What if you got paid for every single second you waited for an AI?
If you use AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex, you know the drill. You ask it to do something, and then... you wait.
A few seconds. A few minutes. Sometimes longer. You just stare at the "Thinking..." spinner.
But one developer had a crazy idea: what if that little loading message showed ads while the AI was working? And what if the money from those ads went directly to the people staring at them?
The Joke That Became a $30 Million Business
Enter **Kickbacks**.
It started as a joke. The creator built a simple VS Code extension (and CLI tweak) that connects to your AI tools. When the AI is working on your task, Kickbacks replaces the normal loading message with a tiny, non-intrusive text advertisement (like *"Linear ยท issue tracking built for speed"*).
When that ad gets shown while you're waiting, you get a 50% cut of the revenue.
What began as a funny experiment accidentally went viral. It exploded into a $30 million business, with some developers making over **$70 a day** just by doing their normal work and letting the AI run.
Should You Try It?
It's the ultimate passive income loop. You don't change your workflow. You don't do extra work. You literally just let the AI do its job, and you get paid for the latency.
**The catch?** Security and privacy. While Kickbacks claims they only track "impression events" (how long an ad is visible) and never read your codebase or prompts, some enterprise developers remain cautious. The extension polls for remote updates, which can be a supply chain risk for strict corporate environments.
But if you're a freelancer, a student, or building personal projects? It's a no-brainer way to turn dead time into coffee money.
The attention economy has officially reached the terminal.
