136. Introducing PromptBase, my next tiny project!

Thursday, June 2nd, 2022

Here it is: https://promptbase.com

PromptBase is a website for buying and selling prompts for AI models like GPT-3.

Prompts are basically the instructions you use to tell an AI like GPT-3 what to do, it's like code but it can do really powerful things.

This idea was born out of Paper Website, where I needed a prompt to fix spelling mistakes in OCR text.

I couldn't find one online, but I would have paid good money for one. Instead I had to spend hours making my own and learning "Prompt Engineering".

(this is not the OCR prompt I'm using, just an example of a 1st version I made)
(this is not the OCR prompt I'm using, just an example of a 1st version I made)

At the same time, a few people have asked about the prompt I made, and I thought it would be cool to make some passive income selling these magic text files.

Example of a Prompt for sale on PromptBase
Example of a Prompt for sale on PromptBase

Good prompts produce better results, and are cheap to run in terms of API costs, so if you have a good prompt it can save someone a lot of money.

On top of this, my bet is that programming is going to change a lot in the next decade.

I think I'll spend less time writing Javascript, and more time writing prompts. There's been occasions at my regular job where I've used prompts instead of code and saved weeks of time. Although this only happens maybe 1% of the time currently, it's increasing.

Anyone can sell a prompt on PromptBase, and on each sale I take a fee, a bit like an app store. Currently the split is 80% to the prompt creator (all handled via Stripe).

I'm also experimenting with a custom prompts page, where someone can request a bespoke prompt, so there's a few ways this idea can be monetized.

My next steps are to get prompt sellers onboarded and create a well stocked marketplace (currently there's just 2 prompts for sale!).

I also think this website is going to live and die on SEO, so I'm going to start optimising that, and perhaps experimenting with some Google Ads.

I'll be trying to market and improve the site this month, then will launch on ProductHunt/Twitter and write a full blog post about it afterwards. I'll share updates as I go on this daily blog in the meantime.

If you have any feedback on the idea or the website, I'd love to hear it!

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