Developer Tests 5 AI Skill Marketplaces in One Week, Earns $0 but Builds Useful Framework

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A developer spent a week publishing AI agent skills and MCP servers across five marketplaces — Agensi, Xiaping, Apify, MCPize, and Capafy — generating no revenue but gaining practical insight into platform automation limits. The experience led to what the developer calls an 'automation ceiling test,' which categorises platforms by whether publishing can be fully automated via API, requires one-time human action, or demands manual UI input every time. Xiaping and Apify offered the most automation-friendly paths, while Agensi required full manual web-UI publishing, a limitation only discovered after the skill package was already built. Platforms like MCPize and Apify offer 80% revenue shares and handle hosting, payments, and tax, but new listings still face moderation delays — Xiaping imposes a 30-day community trial before storefront visibility. The developer concluded that checking a platform's API capabilities before investing build time, and dedicating significant effort to promotion, are the two most critical factors for anyone selling on AI marketplaces.

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