I'm wondering if I can just build them and sell off the code to make some money on the side.
So I was wondering if it's a viable strategy to build a complete product, end-to-end and put it out on the market for someone else to purchase and operationalize.
I think "side-project" is misleading. What I really meant was "quickly buildable" projects. Some examples of such projects would include a unique LLM-powered content generator, or an AI-based Google Forms, etc
remove.bg is a good example of a project in the lines of what I have in mind.
But you already told us you don't.
Have a go, but you should stay focused on getting a job. It's, unfortunately, a numbers game. I don't know your situation, smaybe you don't really need to yet.
But I did something similar when I got laid off in 2008, and in hindsight it was a massive waste of time and a way of making myself feel better without doing something actually productive to get a job.
Check out Rob Walling and StartUpsForTheRestOfUs, great podcast and lots of great advice.
Check out his stair step approach. Basically start out with a simple product. An info product, plugin or package and then keep leveling up to get to a SaaS.
Good luck, keep those resumes going out.
Code can be imitated but traction is priceless.
15 years ago it seemed a good idea to build a large number of content sites on a range of topics because these would collect "link juice" and you could either link to your own money sites or sell them to somebody else who wants to do the same. Many of the people who were doing SEO back then are doing paid ads now so it is probably not such a great idea.