post ends at a paywall, and the rest (about 3,869 characters) is sold for 100 yen.
  • The income figures are his own and unverified; the monthly trend and project details promised in the title sit behind the paywall.
  • Figures are translated from the Japanese original; yen amounts are copied exactly.

Prompt

PromptWritten by our editors from the source
I'm building an n8n workflow for a client who gets quote requests by email.

Write the Claude prompt for the AI step. Given one email, return JSON with: company, contact name, contact email, what they want quoted, quantity, deadline, urgency (high/normal/low) and a two-sentence summary for Slack. Use null for anything not in the email; never guess.

Then list the n8n nodes I need (email trigger, HTTP Request to the Claude API, Slack, spreadsheet) and the edge cases to test before I hand it over.

Setup notes

  1. Agree a price and scope in writing before building, even for people you know.
  2. Check the current Claude API and VPS prices yourself; his figures are from September 2026.

Business fit

Who this suits, and how:

  • Engineers with a day job: sell small automation projects on evenings and weekends.

    Solo founders

  • Freelance automation builders: use his pricing ranges and first-project mistakes to set your rates.

    Agencies

See real examples

Related

Similar tools

Other tools for this job, and how they differ. Chosen by our editors, never paid for.

  • Make

    Visual automation builder with a free plan; a hosted alternative if you don't want to run your own server.

  • Zapier

    Broadest catalog of app connections; quicker hand-offs between a client's existing tools, priced per task.

“Light evidence” (grade D) means: A brief, early or in-progress claim. Treat it as an idea to test, not proof. How we grade. Spotted a mistake? Suggest a correction.