The £5.23/Day Developer That's Changing Everything

Welcome to Week 31

Hi there,

For £5.23 a day - less than a pint in most UK pubs - you can have a full-stack developer working for you 24/7.

I’m not joking. Claude Code at $200/month (£157) is literally changing how I build everything. In the last week alone, I’ve built features that would have cost me over £5,000 using traditional development processes.

The maths is insane, and most UK businesses have no idea this exists…

From 69/100 to 99/100 PageSpeed - the proof is in the numbers

But First… This Week’s Deep Dive

From 69 to 99 PageSpeed: Why Claude Code + Astro Beats WordPress Every Time

I bought Elementor Pro for £199, wasted 2 hours fighting with containers inside containers, then built a 99/100 PageSpeed site in 4 days with Claude Code and Astro. The full journey includes screenshots of the transformation, real costs, and the exact method I used.

The interesting part? Most WordPress sites I see are stuck around 50-70 on PageSpeed, even after optimisation. Yet here’s my Astro site hitting 99/100 straight out of the box.

👉 See the proof and full story here →

💡 What’s Really Working Now

After building sites for 25 years, here’s what I’m seeing work THIS WEEK for UK businesses:

1. Static Sites Are Winning on Speed

My Astro sites are consistently hitting 95+ on PageSpeed while WordPress sites struggle to break 70. Google’s Core Web Vitals update means this directly impacts rankings. I built a beautiful new landing page for those considering a WordPress to Astro migration.

2. AI Development Is Real (But Not Magic)

Claude Code isn’t replacing developers - it’s making good developers 10x faster. I’m building in hours what used to take days, but you still need to know what to ask for.

What I built this week with Claude Code:

• Complete audit presentation system with PDF generation (90 minutes)
• Wix invoice import system with payment reconciliation (2 hours)
• Marketing dashboard with email tracking (45 minutes)
• WordPress to Astro migration landing page (30 minutes)

Each of these would have been a 2-3 day project before. The key? You need to understand the architecture and guide the AI properly. (I’m writing a complete guide to this for next week’s newsletter - stay tuned!)

3. Traditional Agencies Are Struggling

Agencies are finding it harder to justify their fees because business owners are learning to use AI tools better. ChatGPT for content, Claude for coding help, Canva’s AI for design - the tools are getting easier and more powerful every month.

The agencies that survive will be the ones who embrace AI and use it to deliver better results faster - not the ones trying to protect their hourly billing model. The smart play? Position yourself as the expert who knows how to leverage these tools properly.

🛠️ The 5-Minute Speed Test You Can Do Right Now

Here’s exactly how to check if your site is costing you customers:

Step 1: Test Your Speed (2 minutes)

1. Go to pagespeed.web.dev
2. Enter your website URL
3. Click “Analyse”
4. Wait for results

Step 2: Understand the Numbers (1 minute)

• 90-100: Excellent - you’re in the top 5%
• 50-89: Needs work - you’re losing conversions
• 0-49: Critical - you’re haemorrhaging customers

Step 3: Quick Win If You Score Under 70 (2 minutes)

The fastest fix? Compress your images:

1. Go to tinypng.com
2. Upload your largest images
3. Download compressed versions
4. Replace on your site

This alone can improve your score by 10-20 points.

📊 This Week’s Real Development Win

What I Actually Built: Rescued a client from a database nightmare this week. Their e-commerce platform crashed and I used Claude Code to write custom SQL extraction scripts that recovered years of order data from corrupted backups.

Time taken: 3 hours (including testing)
Traditional agency quote: “That’ll be £500 please”
Cost with Claude Code: £1.96 (£5.23 ÷ 8 hours × 3 hours)

This is the reality of AI-assisted development - solving real problems in hours, not weeks. Next week I’ll share specific client wins (with permission) showing exactly how we’re using these tools to transform UK businesses.

🚀 One Thing to Do This Week

If you do nothing else after reading this, do the PageSpeed test.

It takes 2 minutes and will tell you exactly where you stand. If you score under 70, you’re losing money every single day.

The test: pagespeed.web.dev

What to do with the results:

• Under 50: This is urgent - reply to this email and I’ll give you three specific fixes
• 50-70: You need optimisation - start with image compression
• 70-90: Good but could be better - focus on caching
• 90+: You’re doing great - focus on conversions instead

📮 Next Week

The Complete Guide to Claude Code: How to Get a £5.23/Day Full-Stack Developer

I’m sharing everything - the exact prompts I use, how to structure projects, common pitfalls to avoid, and real examples from this week’s builds. If you’ve been curious about AI development but don’t know where to start, this is for you.

Plus: Why most people fail with AI coding tools (hint: it’s not about the AI).

Until next Thursday,

Tony Cooper
Founder, We Build Stores

P.S. - If you’re still on WordPress and want to switch, reply to this email. I’ll personally review your site and tell you exactly what platform would work best. No sales pitch, just honest advice.

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