Want to earn six-figures with AI? At the one-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s launch, a number of freelancers are doing just that. Better yet, they maintain that almost anyone can make money with AI.
Consider Mark Kashef. The 29-year-old Canadian earns $10,000 a month helping people navigate ChatGPT.
“I started my consultancy on Fiverr just a few days after ChatGPT came out,” he says. “All of a sudden, I went from earning a few hundred dollars a month to earning thousands. As a freelancer, it has been exhilarating.”
Kashef, whose specialty is prompt engineering, says he uses the tools himself to make cold calls on potential clients. He’s also working with a psychiatrist, who wants to automate her intake forms. And with an author, who wants to customize children’s books. Both clients expect to vastly increase their productivity and profits with automation.
Make Money with AI
Kashef is just one of many AI experts who are making a mint helping others navigate this new work landscape. Louie Martin, 38, has a full-time job. But, in his free time, he earns $150 an hour creating graphic designs with an AI tool called MidJourney, for example.
“This is just a side gig for me, but if I wanted to spend more time, I could double or triple my income,” Martin says.
But you don’t have to be an artificial intelligence expert to earn money with AI tools, both experts agree. Almost any freelance business can increase income and profitability by using these tools to automate rote work, create new products or design marketing materials. AI tools can even help you find customers and pitch them your business ideas.
How do you make money with AI?
Niche
There are literally hundreds of AI tools and more are being developed every day. No one can learn to use them all. Figure out just one thing that your business needs — or can do for others — and focus on learning how AI can help you deliver a product or service faster and more effectively. And when it comes to deciding on your business niche, the narrower the niche the better.
Martin, for example, focuses on using MidJourney to create book covers.
Why? There are hundreds of thousands of books written every year and many of them are self-published. That means the author must find an artist to create a compelling illustration that telegraphs what the book is about. However, Martin says good book-cover artists are rare. He thought he could provide a better product at a reasonable price by using AI to rapidly produce multiple variations on a specific theme.
“There are a lot of people who can design book covers cheaply — but they do it badly,” he says. “I felt like I could make covers that really conformed with specific design elements that authors requested.”
By using MidJourney, Martin says he can spin out dozens of book-cover variations, all using the client’s requested design elements, without spending hours personally manipulating the images.
Audit
If you don’t have a clear idea how AI can help your business, Kashef suggests that you conduct an AI audit. This identifies regular tasks you can give to a bot to free up time. That gives you more time to concentrate on things that require your personal touch.
Start the audit by clearly defining what you do and why you do it. Also detail what specific tasks must be completed each week or month for the business to run. And, finally, consider what makes your product or your business unique.
The processes that make the business run, but don’t define it, are areas that you can automate.
Some examples: Bloggers may use AI to create snappy and SEO-optimized headlines. Web developers can use AI to write code. Interior designers can use AI to move furniture around a virtual room, while graphic artists can use it like Martin to create multiple variations of their work.
Learn
Artificial intelligence is evolving at a breakneck pace. Even if you’re an expert in one area today, you’ll need to keep reading, experimenting and learning to remain an expert.
Kashef says he sets aside an hour every day to simply read and journal what’s going on in his business segment.
Also consider taking courses and watching YouTube tutorials on the tools you need. As these products evolve, they add features. Keeping up-to-date allows you to use them more effectively.
Get help
Not sure where or how to start? Ask an expert for help.
To be sure, you can watch YouTube tutorials all day for free. But, if you’re just getting started and find the landscape too complex to navigate on your own, it may be worth spending a few bucks to get an expert to help you.
You can find experts within your industry by approaching your trade association or union. You can also find a wide array of AI experts on Fiverr. Many of them provide one-on-one tutorials for a fairly reasonable cost.
“If you could spend $50 or $100 to save yourself two days of your time, would you do it?” asks Kashef.
Disclose
If you provide a product or service that’s produced — even in part — with AI tools, both Kashef and Martin suggest that you disclose that. This could be in the Terms of Use for your website or in the boilerplate of your contracts. Or, of course, it could be a screaming banner headline in your product advertisement.
While disclosing the use of AI tools is not a current requirement, Martin says clients appreciate the transparency and it helps them better understand the service he’s offering. However, it’s worth nothing that the Federal Trade Commission also may start requiring AI disclosures at least in some circumstances.
“There are very few things that you can’t improve with AI,” says Kashef. “You can use it to elevate your business to be extraordinary.”
12/11/2023
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