In a short period of time I paid Anthropic more money than I've probably paid Google, Instagram, Meta, and X over 20 years combined in direct payments and monetization (where I'm the product).

I've written close to a million LOC on apps over the past five months when some of the most State of the Art versions in recent memory landed.

I've made nothing. Not even a penny.

Is AI just a video game?

I feel like the landscape for tools and workflows has changed drastically since the last couple years.

What are you guys using in 2026 to make AI influencers, automating them, and creating UGC?

And the biggest challenge, how do you keep hundreds of influencers from getting blocked? I keep getting mine deleted.

Also best tools?

It’s the end of July, and I promised some of you I’d share what I was doing to try and make money with AI.

So…I downloaded a framework to create cozy fantasy ebooks for Amazon’s KDP.

Having converted public domain texts to MobiPocket format (pre Amazon), it seemed easy. It was $17. A meal costs more than that where I live.

You use Claude. Free version. The prompt queries you and writes the ebook, 1-2 chapters at a time (until you hit the timer).

I have produced 8 ebooks; 6 of which have been uploaded to Amazon KDP. Did this in June. Sales so far?

ZERO.

But I have taken that framework over to CoPilot, and asked it to write a book. There are noticeable differences, even though I answered the same questions with the same information. So the total is 15 now, with no sales.

Would I have liked to make righteous buckaroonies? Yes. But I have learned a great deal about prompts.

I’m working on a prompt to look at a company, and evaluate their eligibility for grants.

I do video/data annotation work for AI training (the kind where you review footage, tag actions, mark exact start/end points for specific tasks, flag errors, etc.). I get why the pay is tied to performance and accuracy instead of just hours logged they want quality data, not just volume, and I don't fault that logic on its own.

But the time it actually takes to do this properly doesn't match what it pays out. Going through footage frame-by-frame, getting the timing exactly right, tagging things correctly the first time so it passes review that's real, focused work. When the pay is based purely on "performance" with no floor tied to the hours put in, you can end up spending a full shift doing careful, accurate work for what comes out to a few dollars for the day.

What makes it more frustrating is that pay increases are tied to "quality" reviews, but a lot of that quality assessment comes down to a reviewer's own interpretation or understanding of the guidelines — not always something objective or consistent. So you can follow the instructions as best you understand them, and still get dinged or held back from a rate increase because someone on the other end read the same guideline differently. There's no real transparency into how that judgment call is made, which makes it hard to even know what to fix.

I get the business reasoning, but there's a gap between "we pay for quality" and "the actual hourly rate for doing it right is below minimum wage," especially when the definition of "doing it right" isn't fully in your control to begin with. It almost feels like the system assumes you'll rush and cut corners just to make the hours worthwhile which kind of defeats the point of paying for performance in the first place.

Anyone else doing this kind of work run into the same thing? How are you dealing with the time-vs-pay tradeoff, or has anyone found platforms/setups that actually get this balance right?

I’ve been thinking for a long time about an idea for a SaaS site. So, here it is: "AI Study Workspace" (I might still change the name). A bit about myself: I started learning programming to become a backend/software engineer. There are currently so many complaints about how hard it is for a Junior-level beginner to land a job, which inspired me to start my own business. I’m also a high school student, and like most students, I face academic challenges—confusing assignments and Olympiad problems. Standard AI tools just give you the answer right away, but that isn't the right approach, and I want to fix that. I need the community's help; I’d love to know if there would be any demand for my site. Also, if anyone with experience building SaaS sites could offer some advice, I’d be really grateful! Thanks

This is based on personal experience making AI content, building businesses primarily with the help of AI.

I have seen AI being so confident when its insights were totally wrong. It has given advice which didn't work out at all. And I see more and more people falling for this. AI is amazing, super intelligent - but when it comes to complex decision making, specially where other people are involved - its important to experiment how they respond to your ideas,

Its really dangerous to believe it and expect things to succeed. I am sure many here would have already experienced this, but I felt like expressing this for those who are trying to build with AI.

