I sell VPS access to people in countries with bad internet
I had absolutely no idea this was even a market until someone explained it to me. So bear with me because this took me a while to fully understand too.
Last year I was in a Discord server playing Fortnite. There was this guy (shoutout to him wherever he is) from southeast asia who was always complaining about his ping. Like 200-300 ms on every server, which was basically unplayable for him. He mentioned he'd tried VPNs but they made it worse and he just wanted a machine physically located in the US that he could remote into and run things from.
I didn't fully get what he meant at first. But after some back and forth I realized he basically wanted a VPS, a virtual private server. A remote computer that lives in a US data center with fast stable internet that he could access from anywhere.
I had just claimed my Azure credits offer and had barely touched them. So I told him let me try something.
Spun up a small VM in Azure's US East data center. Sent him the login details. He remoted in and his jaw dropped apparently. He was getting speeds he'd never seen his entire life lol (he barely averaged 10 mbps).
He asked what I wanted for it. I said $20/month honestly just to see if he'd say yes.
He said yes immediately.
That's when I realized I'd accidentally found a side gig.
The thing people in countries with fast reliable internet don't realize is that a stable US-based connection is life changing for a lot of people. Whether it's gaming, remote work, accessing services that are banned in their country, running bots for their own businesses... There is demand. And they're willing to pay monthly for that solution.
I started posting in a few Discord servers and some international tech communities. Within two months I had 11 people paying monthly. My Azure credits covered the compute almost entirely. My overhead was basically zero.
I eventually had to get smarter about scaling it and the credits don't last forever obviously (there are some ways around), but the point is I bootstrapped the whole thing without spending a single dollar upfront. The credits gave me enough runway to figure out if there was a real business here before risking anything.
If you haven't claimed your Azure credits yet, you're sitting on a goldmine basically.