How to Make Money with AI

AI (artificial intelligence) is one of the hottest topics of the year. And today, we’re going to explore some of the actionable ways that you can capitalize on this new technology to either start a new business or grow one that you’ve already got.

To help me talk through these is Matt Wolfe from FutureTools.io and the FutureTools YouTube channel. Matt’s a long-time friend who’s been doing a deep dive on this stuff for the past few months and I’m anxious to get caught up.

Last week, Matt shared some of his advanced affiliate marketing strategies that helped him earn over $900k from ONE affiliate product — if you missed it, be sure to check that one out as well, but that’s where I want to start this list.

1. AI-Powered Content Website

Niche sites are having a resurgence, and Matt’s FutureTools.io is a great example of those.

FutureTools.io collects and organizes AI tools. Matt has automated the process of adding new tools to the website and uses AI to generate descriptions for each tool.

Roughly 25% of the tools on the website have an affiliate program, and Matt uses his affiliate links for those.

GetThriveCart.com, the website Matt built around the online shopping cart platform ThriveCart, is another example of a niche site.

He writes a ton of articles for the site — a process made easier by AI tools.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, generates human-like text based on a given prompt and is especially helpful in writing content fairly quickly.

OpenAI has another free tool called GPT-3 Playground where you can get familiar with how the tool works.

You can use it to test prompts, summarize articles, and rewrite content. Think of it as a kind of idea generator.

If you want your content to rank, however, you should polish it with your own voice.

“It’s always a good idea to go back through and almost use AI as a rough draft,” Matt says. “That’s how I would personally do it.”

2. Copywriter for Hire

Continuing with the AI-generated content theme, next on the list is supplementing your copywriting with AI.

There’s currently a lot of discussions online about whether AI tools like ChatGPT will put human writers out of business, but Matt isn’t too worried about that.

“One thing that you have to do well as a copywriter … is be good at coming up with the big idea ​​— the hook,” Matt says.

As it stands, AI tools can generate a rough draft for you, but they can’t quite yet provide you with the hook or angle you need to write good copy.

“I think copywriters that are going to be successful are going to be the ones that are good at looking at things from a perspective that the AI can’t look at it from.”

Plus, AI tools are still largely novel as far as the general public is concerned, so there’s plenty of market share up for grabs for copywriters.

3. Coloring Books

AI-powered side hustle #3 is making coloring books using Midjourney, an AI art generation service that launched in mid-2022.

Matt hasn’t tried doing this himself yet, but it’s something he’s excited about given the popularity of adult coloring books on platforms like Amazon.

The idea is to generate images on Midjourney and collect those into a coloring book through Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s e-book publishing platform.

“You can go into Midjourney and say, ‘Draw me an exotic car in the style of a coloring book,’” Matt explains. “It’ll actually draw the image in black and white and leave the inside unfilled.”

Midjourney allows users to generate up to 25 images for free. After that, you need to pay $10-60 per month, depending on your subscription plan, to continue using the service.

The best part about this idea is it’s print on demand, meaning Amazon will take care of order handling and fulfillment for you.

4. Stock Images

One side hustle that Matt has been doing is generating photos using Midjourney and selling them on Adobe Stock.

Adobe Stock is one of the few big name stock image sites that allow AI-generated art on their platform.

To date, Matt has generated 50 images and made about $50 in sales, so this side hustle is definitely a volume game.

What’s helped him is going where the demand already is.

Adobe Stock has a section called “Insights” that shows users the top-selling images for the previous month. You can look at that to get a feel of what images to make with Midjourney.

Matt notes that he personally has ethical boundaries he’ll never cross in doing this side hustle. That’s largely why he prefers Midjourney over other AI art generation services.

“Midjourney has really its own look now so you can see images and go, ‘That was generated with Midjourney,’” he explains.

In other words, provided that you don’t plug an artist’s name into the prompt, Midjourney will spit out an image that doesn’t look like any specific artist’s style.

5. Faceless YouTube Channel

Next on the list is creating videos using AI tools if you have existing blog content that you want to push over to YouTube.

If you want to make a video about the benefits of GPT-3, for example, you can use an AI video generator to create a slide deck complete with text and images. You can then use tools like DaVinci Resolve or ScreenFlow to add a voiceover to each slide.