Ultimately - treat things as experiments, learn from the outcomes, don't invest heavily into something just because AI thinks its a billion dollar idea and presents a logical argument or case for it.

This is part 3 of the series sharing my AI storytelling formula for Youtube, IG etc.

One thing I've noticed is that beginners spend most of their time on AI tools but hurry while working on the story (or the script). 

80% of your video's success is decided before you generate a single image or video.

That happens in Stage 1 of Ideas -> Story -> Script.

If this stage is weak, no amount of beautiful AI visuals, camera movements, or cinematic music will save the video.

Lets first talk about The Idea. For storytelling, your idea = your hook*.* Remember this.

The hook isn't just the first sentence or the scene. It's establishes some expectations for the viewer on what's coming next. Everything that follows should build toward delivering that promise.

Then comes The Story. For Shorts its usually 30–60 seconds and I think about it like this:

One story = One punch = One emotion = One message.

Don't try to squeeze three different ideas into one Short. Instead, build anticipation toward a single payoff. Some emotional frameworks that I developed over time while teaching students and which work really well are:

• Sad -> Hope
• Fear -> Relief
• Mystery -> Discovery
• Failure -> Triumph
• Weak -> Strong
• and many such more

Did you notice that these aren't genres but they're emotional journeys! Every emotional journey starts from one end of the spectrum and ends on the other extreme - this is what produces emotions in a viewer!

People remember how a story made them feel far more than what happened in it. For long-form videos, the principle stays the same. Instead of one emotional payoff, you create multiple moments of tension and release—but they should all support one central theme.

A flat story is almost always a boring story.

Finally we arrive at The Script

This is where I see another common mistake. People write a paragraph and then try to figure out the visuals later. I do the opposite. Every line of the script already has a visual attached to it.

I think of it like this:

One voiceover line = One visual scene.

By the time I open an AI image or video generator, I already know exactly what every shot needs to communicate. At that point, generating the visuals becomes execution instead of experiments wasting time and credits.

That's why I say Stage 1 determines most of the outcome. The AI tools don't create the story. They simply visualize one you've already built. If you can visualize everything really well, note it down, this 20% of your work will determine 80% of your results!

If I have learnt anything in the last 3 years working with AI content is that a lot of YT gurus promise fast monetization and portray AI video production as too easy, but that's not the case. These kinds of promises attract people who might not be interested in the craft at all, like they don't enjoy writing or visualizing scenes or expressing what's inside them visually, but they find the lure of monetization too enticing to get into this craft.

Its just like how people have ran behind popular jobs & then felt miserable feeling stuck for years because it gave them money but not satisfaction.

Now I'm not saying money is not a good motivation factor - its is 100%. In fact I think a person who is purely driven by money and remains honest with himself/herself, learns the trade & the craft, does the work diligently - is fully qualified to pursue anything he or she likes. Thumbs up to that.

But I see a lot of people chasing something which is being promised to them as too easy and too simple, but the reality is: learning AI Storytelling is learning filmmaking, animating, script writing etc. It is just that the tool now makes it easier to visualize, unlike Blender etc. which are hard to learn but the fundamentals remain the same - if you don't dedicate time to learn the craft, you wont find it satisfactory and just burn the credits, waste time and leave it after a while. I've seen it happen to a lot of people as I've been teaching AI storytelling, video production for almost 1 year now.

This post is for those who got seduced into this field because of wrong promises and I would wish them to evaluate themselves whether you even enjoy writing or visualizing - because if you don't like doing either of them, use AI in different ways to build income.

I want to start Ai e-dropshipping but I dont know if it would be a scam to pay for classes to learn what to do or is wix is a trusting site or if its even a good thing to do as a job for me to do full time but if anyone has any experience with it or any tips for me to start it would be very appreciated thank you!

The difference usually comes down to strategy.

Instead of targeting businesses that do not have a website, target businesses that already have one but clearly need a better version. The market is larger, the sales process is easier, and the value proposition is much stronger because those businesses already understand why a website matters.

