And they usually try to sell you their courses/mentorships.
I don't know if I'm being suspicious because they seem fake or because they came out of nowhere and are earning in a month what I make in a year.
Just like you said, they all claim to make $xk per month and have a course to sign up for. I really hate this as places like product hunt are just gummed up now with Slapps (AI slop apps). The courses they sell seem to be how to quickly make Slapps, get people's email addresses and then use the authors email list management software (for a monthly fee) to endlessly send spam.
I agree with all that you said, however…
I have found that doing stuff that could be done with code with the automation tools/services that you mentioned above (plus excel) is often preferable for small businesses and certain orgs precisely so that a programmer doesn’t have to be called on every time a change is needed.
Not knocking programmers (I’ve been programming since age 10), but programmers aren’t always easy to hire and evaluate, and their cost (at least until recently) has been extremely high.
These automation tools allow for business to make a tech leap with much lower execution cost and risk.
So while I agree that a lot of the “vibe coding” stuff being promoted is drivel, that doesn’t mean that the tools themselves are not empowering in the right hands.
Step 1: Vibecode 5 trash generic apps (eg AI interior designers, gpt wrappers)
Step 2: Launch with paying 15k in google/meta ads
Step 3: Receive back ~5k in revenue
Step 4: Spam on twitter+linkedin clickbaity "heres how i reached 60K ARR in 3 milliseconds" posts to attract ex-crypto bros and hustlers
Step 5: Use your newfound following for sponsored content, courses and hopefully actual organic growth for your aforementioned trash apps