Some AI-powered video generators worth checking out are:

• Lumen5 – With Lumen5, you can feed it a link to an article or blog post and it will turn the text into a video. You can then add music, insert new images, and tweak the format.
• Fliki – Much like Lumen5, Fliki allows you to transform your text content or blog post into a video or voiceover in a few minutes using lifelike AI voices.
• Tome – Using GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, Tome AI helps you to create presentations easily. You can also use it to overcome writer’s block and craft a narrative from scratch.
• SlidesAI – SlidesAI allows you to easily create slides for presentations. Once you have a first draft, you can customize the look and feel of each slide.
• Descript – Descript is a collaborative audio/video editor. It has a feature called Overdub, which lets you create an ultra-realistic text-to-speech model of your voice.

6. Voice-Over Impressions on Fiverr

Matt has yet to try this next side hustle, but it’s worth looking into all the same.

The idea is to create celebrity voice-over impressions using Voice.ai, a real-time ultra-realistic voice changer, and then sell those impressions on Fiverr.

Voice-over and voice-impression freelance services are popular on online marketplaces, so this idea certainly has side hustle potential.

7. Ad Campaign Manager

AI-powered side hustle #7 is making and running conversion-focused ads using Ad Creative.

Ad optimization — the process of creating and perfecting ads that are relevant to your audience — is a service that businesses pay for all the time, and AI can give you an edge if you want to offer a similar service as a side hustle.

Ad Creative, for example, allows you to generate hundreds of high-performing ad creatives in seconds. It also gives you real-time feedback on the performance of your ads.

8. Social Media Management

Next on the list is social media management — specifically, using AI tools to create social media content, such as tweets and Instagram captions, for businesses.

“There’s a lot of companies out there that would want somebody to go in and manage their social media,” Matt says, and that’s something AI tools can help with.

Tweet Hunter, for example, curates top tweets in different categories, which you can use as inspiration in crafting your own tweets. It also gives you daily custom and ready-to-publish tweets, thread ideas, and more.

With the tool’s AI-powered TweetPredict function, you can even check out your tweet’s predicted performance before you put it out.

Another tool called Replai lets you generate meaningful replies to tweets, create viral jokes, and increase interaction. With Replai, you can easily grow your account and boost your visibility.

And that’s just Twitter, so if you can put on your agency or freelancer hat and create content for other social media platforms better, smarter, and faster using similar AI tools, then there’s definitely some opportunity there.

9. Image Improvement

Image improvement is a much-needed service that many people would pay good money for on Fiverr and other online marketplaces.

AI tools let you offer this service without having to be a Photoshop expert.

With ClipDrop, for example, you can easily remove backgrounds from images. The tool also lets you remove elements from an image with just a few clicks.

There are even tools that allow you to automatically enlarge and enhance pictures, clean them up, and remove watermarks.

“There’s all sorts of tools … to just make images better for the use case that you’re trying to go for,” Matt says.

10. Podcast Show Notes

Rounding out this list is a podcast show notes service made faster and easier by AI tools. One such tool that Matt has used in the past is Melville, an AI-powered podcast copywriter.

How Melville works is you feed it an audio file for it to transcribe. Once that’s done, it’ll spit out an episode summary and timestamped bullet points of what you talked about on the episode.

You’ll still need to go in and clean the show notes draft, but Melville at least provides you with a good starting point.

However, Matt notes that because AI-powered podcast tools like Melville aren’t perfect, you should offer some additional value if you plan to offer this service.

11. Bonus: Prompt Engineering

Here’s another AI-powered side hustle idea from Matt as a bonus: selling prompts.

AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney spit out whatever prompt you give it, but the results vary greatly. For example, if you ask Midjourney to give you an image of a wolf in the forest, you’ll get different images of a wolf in the forest.

But if you asked Midjourney for a wolf in the forest in the style of Synthwave with colors X, Y, and Z, you’ll likely end up with better, cooler-looking results that are closer to what you’re looking for. That’s the type of prompt that people apparently pay good money for.

Matt says he’s seen marketplaces sprout up where people sell their prompts to other people. One Twitter user reported selling one of their prompts for $150!

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