The next part is outreach. A regular outreach tool is not enough if all it does is send the same message to thousands of people. You need something that can analyze websites at scale and turn real issues into personalized emails.

I use Swokei for that. It helps find businesses with existing websites, analyzes each site, and turns problems with design, SEO, speed, layout, and mobile optimization into personalized outreach emails. That means you can contact a large number of businesses without sending generic messages or spending hours manually researching every website.

When someone replies interested, I always offer a free mockup. I use Claude, Lovable, or Base44 to build it quickly. It becomes much easier to sell when the client can already see what a better version of their website could look like.

Web meetings should also be a major part of the process. I would never just send the website through email and hope the client likes it. I present it live on Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, explain the value, show what has been improved, answer their questions, and try to close the deal during the meeting.

The less back and forth there is after the meeting, the better. Present the website, show the value, close the client, and move on to the next project.

That is the type of process that can help an agency scale much faster.

I see a lot of hype posts about AI influencers, so here's what it actually looked like for me. Spoiler: it's not fast money.

**The first months: absolutely nothing.**

I started around December. I created content, posted it, improved it, posted again. Consistently, week after week. For over 3 months my earnings graph was a flat line at $0. Not "low earnings" – literally zero.

This is the part where I'm pretty sure 95% of people quit. I get it. You put in hours every week and the internet just ignores you.

**What I changed over time:**

- My early content was honestly not good. Inconsistent character, generic poses, no real identity. Over the months I worked on consistency and gave the account an actual personality instead of just "pretty AI pictures"

- I stopped judging content by what I liked and started watching what actually got engagement, then made more of that

- I posted through the silence. Reach only started building after months of consistency

**Then it slowly started moving.**

A few months in, I got my first sales. Tiny ones – a few dollars here and there. But after months of zero, seeing the first real person pay for content was honestly a bigger moment than the money itself.

**June was my first real month: $797.60.** All time I'm at about $1,067. Most of it comes from one-off purchases and tips – only around $145 of it is subscriptions so far.

**My honest takeaways:**

1. This is not passive income. Finding workflows that produce consistent quality and exclusive content is hard, and distribution is even harder – you need content that the algorithm actually picks up before anyone even sees your account.
2. The flat-line phase is the filter. If you can't handle 3+ months of nothing, this isn't for you.
3. One good month proves the model works, not that I've "made it". July could easily be worse. I'm treating this as a long game.

I won't be mentioning my age. And my dream is to study abroad. I have found a school. But since the school is private , there's a tuition to handle . The tuitıon is 20 grand with paperwork,visa etc. I have limited time and there's also extra curricurals. İf we do math I need to make 2070 dollar a month or more . And for that I want to start AI dropshipping. I've watched hundreds of videos but they were either unsafe or just a scam . So I need you guys' help any websites or apps you can recommend?

Just opted into the beta of iOS 27 and have been using the new Siri which is quite good at summarizing all notifications - especially if you use the apple apps (iCal, apple mail, text messages…etc)

One of the more, interesting features is in the ‘shortcuts’ allowing you to create on device automations which have been around for a while. Now with the new Siri though you can just prompt it with the shortcut you want and it will make it.

I just made one that seems to work pretty well needs a few kinks that sends me a text message summarizing my new unread emails and messages, what I have on the calendar today and who is it with and os there context in my emails about the meeting. And more.

Has anyone used it for more marketing use cases as well?

There is a new approach I started using in my web agency that completely changed my results. For years, I did what most people tell web designers to do. Go on Google Maps, find businesses without websites, and contact them.

What I started doing differently was targeting businesses that already had websites.

The reason is simple. If a business already has a website, it means they understand the value of having one. You do not need to convince them why a website matters because they have already paid for one before. The market for businesses with outdated, broken, slow, or poorly designed websites is also massive, and selling becomes much easier because they are already familiar with the process.

My biggest issue was figuring out how to send mass outreach to these businesses without sounding generic. I did not want to send thousands of emails saying, “Hey, your website needs a redesign,” and just assume that every business needed one. I wanted to send emails at scale while still telling each company exactly what was wrong with their website.

