How to Make Money With AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a driving force in business and creative industries. AI-powered tools and technologies are bringing us to the future in unprecedented ways—creating efficiencies in manufacturing, automating manual and laborious tasks and collecting and analyzing data with incredible speed. But AI is a powerful way for entrepreneurs and side-hustlers to make money too. 

Ahead, we’ll run through how AI works, ideas for ways to make money using AI, and some tips on the risks and benefits of incorporating AI into your business or workflows. 

How AI works

The AI we use today isn’t especially self-aware, as science fiction has led us to believe. While that may yet still be in the future, current AI helps with a number of different tasks, like transcribing text, providing ideas via prompts—it can even drive our cars. AI is created through computer science with the help of an algorithm to simulate human-like intelligence and features. 

AI does have the capabilities to “think,” or process large quantities of information, and learn, reason, problem-solve, and even make decisions. It takes a lot of work to get AI to such human-like behaviors. It requires a subset of tools, such as natural language processing (NLP), to generate and understand human language, machine learning (ML) algorithms to make decisions from data, and neural networks that help improve speech and text recognition and respond accordingly. 

Learn more about how AI works

10 ways to make money using AI 

If you’re new to AI or new to using an AI tool to help generate more money, it can certainly be overwhelming. AI is everywhere. How do you begin to formulate the best idea for you? 

Consider creating parameters that align with your goals and help you make the most out of the technology. Ask yourself: What are your current strengths? Would your existing areas of expertise and knowledge benefit from a partner like AI? What security, privacy, or data needs to be protected before using AI? Is this for a short-term goal or for long-term gain?

No matter what your business is and what your goals are, you can use AI to make money or help you grow your revenue. Consider one of these 10 ideas.

1. Build a website

A website is crucial for business success. Having a website isn’t necessarily enough though—it needs to be able to drive traffic, conversions, and engage users.

With AI, you can tailor your website design precisely how you want it and use AI as a partner to optimize key pages. AI plug-ins can help with content generation, including text and art, and SEO optimization. You can add an AI chatbot to answer customer questions. 

Some AI tools can suggest improvements to pages, including layout and design, for better engagement from viewers. There are so many uses for AI to ensure your website (for you or a client) is at its peak. Nearly 60% of web designers in a recent Squarespace report said they are using AI to help them create client websites. 

2. Offer freelance services

Freelance work is ubiquitous now as a way to earn cash for secondary or full-time income. Freelance services are inclusive of anything listed in this guide, or any type of work that may include an AI component. These include but are not limited to: writing, art, design, code, app development, editing, search engine optimization, or project management.

Any of these roles have the ability to generate more income by incorporating AI to help you work faster or specifically offering AI services to people who are less practiced with the technology. There are a number of substacks, like writing copy for an ad tagline with the help of an AI prompt, that can help you make more money. Consider what would fit your existing expertise and network—you and your clients still need to be able to trust the quality of any work supported by AI.

Get our full guide to becoming a freelancer

3. Ecommerce selling 

The rapid growth of ecommerce means this way of selling isn’t going away anytime soon—and it means you can use some of the latest technologies to improve your bottom line. Pairing AI with ecommerce is a natural fit, and an easy way to test out optimizations to generate more revenue to sell online. 

This could include getting AI-powered chatbots or virtual assistants to help customers pick out the right products for them or managing inventory with AI to always know exactly what’s available for a customer. Or simply use AI to help you draft product descriptions or organize orders, saving you time to focus on other priorities.

4. Optimize digital marketing campaigns

Putting together a digital ad campaign can take time, which may take away from other parts of your business’s earning potential. AI can help you put together the essentials of your digital marketing efforts—everything from strategy to finalized ad copy and visuals to email copy—to reach your goals including more traffic, conversions, and revenue. 

Or ask an AI tool to analyze the performance of your previous marketing or customer feedback and pull out themes. You can use these to inform and optimize your future marketing.

5. AI-assist fitness instruction

For fitness entrepreneurs, AI can help you and your clients unlock potential in a number of different ways. Consider how you can use AI to bring traffic to your social media channels or web pages by creating AI-assisted digital ads, social copy, or blog content on correct form for exercises, your fitness philosophies and methodologies, and habits and nutritional guides to support overall health and wellness. 

It’s worth mentioning, too, that there are AI-powered video assistants that can help fitness entrepreneurs and their clients analyze and detect patterns in training, deepening the level of care and expertise you offer, which can help you create more income. 

