I Created 10 Creative Websites in 30 Days

The Showreel

Before this challenge started, I never thought I could pull it off. Enough talk, let me show you the highlight reel from all 10 sites first. This is what 30 days of blood, sweat, and tears looks like:

The Story Behind the Challenge

I've always been powerless against those jaw-dropping, dopamine-spiking websites. Every time I see one, a little voice inside me shouts:

I so badly want to be the person who creates experiences like this!

Before this challenge, I'd built two fun, immersive experimental sites purely out of passion. Finishing them made me happy, but there was also this hollow feeling afterward. As a UI/UX designer, deep down I want my work to solve real problems and create business value, not just look pretty. And because I had no idea how to bring this kind of craft into an actual market, I quietly swallowed my doubts and went back to my regular UI/UX job.

Then one day, I stumbled onto one of Olivier's videos.

That video hit me like a bolt of lightning. It made me realize there are two completely different paths in the web world. One is the more widely known SaaS product path, all about specs and logic. The other is the interactive web path, focused on sensory experience, built for brand marketing and storytelling. The second that video ended, my scalp was tingling. I used to think I was slacking off, wasting my time on pretty effects that meant nothing. The truth was, I just didn't know which world I belonged to.

Once I knew the direction, I felt like a little bird that had finally spotted its way home. Now I just had to grow my wings strong enough to fly back to the nest that was meant for me.

And so, this crazy challenge of building 10 websites in 30 days was born.

My original intention was simple. I wanted to prove that beyond art experiments, I could also redesign for real local brands and lift their image with top-tier motion visuals. But then I thought: who's going to trust some kid with nothing but playful side projects? If no one was going to give me the chance, then I'd create the chance myself. I decided to research beautiful local shops directly, redesign and build brand new sites for them on my own, and once finished, email the demo videos straight to the owners as cold outreach. This wild idea was also inspired by Olivier. His very first project was for a friend who didn't even know they needed a website.

The Struggle in the Middle, and the Loneliness of a One-Person Show

I had the idea, but I was still full of doubt about my own design and development skills. On top of that, this was a challenge I started entirely on my own. No one watching, no one expecting anything, and definitely no one paying me a cent. It was all a one-person show. Whenever I got stuck, I felt like Spider-Man in the movies, fighting crime alone, carrying that quiet loneliness of not being understood and not being seen.

Along the way, my thinking kept shifting:

• Early websites: learning skills and experience > actually landing a client. I only cared whether I had a visual vision for the brand, and whether the tech I wanted to use (like GSAP) was something I actually wanted to learn. But after several sites, not a single shop replied.
• Later websites: actually landing a client > learning skills and experience. The frustration made me get real and adjust my strategy. I started asking whether this shop even had the budget for a redesign, and what serious pain points in their current site my design could actually fix. I also started rewriting my cold emails, terrified of coming across as just another annoying spam pitch.

For me, the hardest part was never the design or the code. It was the voice constantly murmuring inside my head.

Every day, while hunting for target shops, a little devil's voice kept circling in my mind:

"Their site works perfectly fine right now, so what are you even going to change?" "Maybe they don't need a website to find customers at all." "Their current site was made by another designer, so who are you to butt in?" "The owner probably doesn't even care what the site looks like."

With the crushing weight of zero replies, there were plenty of moments when I genuinely felt like I'd accomplished nothing.

But here's the magical part. Every time I gritted my teeth, finished building a site, and watched the final product come to life smoothly in the browser, the sense of accomplishment inside me would instantly explode. I could clearly see the traces of my own progress. My process got smoother, and when I hit a wall, I found solutions faster.

Even though no shop ever wrote back, I suddenly realized: oh my gosh, I think I've found the thing I love doing most in my whole life. This was so much more fun than drawing user flows and doing competitor research back when I worked on SaaS products!

So What Did I Actually Gain From This Challenge?

"So did you really just work for free for a whole month?" you might ask.

Actually, during the first week, when every cold email vanished into the void, I already felt I needed another path. So I decided to build this whole journey in public. Partly so my one-person show could get a little remote accountability from people online, and partly in the hope of attracting the kind of clients who were on the same wavelength and genuinely had a need.

At first I honestly had no expectations. I figured, who wants to watch some person hyping themselves up building websites online?

But to my surprise, there really was a group of like-minded people who started getting curious about what I was doing. They left comments, cheered me on, and gave me support. Even more miraculously, because of these public records, I actually found clients who wanted to work with me. When that bit of luck landed on my head, I was completely stunned. My follower and view counts aren't some crazy huge numbers, but for me they were already more than enough, and warm enough.

Looking back, building 10 websites in a 30-day burst came in large part from the thrill of actually making things. But without the support of these online friends, there's a real chance I would have given up halfway, or dragged it out until I quietly pretended it never happened. It was the warmth of the community that walked with me and helped me finish this lonely challenge.

So, What's Next?

Now that the challenge is done, did I suddenly become a master of cool websites?

Of course not. My road is still long. There's still so much tech I want to learn and so many visuals I want to try. Next up is bringing the projects with the clients who chose to believe in me perfectly to launch. My hope is that one day, my development and design skills can truly stand shoulder to shoulder with the top creative developers sitting in studios in big cities like Montreal and Paris.

AI is developing at breakneck speed right now. Back when I did SaaS UI/UX, I often feared that one day I'd be replaced by AI. But now that I've turned toward building cool websites, I actually can't wait for AI to get better even faster! Because once it takes the repetitive work off my plate, I can free up more time and energy to create work the world has never seen before.

In the end, once this challenge wrapped up, I suddenly felt like my vision for the future had become incredibly wide and clear. The road ahead might still be bumpy, but at least this is a path I chose for myself, and one I genuinely love.

I'm Carol, living in Canada, and my story is only just beginning. Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I hope it brings you a little inspiration, and feel free to chat with me or follow my socials~