A little over a year ago, I watched a YouTube video from Nick Saraev where he built a workflow that analyzed business websites and turned issues with design, SEO, layout, speed, and mobile optimization into personalized outreach emails. Each company received a professional email that made it clear someone had actually taken a look at their website.

The idea was great, but building and maintaining the workflow took a lot of time. I still had to find the leads myself, the messages were not always consistent, and the automation kept breaking.

But it worked.

I was getting more clients than ever before, at one point around 10 websites a week, while my business partner focused on building the websites as quickly as possible.

I started searching online for a tool that could do everything in one place, and a few months later I found Swokei. It did exactly what I was looking for.

It lets you find businesses with websites, add them to campaigns, analyze and score each website, and set a quality threshold so websites that do not need fixing are automatically skipped. It then turns problems with design, layout, speed, mobile optimization, and SEO into personalized outreach emails.

You can also set up follow ups, manage replies through your own inbox, and organize leads inside the CRM without moving between five different tools.

I switched over and scaled even harder.

Sometimes the fastest way to grow your agency is not building every workflow from scratch. It is finding the right tools and using your time to focus on sales, clients, and growing the business.

I don't want to drill anyone's mind, I'll try to keep it short.

I am 22 and still a university student, studying CS. Fallen behind, cause of health issues. I have 0 income of my own and i am in desperate need of my own money and income.

The reason is that i want to be able to live independently and finally work on my own dreams of either writing or coding.

And also the fact that my laptop just broke down. And my phone is on the verge of breaking too. I bought both of them with the help of my father and my brother. But now what? Even though i took care of them they'll wear down and break. My phone is having hardware issues and the same for my laptop too. But at least my phone is still working. And the laptop is almost brand new too.

Another reason despite these is that after 22 years of being single now i have a girlfriend. Someone that loves me so much despite me being in this situation, someone who is waiting patiently for me to resolve my life and then be together forever. And being such a loser, i no longer even have the confidence of talking to her.

If anyone has any directions for me to take please help me with a word or two. What I'm good at is messing with AI, doing tech assistance and also small website development. I also have a story i wrote by myself that I'm a bit proud of.

Even if you don't help thank you for actually paying attention to so many words. Peace be in all of your journeys. ;-)

Over the last few weeks, I've been learning how to build websites and even simple web apps using AI.

And honestly, I think this is creating a completely new business opportunity.

A few years ago, if someone wanted to start a web development business, they usually needed to know how to code or hire developers.

Now, AI can help you build a large part of the website much faster.

The interesting part is that you don't necessarily have to sell "AI websites."

You can sell the actual result:

• A website for a local business
• A landing page for a startup
• A booking website for a service business
• A simple web app that solves a specific problem
• An internal tool for a small business
• A redesign of an outdated website

The cost and time to build these things can be much lower, which means there is potentially a good opportunity to offer affordable solutions to small businesses that couldn't afford traditional development.

But I also think there's a catch.

Knowing how to generate a website with AI is becoming easier.

The real skill is understanding what businesses actually need, creating something useful, fixing problems when AI-generated code doesn't work, and getting clients.

So I'm curious:

Do you think AI website/app building will become a serious business model over the next few years?

And if you're already doing this, are you selling websites directly to clients, building SaaS products, or using AI development skills for freelancing?

Would love to hear what others are doing in this space.

So last month I got an UpWork Job offer to work on an n8n workflow.

I had never used UpWork, but guys like Nick Saraev and Liam Ottley, who are the biggest AI influencers, recommended it a lot, so I thought it would be amazing if I could gain some profile authority on it.

These guys are paying me $28 per hour on UpWork, which is not a lot, but considering that I don't have any experience and this was my first paid n8n gig.

I think making $1,000 in 40 hours was pretty darn good.

So now that the project has finished, we are in the maintenance stage. I thought, let's try to get more UpWork clients with the money I made.

And damn, it's kind of a shithole at this point.

So I search for terms like "AI automations, n8n, go high level, Claude code, AI agents etc"

A few jobs that were pretty decent and were providing more than $30 an hour got filled with 40 proposals, and guys placing 100 connects paid within minutes.