6. AI-powered affiliate marketing efforts 

Affiliate marketing, which earns you a commission from promoting products and services from other businesses, can be as passive or active as you wish. If you want to earn a substantial amount from affiliate marketing links, consider using AI tools to help you understand which products or services are the most useful to you to sell. 

You can use AI to quickly research and summarize trends, your own audience analytics, and market information to better inform your decisions. 

7. Manage social media platforms with AI

We know social media management is more than an intern posting a photo to Instagram. Social media copy, design, and distribution can take a lot of time and effort, but the rewards can be very high if done well. Take the guesswork out of your social media efforts with AI, which can help speed up the process of creating all of the copy and design. For example, instead of asking a creative to mock up visuals for a campaign, you can generate examples to test ideas until you’re ready to create the final one. 

AI can even offer strategies on how often to post and where might be the best for you and your brand. Social media platforms are powerful, and can help you bring in income if optimized well for your audience.  

8. Create and edit videos and audio

AI needs a substantial amount of information to generate pretty much anything, and that includes audio, like voice or music, and video. Written copy isn’t the only or best thing that AI can generate for entrepreneurs looking to earn more money. AI-powered tools can help you create original audio like music, read text aloud for a podcast, or generate images to include in a video. 

AI is also extremely useful in precise editing. AI-powered editing tools can edit audio and videos of any length, with some tools able to publish the finished product for you. 

9. Turn your work into online courses 

If you’re an entrepreneur with a lot of content and expertise, it may be worth considering creating online courses for your audience and potential clients. With AI, it’s a lot easier to gather all of your available content and generate informed, engaging, and optimized materials for people to purchase. If your courses are standard, downloadable, and have a lifetime use, AI can ensure it’s well-packaged, designed, and delivered. 

AI tools can also help with live classes that have students: personalizing learning offers, delivering data-informed insights, and ensuring students provide feedback to better optimize the experience. 

Learn more about creating online courses

10. Offer translation services 

AI can help with a lot of labor intensive, and sometimes monotonous, tasks. Translation is one of them. So many people are multilingual and offer translation from one language to another, either written or verbal. 

With AI, you can take all of the knowledge you have for one, two, or several of the languages you know well, and create a translation service for potential clients. With the power of AI, you can translate text and use your personal expertise to ensure it has proper grammar and contextual nuance with speed. 

Risks and benefits of using AI

Like any technology, there are some great benefits that come with using AI and some risks that are important to understand. Before diving headfirst into the world of AI to generate more income, consider the following risks and benefits of the technology. 

Risks

1. Ethical concerns

   AI comes with its fair share of ethical concerns, such as plagiarism, biases, and privacy. AI is really only as powerful as the information it processes and analyzes. On the other hand, giving it too much information, such as private, legal, or financial considerations, may mean the AI tool will pull from that. It’s important to understand the technology’s limitations and work within them.

2. Errors

   If people don't always provide the correct information and need to double-check to ensure accuracy, it’s safe to assume AI has a similar hindrance. Always do your due diligence by fact-checking whatever output AI generates to avoid any errors.

3. AI fatigue

   Because AI is a bit of a buzzword these days, customers and businesses may get tired of constantly engaging with content that doesn’t feel unique or genuine. Consider where AI is most useful to you and your business, where it helps you, and why. This will help you avoid giving users AI fatigue. 

Benefits

1. 自動送信メール

   AI has been so helpful in streamlining operations in any business. This could be populating and analyzing information in a spreadsheet or translating a customer service call and analyzing it for a live customer support rep. There are a number of menial tasks we’ve all done that AI technology can do instead through automation, saving you time, and your business money.

2. Availability

   Unlike people, AI is largely available 24/7. This takes the pressure off of constantly being on. If a customer emails your business, for example, you can use AI tools to ensure whatever they send is captured and quickly generate a starter response so as not to leave them waiting. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can help with tasks, depending on the technology’s machine type and capability, freeing up your time.

3. Easy to use

   For the most part, AI is really easy to use. For example: If you’re looking to write a few lines of content for a product, all you need is an AI service to offer some prompts, then revise the generated copy to your unique voice and needs.

AI can seem daunting, particularly because it’s everywhere and a lot of the narrative focuses on what it may take away rather than what it can provide. If you’re looking to make more money from whatever your entrepreneurial endeavor is, consider bringing AI into the fold to streamline, optimize, and analyze for you.