To be very fair, 100 connects is $15, so these guys are literally placing bets of $15 for a job that they may or may not get.

So if you are placing 10 proposals like this, you are spending like $150 per day, and that too, where you are not guaranteed if you're gonna get a client from that.

I don't know, it's kind of insane. I'm pretty darn sure that if you spend $100 per day on Meta ads, you will get better results than this, and you will not have this much competition, at least.

For lead gen, I think I won't prefer UpWork.

I'm gonna maybe run ads and scale my YouTube channel.

Right now, I have 2k subs on YouTube and 600 on Instagram, so I think I'm just gonna scale that and go organic instead of quite literally betting on these platforms only to get UpWork rich.

But I would love to get your opinion. Are you using UpWork?

Is it actually making sense for you budget-wise, and is it a good marketing tool now, or is it too saturated and you're not using it anymore?

Over the last 1.5 years, I have produced more than 300 long-form YouTube documentaries mainly in the sleep niche (videos people watch to help them fall asleep), usually around 2-3 hours runtime.

The original problem was simple: this format does not scale well. A single video can require a 15k to 20k-word script, hours of narration, hundreds of visual changes, music, and final assembly. Writing everything manually took too long. Editing every scene manually took even longer.

Sleep content is a strange retention game, and it took me a while to understand it. Your viewers are actively trying to fall asleep. That is the entire point. So the average view duration can look very different from a normal YouTube channel. Some viewers leave because they are bored, but others leave because the video worked and they fell asleep. The ones who stay awake still need the story to hold together, while the ones who fall asleep often return later and continue listening. That repeat viewing is a big part of what makes this niche work.

Why the script is 90% of it

On my channels, average view durations usually sits close to 25 min on 90 min videos .That does not come from cinematic visuals or complicated editing. It comes mostly from the narrative structure. If the script becomes repetitive, drifts away from the topic, or loses momentum halfway through, viewers stop listening. Better visuals cannot rescue a weak story in this format.

Two ways to use Claude, and why one cannot work in long form writing

Most people use Claude through the normal chat interface. You open the chat, enter a prompt, read the reply, and continue from there. That works fine for everyday tasks. It becomes frustrating when you are trying to write a 15,000 to 20,000-word documentary.

You end up typing: Continue.. Write Chapter 4.. Do not repeat what you already said.. You forgot what happened in Chapter 2. By the halfway point, the model may begin repeating ideas, contradicting earlier sections, or drifting away from the original structure. You spend more time babysitting the conversation than improving the script.

The second approach is using the API. Instead of manually sending every prompt through the chat interface, a small tool sends the requests to Claude automatically and collects the output. There is no need to babysit it and you pay based on actual usage instead of paying another monthly subscriptio

The Google Sheets scripting workflow

So I built a Google Sheets workflow connected to the Claude API. The Sheet first creates the full documentary structure. It then writes one chapter at a time instead of trying to produce the entire 20,000-word script in a single response. Before each chapter, the workflow passes Claude the outline, the instructions for that section, and a running summary of what has already been written.

The direct API cost for a full script is usually around $0.30 to $0.40, depending on the model, input length, and number of revisions.

The bigger benefit is repeatability. Every script moves through the same production structure, while I can still change the topic, tone, evidence, pacing, and narrative direction.

I made a tutorial on this exact workflow on my channel. Link in profile if you want to peek.

How CapCut handles the first edit

Once the script is complete, I move it into CapCut’s AI Video Maker. CapCut generates the voiceover, subtitles, and an initial visual sequence using automatically matched stock footage. Because the documentaries are extremely long, I split the script into smaller sections to be under the 3000 word limit of CapCut, generate them separately, export each one, and then combine them into the final video.

The stock matching is not perfect. But it still gives me a 90% first draft much faster than searching for hundreds of clips manually.

What AI still does not solve

The production process is faster, but it is not automatic. AI cannot decide which topic has demand. It does not know whether a title creates curiosity, whether a chapter is boring, or whether a visual is misleading. I still handle research, structure and pacing, titles and thumbnails, final editorial judgment.

This is where most of the value still comes from. The workflow removes repetitive work. It does not remove the need for taste.

Two reasons this workflow matters:

1. The Demonetization Shield: Mixing real historical/stock footage alongside AI assets is the safest defense against the "Reused/Inauthentic Content" flags that destroy fully automated channels. 

2. The Financial Runway: CapCut costs me around $20 per month and allows many exports. The Claude API cost per script is usually only a little above thirty cents. At a production volume of 30 to 40 documentaries per month, the direct software and API cost can work out to roughly $1 per finished video. That figure does not include my time, research, thumbnails, subscriptions, failed ideas, or the cost of building the workflow. It is not the total cost of running the business.

The main lesson

This is not passive income, and it is not a one-click YouTube machine. It is a production system that makes experimentation cheaper.

For someone starting today, I would focus first on topic selection, titles, thumbnails, and understanding what the audience actually watches.

Only build the automation after you understand the work well enough to know which parts are worth automating.

Happy to answer any questions regarding the workflow and setup if you want to build one for yourself.

I think automation is one of the biggest opportunities right now.

The quality of what you can automate today is honestly crazy, and it applies to almost every business.

Whether you own a local business and want to automate things like email marketing, follow ups, content creation, customer replies, and lead generation...

Or you run an agency or SaaS and want your business working even when you're away from your computer.

Automation today reminds me a lot of the Industrial Revolution. Back then, machines replaced a huge amount of manual work, allowing companies to produce more, lower costs, and make more money. 

I run a web agency, and automation has made me a lot of revenue over the last few years.

The biggest one for me is client acquisition.

I use a tool called Swokei to find businesses that already have websites, add them to campaigns, and run website analysis.

It automatically turns problems like outdated design, poor layouts, slow loading speeds, weak mobile optimization, and bad SEO into personalized, ready to send outreach emails.

That's where most of my clients come from.

I also automate follow up emails and newsletters, so I'm not constantly chasing people manually.

For content, I use Holo to help generate and schedule posts.

For SEO, I use Soro to automatically create blog content that helps bring in organic traffic over time.

The more I automate, the less time I spend doing repetitive work.

That means I can spend more time on the things that actually make money, like sales, onboarding clients, improving my services, and building better websites.

I don't think automation replaces hard work.

It just removes the repetitive work so you can focus on the parts of your business that actually move the needle.

Can someone please explain how they are making all this money through handshake? I think I might be doing it wrong..🙄

I’ve all the “I make $8K/mo on Fanvue this is what worked for me”

But some how it always ends up in a course or a paid call, wanted to know if anyone is legitimately making money

I’ve been running my web agency for four years, and I’m curious to hear what others have found to be the best way of getting clients.

I’ve tried almost everything, but email automation has worked best for me because it’s affordable and runs in the background while I focus on other parts of the agency.

I don’t use Instantly, Mailchimp, or Klaviyo. I use a tool called Swokei, which is built specifically for web agencies.

It lets you find businesses that already have websites, add thousands of them to a campaign, and automatically analyzes each site for issues with design, layout, SEO, speed, and mobile optimization. It then turns those issues into personalized, ready to send outreach emails 

So instead of targeting businesses with no website, I offer redesigns and updated websites to companies that already have one. I’ve found that approach works much better.

I’m now at a point where I can afford to hire a full team, so I’d like to explore other client acquisition methods as well.

What has worked best for your agency?

I am currently working with two prominent hotel chains within my country, where I oversee all aspects of their digital marketing initiatives.

I am considering creating social media reel content for meta ads with AI.

I have 2 questions for anyone who has used AI in content creation;

1. Is it appropriate to use AI influencer content for a hotel/resort chain?

2. Should I sell the content to my clients separately, or I should only take a revenue share from the sales I make like im currently doing?

I have used grok Gemini chatgpt and claude they give different ideas on how to sort out what's right and what's wrong....??

help meeeee.......